Is Numfar doing the dance of disappointing site redesigns? Or joy? I always get those two confused.
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Yeah, my complaints are more about the diminishing of the written content than the actual layout. While I agree that two columns is confusing, itās not hideous. The contentless clickbait is what bothers me. Ensmallen the pictures a bit so they donāt take up the entire screen, and use that space to allow for a full leading paragraph beyond just āSomeone says some stuff CLICK HEREā and most of my complaining would evaporate.
Hey, most of what I have to say has been pretty well covered already, and despite my initial dislike the new layout is somewhat growing on me. However, there is one thing that I havenāt seen anyone mention yet, and itās bad enough that I registered just to bring it to your atttention even though the thread is rapidly approaching its sell-by date. You say the feature column is supposed to be chronological, but as Iāve been checking back throughout the day, Iāve noted that the blocks seem to be moving around. At the moment, the following stories are at the top for me:
āPitch drop experimentsā in a big block (Published 12:00 pm Wed, May 7, 2014)
āCassini Revisitedā in small block on the left (Published 8:00 am Thu, May 8, 2014)
āHow to make a simple electronic musical instrumentā in a second small block on the right (Published 12:01 am Wed, May 7, 2014)
As you can see, definitely not chronological, or any specific order at all. The rest are similarly jumbled. Any idea what is going on here?
Thanks.
I did add to the discussion, you decided to characterize my comments on your predicament, and are trying to turn the table so somehow the ad hominem is mine? Good luck with that! That would be like expecting a website owner to rearrange their content to please someone who goes on at length to describe how little attention they are paying. You are not my friend, I hear you.
Except it doesnāt seem to be working right. The left column looks okay, but the right column has had the pitch-drop story on top for a couple of days now, with new stories appearing below it.
The new look is growing on me, but I agree with some others of the commentariat that it would be nice if the āteaserā text would be a little bit longer.
Day 3, and I took another look at the homepage.
Maggieās pitch-drop piece is still top-right. Itās a good piece; I read it when it appeared. I donāt need to read or be reminded of it again.
On my desktop monitor, BB has available screen real estate of about 370250mm; the pitch-drop story takes up about 220140. Thatās a hair short of a third of BBās homepage, devoted to one three-day-old story. I canāt avoid seeing this as simply perverse.
Put me among the people who miss autoscrolling on the proper home page; Iām often busy, BB is often busy, and I like to catch up chronologically: so, more button-pressing than should be necessary (unless thereās a pressing need for separate pages).
Incidentally, I see that BB is hot on the Geocitiesizer. Well, itās a possible design option; and if you donāt like it, youāre probably just resistant to change.
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Nice catch. Iād not noticed the overflow issue on post pagesā¦ this is what it looks like to me:
I guess it changes depending on your aspect ratio and screen res.
FYI you can still see the āclassicā BB at www.boingboing.net/page/1
Finally, on topic. It amuses me how often ććć (sugoi) is translated to āterribleā as it is in the videoās title, when a better fitting translation is āawesomeā. ććć can mean terrible - like if you were using it to describe bad weather - but in common slang use itās an expression of how good something is.
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Did BoingBoing really need a new redesign?
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You know what might be interesting is to have the āmain featureā box be dynamic based upon the reader. It could try to determine what current feature youād be most interested based upon the readerās BBS viewing habits. If the reader gravitates to the articles by a particular editor, those could be highlighted. If the reader never reads anything having to do with steam punk, those could be put into less visible real estate. If the main feature article is read, it is cycled out of that spot and the unread recent feature that the algorithm thinks will be most interesting to the reader takes its place.
if there is a vote, mine goes in really dislike bucket (hate is a bit strong, it doesnāt affect my life that much in the grand scheme of things, and I found that if I go to http://boingboing.net/page/1 instead, I get old school.
so no, go back, or donāt, itās your site, I just really donāt like the new design, the actual content that I am looking for and used to seeing is now just thumbnails and the stuff that Iāve already looked at, but maybe you want me to spend more time on that I choose to is taking up more real estate, but then again, maybe it pays to make the ads look more like content. Iāve seen this format used on other sites I used to frequent (key here is āused toā)
2 cents.
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Youāre supposed to end with āIām not your buddy, pal!ā
Every single phrase in English may or may not be figurative at any time. āUnder two minutesā is figurative if you mean ānot really that long but Iām not sure exactly how long.ā
Since Iām too lazy to actually visit page/1, I found myself looking at the front page with fresh eyes this morning and it certainly didnāt bother me as much. I will say, though, that for me it seems to have the exact opposite effect it was intended to. I donāt look at the features at all, only at the left-hand column. I understand I have something that web designers call ābanner blindness,ā and that Iām not typical, but it certainly is one thing that happens with the new design - if you top to bottom, left to right, looking for the first thing that looks like content and then ignore everything else once you find it, the features get totally ignored. Enh, itās probably just me.
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OK, Iāll grant you that. I still think it was an unnecessary overuse of a very overused word, but acknowledge that it was not necessarily a misuse. 
Itās not at all just you, Facebook has trained an entire generation to ignore everything on the right hand side of the screen. I hate how my eyes bounce back and forth with the new design, itās ācognitively uncomfortableā if thatās a thing. And like you, I find myself tending to either avoid the features completely when I scan for new content, or, ignore the blog posts entirely. Itās not integrated at all, I almost treat visiting the home page as two separate sites now, and thatās, well, annoying to me.
This is the info I came here to find.
I take it blog posts are reposts from around the web and other cool links, and original features are content that BB has created or paid to have created?
Oh, I was ignoring things way before facebook. But yeah, itās obviously a defence mechanism where Iāve been duped into looking at content I donāt care about too many times.
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And the fact that his original comment was making a joke about using the term.
Agreed, my eyes keep bouncing back and forth and generally just settle on reading the left side only. Its too hard for my brain to read down the left column, back up to top of the right column, and then down again.
