4.5.3 was done very quickly to respond to a security issue.  We did not want to get involved in a bunch of this should be patched and why not change that also.  It would have delayed the release and required more testing.  Had there been no security issue we would not have made another release last night.  We also wanted to make a more reasonable response to the search issue that is based on a number of factors including the responses of a handful of people in the forums.

The mistake was the manner in which the change was rolled out with very little warning and not enough testing.  The reason for wanting to implement this feature and to make it available to new users was not a mistake.  Going forward we feel it is best to not make the same mistake by rushing out a change only to change it again in the next release.  We will be coming out with another release shortly (timeframe still being discussed) that will address any significant issues raised during the original 4.5.2 release.  At that point we will likely make changes to this skin object based on the feedback we have recieved.

Sebastian,

I am glad to see that it can be disabled.  However, this still means that hundreds of skins need to be tweaked to look right. Had the DNN team kept the defaults the same as the previous behavior then these skins could be re-worked when and if  desired.  Now most of the skins for sale at Snowcovered, will look funny since the designer couldn't have planned for the extra space required for the radio buttons.

Stability releases like 4.5.2 and 4.5.3 aren't supposed to introduce new behavior, nor required tweaking a zillion skins. They are supposed to fix bugs. 

I have become very wary about the level of testing and scrutiny that DNN releases get before they are shoved out the door.  I started with DNN back with 4.3.5 and most of the upgrades I haven't dared to apply. I finally upgraded from 4.3.7 to 4.5.1 just a couple weeks ago on my production site. I was just about to localhost test 4.5.2 today after it had only been out 2 days, when I saw 4.5.3 was the only version available.

/DaveS

back on topic since those questions were too difficult

was this change (Search) discussed anywhere before it was released...      feature, changes needed, configuration?