EDIT: On the other hand, some colours are so bright that it is to the point of irritating.

If I do not log in, the summaries under the forum titles are shown in grey.  After logging in, the text under some forums are shown in a very light grey, just like this one below

ESL Common English Questions and Answers - Archived Posts

Note that the colours above are not exactly the same as what I can see, just an approximate simulation.

The same also happens to any READ entries in a forum.  For example,in the "English Audio: Speech and Pronunciation" forum

Swine Influenza Statement by WHO Director...
What do you think about the accent of the WHO Director-General? http://video.who.int/streaming/SWINE_FLU_PRESS_CONF_29APR2009_INTRO.wmv If you don't...
By Pter  Latest post by S.P.I. 3 days ago 7:22 pm

The icon on the left is also shown in light grey instead of blue because I have read the thread.  The contrast on "1 replies" inside the icon is also very low.

I have adjusted the contrast of my screen and I can now see them better, but the contrast is still quite low.  I haven't test it out yet, but I would say the colour contrast would most likely fail colour contrast tests for web accessibility.

Sufficient colour contrast is very important for people with low vision, such as presbyopia, colour blindness and cataract.  Sufficient colour contrast is also important for people with normal vision.  In my opinion, the last version of EF is much easier on the eye.

Thank you very much for your reply.  I understand why you want to make them 'hidden', and I suppose it should help us to quickly tell which threads are unread.  But in my case, I sometimes may want to reread some posts I have read before and I find it very difficult to find the threads when the summaries are 'hidden'.  Perhaps it is just me.  I found it very frustrating initially, but am now starting to accept this change -- I can no longer scan the page quickly, but have to stop at those 'hidden' text to read them slowly.