Revert… REVERT!
Hold your horses for 1 more minute, then you can really start giving us grief.
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Yep, sorry, I’m going to go ahead and do that…
You know the thing where everyone complains because facebook doesn’t have a simple chronological view that’s reliable any more? Unfortunately, your new layout has just done the same thing to boingboing. I follow boingboing fairly religiously, but the new layout makes it hard to “keep up” - to know that I’ve read, or at least looked at and decided not to read, everything that’s new. There’s a lot to be said in favour of a linear list of articles, and while the new layout is prettier, it’s really not the best for someone who isn’t just a passing visitor.
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It’s being going downhill for a while. Half of the articles were thinly disguised adverts for TV programmes. (As if creative types have time to sit around watching US TV all day?!) Now we can’t follow it at all. Too bad.
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The homepage is still linear and reverse-chronological, except for the top feature box on the right.
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New BoingBoing. Now with even more Daily Mail!
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You must be looking at a different site from me, because it isn’t chronological. You have to turn on Javascript or something?
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Sorry, you must be looking at a different site from me entirely. There’s no feature box, it’s a whole feature column down the right hand side, and I have no idea if the left column is chronological or not…
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My first thought when I saw it; “oh no, it’s gone all buzzfeedy”. Never a good start…
But! Given that we humans are more often than not instantly adverse to any kind of change, I’m willing to give it a go for a little longer. I’m assuming there is a logic to why it went this way so hopefully I’ll get used to it.
Is there an explanation of the changes somewhere though? Or a guide to explain the new (and at first glance bizarre and esoteric) layout? Why are some things big, and some small? How do I kno the chronology now that stories are spattered across the page? Is it me, or are there more stories now?
Help me please, I’m lost in a sea of confusing internets…
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Just saw this after I revisited the main page! I shall do my best to make sense of this new classic Boing Boing.
Have been reading Boing Boing regularly for years now. Just registered for the BBS for the first time to voice how much I loathe the new formatting. You’ve changed formats before over time, but never before into something that actually seems to be driving me to visit less.
In the past, say on a vacation, when I came home I would just drill down until I was caught up with everything. There isn’t a chance I’ll be doing that now. I’m quoting your article: a more consistent, easily-scanned layout for all of it. You haven’t achieved that. It’s LESS easily scanned, and more onerous to use.
Two easy examples - the small thumbnail sized images aren’t done justice. The images were the best part of “Who will stand against the mammalian hordes?” and “Neil Gaiman knows how to get to Carnegie Hall” On the old site, neither article interested me enough to click and read the full entry but the images were great and the synopsis seemed longer (could be wrong on that). Now? Well, I really wasn’t looking forward to a veritable clickfest to see everything on the site.
Will I stop viewing Boing Boing? No. Will I view Boing Boing less, read fewer articles, and generally drift away from what previously has been one of my daily check websites? Yes. I can only hope that I’m not alone, and if you notice your web traffic (and thus advertising revenue) decrease that you’ll alter the format once again into something more pleasant to visit.
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I hate it as some one with dyslexia, dyspraxia and auditory short term memory sequencing disability.
The new page lay out is unreadable its over complicated to close together the font is to small and i have no idea whats going on with it, I think you just lost me as a reader, as i can no longer make an sense of anything on the new layout there is just to much going on!
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It is definitely chronological.
The font is a WHOLE PIXEL size larger than it was before!
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The feature column is chronological too, but we can highlight specific ones (optionally) at the top.
Is that the best you can do pick out one part of my comment about font size, it may be a whole pixel bigger but next to all that stuff that’s now there it looks smaller, its also hard to see, never mind its usability for disabled users that does not matter, well at least we know what you think about disabled people we don’t count.
Ps There is no need to shout.
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But how can one tell on one’s own? There is no longer a date and time stamp. That bothers me.
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First off, I’m not going to be favourably disposed towards a new layout that makes my 1st gen iPad fall over the first time it sees it.
Second, as an every day, sometimes more often, viewer of BB, the dominance of the features is off-putting. I’ve usually read all the features already, unless I’ve been busy, and then it’s only the top two or three that are new, usually.
Third, I liked browsing the old layouts: just opening the front page, reading the top article, scrolling down, reading or skipping the next one, scrolling, etc. I now have to be more active: scanning a headline, an incomplete leading sentence fragment, deciding whether there’s enough substance in the lead to interest me in opening the article to read more… It seems like I’m not going to bother a lot of the time. You might get more click-baity in the opening sentence, but that’s quite likely to trip my advertising filter and so I won’t bother again.
If you really want to improve things at BB, you could take the money you spent on the redesign to hire a sub-editor to fix up the horrendous spelling and grammar mistakes that find their way into the articles and headlines even (“rejueventating”). And then set up an article queuing system so that you don’t get long periods of no new posts followed by a flurry of new content delivered all at once.
And, if you really want to shake things up, a reader-driven design system, so I can set up BB the way I want it for my reading habits. (There, that should keep your designers busy for the next year or two.)
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My biggest issue is when reading on my iphone, when I swipe back from an article, it now takes me back to the top of the page, not where I was in the list of articles. That’s a big ux fail.
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