Firstly, Martin (and team) my post was not meant to belittle all your hard work on Plone 3.0.. but it came across that way and let me say from the bottom of my plonista heart .. I'm so sorry if you feel we were "hating" on you (as my teens would say)

Please keep in mind.. as you said.. change even if it's for the better.. can be extremely painful...

The 13th of this month I posted...

Plone 3.0 - Customize footer.pt (plone.footer)

As was mentioned.. there are a lot of positive things about Plone 3.0.. many of the functions once nestled in the zmi... are now accessible via the plone control panel (yay!)

• No more logging in to my websites zope port.. accessing the zmi control panel and packing the database.. I can pack my database in Plone..
• portlets don't require accessing the zmi.. I can do all of that through the Plone interface..
  
• content rules and versioning and pre-configured worfklows for intranet (one of the most common workflow setups we deal with..)
  

All fantastic enhancements in functionality and value to our client base...

It has become harder for integrators to implement Plone (especially the skinning side) that doesn't mean we won't buckle down and learn what we need to learn.. I've got eclipse open now.. and Martin's book.. and Phillips book.. and David Convent's tutorial and half a dozen tabs with tutorials on viewlets.. and zopeskel.. and Generic setup.. etc etc.. I'd say I've got 80% of it learned.. but not without quite a few hours of investment "relearning" the art of theming.. will we have to do this with every major release? I'm assuming we won't..

I guess that's the cruxt of the issue.. those of us who have a decent sized client base.. who deal with client requests every day.. and still support many, many clients with 2.5 or lower versions..trying to keep up with the changes..

My lament is over .. back to hitting the books.. (and getting that Customize Plone 3.0 ttw tutorial finished at plone.org.. )