Welcome to Neowin 5

[Adrian0E]

The new Layout is awsome!!

[Antaris Veteran]

i still dont get why it goes Apple > Microsoft > Linux.

Whats the logic behind that order?

[White Cuban]

i suggest making V4 available too.

[Guest]

Very, very nice.

[crazzyyfool]

Anyway to get the FP back to the old style? Don't get me wrong the new style is hot. But it bugs me when switching between the FP and forum and the styles changing. Hurts me eyes. :wacko: :cry:

[Panacik]

Not everyone has control over their web access. i can't even get onto half of google at school and not everyone likes big square flash ads in their articles.

I agree. I never found the ADs on neowin intrusive and couldnt understand people that complained about it, however that AD right in the middle of the page is somewhat annoying. It also distracts from reading the ADs properly, which i personally feel might turn people away from Neowin before they even get to the forums. That is something that Neowin cannot afford to do since their member base and post counts seem to be decreasing.

[Denholm]

Really good professional look (Y)

Now the forum skin needs a refresh and the masterpiece is complete.

[tomwarren Veteran]

Anyway to get the FP back to the old style? Don't get me wrong the new style is hot. But it bugs me when switching between the FP and forum and the styles changing. Hurts me eyes. :wacko: :cry:

Patience :) the forum style will be updated shortly. We just gotta work out the best way to go about things and any bugs/feature requests etc.

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

Is anyone going to reply to the numerous requests as to whether we can switch back to the old version?

I personally appeciate the work but dislike the new version. Neowin forums now seem to take about 10% of the screen estate - and they are the main reason I use this site. I liked the way the "New posts" were shown quite prominently on the old design, now they are tucked away in the upper right.

[Swiftie]

You can't please everyone all the time. & as human beings we don't like change. Hence some of the replies on here. But I do hope the design team stick to their guns and just tweak what is needed and pushes forward with their ideas. Coz personally I like the new design. If the layout gets tweaked just a lil bit then it will be even better.

Good work. (Y)

[alsheron]

Needs more padding on left side between main column border and text. Otherwise very nice (notwithstanding the jarring nature of any new update while getting used to it)

[Knife Party]

(Y) (Y)

[Raa]

I agree with njlouch and many others. At least the option to switch layouts would be nice. I'm sorry guys, I really do like the color, but the layout doesnt agree with me.

Change is nice, sure. But this one really seems a backwards step :(

Geez I hate saying that, you guys do such good work.

The subscriber/ads issue bites a bit too. But hey, gotta make money somehow I guess!

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

But this one really seems a backwards step

It really does. It feels like websites were about 3 years ag, almost a but "2.0" ish (sorry - hate saying that).

I thought the existing design could do with a polish, but it now feels over designed :(

[=NickJ=]

Yes the design looks nice, yes the content re-organisation is really good but why in the name of god on a news site would you want to reduce the amount of text shown per article and replace it with massive margins. IMO the 100% width was one of the best things about Neowin, I cannot stand the fact that eBays new design has gone the same way too. It just makes no sense.

[gigapixels Veteran]

As a news site this layout actually makes more sense. Go to any news site, such as CNN, MSNBC, or even ArsTechnica, and look at how they have their front page articles set up. We have small lead-ins to articles that require you to click through to view the entire article. This is normal for any news site I've ever been to. We also now include more stories on the front page. The entire new layout was based on the premise that we needed to look more like a news site than a forum portal, and, in my opinion, it wholly succeeds at that.

And I'm not sure why anybody thinks the recent forum posts and such have less attention than before... That little box actually takes up more space than the old one and allows longer thread titles than before.

[Raa]

Thats all very nice Giga, but this is Neowin. Remember the slogan!

This ISNT CNN/MSNBC/etc. If I wanted to read those, I'd go there. I want Neowin, not another almost generic looking site :p

I like Neowin, but yeah, my feelings have been made clear. I'm just hoping that feedback will be taken into account and an option made available, or some tweaks made to make it look ..... different, I dunno how to explain it :p

I like the idea that the thread titles box is bigger, that doesnt worry me - but it doesn't auto refresh?? That really is annoying, I like to see (From the main page) what threads are being talked about!!

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

That little box actually takes up more space than the old one and allows longer thread titles than before.

Previously they were left aligned - this implies importance in a western layout (left to right).

Moreover, they just feel lost.

Guess the forums are taking a back-seat to the news? Fair enough - my grasp of neowin may be different to the next persons, but I always here for the forums.

Either way - can we be given the option to switch?

[alsheron]

For those that want 100% width and have stylish installed...I created a small script to fix that. :)

http://userstyles.org/styles/11298

I tried this script (great work!) and in my opinion, with some tweaking, it would make it look updated, AND readable = GREAT.

The guys who worked on this must have put in massive amounts of work and effort and we cant thank them enough for that. If now our feedback could be taken on board and some fairly middling changes made, I think the updated style would please almost everyone (except those who simply don't like change).

[gigapixels Veteran]

Previously they were left aligned - this implies importance in a western layout (left to right).

Moreover, they just feel lost.

Guess the forums are taking a back-seat to the news? Fair enough - my grasp of neowin may be different to the next persons, but I always here for the forums.

Either way - can we be given the option to switch?

Lost? How so? They're right there in their own little box. It actually looks more important now, given that it's not attached to an announcement box or something similar, but in its own spot at the very top of the content on the right.

The forums aren't taking a back-seat to news in any way, shape, or form. However, the forum cannot function without an ad-driven news frontend. This point cannot be stressed enough. If we are to get more traffic, more visitors, and inherently more revenue to power the website, we need to be a fully-fledged news site on the frontend. It's that simple.

No design changes are my decision, so I cannot tell you if the option will be given. However, I personally hope it won't.

On a related note, I don't want anybody to think I'm being argumentative. I'm simply trying to understand these different opinions and perhaps give the reasoning behind these design decisions.

[+Nik Louch Subscriber²]

It's only my personal feeling, not an attack or really even a criticism, just a feeling. And to me they feel lost over on the right.

May I ask why you prefer the option to not be given? How would it affect those who wish to stay on the new design negatively?

[Axel]

i love the new colors and all but it's WAY too cramped. i have literally 4 inches of just blue margin on both sides of my screen that used to get used up by version 4

but now you've crammed more information into way, way less space with 8 inches of empty blue just sitting there on the sides. doesn't seem very efficient, nor user friendly to me :no:

i understand that not everyone isn't using as big of a monitor / resolution as i am but should there not be some settings in control panel for us wide screen users? or at the least let us switch back to version 4 so i don't have to click on every single link in order to see what's going on

100% agree!

[gigapixels Veteran]

It's only my personal feeling, not an attack or really even a criticism, just a feeling. And to me they feel lost over on the right.

May I ask why you prefer the option to not be given? How would it affect those who wish to stay on the new design negatively?

I understand completely, and I welcome different opinions wholeheartedly.

There have been many changes to the way news is posted now.

Another reason behind some of the design decisions was that we want to emphasize original content. Neowin has a bit of a bad reputation as being a simple copy & paste website, and we would like to get away from that. All of the news items in the left column are original content, and we now differentiate those from copy & pasted articles (shown in the right column) when posting news. This change affects the layout inherently.

Such a simple change can affect the layout, and if we make any more changes in the future, we would have to work on and update both layouts to include said changes. It's simply more work than it is worth in my opinion.

But, once again, such decisions are not up to me, and I'm not even sure if my opinion is shared by the rest of the staff.

[Axel]

For those griping about the fixed width. We may add the ability to resize it just a tad (max width, maybe an addition 100or200 pixels). But it will not be 100% like shift was. This is a design choice.

Bad choice in my opinion. In this respect I believe practicality has been sacrificed for aesthetics. With more people getting widescreen monitors, I don't think a great deal of thought has been put into the design from the users perspective. Yes the graphics look nice, but layout HAS been compromised.

[Raa]

I've got another bug, and i'm hoping this one's an easy fix

When I move the mouse over the main menus, the Main menu drops down, but wont clear. It just stays there. Control panel & IRC menus works fine.

Possible cookies problem? (This bug occurs in IE7, but not Chrome)

Edit : Just cleared cookies, still happens. Also, if I mouse-over Main, then move to the left or right on the menu, it wont ever clear, but if I mouse over main, then down the menu, then off, it clears. That's gotta be a bug!! :p