Boing Boing: zine, blog, and back again

But after looking at it a few times, and hating it more and more, I find it somewhat difficult to distinguish between ads and content. And to navigate around said ads. Oh well…

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in the couple of articles I’ve tried, the “Comments” button in red at the top of the article leads to the article rather than the bbs.

Otherwise, what others have said. In general I come for the words, not the pictures, so this is a retrograde step for me; and the feature column takes up too much screen real estate for my taste, crowding out the new stuff I actually come here for.

But everyone’s a critic… and this is Day 1, after all. I may get to like it in time.

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Look on the bright side - now there’s less article to detract from the rather creative headlines.

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Hmmm, of course I’ll give the new format a go, but at first glance it’s a blast of unhappiness. The entire page looks as if it’s nothing but ads. The information is very crowded, and it takes mental effort to sort through it all, skimming is useless.

In other words, it’s EXTREMELY ADHD-unfriendly.

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Maybe I’m a weirdo, but I pretty much read the site through the bbs. Before that, I clicked on links in the RSS feed. It’s very rare for me to even see the front page.

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There is a front page? Oh right! I’d forgotten about that.

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It feels more like a newspaper, than a blog. But most of the newspapers online have gone in the direction of old BB. I would like to see the popular stories smaller and the new stories larger, plus the comment number, but it’s new, so I suppose there is an adjustment period. I also would prefer more words and less photos. I might feel differently if the photo content was original, generated by BB, but I think it does the writers a disservice to make the photos more prominent than the stories when they agency/stock-derived.

How about a smallish banner across the top with most popular stories and then lists in chronological order of new articles? Or is this nonnegotiable?

I have bookmarked the bbs.boingboing.net just in case, this way I can double back to the stories, but have them in order.

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Same here. I think the new design is confusing. I like the chronological order - with the new design I can’t figure out whats new.

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shark_jump.gif

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The RSS feed is there, but it’s not a full-text RSS feed - it’s just the same Excerpts as the front page. @Kahomono was referring to the previous RSS style which contained the full text of the post (Except for some features/comics, but that’s fair with original content).

I like the redesign overall, but I agree with him on that point. Is there a chance we could bring it back? Or at least have the first paragraph in the RSS feed? Space isn’t at a premium like it is on the front page, and the more of the post is in there, the easier things are for the reader.

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Looks nice!

And remember, people disliking a changed design always are quicker to reply than people liking it or even feeling indifferent about it.

I do miss the complete article in the rss feed, but for the interesting ones I always clicked through to the BBS anyway.

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I imagine the re-design is here to stay regardless, but is there any chance you can at least add a date (or day of the week) to the previews on the main page? It would be mega helpful. I know you’ve said it’s still chronological, each column, but I find the dual columns baffling (perhaps I’ll get used to them). It would be nice to know when the blog posts are from and when the feature posts are from - especially if they are side by side when scrolling, but not necessarily related to each other chronologically.

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I like it!

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I love it so much I turned my second monitor 90 degrees to get the complete retro-zine look!

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What ads? I went back and look at the front page to check this, but I can’t see any.

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Yet another site falls victim to this recent awful trend in site design, a trend they will all quietly drop two years from now.

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Now boinboing combines the two worst trends in web design: looking like pintrest and the actual posts have a big picture at the top and a narrow band of text with 2/3 of the page empty white space.

I don’t understand why every site seems to think these are good looks. At least it isn’t light grey text on a slightly lighter grey background…

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Another vote for a permalink on the front page. It looks nice, I just find it easier to quickly navigate new stuff with the old layout…

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I am such a change nut - honestly, every refresh is a little bit hit, a little bit miss, but I love how you keep moving the mark. Can’t wait to get in and explore. THIS is why I come here, for people who want to always expand technological horizons, approach problems in new ways, yes, keep on throwing redesigns at us.

Thanks for the great surprise today.

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Can’t read this new layout, cant stand it. First impulse was to come here to say thanks and goodbye forever, after being a daily reader for over five years. Then I noticed people talking about (the well-hidden) link to the “classic” look.
Better, but over there i did notice one thing being worse than before though - hardly any posts could be read fully in the feed anymore without clicking through on the read more link. Don’t like that, and that will proably make me stop being a reader pretty soon. But as long as that reverse chronological option is around I won’t stop immediately like I would have otherwise

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