Do you like the new Neowin front page design?


  

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  1. 1. Do you like the new Neowin front page design?



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I do post updates in Site Announcements, but this is kind of a major update and if I need to post a help manual along with it then we're doing it wrong. I am disappointed that some people have complained about options that we already have in the update, complaining without bothering to look.... eg: complaining it's too bright (we added darkside) complaining that summary view is gone, (it isn't) and so forth.

 

What about complaints that the banner at the top of the page is WAAAAAY too friggin' large?  

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I must say, while I'm no designer for Neowin, I am a designer by trade, blank critical comments like this with no actual feedback don't help and tick me off a little. At least offer feedback so they can improve

there was plenty feedback offered in this thread. what is the point to repeat it all, since it looks like the designers are not even listening!

BUT, SINCE YOU ASKED, HERE IS A REPEAT OF MAIN POINTS FOR YOU!

- too much wasted space. too much white space. font is way too big! i had to zoom out at least to 80% to make front page look good. this made forums unreadable! incongruent!

- looks designed for mobile and tablets, not for desktop users, while this is not m.neowin.net!

- top bar (the original neowin color!) does not color/style match to anything anymore... the originality of all that was neowin is lost! tiny logo is all that is left.

- why circle crop the avatar, when there are no circles in the rest of design.   looks seriously amateurish, or just basic template!

- no notifications appear on front page, you have to go to forum to see if you have new messages, or replies. sucks. makes me what to skip front page all together now.

- the use of gradients, makes the "modern" metro look that it is aiming for, look horribly dates. gradients like this are just plain bad!

 

happy now, Designer?  care to elaborate on this points? am I being too harsh?  

 

this site is too large and too long standing to allow such amateurish design to prevail.  it is just a slap in a face for anyone with taste.   now it is a copycat of every other tech news sites... even worse,

since some of them (http://techcrunch.com/) actually look congruent, and everything actually fits with the theme! grey, white and green!

 

unlike here. there is not even a sight of the neowin blue color from the top bar, used anywhere else in the news.  nothing!!!!  why even bother to keep that color, when it is not used in news!

this makes the top bar totally alien to the rest of the front page. it does not look like it belongs!  

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Fun fact: People don't like change.

 

Were I doing it, first thing I would have done was get a "Classic" theme made up that emulated as much as possible the old site appearance.  After all, it's all about keeping your users happy.  Unhappy users rapidly become ex-users.

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there was plenty feedback offered in this thread. what is the point to repeat it all, since it looks like the designers are not even listening!

BUT, SINCE YOU ASKED, HERE IS A REPEAT OF MAIN POINTS FOR YOU!

- too much wasted space. too much white space. font is way too big! i had to zoom out at least to 80% to make front page look good. this made forums unreadable! incongruent!

- looks designed for mobile and tablets, not for desktop users, while this is not m.neowin.net!

- top bar (the original neowin color!) does not color/style match to anything anymore... the originality of all that was neowin is lost! tiny logo is all that is left.

- why circle crop the avatar, when there are no circles in the rest of design.   looks seriously amateurish, or just basic template!

- no notifications appear on front page, you have to go to forum to see if you have new messages, or replies. sucks. makes me what to skip front page all together now.

- the use of gradients, makes the "modern" metro look that it is aiming for, look horribly dates. gradients like this are just plain bad!

 

happy now, Designer?  care to elaborate on this points? am I being too harsh?  

 

this site is too large and too long standing to allow such amateurish design to prevail.  it is just a slap in a face for anyone with taste.   now it is a copycat of every other tech news sites... even worse,

since some of them (http://techcrunch.com/) actually look congruent, and everything actually fits with the theme! unlike here.

 

There is always a difference in critical feedback and negative/harsh feedback. This is something you learn in trade. Critical helps, negative doesn't. 

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Were I doing it, first thing I would have done was get a "Classic" theme made up that emulated as much as possible the old site appearance.  After all, it's all about keeping your users happy.  Unhappy users rapidly become ex-users.

 

 

yeah, at LEAST keep the color there going.  as i mentioned, they only kept it in the top bar, and it matches NOTHING. lame.

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Looks like every other website out there now. Pretty much "Hey let's use this template we found."

 

Now that I think about it, that's true. Neowins old design was great and it looked like Neowin and no one else.

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Were I doing it, first thing I would have done was get a "Classic" theme made up that emulated as much as possible the old site appearance.  After all, it's all about keeping your users happy.  Unhappy users rapidly become ex-users.

That's more of a software thing. I haven't seen any websites that allow you to go back to the older appearance. I mean I guess some sites let you view older designs as a sort of novelty feature that isn't maintained or updated.

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There is always a difference in critical feedback and negative/harsh feedback. This is something you learn in trade. Critical helps, negative doesn't. 

 

what?  this is critical feedback. 

 

if they use more of neowin blue color in the news, and shrink the entries a bit, switch white to grey, make the avatar diplay properly on front page and add notification display, I would be happy.

 

metro style is ok with me, but not at a cost of functionality.

but i was listings the things i did not like.  because i wanted people to understand the issue.    solutions are obvious (as i listed)   i dont think any web site coder will have a problem with any of this!

(even with multiple testing and tweaking it is a 2 day job...  and if everything is smooth, it is 20 minutes job to change it to better, while keeping overall new theme.

only issue is notifications, which might be not so easy to add to the new template (IT LOOK LIKE A TEMPLATE. THERE IS NOTHING CUSTOM ABOUT IT AT ALL SO FAR!!!  that is what upsets me most...)

 

damn, i will even forgive them for the horrible gradients. not everyone has same taste.

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what?  this is critical feedback. 

 

if they use more of neowin blue color in the news, and shrink the entries a bit, switch white to grey, make the avatar diplay properly on front page and add notification display, I would be happy.   metro style is ok with me, but not at a cost of functionality.

 

damn, i will even forgive them for the horrible gradients. not everyone has same taste.

Should have added that your feedback was critical which helps

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That's more of a software thing. I haven't seen any websites that allow you to go back to the older appearance. I mean I guess some sites let you view older designs as a sort of novelty feature that isn't maintained or updated.

 

Ohh come on.   At least they could have TRIED to keep the neowin color theme going...  So it looked like neowin!  Not like ANY ANONYMOUS tech news site...  :(

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Not really fond of the news size as they are simply too large and very little content is visible without scrolling,and that for the content delivery is never good. The worst offense is that commenting system does not show up or work in Opera 12.17, still my main browser.

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what?  this is critical feedback. 

 

if they use more of neowin blue color in the news, and shrink the entries a bit, switch white to grey, make the avatar diplay properly on front page and add notification display, I would be happy.   metro style is ok with me, but not at a cost of functionality.

 

damn, i will even forgive them for the horrible gradients. not everyone has same taste.

Already stated that Notifications will be returning.

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This new design is definitely not designed with desktop users in mind... besides the fact that everything is simply too big, the auto-hiding header that shows up every time you scroll up is extremely annoying. I don't even understand why I would need to access it when I'm half-way down the page. Mobile users can already get back to the top of the page with a simple flick of their finger, and it's clearly not designed for desktop users, so what's it for?

 

I don't even hate metro (I've been using Win 8 since the DP), but the front page seriously makes metro look professional. I can only hope that the admins realize that while this is "pretty" to look at, it's not at all functional and provides no distinction from other tech sites.

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 i had to zoom out at least to 80% to make front page look good. this made forums unreadable! incongruent!

 

FYI -- the forums will be updated later.  We didn't want to change everything at once; work out the bugs in the front page first, then move on to forums.

 

Thanks for the rest of the feedback, appreciated!

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Ohh come on.   At least they could have TRIED to keep the neowin color theme going...  So it looked like neowin!

OK, but the colour scheme seems to have changed over the years, so I take it you prefer the last design's colour scheme?

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Time it takes to deal with ipb, is the reason why it always comes later.

 

I'm dreading upgrading to IPB4, but we're (my forum and staff) are going to give everything a refresh once it is released.

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OK, but the colour scheme seems to have changed over the years, so I take it you prefer the last design's colour scheme?

 

Either...  At least we HAD a theme!

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Home page does not render correctly on Mac Safari and Mac Firefox. The background is a progressive dark blue to lighter blue instead of the white background. Very difficult to see the grey font.

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This new design is definitely not designed with desktop users in mind... besides the fact that everything is simply too big, the auto-hiding header that shows up every time you scroll up is extremely annoying. I don't even understand why I would need to access it when I'm half-way down the page. Mobile users can already get back to the top of the page with a simple flick of their finger, and it's clearly not designed for desktop users, so what's it for?

 

I don't even hate metro (I've been using Win 8 since the DP), but the front page seriously makes metro look professional. I can only hope that the admins realize that while this is "pretty" to look at, it's not at all functional and provides no distinction from other tech sites.

 

Thank you...  I agree to that 100%

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