Dislike!
The new format is a bit too visually scattered for my liking – it’s much too busy and I feel that I’m overlooking and missing content b/c my gradually slowing brain is only taking in finite-chunks-at-a-time.
I might suggest changing it to two equally visually-weighted columns rather than the smaller sidebar on the left and the larger on the right?
On a completely different vein that my previous and most comments:
I would absolutely love to see a UI that’s actually zine-like, which I think would be really cool. (I don’t see this is… anything like a zine, to be honest)
Nailed it!
Looks pretty, but I am finding it harder to scroll through in the way that I usually do. This is definitely going to take some getting used to.
I love the short posts that made up most of the old blog format, for their quick dip into information that I could go read more about elsewhere when I had the time. I nearly always pop the features out into new tabs if they interest me and Pocket them for later if I don’t get to them by the next time I close the top of my laptop. Now the stream highlights things I don’t have time to read in the timeframe of a break between meetings, so I may end up just reading the blog when I’m on long bus or train rides instead of checking in as often as I used to.
Or not. BoingBoing is kind of an addiction for me, so I might just keep snorting it because I can’t help myself.
Oh, yay! Thank you. Now I can keep boinging in my accustomed fashion.
I came back to this thread to make a similar comment. I think a genuine old-school zine style would be great, and unique on the internet. Unique, of course, because it’s a huge design challenge and many sites have failed trying to create similar designs 
But what we’re seeing now at BB is basically already the zine concept, which obviously was the point, just IMO arranged less-than-ideally.
Here’s my idea. I am under no impression that my opinion holds any weight, but I do know that as in the past Rob and the others are reading this thread and taking suggestions seriously, despite what some commenters probably think.
So - fill the top section of the front page with a version of this design, and have nicely-designed blurbs (with sufficient amounts of lead-in text) for all the latest features interspersed with relevant imagery - perhaps even commissioned illustrations rather than generic stock photos (which BB loves to use ironically, and admittedly very well compared to any other site that uses them, ironically or not) to make it truly zineish or magazineish.
By “nicely-designed”, I mean basically not what most other sites do. I mean hearkening back to the zine idea. That means static, thoughtful arrangement (and absolutely no box rotating through several articles like many sites do). It has to be designed by hand (or at least look designed by hand) to draw the reader to look in the right places. Magazines and zines are good at this, websites traditionally aren’t. It’s a difficult problem, but it’s the core of the issue here I think.
By “all the latest features”, I suppose I mean everything from the past couple days (if Rob’s suggestion that there will be a couple per day now holds true) as well as any major ones from the past week or two that the editors wish to continue featuring. That’s an arrangement challenge to figure out I suppose, without having some features slip between the cracks for some readers, but very doable.
Perhaps have the TV recaps in their own section at the bottom (though not slighted or missing lead-in text) since so many people vocally oppose them. I like them, myself, and ignore them for shows I’m not interested in and for episodes I haven’t seen yet so as not to spoil myself, things some people apparently aren’t capable of. But the point is, they’re frequent enough that they’re no longer a novelty and can easily be put into their own section - as they would be in a zine. If something in that category prompts a bigger discussion (like the rape-on-tv issue), then it can be featured in the regular features section too. Again, the arrangement will have to be thoughtfully hand-configured. If there are just a couple new features a day, this shouldn’t be an issue, and it’s touches like that which is what has always made BB unique and attractive to its audience.
Anyway - then, when the user scrolls down the page past that zine-like features area (which should be maybe one “page” worth of scrolling at most IMO), it goes right into the regular blog stuff. The format doesn’t have to be exactly the same as the old format, but it would be nice if it were similar (with automatic loading of the next batch of articles, as before) because IMO it was pretty great compared to most sites. That level of minimalism is another thing that separates BB from the rest of the (very bloated) web.
Along the side of the regular blog posts could be an index of all features posts. But it’d be small and on the side (sort of like how they used to be a couple designs back actually). Assuming light and fast coding, no reason not to just have this keep going, generated as older-chronologically blog items are generated when you reach the bottom. Guaranteed that people will click on older features they may have missed that way.
I considered maybe that the daily blog stuff should actually be completely separate from the zine-like features section, but I don’t think it should be (and thus I agree with the concept behind the decision made in the current design to keep everything together). The concept of the “front page” is not the same as it is in print, and as I mentioned in an earlier comment, it’s the daily blog stuff that attracted me to BB in the first place (at the time there were far fewer BB features, of course) and shouldn’t be deemphasized or slighted. Having it side-by-side with less-frequent features as it is now just doesn’t work, though.
Literally is the antonym of figuratively, is it not? “Under two minutes” is not a figurative phrase. I rest my case. 
Thanks very much for this change. I’ve been reading BB forever, but it’s been less and less interesting over the last few years and some of the personalities were getting shrill and/or sensationalistic. Now that BB has screwed the pooch on the layout, it makes my decision to move on to greener pastures that much easier.
Very much dislike the new format. I don’t like to have to bounce back and forth from both sides, always wondering if I’ve missed something.
Sounds like a business focused decision, rather than a customer focused decision.
I’m pretty solidly against this particular layout as well, but I feel compelled to point out that your fundamental assumptions are way off the mark. We are not the customers. We are the product.
I totally agree on the sizing. I don’t enjoy looking at previews for the same feature over and over when the reason I visit BoingBoing every day is the new stuff.
ETA: The new design is really difficult for my meaty paws on my ipad. I end up at the comments page more often than the full post.
Yes. Nailed it. Going back and forth between the two columns is excessively tedious and just another barrier to finding something interesting to read. The lack of meaningful text for each article on the front page seals the deal. I’m done.
On the plus side, Rob won’t be able to ban me again.
I totally get that. But bb still has a responsibility to keep the readers happy, no readers = no product on the shelf.
Since that comment I now understand the reasons behind the redesign goals, I just don’t think it was implemented well and I’m wondering if this goal is even necessary (other than personal pride for the owners). I do understand the desire to keep features up top, but it will be interesting to see if the outcome will really lead to more clicks. If I’m an average reader of bb, then the answer will be no.
This layout, how do I make it stop? Lots of blogs offer an option to keep the old style when they switch to multi column. Also it would be nice to have a reverse contrast, black background, bright text option.
Kudos on the zine stuff though, I much like that kind of content.
A reasonable compromise: return the popular, sensible, single-column layout to http://boingboing.net/ and move the ars-envying, click-desperate, tiled migraine to http://boingboing.net/shitshow/1.
Side note… I’m wondering if the over reactionary criticism on the net is a result of consumers finally having a voice they never felt they had before? We are able to immediately unite with an unlimited audience, vastly different from writing a letter and getting back a couple of coopins 4 weeks later.
People are pendulums, maybe the net/I could be more level headed one day.
“move the ars-envying, click-desperate, tiled migraine to http://boingboing.net/shitshow/1”
Not nice! But I do keep chuckling about it.
Sorry, but I really dislike the redesign. I swear, I don’t hate change. Many redesigns I’m fine with. I have never griped about facebook redesigns, and everyone hates those, right? But I really dislike the two columns, here. The increase in graphics is fine, but I don’t want to have to scroll down a lot on the right, but only a couple articles on the left, to get caught up on both. That just doesn’t make sense to me. I’ve been checking bb a bit less over the last few months (when I used to be a daily reader for years) because so many of the posts were “5 years ago…1 year ago…” and that’s kind of boring after awhile. Honestly, this redesign might well make me become an only occasional visitor. I’m a “scroll down until I see something I remember” type of reader, and the two columns makes that harder to keep track of.
Either you’ve been tweaking a bit, or my eyes have gotten used to the new format. Starting to look a little more sane to me. Would still like more than a tiny snippet of the article but at least the right column isn’t completely overpowering the left anymore.
