There threads are always rough, regardless of the website. I have never seen a website do a redesign and get anything but a mountain of criticism. People hate change.
That said…
More words, or at least, more descriptive words. Teasing, at least for me, doesn’t work. I just skip it. The current articles up are actually pretty well done.
Please keep the mundane crap out of the features bar. I mean no offense to people that like it, but I loath 5-a-day recaps of TV shows. Discussing a show’s themes once in a while is fine, with the rapie GoT episode being a good example. For the love of god though, if you are going to review every single episode of a TV show, please shunt it off to the side. Why BoingBoing would want to get into TV reviews of popular TV is beyond me.
Your ads are annoying. I know you need ads, and that is cool, but if I struggle to tell what an ad is and what isn’t an ad, I am just going to stop clicking on things. It is really obnoxious to have them RIGHT in the middle of your “features” Just toss it in a box or something with a different background.
Overall, I don’t hate it. I find the two column thing to be a little annoying if you like to read chronologically, but it does give some of the better pieces more time at the top of the pile.
I absolutely hate the new design. Two weeks from now I’ll be use to it and won’t notice it at all. In another two weeks I will have forgotten what the old design looked like or why I liked it better.
I just find it annoying that I have to open absolutely everything in a new tab because I don’t know what it is until I do so. Why even have a front page, just have a button and when I click it, it opens a dozen articles in new tabs. What would the difference be.
WOW! So many comments (I haven’t read them all but the general trend seems to be hatred) that I am pretty sure mine won’t be read by anyone.
But anyway, as much as I have a negative initial reaction to the change (as anyone most likely does… people don’t like change) I also think that this is exactly why Boing Boing is a unique website. They knew, 100%, that a lot of people would gnash and moan about the format change, but they did it anyway because they wanted to, and because they felt like it better fit their ideas.
To me, even though the change is jarring, it also reinforces a lot about Boing Boing. They take sponsorships, but they make it clear that sponsorships won’t affect what they write about. Just like the Internet Group Think won’t affect what they choose to do with their format, or their articles, or what spoilers they do and don’t present, etc.
If they can get through this without berating or censoring dissenters, I think it strengthens Boing Boing’s position as a more or less journalistic entity (I’m not sure if the Kermit gif constitutes berating, though… it might be cutting it close.) The take-away that (I think) they’re trying to bring is that Boing Boing says and does what they want; if you want to read it then they’re happy to have you, and if you don’t then it doesn’t really bother them that much. I think that is pretty much their original charter, and it’s the reason I continue to read.
What a f’ing mess. I know it’s just me fearing change - but my morning is, drink coffee, read BoingBoing chronologically 'till I hit story that I read yesterday. That lovely model is blasted to smithereens. Who moved my Boing-Cheese?
Thanks for this. I couldn’t quite find a way to address that post without getting way too sarky about it.
I honestly don’t get this “people are just afraid of change” claptrap. It’s not like this redesign is anything terribly new or groundbreaking - just the same old same old that’s been the bread and butter of web design for a while now. My reaction certainly wasn’t “what is this new and confusing thing I see before me, I have never encountered such wonder and it frightens me” but rather “oh no, not here, too”. Considering how happy I’d been that BB at least remained a sanctuary of clarity in a sea of clutter, it was also a bitter disappointment.
+1 to that. Going from a nice, easily scanned list to a random splatter is not a good idea. Double plus unlike. Are you guys taking design cues from cNet and Slate now?
But Maggie’s work is excellent and fully-worthy of the praise it receives.
Yes, her work is excellent, and I am a big fan. But, that said, not everything she writes about necessarily interests me; not because it lacks quality but because the subject may not be something that appeals to me. So just getting an uncommunicative headline doesn’t give me the information I need to decide if I want to read the article.
That’s my evening. Generally, in a redesign, the first step is to study how people try to use the existing design. I guess “pull it out your ass” is the new black for design.
The part that never gets said - is that a redesign is not usually about benefiting the users. The honest truth is that it’s often about monetisation, specifically increased CPM ad impressions.
Reply to myself: I use AdBlock so I never see any ads at all. I shouldn’t have discussed the new format without taking ads into account, because it seemed innocent enough from my adless -> adless perspective.
I will never know what new commercialization the new format brings, so I apologize for speculating about the integrity of the owners of Boing Boing, which may or may not be true. If I implied that I admire a journalism team which markedly ups their product placement capacity, I apologize. Again, I have no idea what the new layout looks like with ads, how much those ads might look like real stories, or how much the dollar signs may or may not have affected them throughout the years. Because I use adblock, and I can’t see the ads.
Hey, by the way, why don’t you complainers just install adblock? It literally (as in the literal meaning of the word literally) takes less than 2 minutes. Then you’ll be as blissfully ignorant as me. And if the day comes where Boing Boing is shilling for products and masquerading such as regular stories in exchange for money, then you’ll know it’s time to quit.
I dislike the new design a great deal. I emailed to say so before I knew there was a blog. I love BoingBoing, but I don’t think I can comfortably read this. It makes it harder to find articles to read, and … yeah, no. I’m really not enjoying it at all. I understand what is being attempted, but there’s got to be a better way. The old design was far more pleasant to the eye.
This wasn’t an ‘I hate change’ reaction for me. I normally like it! But this is really difficult to read and to find things that interest me. I like reading a paragraph or two to get a sense if I want to go on, but this doesn’t allow that entirely. I am a reader and I really enjoy many of the articles I find here, particularly those on social issues … this is just visually confusing. I find it actively uncomfortable.
I mainly interact with BoingBoing via RSS, I never saw any brokenness in the feed. When I saw the redesign post, I went to the homepage, and thought “neat, I don’t hate this”, and went on with life. After reading (most of) this thread, I took another look with a more critical eye based on people’s comments, and I still can’t make myself hate it. Ads are still well-labeled, in fact I’d say they are more easily distinguishable from content than before. Sounds like some more finishing is coming up, but yeah, I pretty much dig it, good work.
I don’t know if I have the words to describe how eye-gougingly bad the new look is, but I will try.
BUSY BUSY THINGS MORE THINGS OVER HERE CLICK CLICK BUSY TABS MORE OPEN TABS LOOK AT ALL THE THINGS WE CAN FIT ON THIS PAGE OH YOU WANTED TO ACTUALLY READ SOMETHING WELL TOO BAD CLICK ON THINGS SO WE CAN GET MORE AD REVENUE.
This new trend of making your website look like it was designed by over-caffeinated squirrels with ADHD is slowly but surely killing all of my favourite websites. One column, ONE, that I can scroll - not click, SCROLL - through without needing to open a million tabs, that I can keep in a small window off to the side to read during downtime. This is all I ask for. (That and sans-serif body copy but apparently no one who designs websites these days actually took web design so I’m choosing my battles.)
I’m not even going to discuss the bone you threw us with the chronological view, which looks like a 90’s newsfeed threw up on it.
I’ve broken up with better sites than you over less than this, Boing Boing. I’m afraid this is the end.
