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 .
What on earth is wrong with having stories in a simple list style (variable width of course). This is the most user friendly way to make information clearly, and efficiently accessible.
As has been said repeatedly. We're not kids, nor shiny-chasers with a goldfish attention span.
Why are so many technically orientated sites going on this bling downward spiral? I'm even seeing it from mainstream electronic parts suppliers.
"We don’t think we are any brighter than, say, Amazon or the BBC, although we recognise that our restricted colour palette may be an aggravating factor in your perceptions of glare. While we consider this, as an interim measure we are thinking of changing the background colour outside the site."
* Amazon - has lots of pictures of items that I might want to buy, breaking the site up. Full width page so more shown - meaning less background shown
* BBC - couldn't comment, wouldn't go to that left-wing rubbish
Your site is now literally so white that I haven't read a single article apart from BOFH since you did the redesign. And even BOFH I did a CTRL-A, CTRL-C, CTRL-V to a VIM window so I could read it without hurting my eyes. The only page I've read since your change is this one, and then only once, maybe twice a day,
Why do we all hate it with such a passion?
The vast majority of us are in IT - we've all done, or do, web design at some point in our careers, (with varying degrees of success). And over 800 comments later we're telling you that this design is a total utter failure and we don't like it.
I know your tag line is "biting the hand that feeds IT" - well right now you are biting us. I recall in a previous comment you claimed that our feedback is akin to claiming that "we have physically assaulted you". No, we are not claiming that *YOU* have physically assaulted us, we are saying that your site is an assault upon our sense and sensibilities.
In regards to your feedback:
I noticed one of the El Reg people making a few responses to people in the comments and saying "why do I bother". I have 2x things to say to you:
1) I don't have the time/patience to wade through 18 (currently) pages of comments to try and find where you have responded to an earlier comment. I should be able to see your new comments on the latest page with something like "In response to ..." and a link to the previous comment. Your site is far too bright to spend a huge amount of time here.
2) You have to EXPECT to get down votes etc when you are not giving people the responses that they want to hear. Yes, I know that you have to toe the corporate line, and that you are not the person responsible for this mess. But you are the voice that is responding, and we need SOMEONE/SOMETHING to take out our frustrations on. So I guess in a word I'm trying to say "GROW UP AND TAKE IT LIKE A MAN - IT'S ONLY A BUNCH OF COMMENTS, NOT LIKE WE'VE PHYSICALLY ASSAULTED YOU (unlike what your site has done to us - see point 1)".
Finally: pictures.
I do not come to the Reigster to look at pictures. If I want to look at pictures, I either pick up one of my kids books, turn the telly on, or go to a damn p*rn site and look at some REAL pictures. The images on your site are a distraction from what I come to see, which is the articles themselves. Now when I look at your site, all I'm confronted with is giant pictures that I couldn't care less whether they have anything to do with the article or not. The only place pictures are relevant is part of a review, in which case you should be showing me thumbnails and giving me the option to see a larger version IF I SO CHOOSE. Not forcing me to look at your damn clipart fetish.
Right, I'm off to the pub for the office Christmas do. Enjoy, and make of this as much or as little as you like.
"GROW UP AND TAKE IT LIKE A MAN - IT'S ONLY A BUNCH OF COMMENTS, NOT LIKE WE'VE PHYSICALLY ASSAULTED YOU"
I only sighed to the effect of "why bother" because some people wanted a total revert, no other options. Which doesn't leave much room for dialog. Trust me, I've had far worse from the internet than the feedback here :)
Merry Christmas,
C.
I think it's more we want you to step back to what it was before whilst you rethink what went well and what went badly in this update, rather than leaving us stewing in an update that we hate at least parts of whilst you do so.
I'm sure there are some parts of it that people do like, even if they're not fully aware of them directly (if it's stuff under the bonnet/hood) or just that everyone's focussed on the negatives like the whiteness.
Also it's probably a bit surprising at the attitude that's being taken (or at least appearing to be taken, after all the only feedback for our complaints is your good self so far), especially given the delight that el Reg (or certain members of it) have taken in lambasting Microsoft for doing almost the very same thing with Win8 in terms of ignoring user (or reader in your case) feedback.
So maybe it's time for some more "official" feedback or action on all this, before the frustration leads to the only other course of action we have than venting in comment threads like this, namely abandoning the site (either fully or just visiting less).
not a lot, but it's ok
however despite many years of reading the register i have to say i hadn't quite realised what a miserable whining bunch of entitled bastards my fellow commentards are, so you have my sympathy there...
p.s. One issue (forgive me if it's been mentioned before, i lost the will to live after the first page of whinging) is that the site search overlaps the link to "WEEKEND EDITION" in the nav when active
Just got a call from the wife who teaches in one of the local schools. I showed the misses what had happened to the site and how bad I thought it was, as you would need a 55" monitor, in portrait just to by-pass the images so that you could read the article or else do a whole lot of scrolling. Guess what - she showed this to the Web Development class teacher, and congratulations to the The Register, the teacher of that class now has a web site to show how "not to design a site". Way to go The Register, I now have a reason to promote this site once again. Many thanks for this. What is that old saying, every cloud has a silver lining - sometimes we just have to look really hard to find it. (Posted Anonymously as I am in work at the moment).
When a web development teacher knows the first thing about designing a proper website I'll eat my hat. I've never ever seen a site, even one built by a good web designer, that ANY other web designer wouldn't say "that's a bit crap, you should re-do it".
It is massively subjective for a start, and also affected by trends and fashions just like magazines are in terms of what looks good.
Thanks - still in work so posting anonymously (did the original post you replied to). Used to work in IT a long time ago and never did web design but I do understand what you are saying. Maybe you are 100% right as I do not have a clue other than to say, it hurts my eyes, the white. Here it goes, this is the time to show my total lack of knowledge in the web and how the whole thing works but can a site give you a configuration page whereby you could set things like background colour, text colour for read and unread articles? If that was possible and implemented here, everything else they have done, I could accept. Is this type of configuration page possible? I know a cookie would have to be stored on my PC to enable the site to remember my preferences for this computer I am working on, but could it be done? If so, could we add in other settings for things like image sizes (or to remove then altogether), ads (static, animated, video) selector options as I love static ads but hate animated / video ones. Would any of that be possible through a configuration page? Really would like to know as I know nothing of the languages / tools / packages available for web design. Honest questions, asked honestly and would like a simple honest answer, if possible - many thanks to one and all. Really appreciate it. Thanks - Happy Holidays
Well. It is a sterile sort of clean look.
My biggest gripe - there's no "Print" button on any article so that I can view/search an entire article on one long page.
I had thought about checking all 18 pages of comments for a similar comment - and gave up after 2 pages. If only you had a print button that put it all on one page - I could have searched through it much easier.
People complaining about how white the site is are perhaps more irked by the contrast than anything. Most modern sites that use a white background don't usually have fully black (#000) text. Try a dark grey such as #333; it will make things a bit less stark.
@theregister - you're doing it wrong. The biggest mistake of all was just dropping the design on us.
People ***HATE*** UI changes. That seems to go double for nerds. Look back at the comments for any UI changes, by anyone, anywhere and you will see exactly the same reaction. I refer you particularly to Windows 8; Facebook changes and any software that people spend a lot of time on; but any UI change will do. Partly this is to do with convenience...people don't like having to relearn where everything is and what happens when you click this bit etc.
What you should have done was to consult with your readers first. This would have the triple benefit of 1) throwing more brains at the problem so you would have got more ideas (and you would have been made aware of stuff that you maybe hadn't thought of; the 'print' bit being useful for those using text readers as an example) 2) you would have got some people onside so the commentardery would have been more various factions and it wouldn't be Reg vs. readership ("I am become death, destroyer of eyesight") and 3) It would mitigate the fact that the redesign is mainly for the benefit of El Reg and it would seem less like a fuck you from our point of view. Bear with me for a sec here...the redesign would appear from your initial comments to be largely about ad placement and tuning the ads for maximum profit. You're the site owner and nobody has a problem with you making a few quid (although it's fairly dicey ground to start with given your readership's near-allergy to ads and tracking and that sort of malarkey); but what works for you is not necessarily what site visitors want. Designing the site for your own purposes at the expense of treasured toys and dropping it on your readership is going to feel like a gigantic "fuck you and your opinion because you're not important, minion" to every single reader. And you're looking at 18 pages-worth of the results of that feeling.
Everybody uses the site differently; in their usage patterns; the kit they are looking at it with; and their reason for visiting the site in the first place. Therefore different aspects of the redesign are going to have varying effects on different visitors. I have a mouse with a scroll wheel, so I don't give much of a toss about scrolling. I have a 17" 1080p monitor and mostly work at night, so the glare is a big problem for me...it would be hyperbole to say that I'm getting calls from the local lighthouse asking me to turn it down a bit; but saying that I can't see the fucking thing for 15 seconds after using your site is a statement of fact. It is really -in case you've missed it in the subtle comments- too bright. That's my particular bugbear, followed closely by the lack of vlink contrast. Other users are going to have other things that particularly piss them off, depending upon the way they use the site etc.
@Drewc - don't take it personally. Everyone hates UI changes. Dropping UI changes upon an unsuspecting bunch of readers is going to be seen as a fuck you and that will affect the tone of any response. Doing that to a readership who are technically sophisticated just...doesn't help.
Welcome. The post above was mostly to point out that a shitstorm was inevitable, so don't take it to heart; and also that you can lessen the pain somewhat in future by having a consult first (although I suspect that -after this has all blown over- you might not feel like redesigning for quite some time) rather than just sproinging it on people between page refreshes.
I posted about the psychology and effects because you seemed disheartened and a little surprised by the reaction. Remember that a UI redesign for software that people use often is -actually and physically- rearranging their desks without asking them. Only a tiny bit of the desk, but nevertheless. Butthurt is going to happen and there's no avoiding it. The "without asking them" part is key and that bit can be avoided.
Apologies for the assumption that the redesign was ad-tuning based - your early posts did seem to imply that a bit.
From my experience consulting members just makes them believe they will get what they want and they'll be just as cross when they don't, maybe more so "you didn't listen to us at all".
I think "dump the new site and stick your fingers in your ears" is probably as good an approach as anything. Feedback will always be overwhelmingly negative with a large proportion clamouring "put it back how it was" so I'm not sure attempting to placate people actually achieves anything other than wear you out and risk you getting pissed off with your users.
You raise good points but being pragmatic, people are going to bitch.
@JDX - I see where you're coming from and -yes- consultancy does not come without it's own pitfalls, but it can be done with minimal pain if you structure your consultancy properly and state the rules upfront; something along the lines of:
1) These bits are going to be changed in this way for this reason...we're open to suggestions to better ways of doing it, but these things -or something analogous- are going to happen.
2) These are the bits that might be changed - thoughts? Remember that we only have so much space and implementing a new toy may well require losing an old one.
3) Any other suggestions, including things about the current design that annoy you and maybe can be fixed while we're poking it.
RULES: We know we're not going to please everyone. Weapons will be confiscated at the door. Thank you.
The main argument for consultancy is prepping your audience so that they know that something's coming and lessening the shock when it actually arrives. People will -of course- still bitch but consultancy takes some of the heat out of it and also redirects and disperses some of it. Then there's reader engagement and making people feel involved in the process which helps keep your loyal users loyal. There's also the fact that there's no clickbait like a good argument and -with a suitably rabid userbase- you could keep it going for a good week or three. From an adminning point of view, it's funny as fuck to watch the "Off-White Crew" square off against the "Semi-Transparent Sepia Militia"; with occasional raids by the "What's Wrong With Cream You Cunts Posse". Then someone will inevitably mention fonts (office pool for the time interval) and it all goes religious, as do your ad impressions.
The other main point is to remind people gently whose site it is. Our territorial instincts are just not built for other people's 'property' to be running in our homes. The correct etiquette is, I believe, to call whoever changed anything twelve types of bastard and threatening to leave. Dropping the design and the mic does establish ownership, right enough; but it's possible to broach the subject in a much kinder fashion and establish a mood that's more we're all in this together rather than take it bitch.
It is hard work, I'll grant you; but worth doing, in my demi-anonymous internet opinion.
A bit of comic relief thrown in for free.
"Daddy, I do not want a boat like this."
or
"Hey, Daddy, *I* want an Oompa Loompa! I want you to get me an Oompa Loompa right away"
or, for the younger generation:
"But I don't want any old squirrel! I want a *trained* squirrel!"
(and no, i won't get my coat. I like it here, thanks very much)
For balance, it's not too white. It's quite pleasant on all my monitors.
I use Visual Studio and NotePad++ and MSWord and Explorer all the time and they don't hurt me either, and I don't change all my theme settings to brown on black or anything.
Maybe you all have your monitors turned up too much or sit too close to the screens :)
This post has been deleted by its author
So from your latest article some responses from me.
1. The site is too white - making it hard on the eyes.
Its not that the site is to white as such that makes it hard on the eyes its that you have chosen a shade of gray almost at the white end of the spectrum as your dividers it doesn't break the site up into sections properly that's what's effecting the readability.
2. Pictures and headlines in stories and the “hero pic’ at the top of the front page are too big, making for unnecessary scrolling.
Serioulsy they are try using an average office monitor and its to big on a mobile its bloody awful, also if you don't want to have an autoswitch to mobile because its to tricky/risky fine but if you are not then really you need to get the picture sizing sorted.
3, Just put it back to the way it was before
I don't know if it needs that but it would be nice you actually listened to some of the feedback and acted on it, rather than coming back and complaining that we all don't like you, either ask for the feedback and deal with it or don't and publish and be dammed, but don't start giving out the "your holding it wrong type excuses".
Also I liked the side tab that gave you most read and most commented, the new way of doing it is inelegant and messy in comparison.
"Well - we are looking to do something about pics."
Here's a couple of suggestions I think a lot of regular visitors can get behind:
NO PICTURE ON THE FRONT PAGE AT ALL!
and:
DON'T PUT A PICTURE IN THE ARTICLE IF IT HAS NO ACTUAL RELEVANCE TO THE SUBJECT BEING DISCUSSED!
You're splashing stock pictures around like clueless people used to do with excess amounts of clip art in the early days of desktop publishing. It's not wanted, we're already here to read the articles, you don't need to try and lure us in with stupid, irrelevant pictures that hog most of the screen.
Sadly, I had a whole lot of shit to say here but after reading God knows how many pages of pissed-off commentards putting in their bits, I can't be bothered. You want a death threat? Here you go. 'If you don't revert, I'll kill myself.' Fucking sad, isn't it. 'If you don't revert, I'll go elsewhere for my IT coverage', sounds a little better.
At the moment, I'm reading this site via the feed. Gawdelpus, I used to love reading it by any means possible.
[this long post represents my meandering thoughts - if you have a short attention span, just hit Page Down a bunch of times...]
First up, comparing yourself against Amazon "because both have lots of white" is a bit dumb. People don't go to Amazon to read stuff. It isn't like El Reg and - to be honest - thank god for the accessibility option on my iPad where pressing the button three times inverts the colours. White on black is a bit old-school, but at least I can read without eye pain.
Secondly, comparing yourself against Amazon is a bit dumb because Amazon makes good use of available screen space (their webdev mission statement probably says "a wasted area of screen is a missed sale"). You? You have huge swathes of white on either side. It looks... amateurish. Like somebody playing with <table> layouts not realising the difference between px and % because "it looks okay on my screen".
Thirdly - http://m.theregister.co.uk/Week is a 404. Any plans to fix it, or are we going to be stuck with the arbitrary order? How about give us an option - "most recent first" vs "stories we think you'd like" (or something). After all, Amazon lets you choose what order to see things in. <nudge><nudge>
Could we have an "age" indication on the mobile version, please? It is useful to see if something is "X hours old" so you can quickly scan through for items that have been posted since the last visit.
I notice that you said that you don't have in-house resources to develop, and that nobody likes change. Actually, change can be good. But to handwave concerns with "nobody likes change" is a bit churlish, especially when the change is to something that does not look or feel as nice as it was before. Here's a bit in bold, please read it twice: YOUR SITE WAS NOT BROKEN. NOW IT IS. Clear enough? Would it not have been an idea to develop this in-house, run it alongside for some feedback (maybe of your gold-shield commentators) and tweak it accordingly prior to a public release? Wouldn't that have been better than a "here's shiny new whiteness, now beta test it, oh and there's no downgrade". Reminds me of Orange with their Livebox firmware (every update looks nicer but makes simple actions tedious and breaks loads of stuff along the way - thank God they only update like once every two years).
I read the link. I find it interesting that desktop advertising brings in more revenue than mobile, given that it isn't hard to remove advertising from a desktop browser, but generally mobile devices do not have this sort of functionality. What you may actually be seeing is that advertising on a desktop machine is "tolerated" because it loads quickly (even at slow ADSL speeds) and there isn't much in the way of technical restriction. On the other hand, I completely avoid visiting advertising-heavy sites on my mobile device as it takes longer to load (an eternity if on EDGE instead of 3G), most of the browsers I have used on phones have a really annoying habit of throwing away all content and refetching it if you switch to another app (even something as simple as reading an SMS), and phone contracts tend to come with a data allowance. Some have gigabytes, some have hundreds of megabytes, some have less. I have 500MiB/month, which works out to be about 16MiB a day. Not enough to mess around with advertising I am not going to read. And, some sites, sadly, accept to receive revenue from advertisers that do really shitty things like "oh, you're on Android, here's a 400KiB apk file every bloody time" - animelyrics.com I'm naming YOU, or you visit a webpage and suddenly you are staring at some game you wouldn't look at in a million years in the app store. Behaviour like that, and the fact that bandwidth is restricted (moreso if your contract is one that will let you go over and hit you with ££££ for it) mean that people are likely to be less tolerant of advertising on a mobile platform (despite Google's best attempts to insert advertising everywhere possible). As it is, I have reprogrammed my ElReg bookmark to the mobile version as the main page is massive. I can't justify >200K every time the browser decides to reload the page. But, if it continues to be difficult to sort new stories from things that I have already noticed, I'll just stop reading it during my break at work (when I read most stuff on ElReg).
Your linked article finishes with "This is why the media industry's crumbling fortunes cannot be ignored." What was ignored for too long was the media industry publishing generic mass produced junk that alienated the readership. Take, for instance, Dr. Dobb's - a recent story here on ElReg. It started being hardcore, then it went commercial, then it went through long protracted death throes due to having lost the readership that it had in the beginning, and having lost the essence of what made it different. It might do for the publishing industry to start making things that people are willing to pay for, instead of trying to "make a killing" by publishing things that some clueless marketing twat thinks the readership might like. There's a magazine I buy from time to time. The subject matter is Japan. Things to see, interviews, lots of J-Pop, reviews of manga and such. Somewhere along the way, it started taking on a lot of stories about K-Pop. Now, I understand that maybe to a clueless Westerner, Japan and Korea are kind of the same place, but to those of us who can actually find them both on a map, they're not the same, their language isn't the same, and don't they kind of dislike each other anyway? My knowledge of Korea is a few seriously bad-ass films and That Song That Broke YouTube. Obviously, I haven't bought the last two issues, and judging by the fake sticker on the front saying "100% Japan" on the latest issue, I'm not the only one to think that. If they want to promote Korea, go for it. In a magazine all about Korea. Simple! It's really the same sort of story as Dobbs, isn't it? It's a balancing act between satisfying a potentially smaller readership versus attracting new readers while not alienating the ones they have, and not becoming so generic that their publication has nothing to make it stand out of the crowd. Perhaps, instead of whining about how mobile pays less, publishers might want to think of things that people would actually pay for...
"This may sound lame to you but we have 50 mouths to feed." - fair enough. I can't say I agree, but it's your site, your decision. You've already pretty much lost a mobile-device reader and you're in danger of making a regular become a part time lurker. Is this what you intended?
-" http://m.theregister.co.uk/Week is a 404. Any plans to fix it, or are we going to be stuck with the arbitrary order?"
- I am not sure that we ever had this view. I will find out tomorrow. But m.theregister.co.uk except for the top five stories - the ones with the pics - are all in reverse chronology. Does that still make it hard for you to find stories you haven't read?
When the BBC changed their design a couple of years ago to something resembling this el-reg change, it was universally slated in comments in a similar way to what we see here. The BBC ignored all the comments about shit layout and gave lip-service about fixing the 'too much white' but basically changed bugger all. Full expect el-reg to do the same.
Although community created userscripts changed the layout back to something similar, ended up hardly visiting the BBC website after that change which is still the case to this day. Not only looked horrid but there was much less words and worded for twitter type first paragraphs and some crap about being 'media rich' to explain the stupid size graphics and limited text while pretending it had nothing to do with phones and tablets. A slippery slope to resentment which I hope the register do not continue to follow although deep down we know the answer already.
I now spend as little time as possible on BBC.
The Images get bigger, frequently fill browser on a 1600 x 1200 screen
The text is too big
The Content is getting poorer
They now feed different .com and co.uk versions based on Geolocate and no assurance a link you send works for someone else.
This change seems to copy the BBC news site, which is now one of the WORSE designed sites on the internet!
Perhaps El Reg and BBC are designed for a 42" HDTV about 7 ft away (a bit more than 2m) rather than computer screens?
Do you all need reading glasses?
Are you all using UHD retina displays?
The design may look pretty, but in the real world it doesn't work!
Have been hanging about the Reg for ages. I rather like the site - the change implemented was .... drastic. My commentary:
The banner, well -- I think it would be improved if the Vulture got his texturing back. Just a hint of black in there to break up the red/white.
Yes - too damned white - hard on the eyes. - a possibly shading the background to other than white, but I suspect you'd get as much mileage from darkening the deliniators and/or putting a shaded background under the subheading. Please put the author's name on the title flyover.
My god the pictures. Many of your readers/vistors are command line/green screen junkies. I'd be fine with the pictures most of the time, if they didn't leap off the page and bite my face. *grin* -- its possible that the sizing would work fine if you changed the overall page texture, but at the moment I just want to see them about 30% smaller overall -- possibly 40%. I realize that blows the layup to hell - -but then you'd be able to make the top 3 articles on the right wider.
Please -- most commented on the right -- I see top stories and most read. Havent looked at mobile yet - but I suspect that this would not lay up well on my SIIx.
Here's hoping we can get it tweaked to a point where the screaming stops. Clarisse will be much happier.
Re: "we don't think we're more white than [X]"...
There are some pages where I need to turn down my monitor. Most pages I don't have to. But The Register is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for me. Turning down my monitor for 1 page that I'm spending 15 minutes on is one thing, but when I am using El Reg for resource/reference all day long, it's really quite to bright.
I tried using Hacker Vision, which works well on Wikipedia and other offenders, but it really makes El Reg look quite silly. I'm working on fully converting the CSS so there's a proper dark theme that I can apply via greasemonkey, but the thing is eleventy squillion lines long.
I am not going to stamp my feet and demand El Reg fully support a dark theme. I'd love it if you had time to work one up, and provide us the option for logged in users. That would be nice.
But I think the idea of a vote is great. "Is it worth El Reg's time to invest in a dark theme" or somesuch. How many readers would like it? Does the site need to be viewed the exact same for every reader?
Anyways, them's the thoughts...
The Register has always been somewhat simply designed, which makes it more attractive to return-to on a regular basis to read articles and news of interest without wanting to throw things at the screen the way I often do on other I.T. websites that are completely garbaged-up with pointless scripts, popup nag windows and miscellaneous non-textual content.
And so I noted in the latest missive about the redesign that "responsive" design will have to wait. As long as it's in the cards I can live with that for now. Especially if you do not resort to intolerant browser-sniffing tactics that penalize anyone who does not use the "Top Two" browser du-jour.
But since I often like to print out (or save to PDF) articles for future reference, I really mourn the loss of the "print" icon, or at least some sort of "read as single page" option, because printing ElReg articles is becoming more difficult as of late.
RSS is also important to me because this is the most convenient way to catch-up on news from my smartphone. However many of my mobile RSS apps struggle with the ElReg RSS content for various reasons.
As for the "brightness" thing - sure, one could use a stylish script or something to change that but that's a hassle in the long run. My fantasy is a button to change from the standard view to the "tired/hungover low-contrast view" on demand. (E.g., grey background instead of white. This is how I configure terminal screens on my systems.) Hope springs eternal. :)
When using the website, I historically used the "weekly" view here, it's just a pity that page is hidden by default these days - if I'm using a new system or device without a bookmark I have to dig for it.
Mea Culpa - looks like the link is at the bottom of the page now. Thanks.
Overall - thanks for your efforts to keep listening to your readers.
First the summary: After a week, I still see no advantage of the new design, and it still feels less useful than the design it replaced. I would accuse it of being less intuitive, too, but I can't really remember how long it took to get used to the previous design. For example, the hot article feature was good and easy to figure out, but I'm not even sure if it exists in the new design...
Wasting the keystrokes on the funding suggestion, but:
Two-part project:
(1) Implementation costs: When enough people pledge to implement the responsive design, then you release the funds and do that project. (As previously suggested, you would be holding the money already.)
(2) Operating costs: On an annual project basis. Of course key features should be funded years in advance, but if the so-called responsive design is not a key feature, you should implement it to allow it to be turned off if there are not enough donors for the operating costs. The website would continue operating, but we would see a link to the operating-cost project. As a concrete example, imagine that the 2016 year is not funded at the end of 2015. Then the responsive interface would turn off, but we would see the link to fund it, if we really want that feature. Imagine the thrill of being the last donor who gets to turn on the popular feature? You could even feature that donor at the top of the funding donation page for the feature. Then again, if no one actually wants to support the feature, then it should remain turned off, sorry. If I had been one of the people who had wanted to put 10 quid towards enabling it, then I might be unhappy, but no skin off my nose. My pledge would become available for some other project.
I have been a fan of the Reg since the mid 1990s. I read the BOFH files back then. As to the new look, I prefer the prior art. It just simply worked. When it was introduced, sure, I had a moment of "I don't know". However, I realized its better design. Now, I think that the prior art is the better design. I liked that I could easily see if I had already read an article. Now, the mousing makes any article appear already read. I must carefully move the mouse up between articles to avoid the "used" coloration. And, yes, the big picture at the top is a little bit too big. If I could, I would return to the prior art. it worked. I liked it. I like it better.
Salek
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