Dark white

I mean dark bulbs and white bulbs, not dark white (gray?). Actually, yellow would probably be better.

now I can't even remember what those icons were on the old software

They were yellow and orange folders, where orange meant new stuff. I thought it was a good color scheme.

I understand your complaint about the alternating colors when you read out of order. I hadn't considered that. Maybe if the unread colors were a bit more contrasting to the read colors. Really, though, I think that the icons need to be different colors and that would help a lot. Actually, they are, but somehow, again, the white looks more like a mistake than an indicator.