back to article What's all this? Welcome to The Register's News Bytes

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 …

  1. Steve K

    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....?

    1. Harry the Bastard

      Re: Can I switch them off as they mess up the front page layout....?

      ^^^this

      it brings out the luddite in me

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge
        Trollface

        Re: Can I switch them off as they mess up the front page layout....?

        At last, El Reg have found a way to stop us moaning about the new design.

    2. BrowserUk

      Re: Can I switch them off as they mess up the front page layout....?

      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!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Happy

        Re: Can I switch them off as they mess up the front page layout....?

        > It took quite a few hours work to work up my CSS that discards all the pointless repetition

        Sounds like the making of an interesting article.

        How about it ElReg?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Can I switch them off as they mess up the front page layout....?

        Blocking images from Regmedia really speeds up the site.

      3. Steve K

        Re: Can I switch them off as they mess up the front page layout....?

        Thanks!

    3. Swarthy

      Re: Can I switch them off as they mess up the front page layout....?

      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.

      1. Graham Hawkins

        Re: Can I switch them off as they mess up the front page layout....?

        Ah! That's much better. Thanks for pointing pointing to the link. Hadn't spotted it before.

    4. Marco Fontani

      Re: Can I switch them off as they mess up the front page layout....?

      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?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Can I switch them off as they mess up the front page layout....?

        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.

      2. Steve K

        Re: Can I switch them off as they mess up the front page layout....?

        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

      3. This post has been deleted by its author

  2. Robert Moore

    Why do all redesign make things worse?

    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.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  3. firu toddo

    Short sharp and to the point.

    This sucks. Pages look so messy now the mobile site is preferable.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  4. ma1010
    Thumb Down

    So these are news items?

    I guess I've been confused all this time. I thought that all the other stuff on the page was news items? And these need to be some different (and quite annoying) context because.....?

  5. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

    Why the Pac Man logo?

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  6. Mark 85
    Thumb Down

    Nah....

    From what I've seen so far, this is for the Twitterati. No meat to sink one's teeth into or feed the brain. Just a quick dirty filler. If I want a quick and dirty headline and few lines of text, I'd use Twitter. Forget this and stick to articles with substance and information.

    1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: Nah....

      "stick to articles with substance and information"

      It is possible to publish early news quickly and follow it up with more detail later.

      C.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Gotno iShit Wantno iShit

        Re: Nah....

        I don't want quick, unverified turdspurts, if I did I'd be on Twitter. I want accurate, verified copy that is correct in technical detail, spelling and grammar.

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

  7. figdot1

    You asked nicely......

    You asked me nicely to turn off my adware blocker. I did that. Now it's my turn. Please put the reg back as it was. There really was nothing wrong with it.

  8. Andrew Moore

    Another vote...

    for getting rid of it- even blocking it via CSS leaves horrible gaps.

  9. Known Hero

    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.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Keeping paid articles on the top of the page?

      Expert troll there.

      1. Known Hero
        Unhappy

        Re: Keeping paid articles on the top of the page?

        I would have to be wrong to be trolling.

  10. Lord Schwindratzheim

    Another vote to dump it

    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.

    • Submitted Wednesday 6th April 2016 19:21 GMT
    Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Just noticed that "News Bytes" are starting to duplicate content on the main site. Pointed this out in the comments, and was moderated???????

    Seems doubly pointless if it's just the same content re-written in a shorter form.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      You have got this back to front...

      The breaking shorter version is published first. A longer article may be published later. This does not mean duplicated content.

  11. TRT Silver badge

    Hate it.

    Kill it with Fire.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    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.

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