Can I switch them off as they mess up the front page layout....?
Can I switch them off as they mess up the front page layout....?
Welcome to The Register’s News Bytes – our new channel for delivering breaking news, live event coverage, and alerts to you. As the name suggests, expect News Bytes to be short, sharp and to-the-point. You’ll be able to comment on them, link to them, and share them just like normal stories. And you’ll still be able to find our …
If you have a site specific local .css file for the register -- an absolute necessity IMO since the changes a year ago or so -- adding the following to it will consign this latest pointless 'innovation' to the bit bucket of invisibility:
#news_bytes div { display: none }
#news_bytes_header { display: none }
On the rare occasions I click the button to disable my local css, I'm always shocked by just how bad this site looks when viewed "as designed".
It took quite a few hours work to work up my CSS that discards all the pointless repetition; reminders for articles I've already read, or deliberately ignored; distracting ads with active content; cutesy-but-pointless oversized pictures completely unrelated to the stories to which they are attached; the oversized and meaningless 'social media' icons littered around like confetti; and a bunch of other crude that makes what is at its heart a targeted, serious news site look like the product of a script-kiddy hackathon in Las Vegas.
Enjoy!
I don't even use the front page anymore. I just go to the Week in Review: http://www.theregister.co.uk/Week
IM(Not So)HO this is what the front page should be.
as they mess up the front page layout
Oh dear, I did test them on all browsers I could get my hands on, but I might've missed something!
Would you mind firing off an email to webmaster@ with your browser string (or the contents of http://www.theregister.co.uk/cdn-cgi/trace) and a screenshot which shows the problem you're seeing?
I think there is some confusion here.
I'm looking at the front page of ElReg on my 17" laptop.
When I open the page, there is a banner ad, and the Register title at the top.
Under it, practically all of the page is taken up by one enormous graphic.
.If you scroll down a bit, there is a column on the right which takes about 1/3 of the real-estate of historical articles, which I have usually already read.
To the left, we now have space for the News Bytes column which takes about 1/4 of the real-estate.
Squeezed in the middle, there is a small column of actual articles. This is actually what most people really want to read, and it gets almost no screen real-estate whatsoever.
I've seen this trend on a lot of websites, most notably the BBC News website. I'm not sure what the motivation is, but the net effect is to drastically reduce the actual usable content on the screen.
Email and screenshots sent.
I get the same result on IE11 and Edge
I don't think it's a technical/compatibility issue to be honest.
The grid on which the main news items is based does not align with the Newsbites items (probably due to the smaller font that Newsbites uses?) so you get a column of story snippets in a small font on the left that looks misaligned with all of the story snippets on the right in a bigger font...
I know, suddenly everyone is a web design expert, but this just jars with me because of the uniform grid layout for the front page.
Steve
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It seems like every time a website gets redesigned it gets worse.
Here are my rules for website redesign:
1. Don't redesign because your site has gotten "Stale" (Whatever that means)
2. Listen to your users. If enough users request a change, then consider it.
3. Profit.
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"stick to articles with substance and information"
It is possible to publish early news quickly and follow it up with more detail later.
C.
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from bad to worse .....
Is this a challenge, how far do we push users before they leave ?
You know the format you used to get millions of readers, Guess what change that format millions of readers are not so interested. They came because they liked what they saw, change what they see they will leave.
our new channel for delivering breaking news, live event coverage, and alerts Keeping paid articles in view at the top of the page, to you.
The thing that gets me as said before is, if users WANT something like this, you would expect them to gravitate towards Twitter etc. to feed their desires.
So apart from a little navel gazing, not quite sure what the point is...
Whatever, if the person responsible doesn't have the cajones big enough to admit it was shome mishtake, at least move it to the right column. Hell, even flowing it across the main content horizontally would be an improvement. As it is the proximity to the "Don't Miss" div is enough to kill it with fire.
I think I now understand what is going on here having thought about it for some time.
I couldn't understand this insistent push for noisy/loud/distracting websites as opposed to the clean, simple and effective.
Most of your readers I suspect are quiet, thoughtful types, like myself probably quite some way along the introvert scale. Our natural environment requires quiet and focus and we appreciate simple, effective and to the point. Marketing types are quite the opposite: they prefer the bold, the loud, the distracting.
If you are trying to address the IT professional, your website should probably best cater to that audience.
Some readers will be in both camps.
I suspect that you have decided that your core targets are the happy clappy types that appreciate the messy, the cluttered and the distracting. If that is so, then I guess you achieved that aim.
For me, reading the front page just causes me mental pain and is no longer worth the effort.