December 19 Update no.4 - changes Changed screen outside site background colour from white to grey. Top Art in stories - now editorially selectable - in response to feedback about relevance (see above). Reduced headline font size on Hero “story” at top of front page, articles and forum pages. Masthead - entirely …
This topic was created by Drewc .
Since it's obvious that they don't give a sh*t - neither do I anymore.
I used to visit at least 6x times a day, now I'm down to once at most, mainly so far just to see if they've changed it back, and they haven't.
It was BOFH that first brought me to the site, the articles that made me stay, but now I can feel my eyes being strained even just writing this I can't stay any longer.
So long and thanks for all the fish.
Well, all good things come to an end. Its just unfortunate that you've decided to do a hari kari on your previously good site.
I tried to read the register on the train on the way home this evening on a regular ipad and its just not workable. It takes ages to load images I don't want - as they are pointless and they are eating my bandwidth allowance, which is costing me money. Once the articles page has loaded, virtually all of the page is taken up with crap I don't want to see and am not interested in. I get 8 lines of the text that I do want to read that are restricted to about two thirds of the width of the page. What a complete fail.
So, in summary it doesn't work on a tablet device and it doesn't work on a typical desktop screen due to the inflexible template and objects that are just FAR TOO BIG. So, exactly what type of device were you aiming to make it work on ??
The new template is just a complete fail in every way you look at it. I suggest you put it back to what works if you want to keep your users.
For me, its been fun over the last 10 years, but I'm checking out. I'll get my news somewhere else.
So long and thanks for all the fish.
<click>
No Carrier
>_
I love that website! It's vibrant and cheerful. You have to click on Mr Punch to get to the next page. And I haven't seen so much purple and yellow capital letters on a page, since the 1990s.
It's awesome!
Oh sorry, that's a typo. I meant awful. I wish I'd put my shades on first. But it was a nice bit of nostalgia. I'm still waiting for El Reg to let us use the <blink> tag...
Martin-73,
Erk! AOL. I had to log into an AOL email account yesterday. Fixing a friend's pooter, and he's still got the old AOL account, and I didn't know where a password reminder was going to end up.
Truly their homepage is a horrific mess. Not quite as eye-watering as the other site, but close. The only thing on there that's subtle is the link to the webmail interface, which is exceedingly small, and well-hidden. Ugh!
I'm not going to go into hyperbole, the redesign has seriously impeded the usability and readability of the site. When visiting it is a struggle to see which stories I've read and finding stories of potential interest is not as easy as it was. Consequently my visits and number of articles read have been severely curtailed, to the point where I doubt if I've read in the last week what would have been my daily average consumption. I'm not suggesting a retrograde step but please do something about the major complaints, huge images, image relevance, acres of white space, visited links greyness, and huge pop down menus.
@diodesign I down voted your comments because people have been describing why they don't like the layout over 15 pages and you say "I'm wondering what the problem is"
Yes maybe people are going overboard but telling people "Don't go nuts, we're all human here" doesn't really address any of the complaints and it makes you sound condescending.
As for your justification of the pictures, that's fine, but people seem to be complaining more about the size than the actual pictures.
So come on Diodesign, keep up.
ps - As one who registered just to complain all I can say is the kid that didn't speak for years said, "Well everything has been fin up to now"
My first reaction – and comment – was not positive, so I’ve spent the last few days seeing if I can be a bit more objective. There is actually one change that I like: Using the sticky-header-menu thing to browse the categories.
But the real issue for me is that my eyes simply have trouble scanning the homepage without experiencing real discomfort – it feels like I’m trying to read whilst suffering from a major headache but without the pain. Is it the font? The whitespace? The spacing?
I don’t know if it’s possible to temporarily induce dyslexia, but it certainly feels like it.
....The team @ The Reg that is.
If you pretend it's not there, it doesn't go away. 767 posts concerning the redesign within a forum that has 3567 posts over 208 topics (quite a weighting for one subject that's barely a week old...) - and the vast majority of them saying you've got it wrong on so many levels.
DrewC - you are the "face" for this, but so far have done little to address the concerns of your customers. Please give us an update, and preferably of the kind that restores our faith (i.e. revert back or correct the design, not just "update 2" or "thanks for reporting a new bug").
By this point in time it must be clear that this was not a good move. I'm trying to use the site with adblocking the large pictures, but it's crazy we should be doing this - especially when so much of the underlying design in also flawed. By not reacting or showing you are listening to the core concerns, you are going to lose the advertising revenue you so desperately need - either by decrease in visits, or through people using adblockers to attempt to use the site. And as for us, we lose a much valued and treasured resource.
As I've said to Executive Teams in the past when providing less than favourable feedback or news;
"Just because you don't like it, it doesn't make it wrong".
And for the record, I'm referring to the overwhelming feedback (bad news). The site IS bad, and it IS wrong.
OK, it would be nice if everyone calmed down. The feedback from people posting here is clear. As I've said before, you're treating the redesign as tantamount to physical assault, which isn't right.
All I can say is: we're working on it. If we rush out a change, everyone posting here will go apeshit again.
C.
"you're treating the redesign as tantamount to physical assault, which isn't right."
No, the response is more that of commentards proverbially seeing "a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved and elegant friend"...
The comments should be taken as "tough love" - now please respond accordingly and do the $*&% roll-back!
"OK, it would be nice if everyone calmed down. The feedback from people posting here is clear. As I've said before, you're treating the redesign as tantamount to physical assault, which isn't right."
It was an assault for many people, sure not physical, but mentally, an assault on the senses, surely a 'beta' site would have been the way to go, get feedback before giving the new site to the masses..
"All I can say is: we're working on it. If we rush out a change, everyone posting here will go apeshit again."
Just roll it back to a previous version while you work on it...
It is the imposition of change, one that is widely disliked, that is the problem. You do not need to "rush out a change", because, as stated many times elsewhere, it should be rolled back to the old design.
Why break something that was not broken?? Please, please go back to the previous design.
We've kinda been inundated to reply to every reader comment. I'm personally a bit surprised to see the number of people who've registered just to say they hate it.
[ ... ]
Don't go nuts, we're all human here. Some people seem to be treating the redesign as tantamount to physical assault."
I agree that some posts have been a bit extreme, and that in my opinion, your followup posts have attracted unnecessary down-votes, but generally, please see this as a good thing.
It shows the 'brand loyalty' and passion this site has built up in people - Far better than if everyone just shrugged and went elsewhere.
"Again, personally speaking and not wishing to pour fuel on the fire, but I'm wondering what the problem is with reading the headlines on the front page? The font may be a little big for your liking, but ... it's still the same 3 column design broken up a little."
OK, here are my thoughts:
Main page
The banner logo looks less professional - maybe due to removal of the shadowing? But, meh...
The category links stood out much clearer, and looked more like links with the white on grey font.
I see no point in this bar now being statically placed at the top of the screen, but meh #2
HUGE PICTURE: Also often not even specific to the article, but some general stock photo. Tolerable before with the thumbnail size, but now ridiculously large. If pictures are specific to an article, their use at this size should be on the article page only. Thumbnails on the front page can help break up the text, but don't have too many useless stock images for the sake of it.
Before, I'd load the front page, and a number of articles would grab me at once, and I'd end up reading more than I planned as I sift through the many tabs I've opened. Now, you need to scroll through 3 article links at a time, making it easier to leave the site when originally intended. I'm sure many bosses will thank you for that!
Main links.. Yes, still the 3 column design, which is good, but there's something there that makes them not appear as separate as before. I can't put my finger on it - it's as if each box previously gad a border, but now doesn't -- I know this isn't the case, but something is making the entries seem less individual than before.. Is it maybe the white-space change, or the lesser colour distinction between the headlines and the bylines? *shrug*
Time-format..... Is this being done to make it easier for people in different time-zones?
Add back the article author please!
'number of comments' under each link. This should either link to the comments (rather than the article) or not be a link at all.
Too much white-space around that 'feature box' that appears after the first 2 rows
"Is it mainly the front page you hate? The article pages look so much cleaner IMHO."
Article page
Huge detracting photo with no specific relevance.
Same image often repeated (obviously a bug not a design decision, so I'll ignore that)
Otherwise, yeah, that page is ok.
comments page
not a new change, but the date of the comments is awfully imprecise.. At least change it so that the non-javascript fallback shows the time as well as the date!
TL; DR
To me, apart from the huuuuge image on thr article page, it is mainly the front page.
You ask for details about what we consider wrong with the new design: I'd turn it around, and by no means trolling, would ask what you think is now *better* when compared ti this: https://web.archive.org/web/20090228193120/http://www.theregister.co.uk/
"HUGE PICTURE: Also often not even specific to the article, but some general stock photo."
I'll admit I was among those who suggested we make a better play of pictures. Perhaps they shouldn't appear on every article until we've either got a dedicated picture desk or they should be made smaller, or both. I don't make these decisions.
It's sad because it wasn't our intention to use pics that, as one soul said above, have "fuck all" to do with the stories.
"Time-format..... Is this being done to make it easier for people in different time-zones?"
I guess so. More than half our readers are in the US, and we have a healthy number in APAC.
So I think the main thing is that the in-your-face design we hoped would guide readers to the obvious big news – NATS cockups, Sony being hacked/sued, etc – and allow people to scroll down to peruse other stuff isn't working. There were worries that the previous design was looking like Ceefax.
Sometimes a big story or a really decent analysis can get lost in all the other coverage. Social stuff needed to be more accessible rather than tucked to the side.
What I'm trying to say is that there is method in the madness. It's the UK office's Xmas party tomorrow (Wednesday) and people are off and about for Christmas, so please don't get too frustrated if changes aren't made immediately.
C.
No, the "Social Stuff" doesn't need to be more accessible. It needs to be LESS accessible, as in "completely fucking GONE."
Seriously, do you expect us to share articles on the state of the IT business on facebook alongside the pictures of somebody's lunch and someone else's grandkids? Seriously? This is where you want the Reg? Dumped in alongside the drivel posted on twitter? Do you have any statistics that say that the Reg users are even using the social media links at all?
BTW:
Congratulations. The front page pictures are starting to be related to the stories. There's actually a picture of an amazon Fire in the headline of an article on the Fire. Now if the blasted picture weren't so damned enormous...
"Seriously, do you expect us to share articles on the state of the IT business on facebook"
Sharing links about new all-NAND storage arrays to your grandparents is obviously a really dull idea. But a mid-range smartphone review, a laptop comparison, a story about scams targeting small biz, a piece about malware holding people's files to ransom, abuses by the government and cops, etc may fit within your social circle. Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, Facebook, whatever you want, or none at all. No pressure.
But millions are sharing news via social.
"The front page pictures are starting to be related to the stories."
Fantastic. We're getting there. Not every story can carry a giant 650px pic, but some can, so a compromise must be found.
C.
Sorry, missed your reply in the flood.
Yeah, no.
I don't have a "social circle" in the sense of belonging to facebook/twitter/whatever. On occasion, I will forward a link to an interesting article to someone via email - along with a short description of why I think the receiver might be interested as well as a "Hi, howyadoin" while I'm at it.
I don't have any interest in the shallow "everybody is a friend" world of facebook and similar sites. Who actually reads all the self absorbed BS on those sites? NOBODY - they are all busy posting their own latest crap.
I'll admit I was among those who suggested we make a better play of pictures. Perhaps they shouldn't appear on every article until we've either got a dedicated picture desk or they should be made smaller, or both. I don't make these decisions.
Thanks for the frankness. Hopefully those who do make those decisions are seeing the almost overwhelming dislike for the overly large and often irrelevant images. (although I note that has improved somewhat interms of relevance. I'm still seeing the odd story with the image repeated again a few line into the story but alt tags are being filled in more often now)
"Time-format..... Is this being done to make it easier for people in different time-zones?"
I guess so. More than half our readers are in the US, and we have a healthy number in APAC.
Can the time stamp not be calculated based on the users local time? An absolute time/date would work for everyone in that case.
There were worries that the previous design was looking like Ceefax.
That doesn't necessarily implay "bad". Just changing the typeface and colours could have produced a sharper, cleaner and more modern design. The big problem for me is the larger fonts so I see less information on the home page. As a technically oriented site with technically oriented readers, higher information density is expected and welcomed by most. Also, while discussing the front page, can we change the mouse hover colour on the story links? For years, red has been for visited links and I've missed a few stories when scolling down because it turns red as it passes under the mouse pointer and my brain ignores it.
Sometimes a big story or a really decent analysis can get lost in all the other coverage. Social stuff needed to be more accessible rather than tucked to the side.
I don't have a problem with either of those, but the way to emphasise a big story needs to be looked at again. The main headline and image is just too big on a laptopor desktop screen.
What I'm trying to say is that there is method in the madness. It's the UK office's Xmas party tomorrow (Wednesday) and people are off and about for Christmas, so please don't get too frustrated if changes aren't made immediately.
Have fun :-)
(But next time you want to have a major site make-over, don't do it just before the weekend and/or just before a long drunken holiday. I suspect that "someone", who may not have voiced it out loud, planned it this way so as to have an excuse to retain their vision of the future as long as possible, with plausible excuses, in the hope that people will eventually accempt it (Cynical? Moi? :-))
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Are there any plans for a rollback? If not, are there any plans to allow users to customize the layout? Of particular interest to me; shrinking the pictures back to their former size, or simply disabling them completely. I appreciate all of the work your design team has put in, but the new layout is actually making it more difficult for me to consume the wonderful content on the site.
'Come on, Ketlan poster, keep up.'
I don't see your point - unless it's just to be bloody patronising. Ketlan is actually my name, by the way.
'Anyway, my previous posts attempting to engage with readers have been downvoted so I guess everyone here doesn't want to hear what Reg staff have to say.'
Everyone here DOES want to hear what you have to say - the problem is WHAT you're saying. Try saying 'we're rolling back to the old look next week' and see how many upvotes that gets you.
is that they have switched to a new CMS and CAN'T rollback without losing all the articles added since the switch over.
I know at a previous company they were so confident the switchover would be a success that they only wrote scripts to export from the old CMS and import into the new CMS, and not scripts the other way round.
It's either that, or they are just being stubborn little children.
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