My fundamental problem with that approach is that I don't want to read 5 sites. I want to read 1 site with the content I want on it.
The ghettoization of stack-exchange was a mistake. Give me an interface more like reddit - let me pick which areas I want to see questions from, all merged on to one page.
No, I don't think I've ever seen any official support for customizing themes. There is the Hot Dog theme for SO (http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/34939/1288) that you might be able to use as a starting point for a custom user theme.
Sorry, should have been more clear. What I really meant was having things like the score, number of answers, etc, in nice big numbers next to the question.
Oh, not on the official site. I don't think that page is updated in real time, so the vote counts would be off by quite a bit for the hottest questions on each site. You might find an app on http://stackapps.com/ that uses the API though.
Do you visit only one site on the Internet? I just wonder how far you're willing to go here, because the beauty of the internet, to me, is that there are zillions of sites on lots of different topics.
As time goes on, the number has certainly decreased. Look at how popular rss ands sites like reddit are.
In fact, in terms of my actual daily "rotation" of sites, there are exactly 3: Reddit, HN, and Gmail.
I absolutely want to visit less sites. Stack-Exchange as a product for me would have significantly more value to me as an integrated network, rather than the current mish-mash of partitioned off sites. Let me search all questions, let all questions (in tags I don't have filtered, and of subject areas I've added) appear in my questions list.
The ghettoization of stack-exchange was a mistake. Give me an interface more like reddit - let me pick which areas I want to see questions from, all merged on to one page.