@Wyck - We'll add the formatting of code blocks a monospaced to our backlog. It seems like a wholely reasonable request.
@davewilk - What you refer to as branding is not only changing of styles. A dev center (MSDN) or tech center (TechNet) for a product is a holistic experience that spans forums, sample gallery, documentation library, search, etc. that share a common
information architecture (most obviously shared menu structure), scope of content, etc. I understand that for MVPs who frequently traverse the boundaries between different dev/tech centers the differences in appearance may seem like a distraction.
But for more novice users, and people who develop primarily for a single platform (e.g., Windows Phone, Windows, Windows Azure, Office) it's important for the forums associated with that center to look and act like the rest of that center. We see this
over and over in usability studies, where people feel it's "jarring" when one part of a center experience "feels" different than all the rest.
Users coming from bing or google should consistently see a given thread displayed in the same branding (i.e. the canonical brand and center for that thread). So while it's possible to navigate within the forums, or manipulate the URL in the address
bar, to see a thread a center that is not its canonical, that shouldn't happen coming from 3rd party search.
