I have noticed that it may not totally be the white background as well. Maybe black outlines will help and not be as much of an issue to change.
What really gets to my eyes is looking at the little green arrow on the left of the message. I tried using the recent activity page since from that page if you read a post and then go back, that post is not in bold any more. And if there is a new post it will go back to bold and have a number in red. This is a good deal if you check the page often. I can't sometimes, so I have to use the more tab at the bottom, but when you back out you have to scroll back to the bottom and re click the more tab how ever many times as you had clicked it before.
There has been times that I sit down and have 100+ post to look at.
Because of this I go to forums and use the all new post tab.
This way I have page numbers if I happen to get messed up and have to start over, at least I know what page I was on.
The down side to this is the only way the post changes from bold is if I reply to it.
So unless I look really close and watch for the very light colored very hard to see highlight, I have to remember the title line and scroll again to find where I was.
Sorry for the rant! I just hope for the day that the post will gray out if they have been read and go back bold when they have a new reply.
I do like alot of the features of this site, I figured if I nobody says anything then nothing can change.
Thanks Jeff, Sorry to give you one more thing to think about.