So many people assume that there is an inherent dislike of change.
I love change. New ideas on the internet are neat, like, heck, Discourse is pretty neat. There’s this neat new blogging program out there based on nodejs called Ghost, it’s prettty neat too.
What’s not neat is breaking people’s brains, how we’re hardwired to work. We’re not hardwired to look at two different things at the same time moving at two different speeds and comprehend them both equally. Our brains do not multitask well at all. They tend to process one bit of information, and then move on to the next. The result of this change here is going to be multiple scans, as we forget the left side to scroll down the right side. Then home… then forget the right side to scroll down the left side. Anything we want to read will have to go into tabs, and because now we’re having two remember TWO pointers, we’re going to have a lot of forgetting whether or not we got “that far” on our return trips to Boing Boing throughout the day.
I’m okay with change that plays INTO how people really process information. I’m into change that makes it EASIER for my brain to process information. (Much like Vox.com has done with their incredible news product.)
This? This is messy, and split into multiple streams, neither of which are connected, and requires tireless reprocessing. The brain does not like this at all, and so that’s why most people respond with frustration.
I think what I’d like to see is a feature called “How to read the new boing boing” where you show us what the expected User Experience is.
It seems to me that everything you mentioned are expectations that, in this life, are yours to manage else you are the cause of your own suffering. And then in suffering you label and point fingers, not suggesting better options, but only degrading what -is-.
These things only fall into that bin in your brain because you have allowed that bin. You state regret for prejudgements you will be forced to make in the future! Oh the threat!! There is still time to not prejudge, my friend, and nobody but you will be drowning that kitten (or instead playing with it) when that time comes.
I am not complaining about you or your many complaints. I have compassion for you, my friend, and I want you to be happy and free from this terrible burden you describe!
For now, I’m in the “don’t like” camp. The change makes it harder to identify interesting articles to read by being less dense (there’s too much white space, the images are too large) and somewhat more confusing (having to scan two lists adds unnecessary complexity.)
I view BoingBoing in a window on a MacBook Pro - not full screen, but not tablet sized either. It’s part of a kind of “news and views” ecosystem I use when trawling the inter tubes, opening tabs of interesting articles to read later, etc.
I hope you’re not trying to optimize the site for small form-factor devices like cell phones and tablets at the expense of workstation sized screens. My iPhone is just a phone these days, and my experiment with a cheap tablet (Samsung Tab 3 7") became (for a while) a Facebook/Twitter machine - and now it’s barely that (since changes to the apps have reduced battery life so much.)
I enjoy BoingBoing’s curation of articles because they make me think - kind of like the Ignoble Awards. But this new format gets in the way of that curation.
Yeah, I get that you think DSL is sucky & slow. For me, it would be a huge step up in speed and reliability. There is no DSL or cable where I live. It is either dial-up, internet via line-of-sight microwave (what I pay through the nose to use), or by satellite. All slower & suckier than DSL.
As I said in the other thread, the corollary to “people don’t like change” is “people who make change don’t like to hear about the problems with it.” The idea that complaints about changes should be ignored is a blight on us all.
I love the idea of more original content. I’ve been a daily visitor of bb for more than 10 years. However, I think the change in content form could have been done without changing the layout so drastically. I’m all about iterative change, but the new layout is too busy and difficult to read. I’m really trying to get used to it, but it’s just not a good UX.
The layout should be a trivial thing to change, why not put up a classic layout so you can get an idea of how many readers stick with the old?
Hopefully at least some adjustments can be made, I just don’t see myself continuing to be a daily reader if this layout continues… not a threat, just being honest…
beschizza wrote: “Articles are still in chronological order, with blog posts on the left and original features on the right.”
From my perspective as a reader, I don’t really care whether it’s a blog post or an original feature. That means two columns I have to scan and scroll through to find new articles I haven’t read yet. I’m also a very spatially-oriented reader, so when the columns grow a different rates, articles on one side start appearing by different articles on the other side and it makes it even harder to remember what I’ve read and what I haven’t. I mean, it looks nice and all, but it’s not very practical for my style of reading/scanning.
Let me also take this opportunity to snipe at the JIT/lazy loading of the BBS threads. When looking for a thread I’ve seen before, it’s all but impossible to find a particular comment because the site only lets my browser retain the comments that are visible in the browser window. That leaves the browser’s “find in text” feature all but useless. The net result is that I have to hit Ctrl+G (“find again”), scroll down, Ctrl+G, scroll down, Ctrl+G, until I finally find what I want. On a long thread, that’s really, really annoying.
Actually I like parts of the redesign, especially the idea to give the original content more room. Unfortunately the right column has an absolutely atrocious information density. 400 vertical pixels or so for perhaps two lines of generic text. What makes this worse is that the images may look nice, but for the most part they are decorative rather than informative.
Perhaps you have a lot of confidence in your brand and assume that we will read all the major articles anyway, but if all we have is a stock photo, a line of non-description and a headline where we have to guess whether it is ironically shit, then we might not feel compelled to do that.
I think expanding the blurbs to perhaps 6-8 lines or so would help a lot. A little more white space might be a good idea, too. Especially the the right column manages to be very busy visually without all that much useful information. That’s an unfortunate combination.
Well, you certainly managed to nail “dripping with condescension and insult”, so good job there. Have you considered “adding to the conversation”, perhaps making coherent points and arguments, or providing useful information that people might want to read, or, heck, even commenting on the actual topic instead of other posters? Or is ad hominem and derision the only thing you know how to do?
Full of hate. Cluttered, busy, articles have one line crap linkbait descriptions. I gave up on some of your subsites because of design issues, and I can see it happening here. I really liked the simple, straightforward linear layout.
Well, see what happens to unique visitor counts, but I don’t see myself warming to it. You made it more work to read, more work to keep your place.
Not sure on the new design, though it is growing on me
My pet peve is still there though: “Continue the discussion at bbs.boingboing.net”
Is there a reason comments and the articles are kept on entirely separate webpages?
I’d prefer the comments underneath the article, as approximately 99+% of other websites manage to do!
I think they discussed this earlier when they broke us out from Discus into discourse, but the gist of it was that they felt that the comments were becoming the centralized point of the site, as opposed to the article/post that they were bringing us. They wanted a clear break between their story and the comments.
Makes the site unreadable to me. I’ve tried to get used to it over the last couple days however it’s too busy and seems disorganized. I like reading the summary paragraph before I click the article. Sorry boing boing, I’ll come back once a week for the next month to see if you revert however after that point I’ll be removing the bookmark from the bookmark bar Nothing personal; your site is more of a pain than pleasure at this point.
Hate to join the chorus of criticism, but I find it really hard to read the new design. Whereas before I always read more postings than I intended, now I find it hard to read any. #sadpanda
[quote=“beschizza, post:74, topic:30472”]
For us, it’s to make sure that the original features we write and pay for get pride of place, but without removing the reverse-chron blog column that still remains.[/quote]
Sounds like a business focused decision, rather than a customer focused decision. So very mega-corp!
[quote=“NickyG, post:253, topic:30472, full:true”]
That’s actually what the word actually is for. Literally should be used when you intend for someone to take a word or phrase at face value, and not apply a possible metaphorical interpretation.[/quote]
Well, actually, that is what I meant when I said literally. If I had just said “takes under two minutes to install,” it could have been taken as an exaggeration. But I wanted to make it clear that it is not an exaggeration and should be taken at face value.
Nothing personal; your site is more of a pain than pleasure at this point.
Literally should be used when you intend for someone to take a word or phrase at face value, and not apply a possible metaphorical interpretation.[/quote]