New design personality and first impression on not-high-res PC monitors

[Ambroos]

Well, time for some (hopefully) constructive criticism. While I like the new look I fear Neowin has lost a bit of it's personality. Too many sites look like the same set of Metro tiles nowadays, and without a striking font or a few unique design elements it might get hard to recognize the site at a glance. Maybe something different than just "Open Sans" would already help.

 

The main issue I have is the lack of content visibility on desktops without scrolling. The fold is a well-known design concept. Although I don't believe you should pay too much attention to the idea behind it (this is an excellent read on the topic), I do feel that Neowin right now needs at least some of it.

 

 

Right now, if you visit the site without Adblock/subscriber, you need a large monitor to see any of the 'real' content at a glance. Any common PC resolution below 1920x1080 suffers from it, which includes the nowadays very common 1600x900, 1366x768, 1280x800, ... Even if I emulate these viewport sizes and don't take into account window chrome (address bar and tabs) and the start bar, you still only see the featured items and ads. While the featured items may look nice if you're really used to them, I think they're getting just a little too much attention right now.

 

A bigger problem is that, at those window sizes (especially if you're not logged in), everything looks like an ad if you don't scroll. It's all so flashy with big images and big fonts, which happens to be exactly how an ad looks. I took a screenshot on my 1920x1200 tablet to demonstrate what I mean:

 

 

When I look at that I just wonder, where's the content? Lost between ads and headers. I'd really make those featured items much, much smaller. For a good example of a similar layout you could take a look at Tweakers.net. Another good start would be making the list view the default view, it's what we're used to from Neowin and, to be honest, is easier to read.

 

Any thoughts on what I said? I'm interested in hearing what the thinking behind these decisions was (especially the big featured tiles and the lack of bold design).

[AmazingRando]

When the header collapses on the scroll, it should go to a shorter version of the current header and not just turn into a blue bar with all branding for the site removed as well.

[Dot Matrix]

you need a large monitor to see any of the 'real' content at a glance. Any common PC resolution below 1920x1080 suffers from it, which includes the nowadays very common 1600x900, 1366x768, 1280x800, ... Even if I emulate these viewport sizes and don't take into account window chrome (address bar and tabs) and the start bar, you still only see the featured items and ads.

I don't see the issue. Sounds like the banner images are doing their job. It akes a few flicks of a finger to scroll. Not sure why everything should be crammed just because of smaller screens.