El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

This topic was created by Drewc .

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.

Page:

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    El Reg Redesign - leave your comments here

    December 19 Update no.4 - changes

    Changed screen outside site background colour from white to grey.

    Top Art in stories - now editorially selectable - in response to feedback about relevance (see above).

    Reduced headline font size on Hero “story” at top of front page, articles and forum pages.

    Masthead - entirely clickable to get back to front page(with exception of area containing social media buttons).

    Footer - “The Register” text now clickable to help return readers to front page.

    Visited and hover states swapped for better readability.

    A Christmas masthead!

    One week on. Update No.2 - our story is here

    Update No.1

    just letting you know that we are listening to your feedback. A quick update for now - we’ll report back to you next week.

    Half-second delay added before the mouseover triggers drop down nav. We hopes this eliminates those annoying accidental pop-ups.

    Two bugs reported - we have fixed one, restoring the ability to switch between desktop and mobile versions. The second. namely the loss of right click to open new tabs affects IE8 + IE9 users - just under six per cent of our readers, We know how to fix it - and it’s on our to do list. We’ll get this out before the end of next week.

    Bye, bye print article icon - rarely used, not coming back. We still support this feature - so you are welcome to get hacking. *

    Here is a checklist of the changes we have made.

    Grey (mostly)  axed from colour palette  -  site is probably too monochrome now - but where better place to start than black and white?

    Top ad moved  -  to get more space-for and attention for editorial content.

    Expanding section nav  - to make content more accessible

    Fixed navbar  - an aide memoire to encourage people to explore site

    Footer  - more logical home for many links

    Tidied up the right column  - We think it is easier to navigate.

    Pics at the top of nearly all stories  -  visual is good, right?

    Removed left column in the story page  - declutter

    Reduced number of “teaser” units at bottom of story page  - declutter

    Social media buttons and tags moved   - more logical places on the page

    Front page headline carousel  - rotating teasers, are they effective? Let's A/B test.

    Removed tabs and content buttons  - tried to make content accessible.-

    Feature removed - most commented   - will be unpopular with some - but ignored / unused by vast majority. We aim to rethink this feature - but at a later date.

    Feature removed print article - not used - This is not coming back

    1. J. R. Hartley

      Fucking shit

      No need to go all Office 2013 on us. Fuck me this is grim.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Fucking shit

        You appear to have changed your prose style since the Art of Fly Fishing, Mr. Hartley.

        Office 13? Really?

        1. Gert Leboski

          Re: Fucking shit

          Well played DrewC.

        2. Jim 59

          Love it, well done

          This is indeed the biggest scandal since the great variable-width rumpus of '05 or whenever it was. Saw it this morning, nice surprise, think it looks nice. I like the old blue headlines being changed to black. And the header being shrunk and a bit less "Daily Sport" too. And it's quick. Not so keen on the pop-up pictures at the top but what the hell, why not. Consider making the font for the main headline a touch smaller, given we all have big screens now.

          It is quite surprising that such a nice job was done by an "in-house team". Oh, and about that...

          In addition, "Redesign v2" is coming in 2015 and is likely to involve an agency that can guide us through-

          NO! Your own team clearly knows what it is doing.

          1. AJ MacLeod

            Re: Love it, well done

            There's always one, isn't there? I can only conclude that you're either viewing the site with a screen reader or completely insane.

      2. Rusty 1
        WTF?

        Re: Fucking shit

        Yep, right down to the "menu" entries in fecking caps.

        Going back a few years, one Margaret Calvert was employed to make our road signs easily readable. Through the clever use of both upper and lower cases letters, with ascenders and descenders, most words were immediately visually recognisable by their shape, quite often without having to read the words themselves.

        Now, 50 odd years on, in the next millennium, this CAPS LOCK SHITE returns.

        Mankind is doomed.

      3. Gert Leboski

        Re: Fucking shit

        I wish I could upvote your response more.

        Whilst I don't necessarily agree with you, the concise, blunt response, first in the queue of real commentards, just made me crack up. Thank you Mr Hartley. :-D

      4. ashdav

        Re: Fucking shit

        Quick, Modern, Fresher.

        Hmm... So that will be..

        Quick - flatter (no graphics to render)

        Modern - (following the sheep)

        Fresher - (it looks like a fucking phone)

        Also looks like a wall of text. Why do you need consultants to to tell you this is WRONG?

      5. Jamie Jones Silver badge
        Unhappy

        ARGGGGGGGGGGGH!

        Sorry, it's horrible.

        I actually thought my browser had loaded the site without the stylesheet.

        How about instead putting resources into making the forum work properly -- highlights/notifications of replies / new comments etc.

        1. Hoppy

          Re: ARGGGGGGGGGGGH!

          Its dreadful.

          Like Jamie I had to check I had the correct version of site I thought I had loaded the one for idiots,

          "Pics at the top of nearly all stories - visual is good, right?" NO it bloody well isn't. I suspect most of your readers are literate and can understand the meaning of an article quite well with out requiring pictures. Although I do forget what a mouse is or struggle to visualise a switch without some form of memory jogger.

          That's not including any comments re fixed width etc. that my fellow posters have covered.

          We (the readers) are not fools and I suspect will dislike the "new and improved" style immensely.

          Oh yes while I'm posting- Please bring back the carousel. It was probably the most endearing feature of the front page bringing articles I mas have otherwise missed to my attention..

          1. Mage Silver badge
            Mushroom

            Re: ARGGGGGGGGGGGH!

            Images TOO BLOODY BIG, pardon my Klatchian.

        2. Steve Evans

          Re: ARGGGGGGGGGGGH!

          Ooooh, that's a point... I might be able to fix it (on the desktop at least) with some abuse in tampermonkey.

          BTW, what's the android mobile app like? Has it got any better? Last time I tried it it didn't last an hour before the bin summoned.

      6. (AMPC) Anonymous and mostly paranoid coward

        Re: Fucking shit

        Not too impressed from my tiny laptop screen. Miss being able to quickly scan the articles with just a discreet headliner on top. Plus I really hate flash warnings. So I am not sure this will catch on but appreciate the effort. Keep trying.

      7. nuclearstar

        Re: Fucking shit

        I hate the new site to be honest. Its terrible, reminds me of those websites like buzzfeed.

        The annoying navigation bar at the top needs to go too. And why is the page so small on my widescreen monitor, I got a widescreen so I could fit more on it, not to have white space everywhere

      8. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Fucking shit

        My sentiments entirely. Utterly horrendous, roll it back ASAP.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

      I'm fed up with fixed width sites on my Full HD screen - wasted space on sides & unecessary scrolling.

      Please consider reverting to the original Reg dynamic width one of olden times please.

      Cheers

      1. Jeff Deacon
        Thumb Down

        Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

        Equally, I often read ElReg on a narrower than usual (these days) screen, and must constantly scroll horizontally to see what is going on. Please record my vote to restore dynamic width coding.

      2. Piro Silver badge

        Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

        Clearly designed for a tablet held in portrait with such a narrow design persisting: my main complaint about most sites today. They've forgotten we all are forced into wider screens...

    3. Yes Me Silver badge
      Unhappy

      Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

      BAD Vulture! BAD!

      Um, this confirms my experience that web site makeovers always make sites worse, especially when objectives like "modern and fresher" are involved. It is now harder to spot the lead stories, harder to quickly whip down the page looking for interesting stories, and also it's visually boring. All worse, nothing better that I can see.

    4. Geoff Johnson

      Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

      Lose the fixed nav bar and it would be OK.

      Fixed content is a waste of space, especially on small screens.

    5. JeffyPoooh
      Pint

      Where's the bloody Start button gone??

      LOL.

      It's fine. Looks a bit more like a newspaper.

      At least there are no Tiles. Thank you.

    6. Mark 65

      Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

      I still see we have no full time SSL option so the login form is delivered up by http and is susceptible to on-the-fly shenanigans as detailed in one of the many articles on web security trumpeted at El Reg. Practising that which is preached would be a healthy start before dicking around with look and feel.

    7. web_bod
      Facepalm

      Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

      1999 has called they want their fugly portal layout back - seriously WHAT were you thinking - it's an abomination - particularly against the bloody geckos you have plastered all over the background - I thought the Guardian was bad - but Jesus Christ - this layout is so noisy - have you never considered usability?

      It's awful.

    8. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: El Reg Redesign - what a f&^*&^ mess!

      Net result of your changes: After a refresh, it takes me several minutes paging up and down to work out if there is any new content that I might want to read. It is now nearly impossible to determine which links I've already visited and which not.

      With the previous setup, the headlines of sorties I'd already visited were red -- ie. nice contrast to black == easily seen. Now they're just very slightly lighter grey.

      I have a 1920x1080 screen -- hardly exotic.

      Of that screen, excluding my browsers screen furniture, an area of 1860x840 is available to the register to use.

      Of that 450x840 to left is blank;

      410x840 to the right is blank;

      1000x180 is the top-of-screen invariant stuff logo etc.;

      665x430 is the pic and head line of the "Top Story" (As decided by who?) that I've either already read, or wasn't interested in when it first appeared.

      334x490 are more "top stories" (Decided by who?) that I've already seen; or wasn't interested in.

      334x170 are "Most read". (Why do I care?) that I've already seen; or didn't care about when they first appeared. What am I supposed to do? Change my mind because other people read them?

      665x215 Potentially new stories.

      So, that means just 8.94% of the usable screen real estate is actually used for something I might want to read.

      Now, you'd think that after I page down, that would increase to 665x840 -- a whole 35% -- but no! Because 435x160 is given over to a reminder to DONT MISS another of your puerile knocking the BBC stories that I WASN'T INTERESTED IN TEH FIRST TIME AROUND; AND STIILL AIN'T!

      And 665x170 has 3 completely meaningless pictures to 3 more stories that I've either read; OR WASN'T INTERESTED IN THE FIRST TIME THEY APPEARED.

      Like I said in the subject:What an f'ing mess.

      For over 10 years I've been here every day; for between 10 and 18 hours per day; refreshing the screen every 10 or 15 minutes; reading what I'm interested in and skipping what I'm not.

      Upshot: I will either: make the effort to write a local (Opera: View->Style->User mode CSS) to:

      a) discard (visibility: hidden;) all the repetitious crap that occupies 50% of my screen;

      b) expand the story_row divisions to fill my screen;

      Or, I will simply throw the tab that has occupied a pinned position in my browser ever since Opera first had tabs and allowed you to pin them; and just forget this place existed.

      Because as is, this place has just become too much like hard work to follow.

      "quick, modern and fresher" NOT!

      Try "pinched, repetitive and forced". Ramming "your choices" and "the social consensus" down my throat. Pathetic. Utterly pathetic.

      1. BrowserUk

        Re: El Reg Redesign - How to fix it!

        This is what they send me: http://imgbin.org/images/21306.jpg

        This is what I now see: http://imgbin.org/images/21307.jpg

        No huge white left margins; No teasers; no statics; no large_story; no story_list; no DONT MISS; no STORY GRID IMG; no right col; no spotlight; no sponlinks; no crumbtrail; no social btns; no follow btns top; no story rhs more;

        And with jscript off; none of those stupid popup menus other have talked of but I've never seen.

        Unvisited links in light blue; visited link if faded red.

        Ain't perfect yet -- haven't worked out a way to use the full width of my screen yet; but so much better than the crap they pulled. I see everything I want to see -- eg. the stories -- and none of the repetitive crap.

        And, cos they forced my had NO ADS!

        (If your an Opera user and wanna know how; mail me!)

    9. CTM

      Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

      Very BBC news and co. So much white space it hurts my eyes. Why does every website redesign make my desktop / laptop look like a tablet / smartphone?

      I'm a techie. I'm like a mushroom. I'm in the dark and fed... even by my favourite websites :(

      1. Fullbeem

        Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

        Needs a night mode then. A fellow dark room techie

    10. Anonymous Coward
      Boffin

      Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

      Two things I would like to see:

      1. A by-line on the front page so I don't accidentally read anything by the likes of Orlowski* and Page.

      2. A better way of changing account details such as email addresses.

      * To be fair, it's fairly easy to spot Orlowski's drivel as the headline usually contains the words "BBC", "Freetard" or "Open Rights Group".

      1. The Other Steve
        Flame

        Bylines +1. Dark mode +1

        I also would like this feature, though for precisely the opposite reason, viz I would like to be able to quickly locate pieces by Orlowski and Page for perusal - and for the hilarity of commentard froth that typically appears below them - while avoiding the febrile ramblings of Hamill - who, unlikely as it seems, was apparantly molested by an iPhone at some point in his life - and likewise the fruity flavoured 'tard dribble that tends to appear below those.

        Other than that, it looks good as long as long as I close one eye, squint with the other and avoid looking at it inside or indeed anywhere outside of direct sunlight. The contrast! It burns!

      2. Dr Stephen Jones

        Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

        I usually enjoy Lewis and Andrew's stories even when I disagree with them.

        Can we also have a filter so I don't need to read whiney easily-offended commentards like Mahatma Coat?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          FAIL

          Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

          Can we also have a filter so I don't need to read whiney easily-offended commentards like Mahatma Coat?

          I'm actually pretty hard to offend. I'm just picky about what I read.

    11. big_D Silver badge

      Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

      The drop-down teasers are annoying, I click on a tab, move mouse down the page to start scrolling and the menu pops up for a fraction of a second, then disappears again. Very distracting.

      Otherwise I like the cleaner layout, fewer distractions. I haven't used the home page for a while, I run your RSS feed through Feedly and pick out the stories that are of interest. I looked at the home page out of interest and it looks okay, but a bit "conformist".

      As to using the screen width, I sort of agree with the comment about a proportional design. I have a Full HD monitor and a 3200 pixel wide 12" display, but I only ever use 50% of the width (snap to the side of the screen) and the design is a tick too wide for that.

      1. Robert Helpmann??
        Childcatcher

        Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

        The drop-down teasers are annoying, I click on a tab, move mouse down the page to start scrolling and the menu pops up for a fraction of a second, then disappears again. Very distracting.

        ... except when it causes you to click on the wrong article, then it's a pain in the ass. I haven't started digging through articles yet today, but this is my first impression of the new design and it is not good.

        EDIT: I didn't realize the menu is stuck at the top of the page in stories (why different from the main pages?), but now that I have had a chance to read a story, I find it to be utter... words fail me.

      2. Lyndon Hills 1

        Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

        I'll echo the comment on drop down thingys. might get used to them but it took me a minute to be sure I'd opened in a new tab, not just opened in the same one. Seems to be fine in IE Win Phone 8.1.

    12. Anonymous Custard

      Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

      We also can't seemingly now right-click and open the article in a new tab (at least under the IE9 I'm stuck with here at work), so it's back and forth into each article which is a pain.

      Like most of the others above, really hating the new design look too, there was nothing wrong with the old one. Bring it back!

    13. Stuart Elliott
      Thumb Down

      Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

      And still no concept that there are people reading your site with 4K monitors - the white gaps down each side are now bigger than the bloody content I'm trying to read FFS.

      "In addition, "Redesign v2" is coming in 2015 and is likely to involve an agency that can guide us through a more rigorous ground-up redesign"

      You might want to link the commentards to beta.theregister.co.uk when you're doing that, to save all this gnashing of teeth - let your users be your QC department.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @Stuart Elliott

        the white gaps down each side are now bigger than the bloody content I'm trying to read

        Just to play devil's advocate for a moment, what would you fill the white space with exactly? Massively wide lines are unreadable. More ads maybe?

        The comp that I'm reading with at the moment has a 1920x1080 screen but I keep my browser window set around 1100 pixels wide. Trying to follow a 1920 pixel-wide line of text would be a nightmare.

        1. Stuart Elliott

          Re: @Stuart Elliott

          Well, having it so it doesn't look quite so barren, as per how it is now at 4K: http://i.imgur.com/lokr8fX.png

          Even if it uses just 20% more white space, at whatever given resolution is used, would be a good start.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

        > And still no concept that there are people reading your site with 4K monitors

        What do you need so many monitors for?

    14. John 62

      Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

      I came to the reg and there was only ONE HUGE STORY.

      Bring back the carousel.

      I found the last version was great for discovering articles. Too many storage stories, but the carousel at the top and the strip a couple of rows down highlighted a few stories for me I was most likely to read. Now there is only ONE STORY and it takes up my WHOLE BROWSER WINDOW!

      BBC Sport's YELLOW redesign wasn't pretty, but it was mostly functional and highlighted the top stories well

    15. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

      As with the vast majority of opinion here - please back this out ASAP.

      Who signed off this grande heap de merde during change control? Back them out too!

    16. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

      Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

      Please, please get rid of that fecking expanding navbar. Pictures thrown in your face and vanishing any time the mouse hapens to brush by. Horrible.

      "make content more accessible"

      I assume that this is some novel use of "accessible", not the customary one of "making it easier to use for prople with disabilities", because it sure as f**k doesn't follow those guidelines.

      For much of the rest, there's always AdBlock.

    17. Stretch

      Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

      Aw you broke the register

    18. Old_timer

      Not liked but for good reasons

      I use having been using The Register most days for several years to keep up with new developments in a rapid, easily digested way.I don't like the redesign because:

      1) I don't need the 'Pics at the top of nearly all stories'. They take up room and very rarely add anything of value. 2) It used to be easy to see which stories I had read because they were marked in red. Now they're much less obvious. 3) The bit that I'm interested in (the 3 columns of headlines) now takes up around one third of my screen space with nothing at all on the left side.

      You're right. Nobody likes change but at least I can offer a rationale for my dislike of the new site.

    19. brigfam

      Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

      What do you mean "Feature removed print article - not used". I use this all the time to print a multi-page article in a single print job. I also use it to consolidate a multi-age article into a single stream so that I can scan it quickly. That is how I found this feature removal today.

      1. Fungus Bob

        Re: Printer friendly removed

        "What do you mean "Feature removed print article - not used"."

        You can get to the printer friendly version by appending print.html at the end of the article URL or by inserting "/Print" before the date part of the URL.

        To print:

        http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/14/building_a_lee_enfield/

        append print.html

        http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/14/building_a_lee_enfield/print. html

        which takes you to:

        http://www.theregister.co.uk/Print/2014/12/14/building_a_lee_enfield/

    20. Squander Two

      Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

      Could you please add a delay to the appearance of the giant menu when we mouseover the top bar? I doubt I'm the only person who moves the mouse up there to navigate between tabs and move the window around, and every time I do half the page is immediately covered in crap.

      As for the rest, there are all sorts of annoyances, but I generally assume I'll adjust to these things.

    21. Conor Turton

      0/10, sack the designer.

      Its a bit shit.

    22. Identity

      Re: El Reg Redesign - leave your comment here.

      Yeah, hate it. Too much white space BS. You guys getting old and NEED BIGGER TYPE? I may be able to navigate after I find everything, but IMHO, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it.' Back, back you crazy beasts! BTW, need "print article"

Page:

This topic is closed for new posts.