We've only gone and done it: Changed what you're used to

Most days are the same. Wake up. Stretch. Grumble to the wife. She grumbles back. Tea, toast. Maybe an egg. Whip out your phone at the breakfast table, check the news. Mostly bad. Check The Reg to see what they're on about today. "Whaaaaaaaa????" Some days are different. Today is one of those days. After more than two decades …

[MiguelC]

Awful! Bring back the light on images version, please!

[MiguelC]

Extra sores:

- Read articles not being shown in a different colour, like the web is supposed to work since it's inception

- No tags shown, so we don't know until we view the article what section it belongs to

- Some articles don't show the comment section link or comments count, even when there is no reason comments should be unavailable for that particular story (not "sensible" issues) [I think I got this one: forum for the article is being created later than the article, but, why?!]

- /Archive better than the homepage, but still worse than the previously existent lite mode

[John Robson]

I'm not keen on the "column" approach to listing articles... it makes it much harder to read left to right.

I'm sure that's deliberate, but given that the site is in a left to right language it seems like a seriously retrograde step - grids are fine.

[Doctor Syntax]

Th e-word reaches elReg

[MiguelC]

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to enshitificate ElReg.

This message will self-destruct in five seconds (if the js works properly, which, considering how everything else is going, may not really be forthcoming)

[Anonymous Coward]

CEO Phil Mitchell, CTO Matt Proud, EMEA deputy editor Jude Karabus: Mission accepted!

[Quando]

Bit of a mess on iPad using safari in portrait mode, about 20% of screen used per line of text for the article.

Ok in landscape. Ok in the comments page, apart from a button class with ‘edit’ & ‘reply’

[breakfast]

I use a regular monitor in portrait mode for reading and it's a little bit scruffy on that, too - mostly the top menu is way wider than the screen and there's no way to see what's on it off the sides of the page. Some kind of wrapping would work there.

I can still find everything I want, though, and doubtless I'll get used to it soon enough. Looks pretty good in landscape.

[Doctor Syntax]

Landscape on a monitor but I usually set the browser window to about a quarter of the screen at which the content is a few words wide. And on my favoured browser - and most others - the comment link isn't displayed - just a load of links to social media crap. I wondered if that was where we were expected to comment.

[breakfast]

Do you have multiple incredibly narrow browser windows side-by-side?

[Joe Gurman]

Not commenting on apparently obligatory redesign, but….

…. I suspect that somewhere there’s some JavaScript or HTML or something that is confusing Safari on iPadOS with Safari on iOS. The result is far, far too much white space on either side of a narrow column of text at least for those of us using the iPad as a normal reader, which is to say in portrait mode.

I’m hoping that some of the designers time can be applied to fixing this. Thanks.

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: Not commenting on apparently obligatory redesign, but….

What designers?

It was generated by AI!

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Re: Not commenting on apparently obligatory redesign, but….

Hmm. Keep an eye out for purple elements.

[iron]

After the initial shock this morning, the new design looks good. Fresh and clean without looking too much like modern web design.

I have one issue though, I can't find a link to the comments section of a story if there are no comments posted yet. Once a comment is posted a link appears at the bottom of the story but it's not there until then, or at least I can't find it.

(Firefox on Windows, haven't tried any other devices yet)

[Jason Bloomberg]

There are no "comment" links at the bottom of article pages for me, just an icon and number of comments link at the top, far right of author's name and above social media links, which did show zero when no comments made.

Also using Firefox on Windows so not sure why we are seeing different things.

[Dan 55]

On desktop currently (yay agile...), the comment link at the bottom of the article is left justified next to the tags. It should be right justified to match where the comment link is at the top of the article.

[Fogcat]

Yes this! So it is in the same place on every page!

<old man mode>It's all about the looks, not the usability</old man mode>

[Philip Storry]

I had that problem too, but it seems to be fixed now - I just opened a brand new article and there was a "0 comments" link that worked.

Hopefully it was just a brief blip!

[DJV]

just a brief blip

I did find the comments this morning (UK time) but it seemed like the CSS on the comments had gone completely AWOL, and I had to step away for a lie down. Glad to see the formatting is back now, though.

[Roland6]

Re: just a brief blip

Yesterday I got the CSS error when trying to post a comment, return to the article page and no comment button. After a few hours a refresh uncovered the microscopic comment icon and underlying button. Given the comments section has been a big feature of ElReg, this decision to minimise the comment button suggest TPTB don’t actually want comments. I note in the redesign the “Send corrections” button is still on the comments page and not at the foot of the article, a more logical place.

I had noted the change the other week to the comments section, with the introduction of lots of wholly unnecessary white space. An improvement would be to introduce threading, as was common with 1980s BBS’s but strangely absent from web forums…

[vtcodger]

You folks did test this thing, right?

Still broken on my Chromebook. No comment links on the article page, And that new navigation bar you're so proud of is wider that the screen such that the items on the right and left are truncated. How much wider? I think only a little. Maybe 10-15%

Overall. I think I loathe it.

I don''t suppose there's any chance that you might give us old fuddyduddies an option to lose the pictures? Not that they aren't pretty. But I come here for the content, not the glitter. Grumphhh!!!

[vtcodger]

Re: You folks did test this thing, right?

Correction: Comments link is now present at the bottom of the page. Maybe it was there an hour ago and I missed it. But I think it really was missing.

[ThatOne]

Re: You folks did test this thing, right?

For me (desktop Firefox) there is a tiny icon and a number on the top right of the article. Probably for those who comment before reading the article...

Nah. I'm probably too old and not hip enough, but I don't like the new look: Too noisy, and that fancy serif typeface is hard to read.

[MonkeyJuice]

Re: You folks did test this thing, right?

There was a brief period where forums.theregister.com went AWOL, and the comments link wasn't present on articles. I was terrified the reg had finally decided to evict the commentards. Where was I going to send my fuming, unsolicited opinions now?

About an hour later everything all synced up and here we are. So we can now proceed to have an editor war as God intended.

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: You folks did test this thing, right?

Overall. I think I loathe it.

The thing I dislike the most is that there's no graphics-minimised view - so in FF on Windows, you get *huge* images dominating the page.

The other thing is that everything is separated out into the various sections (Bootnote/Datacentre etc etc) and so there's no way of seeing the latest articles in all the sections without scrolling to check the individual section. And, even then, it's harder to tell because they are smeared sideways through the section.

Fix those two issues (give us a minimal-graphics view and allow an 'all sections' date-sorted view) and the new design would be much better. As it is, it makes reading a chore rather than a pleasure.

[MattRosoff]

You should see a small blacked-out comment bug (the little thing that looks like a speech bubble' at the bottom right underneath the title on the home page, and on the upper-right of the article page, even if it has zero comments. If you are not seeing that, please share a screenshot to my email: [e-mail], and I'll forward it along to the right people. Thank you.

[Andy Non]

Information overload

Too much in my face, I don't know where to look or read or to scroll to. Sorry, don't like the new format.

[ThatOne]

Re: Information overload

Agree, it's way too noisy. A stark contrast with the ascetic simplicity of the old look.

The only thing missing is to make all titles blink in different colors...

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Information overload

Don't give them ideas!!!!

[Jason Bloomberg]

Absolute shit

Sorry to have to say it but that's how I feel about the landing page change. Did an LLM or an AI Agent help out?

I liked the fact that headlines were obvious links and that stories neatly lined up on rows. I have never liked 'newspaper style' on web pages.

I might get used to it. I might put some effort into having TamperMonkey fiddle with it. I might try coding some Proxy to untangle the home page and get it how I like it. I might just fuck off.

Which will be a shame as I have been a loyal supporter of El Reg for a long time.

[chivo243]

Re: Absolute shit

I might just fuck off.

I might be in line with you!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Absolute shit

been here since 2001. the site has always evolved. it used to be a .co.uk and biting the hand that feeds IT but I guess those days are gone. cash and carrion anyway?

[HereIAmJH]

Re: Absolute shit

The rows don't line up, and the post times are sorted in columns. So you have to scroll up and down and across through the columns, then jump past the 'fold' and do it again. I find it more difficult to keep track of where I left off. I thought at first they weren't even sorting by post date and it was annoying.

I suppose I'll get used to it. And if I miss articles, well I guess that just means I have more free time.

I do like the links directly to comments at the top of the articles and on the home page.

[I am David Jones]

Re: Absolute shit

Having the comments link at the top makes it easier to flame the author without reading the article :)

[HereIAmJH]

Re: Absolute shit

I suppose that's a use case... (and a joke)

I'll admit to looking for this story immediately after I saw the redesign. And while I don't consider it 'absolute', I'm keeping the OP's title.

I'll use the added links when I come back to see responses to posts, or when I was really early to read the article and few comments have been posted.

[ITMA]

Re: Absolute shit

Anyone have a bucket..... I need one to throw up in....

Awful look. Just awful.

Hideous and a right mess....

Looks like the Windows 11 GUI team did the redesign....

[DJV]

Re: Absolute shit

Oh, come on now, be reasonable. It's bad but not THAT bad!

[ITMA]

Re: Absolute shit

Are you referring to my bucket comment.... Or Windows 11?

:)

[DJV]

Re: Absolute shit

Oh, definitely Windows 11!

[diodesign]

Looks fine to me on desktop

Articles are readable, no pop-ups or ads interrupting, and the return of the top nav bar is a nice touch. Looks good to me. For those missing the site from the 2000s-2010s, it's a little reminder. It also states right at the top what this site is all about.

C.

[Alumoi]

Re: Looks fine to me on desktop

I don't know about you but for me, right at the top, is that idiot three lines menu, a magnifier, The Register and my account. Nothing else.

[diodesign]

Re: Looks fine to me on desktop

On desktop at least, if you look under the red mast head there's a line of links that read:

Datacenter

Security

Microsoft

Amazon

Developers

Open Source

IT Careers

Digital Sovereignty

Columnists

Who, Me?

On Call

At least for me, anyway.

[Alumoi]

Re: Looks fine to me on desktop

That's not right at the top. Right at the top of the page is the red bar.

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: Looks fine to me on desktop

On desktop at least, if you look under the red mast head there's a line of links that read

Except that the list of sections is partially hidden to the left and right as it's longer than the window size and makes no attempt to either scroll or wrap.

[EdSaxby]

Re: Looks fine to me on desktop

In my case, I had to set the zoom in Firefox to 90% so the links on the top of the page would fit into the browser window. Otherwise, the text links on the outer left and right sides disappeared off the page.

It looks like you got AI to QA this.

[firu toddo]

Re: Looks fine to me on desktop

Same here.

But with my old mans eyes if I zoom so i can see the links the fonts in the stories are too small.

Maybe CoPilot did the QC?

Can I have a grumpy old git Icon?

[Always Right Mostly]

Just…

No

[Like a badger]

Re: Just…

Makes me wonder what problem was that needed to be solved. I appreciate that humans are fickle, without change they lose interest and drift away to kick a pigs bladder or a severed head (or to hoot and yoller at others so doing). Everything needs an update from time to time, but even so, couldn't we have had less change?

You've got us dribbling down our beards, shouting for the apoplexy nurse, or rocking backwards and forwards, weeping and cursing.

[Pussifer]

Re: Just…

Job justification?

Difficult to make something that seemed to be perfect better.

Whatever - I supposed once 'they' get their full shit together and make the site work right on all types of device we'll get used to the new look.

[Pussifer]

Re: Just…

Additional: The /Week page was my landing page, the /archive page doesn't work right, read stories links don't change colour. Firefox ESR on Linux.

[RT Harrison]

Re: Just…

I had to create a simple Tampermonkey script to highlight the visited links.

(ETA: Not sure how to do preformatted text in the ElReg comments section.)

<pre>

// ==UserScript==

// @name ElReg visited link colour

// @version 2026-05-06

// @description Highlights visited links on the ElReg site.

// @author Richard Thomas Harrison

// @match https://www.theregister.com/*

// @grant GM.addStyle

// ==/UserScript==

(function() {

'use strict';

GM.addStyle("body{a:visited {color: red !important;}}");

})();

</pre>

[Jason Bloomberg]

Re: Just…

RT Harrison - Another day, another legend

Huge thanks for that. It works brilliantly with the Archive page, makes it very easy to discern what has been read from what hasn't.

It has been so long since I wrote any TamperMonkey scripts and, with my outdated understanding of HTML and CSS, I didn't know where to start. You have saved me a lot of effort and grief.

I'd still like to remove the banner links, replace the intro text, remove the '1-100' older links and maybe remove the images. I am prepared to put that effort in myself but if anyone wants to save me and others from the effort of figuring out how to; there's still plenty of room on that Legends plinth :)

So it looks like I won't be "fucking off" and El Reg can thank you and TrevorH for that.

[Jonathan Richards 1]

Re: Just…

I also have been visiting El Reg on an almost daily basis, for the last 18 years, via the /week page. This accounts for a late response, because I thought the 404 message indicated a problem that would be fixed!

In a minute I shall go looking for the post I made the last time that the El Reg team mucked about with a perfectly adequate user interface. I mean, who cares about the number of articles that can be above "the fold"?

My key user requirement is a page which quickly lists El Reg articles, youngest first. I've learned to live with the slightly greyed-out text to indicate 'visited' instead of the red that The Week In Summary page used to have (once upon a time).

The list does NOT need a silly picture to accompany the headline, thank you, as featured on the Archive page. Who thought that an earthworm picture (12K bytes) was a useful addition to "Worm rubs out competitor's malware, then takes control"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Just…Enshitification

The list of people thanked, looks a lot longer than the number of journalists I thought contributed to this once fine rag.

[MattRosoff]

Re: Just…Enshitification

The post thanked three people. Here's our full masthead: https://www.theregister.com/profile/contact. It has more than three people on it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Just…

> Makes me wonder what problem was that needed to be solved.

Wife has fits like that every couple years, she needs to reshuffle the furniture. Mind you, the point is not to improve anything, just to change things. Which means that if the layout was quite well-optimized before it is bound to be less functional afterwards. But it will be different, so mission accomplished.

[MattRosoff]

Re: Just…

As I mentioned in this post, this redesign was part of a larger set of changes across our tech stack that were intended to free up the dev team to work on new stuff, rather than spending so much time maintaining the old site. We are using a new CMS provider that offers more flexible design options so we took advantage of that. We'll be posting an article - hopefully this weekend, maybe a bit later - that explains in more detail exactly what was done and why.

As far as the design itself goes, one goal was to give people more ways to see the articles they're interested in, more quickly. Hence the top navbar and more stories above the fold, and subsections lower down the page for things like columnists.

[Lennart Sorensen]

Re: Just…

Stories above the fold? Don't care, to me those are duplicates. I look through the new articles each day in order, I don't care for highlighted stories whatsoever, they are a waste of space. No one is looking for an old fashioned newspaper. We don't need to duplicate the limitations of articles on paper.

Not having things aligned on a grid and sorting vertically (well within each section, you have to go left to right column by column in each section before going to the next section) is pretty awful. The lack of highlighting what I had already read on firefox yesterday was making me consider whether the register was worth using anymore, but at least that appears fixed today.

[Mike VandeVelde]

Re: Just…

I would like to see a list of all articles, newest at the top, descending date order, with some indication of which ones I have already visited. Is that no longer available here? This is like the Facebook algorithm feed. I no longer go to Facebook at all like I religiously used to when I could see a simple date ordered list of what my friends had posted lately. I've been coming here for half of my life I would be very sad to give it up.

Comment 257 8 bits will no longer suffice FTW!!

[YTC#1]

Re: Just…

But all you have achieved, for me at least, is to render it unreadable on my smart phone.

If it at least obeyed the browser option to resize the font and fit in the window/page then I could live with it. But you are overriding that so I have to zoom the screen and the slide left and right to read a line.

Did no one test it?

You are loosing a reader (20+ years) due to some website control element.

[MatthewSt]

RSS

Full articles (minus formatting) in the RSS feeds now! Nearly made my feed reader explode when I opened it up!

[My other car WAS an IAV Stryker]

Re: RSS

Missing the subheads. I'd rather have the head, subhead, and snippet like before, then only have to click the link (at the bottom, which is now harder to get to) if I cared to have the full text. Also, having the authors' names was nice, especially compared to a generic "www.theregister.com - Articles".

[aidanstevens]

Re: RSS

Inoreader can fetch the full article for feeds that only give you the summary.

[Graham Cobb]

Re: RSS

RSS feed is no longer in date/time order. That really screws up simple RSS readers. In particular, it breaks Tickr, which I have used for many, many. many years for the 4 feeds I watch all the time.

[neurochrome]

Re: RSS

I panicked a bit when El Reg disappeared yesterday in my RSS reader: Flym DecSync on Android 15. OK now. Minor changes are fine, but ARTICLE AUTHOR IS MISSING. It's a nice-to-have but I do find it useful. Also, inline quotes in the articles have never showed up, and still don't. Possibly a Flym issue, and if it's a really interesting article I can always open in browser.

[LateAgain]

Re: RSS

Not like that in "feeder" on android.

I've had to turn off thumbnails and I just see headers.

To almost quote The Doctor. " New look? Nice. .... I don't like it."

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Re: RSS

Full articles are great but in my reader they come in with no paragraphs, which makes them borderline impossible to read

[PRR]

I have seen far worse. As a 20 year update it is quite mild.

I am strictly 1920 1080 monitor and windows at 60%-80% of monitor real estate. More "no surprise" than "gee golly kewl!

I find the same headline in all three columns. Item-pick routine needs more random salt.

The top-bar text-menu is wider than the red top-bar or my screen.

https://i.postimg.cc/5Xz4HDNZ/IBMdedtab.gif

[DJV]

Yeah, I'm seeing that masthead width issue, too. I'm on 1920 x 1200. At the moment, I'm not seeing the repeated articles issue, so hopefully that one is fixed.

[Always Right Mostly]

If this redesign is "quite mild", what on Earth would qualify as a total dogs lunch/bloody abortion? NOTHING has been improved and EVERYTHING has a Homer Simpson's Website "Look what I did, Marge!" effect.

[ThatOne]

> NOTHING has been improved

Usual redesign stuff: Just move some things around and replace things that you know worked with things you assume look "fresher" (irrelevant if they work). Because you can.

Especially the tiny serif typeface is a big no-no for my aging eyes. I suppose the "designer" works on a huge 28" screen, unfortunately on my laptop it's really painful to read.

[Doctor Syntax]

"the tiny serif typeface is a big no-no for my ageing eyes"

Serif? Maybe you mean sans-serif in which case you get an upvote for me. Sans for headlines, Serif for text.

[ThatOne]

Why, both the article headlines and the text beneath them are in serif typeface for me. Both on the home page and the articles. Only the comments remain in the original sans-serif.

[Steve Davies 3]

re: Sans for headlines,

At least it is not Comic Sans.

A small mercy I know but with the now enshitted site I may well no come here so often as it is painful on my aging eyes.

[cbrisuda]

Accessibility

I’ve been using it on iOS Safari. It’s hard for me to read small (or, to everyone else, normal) sized text, but on the old version, I could zoom in using the zoom buttons to enlarge the text sufficiently.

On the new version, zooming in doesn’t enlarge the text, so it’s hard for me to see. On the article pages I can use reader mode, but I prefer not to so that you can make advertising revenues off me :). On the homepage though it’s fairly uncomfortable to read.

Would be really appreciated if you could fix so that the font size can be adjusted by zooming. Thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Too small

The font size is way too small now and using standard zoom controls to increase it breaks the layout. Poor effort

[Scotthva5]

Re: Too small

Same problem here on Brave Linux.

[Jason Bloomberg]

Re: Too small

Font size is okay for me but the banner links extend off my screen left and right at 100% (1360x768, landscape). If I reduce to 90% the banner links are fine but font does become too small.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Re: Too small

Same here on FF; zooming so that the article text is comfortable to read causes the navigation bar to go off the screen. Shouldn't it dynamically resize/reflow like everything else?

[DoctorPaul]

Re: Too small

You mean like bog-standard HTML used to do all those years ago? Welcome to the future.

[Philip Storry]

Nice work folks

I'm liking it. And I'm especially liking that you kept RSS (you obviously know your audience).

But most of all I'm liking that this means El Reg has less likelihood of being killed by ancient technology debts, so is more likely to be here in the future.

Good work all round. Thanks!

[Jason Bloomberg]

Re: Nice work folks

But most of all I'm liking that this means El Reg has less likelihood of being killed by ancient technology debts, so is more likely to be here in the future.

I have no problem with removing technical debt and really hadn't noticed anything done in the last two months. It's today's home page mess I really take exception to. I guess if it's successful or not will be judged on churn.

One thing I have noticed - no idea how it is for others - is that home page article headlines are bold white for me with white text below. The headline gets underlined with mouse-over.

In the past I used to see my normal link colouring, visited colouring once I had.

I hadn't realised how useful that was until it took me quite a while to find this article amongst the rest when I came back to the home page.

[Dan 55]

Re: Nice work folks

There's still one piece of tech debt I can see, if you go to https://account.theregister.com/edit/forums it takes an age to appear* and you can get the cloudflare timeout page, I guess it's counting public posts, upvotes, and downvotes. Once the counts are in the DB cache it appears faster.

* for people who spend far too long on this website, i.e. me at least.

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: Nice work folks

if you go to https://account.theregister.com/edit/forums it takes an age to appear* and you can get the cloudflare

Does for me too.

[the spectacularly refined chap]

Comment searching

Is this why for the last week or so attempting to use Find in page on a comments page has mysteriously jumped to My Account->Topics?

Firefox on Android.

[Alumoi]

Search problems

Who's the ... genius that though replacing FF's type to find in the displayed page with search the register was a good idea?

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: Search problems

Yes, that is an extremely irritating change. Leave my browser alone.

[chivo243]

Wait, what?

Nothing lines up any longer, it's hard to read. I've endured the "other"* changes, but this is really hard on the eyes. I thought perhaps my adblocker was interfering.

*Where's Paris?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Wait, what?

It's in France but that's not important right now.

Paris the comment icon has been gone for at least five years by this point, if you hadn't noticed before you probably won't miss it that badly in future...

[chivo243]

Re: Wait, what?

I've noticed, and commented on it numerous times, I guess we all go the way of Dabbsy...

[jake]

Re: Wait, what?

Dabbsy's not gone ... he's just napping.

In fact, he woke up long enough to post just this morning.

https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2026/05/07/20265/#c_5273056

_{Paris, on the other hand, has gone the way of all fluff. Thankfully.}

_{On the gripping hand, your variation on pizza has become a favorite in these here parts. Ta. https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2020/04/20/who_me/#c_4016679}

[Not Yb]

Harder to find articles from particular departments.

I liked the "on call", "who, me?" and other tags being shown on the front page. Now I don't know what category ANY article is in until after I click through. That's annoying.

[DJV]

Re: Harder to find articles from particular departments.

THIS! ^^

[Not Yb]

Re: Harder to find articles from particular departments.

Well, one page had something like "add section heading" instead of the actual department, but that was fixed fairly quickly. I should have taken a screenshot and submitted it to borked.

Still and all... testing in production? Here?

[Not Yb]

Re: Harder to find articles from particular departments.

And now it's back to "no category tag on articles on front page". Come on. Those were USEFUL.

[MysteryGuy]

Not a new coat of paint... Really a redesign.

Not a new coat of paint, but a redesign.

I liked the old version better as I find that the new one makes it harder to figure out what I'm supposed to be looking at.

[Paul Dx]

Oh dear

* It's very difficult to scan the articles on the landing page as they're not in a standard tile format, so you're looking up and down whilst looking across a line.

* The font is too small.

* Having the timeline in columns goes against the natural way of reading from left to right.

Especially as you get 3 or 4 articles in order, then have to go to the top of the next column.

[Dan 55]

Re: Oh dear

Yes, the lack of a tile format and the vertical timeline within the block of articles does make the front page harder to parse on desktop. Time to bring the HTML 1.0 table element out of retirement to space articles.

[RockBurner]

Re: Oh dear

There's no need to get cruel and unusual....

[gryphon]

No thanks

Really don’t like the new layout.

On iOS Safari.

Top section is far too large.

Big gap between page banner and top of that section.

Next section layout newspaper style is awful.

And the blurb and photo on Rupert Goodwins Columnist is taking up 2/3rds of the page for no good reason I can see.

All in all, yuck. Go back and think again.

[chivo243]

Try this...

All the articles in the top row get photos. Right now, column 1, row 1 has a photo, column 2 row 2 has a photo, column 3 row 1 has a photo, and lastly column 4 row 3 has a photo, totally throwing off any aesthetic value.

Not sure how it will work with an article with a looong headline.

[Jellied Eel]

Re: Try this...

All the articles in the top row get photos. Right now, column 1, row 1 has a photo, column 2 row 2 has a photo, column 3 row 1 has a photo, and lastly column 4 row 3 has a photo, totally throwing off any aesthetic value.

Curious. We seem to be seeing different things? On my Firefox, the only image I see above the red line (fold?) is a large image of a train, then 6 smaller formatted stories to the right of that with no pictures. Then a bunch more stories, some with images, some without and then a large section that seems to feature Mr Goodwins prominently. 8 from him, 2 from Bruce Davie, no other columnists get a mention and several of those stories are months old. Not sure how many viewers search by author, but seems a curious choice to make that feature so prominent and take up so much sceen space.

But I'd like more control over how things get displayed. At 3440x1440, default font is too small for my aged eyes and using FF's zoom might be breaking things? At the previous 120% it became too much, at 110% it's 'normal' and the forum display seems unchanged. Which I guess is one of those web design challenges given all the different display types, resolutions, or just the way I tend to have FF running in the top-left 1/6th of a display which means I can have other stuff running to the side or below it. <shrug>

Main thing I'd want is personalisation, but letting users do this seems anathema to web designers. I'd prefer my default landing page to show me stories, newest first.

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: Try this...

I'd prefer my default landing page to show me stories, newest first

How dare you make me upvote you :-)

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Try this...

There are things that unite us all.

[volsano]

The problem with Changing Things is that it confuses us older people.

Best to wait until all the old people are dead before changing anything.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

By then the young people are old people.

[Alumoi]

That's the idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

You do get it...

[IGotOut]

Terrible

Vivaldi Mobile.

Font sizes all over the place, depending if its a 1 or 2 column article. No idea why some are 1 column and others two

I can't see which articles I've read.

There's grey backgrounds, white backgrounds ,pink backgrounds, but no idea why.

Some articles have headings only.

Either side of the columns don't line up.

There are random blank areas.

.

It's a bloody mess. Change fine, but look at something like BBC news that is simple, but works.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Terrible

Beeb is also a mess on the desktop.

[Paratiritis]

Re: Terrible

With the new format, articles now appear like they used to on the BBC site in the 90s, at a time when they were formatted for lower screen resolutions.

The left and right margins are always given a fixed width as if they are more important than the actual content of the article which may become unreadable. This is a childish design to display adverts, again taking us back to the early days of the Internet was young and designers were making amateur mistakes.

An example of how the start of an article shows in portrait mode on a tablet.

Visitors to London's iconic

Telecom Tower might soon be

able to go for a rooftop swim,

according to plans revealed by

the developer turning the

building into a hotel.

The space on the left and the right of the article text takes up more than twice the width of the article text.

[Wily Veteran]

A Step Backward

I agree with the majority of comments: It's "prettier" but not as usable. Fonts are too small, articles are packed too tightly, limited display of what category articles fit into, reduction of comments indicator to a tiny icon and a number....

Bring back the old layout and fonts.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: A Step Backward

Not even prettier.

[Chris Miller]

I can no longer see any difference on the front page between articles I've read and ones I haven't (which used to appear in grey instead of black).

[RockBurner]

Agreed - definitely need to allow the browser to control the anchor tag colours so that visited links are displayed differently.

[amanfromMars 1]

Just Teething Problems ... that one can expect to be soon masterminded/tuned towards perfection ‽

I can no longer see any difference on the front page between articles I've read and ones I haven't (which used to appear in grey instead of black). ...... Chris Miller

Quite so, Chris Miller. Here's hoping it is just one of those missed oversights now to be easily corrected.

Please add/reinstate that most convenient of unusually helpful facilities/utilities, El Reg. It is one of the crown jewels of the site.

[amanfromMars 1]

Re: Just Teething Problems ...‽

Crikey. Thanks for the fix, El Reg ...... and that was nice and quick.

[TrevorH]

Glad I read the archive link

I used to read theregister.com/Week/ which has now been renamed to https://www.theregister.com/archive so I hadn't really noticed much difference. I took a quick look at the landing page and, wow, it's a mess. It's 18 pages long with articles listed under subheadings and all over the place in a not very well defined groupings. I'll be sticking with the chronological listing on the archive page thanks.

[Alumoi]

Re: Glad I read the archive link

You're a life saver. Have one of these. Or a lot

[Jason Bloomberg]

Re: Glad I read the archive link

TrevorH - You are a legend

https://www.theregister.com/archive is even better than what I had been putting up with, is how IMO things should be. Wish I'd seen that sooner.

That's easier to scrape, parse and make how I want, than the home page - That will save me a lot of effort, and it's preferable as it is.

So I'm sorted. I'll continue to up-vote complaints I agree with. I haven't and won't down-vote anyone in these comments. I don't have a problem with people holding different opinions to myself.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Glad I read the archive link

I don't care if /week is renamed, but hate pointless & distracting images ... I just want a compact one-per-line, time-ordered list of (recent) article titles.

And "dive into", really? I'm not 5.

[Uncle Slacky]

Re: Glad I read the archive link

I got rid of the images using a UBlock Origin filter for the site:

||image.theregister.com/*.jpg$image

[Neil Barnes]

Re: Glad I read the archive link

YMMV as they say... I can take images or leave 'em, but I find it's faster to recognise an image as something I've already read (or something new, depending how you look at it). So to me, the 'archive' view is infinitely superior to official landing site.

As others have said, bottom right to top left boustrophedonism is a painful way to read a timed list, particularly when the alignment is also broken. Newest top left, then older stories to the right until the row is full and then a move to the next line, please.

[jake]

Re: Glad I read the archive link

I, too, was reading from /week ... it made more sense to me than the landing page. I liked it for a lot of reasons, including low bandwidth, all the week's articles in one place, in chronological order. And only a week's worth. All I really needed was a week's worth ... I know how to find older articles, and besides usually the only older articles I want to re-read are the ones I have commented on already, which are nicely found in /my/forums/ ...

I'll be using /archive for the duration ... but including links to all the articles dating back to 1999 is kind of over-kill for day to day life, don't you think? Would it really be all that hard to bring back /week for those of us who use it? Nuking the useless stock photos would be gravy; they are hardly necessary.

[HalfManHalfBrisket]

Re: Glad I read the archive link

Another old /week devotee here: quick scan of titles at odd moments during the day for new articles that tickled my fancy. Images on new archive page make this slower, so yes this ^^^ please.

OTOH thanks for retaining something analogous to /week. Many sites just drop support for established usage patterns completely when doing a redesign.

[TrevorH]

Register developers suggestion

I had not scrolled all the way to the bottom of the archive link and now that I have, I have a suggestion for the developers: please translate e.g. "1-100" into a date range or something, preferably with a drop down selector or something so we can narrow in on a page. Just listing the last 300,000 articles 100 at a time is verging on BOFH design.

[jake]

Re: Register developers suggestion

Better, separate /archive from /week. The two are used in very different ways.

Note that this suggestion should not provide any extra day-to-day work for whoever updates the site.

[Roland6]

Re: Register developers suggestion

Better slash the page length - it’s excessive given most of the time people only want the last few days ~week, if you want more then a second click on to a proper archive index and search/display criteria selection page isn’t a big issue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Glad I read the archive link

/archive - the way / should be.

Chronological order is key on a news site. Left to right, then top to bottom - the way we read! Organising by columns is ridiculous.

[Dave K]

Re: Glad I read the archive link

Thanks for that link. Much easier to navigate and read!

My main issues with the redesigned layout are that the articles don't align, so they're all higgledy-piggledy on the front page, plus the site seems to be promoting old articles - the "headline" box for me is filled with articles that are 12-24 hours old (ie, yesterday's news) with newer stuff buried further down. It's even worse if you go to the "columnists" section - some of the stuff in there is two months' old!

Really wish there was a way to sort the main view by date. However, "Archive" will do until they fix the wonky formatting and seemingly randomness of old/new articles plastered everywhere. I don't "hate" the redesign, but it's pretty clear that it needs work still.

[DoctorPaul]

Re: Glad I read the archive link

Many thanks and an upvote for that, I will be heading there as soon as I've finished wading through all these comments - there are a lot of criticisms that I want to upvote!

The new look reminds me of YouTube's "throw a load of shit at a wall and see what sticks" approach to design.

And while I'm here, it's 2pm here in the UK and the daily email is yet to land in my inbox.

[PhilBuk]

Re: Glad I read the archive link

Been using El Reg for years and never knew that archive link. That’s a life saver! Thanks.

Used to fix the front page with ublock filters but that’s too hard with this new front page - the divs are the length of a small novel!

Oh, and the redesign is utter crap!!

Phil.

[AndrueC]

The article text is only using the centre 50% of my screen..

..compounding the problem that page up/down is jumping too many lines of text (at 125% zoom).

And if this is supposed to be 'Image Lite' as per my settings then something is wrong.

Oh and just noticed like others that there's no indication of which articles I've read.

All this using Google Chrome.

[Alan J. Wylie]

Links don't change colour after being visited

I've used /Week for ages, it's far more cluttered now (and to begin with didn't work for a while). Even if I don't visit an article, I use a Firefox add-on to mark it as visited, so I know where I have to catch up to. Now the link stays the same colour after being clicked, rather than going grey.

[Alan J. Wylie]

Re: Links don't change colour after being visited

Yay! Somebody has taken notice of my (and others') complaints about this: it's now been fixed.

[steelpillow]

WTF

Grumpy old git here. Bloody zero-trust-not cross-site captcha still there: We grumpy old gits like to disable that kind of thing and feel the disrespect. Lots of arbitrary shuffling around and unclear icons. Some stuff, e.g. search and menu icons, appears in different places on different pages. Menu icon opens - no, not a drop-down menu, a sitemap of random options. Home page a mile-long interminable string of sections, unrelated to the navbar or any other discernible nav tool. Horrid grey box for main splash will soon be out of fashion, thank God. Etc. etc.

Sorry, but I just find it unprofessional - too what-everybody-is-doing and we-thought-it-was-a-good-idea-so-there, no sign of what-our-readers-asked-for. But then, I have only been mucking around with GUIs since 1982, what would I know about today's ubergeek demographic or tastes.

[JefcoPDrinkbeer]

Blecch

Font size far too large on my tablet. The two col layout on the landing page is hard to follow; perhaps it works on desktops but not on small screens .

[ecofeco]

It's... OK

The layout is OK, but proportions still need work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Going to reserve my judgement for a few days

I'm going to browse for a few days before I decide whether I like it or not, as a whole, which seems like the sensible thing when change brings both the good and the bad together.

Lost my jump to conclusions mat when there was a mysterious fire at my old employer.

They did get the missing comment count/link problem fixed pretty quick.

[Anonymous Coward]

"We can fix it quickly" shouldn't be an excuse for doing it wrong the first time.

Removing categories from the main site entry page is not good. Making it harder to see what articles have been read or not (possibly caused by adding tracking to links that varies every time?) isn't great either. "We can track clicks better now" doesn't mean "we should track all clicks now".

My setup also throws off your layout calculations, what with one monitor running in 4K, and two others (1080p and 1680x1050), it seems to think the navigation bar should be 2K pixels wide on my lower-res screens instead of using what the browser (Firefox) tells it to use as the current page width.

[Not Yb]

Re: "We can fix it quickly" shouldn't be an excuse for doing it wrong the first time.

Honestly a bit surprised that they're doing "test by publicly releasing MVP" here of all places. 'Minimum Viable Product', that is.

[Bran Muffin]

Did Something Just Change??

I came back after looking at other sites for awhile, and for some reason the front page looks different to me. Better, as if the columns are properly aligned now. Is it just my imagination? Feel free to tell me that it is, I won't mind at all.

[JefcoPDrinkbeer]

I've now discovered that in landscape mode (on my tablet) fonts are a reasonable size. The downside is it goes to 4 columns on the landing page which is even worse than 2 col

[Dan 55]

Inconsistencies between article and comments pages on desktop

There were some before, but they're more pronounced now. The article body margin is wider than the comment margin and the article font is bigger than the comment font. I prefer the comment page's margin, spacing between lines, and font but the article's font size (but not the font itself, I really don't think Roboto is a good choice for desktop).

[Slant Four]

what they said.. a total dogs breakfast

nothing lines up

impossible to scan

some fonts are huge, totally out of proportion

gives me a head ache

way to much work to try and make sense of it

why do sites do this? mess up a great look just to be hip and fresh (they think)

[DS999]

Don't list to all the grouchy old fools

who can't stand change. This looks good. Was a bit of a shock especially since I didn't immediately see the "comments" link, but being able to figure out which are the more recent stories is easier than before so thumbs up from me!

[Roland6]

Re: Don't list to all the grouchy old fools

It looks good if you are a fan of the Windows 8 and later MS design school…

[iam_sysop]

No complaints!

Still smooth to read - unobtrusive layout still reigns either way!

Now if y'all would just walk away from the Nazi-bar (read Twitter/X) and get a fediverse presence --

[BasicReality]

Re: No complaints!

But they'd like people to actually see their stuff.

[BasicReality]

So far so good. No issues that I see. Ever think about a dark mode?

Edit: Just noticed, minor inconsistency, on the homepage the hamburger menu is on the left and "my account" on the right. Clicking "my account" takes me to a page where that's reversed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, so they didn't QA their changes first.

[BasicReality]

I can tell you’re not a professional developer. Production is always where you test everything out.

[jake]

"Production is always where you test everything out."

Only for Microsoft devotees. Last time I heard, ElReg is supposedly a Linux shop.

[BasicReality]

That explains the company I work for, they’ve got their heads deeply up Microsoft’s backside.

[BasicReality]

I have discovered an issue though. I use Brave on all my devices, on macOS and my iPhone everything looks fine. Trying it on the iPad tonight, all of the stories load with the text in a column down the center of the page. It’s about a third of the page wide, the left and right columns just as wide are just white space. Happens in both portrait and landscape mode.

[RockBurner]

The account and burger menus also swap sides between "desktop" and "mobile" window widths, which, although it doesn't really affect me... is just.... nonsensical.

The more I look, the more it seems to be a GUI that's been crammed together in the last month of a 6 month project by a fresh PFY who hasn't yet heard of Browserstack or fluid design.

[elsergiovolador]

Same old

1. Portal works fine

2. Someone decides to change layout

3. Layout changes

4. People complain how bad it looks

5. People forget

6. People look at old layout and say oh geesus what the fork was that?

7. Portal works fine

8. Someone decides to change layout

...

[Dan 55]

Re: Same old

Haven't heard the word portal to describe a website for a while, they were all the rage when we connected to the information superhighway.

[The Organ Grinder's Monkey]

Re: Same old

You may just have connected to it, but I believe that "the young people" surfed it?

[CorwinX]

Not a fan, especially because

On the old site, when you read an article the link changed colour to show "read".

You know, how things have worked since the web was invented.

Now I've got to scroll through the whole mess snd read every link again to see if there's anything new from, say, a few hours previous.

Pleass at least provide a switch.

[Gomez Adams]

Visited link colour not being actioned / respected

In Firefox on a W11 laptop.

[Jason Bloomberg]

Re: Visited link colour not being actioned / respected

For me at least, the comment count link changes colour if you have visited the related comments sections - Far from ideal but better than nothing.

[Dave559]

(Minor) Grumble

"Grumble to the wife. She grumbles back."

It surely wouldn't have been that hard to have written something like: "You grumble to your partner. They grumble back."

I'm sure that a somewhat heavily unbalanced majority of Reg readers are indeed probably male (and probably even mostly heterosexual, although (Hello Alan, Tim, etc) quite possibly not), but it wouldn't have taken that much effort to write a rather less 1950s-stereotyped intro, one which would be rather more inclusive of everyone in the IT community and more suitably welcoming to all (Hello Grace, Margaret, Sophie, etc).

I know no ill-will was intended, but we do all have a duty to try to downplay stereotypes these days and to try our best to help improve on the gender imbalance in the industry.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: (Minor) Grumble

Surely homosexual men don't grumble - they enunciate properly.

Homosexual women are included by stating "wife"

In fact the most underrepresented group would be single people, of which I'm given to understand there are a large number in the IT profession.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: (Minor) Grumble

As a servant employed by the Feline class, it's a case of being woken up to serve breakfast, immediately. No point grumbling

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: (Minor) Grumble

As a servant employed by the Feline class, it's a case of being woken up to serve breakfast, immediately

Likewise. And I have the toothmarks in my right arm to prove it..

(Meow. Meow. Lick, lick. Meow, *CHOMP*)

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: (Minor) Grumble

Ah, yes, with me it's either a paw with extended claws on the left arm or the more gentle version of soft taps on the head.

What gets me is the frequency and number of taps. Almost the same as a person would tap another on the shoulder

[A Non e-mouse]

Things have changed. Some people hate it. Some people like it. Some people are just "Meh"

But the vitriol coming from some of the commentards. Jeez... I thought many of us were IT professionals. If that's the level of feedback you provide, good luck in life.

Bring back the Moderatrix.

[Anonymous Coward]

We are professionals, and we know garbage/crap/shit (insert the word appropriate to your understanding) when we see it.

[Androgynous Cupboard]

I have beeen through quite a few site redesigns, and the only constant is people immediately whinging about how everyone involved was an idiot and they want everything back the way it was. At the very least the font size is too big or small and there is always, always too much white space - the poor little lambs. Sudden onset headaches or seizures are also not uncommon.

Withholding judgement but I thoroughly approve of the new font. Clean and modern and readable. Surprised no dark mode as part of the rework. but easy enough to add later. Otherwise TBD but echoing the “it’s fairly mild as redesigns go” view above.

[A Non e-mouse]

There's spotting bad design but there's also giving constructive feedback without abuse.

[Always Right Mostly]

This redsugn is a form if abuse in that it objectivelt sucks in every way that a web page can suck.

[Dr. G. Freeman]

"Bring back the Moderatrix."

Yes. That should be the next update. No other changes until then.

[stiine]

Stupido...

The font sucks and its impossible to read on my wall-sized monitor without zooming, and there is enough wasted space to launch a Falcon Heavy. Before I found this article, I thought Firefox had done something brain-dead again.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Stupido...

Never noticed the font change. It's just a hard-to-read sans.

[Dave559]

Reduce zoom to 90%

I know we're all getting older, and many of us (myself included) are in the unlucky position of our eyesight getting gradually worse, but that's a bit of an (in my opinion) unnecessary jump up in the font size (but, ironically, not in the comment editor, where it has actually long more been needed) and rather too much dead white space padding.

Fortunately, using the browser controls to reduce zoom to 90% makes the sizing much better!

Apart from that, from a brief look around of a couple of articles it all mostly seems fine, a bit of a wash and scrub up rather than a huge drastic change.

(As before, I'll still be going in via the date-order "week" view as ever, rather than the somewhat more arbitrarily ordered home page, however!)

[jake]

Scrolling the front page ...

... looks like a cartoon video of a mog in a frying pan subtitled in ransom-ware fonts. 34 fscking pages worth.

It's headache inducing, at least to this speed-reader.

Suggestion: Fix the fonts and straighten out the formatting.

Observation: We probably don't need 2 and 3 week old articles on the front page ... much less 3 month old articles.

[Synonymous Howard]

Too Much Whitespace

Definitely too much whitespace for my liking.

[3arn0wl]

PUT THE FORMAT BACK

Please restore the blogroll format - the new style is hiddeous. It's not stylish, it's not clever and it's certainly not helpful to the reader - especially those with needs.

[Michael Hoffmann]

All this...

... and you didn't at least throw dark mode into the mix, finally?

[Joe Gurman]

Re: All this...

Can't possibly upvote this one enough.

Next time you do a redesign (in 20 years' time?), please add a dark mode option.... especially if the articles still use only 1/3 of the horizontal space available. As it stands, "It burns!"

[a.b]

Fix for printing

I didn't mind the old design, but this works too. Except for printing ...

- Body text and links are oversized

- The page renders as a narrow column instead of filling the paper width

- "The Reg" inline brand name renders at a larger size than surrounding text

- The "More Context" related-articles block appears mid-article and the font size is off

- Navigation, ads, headers, and footers clutter the printed page

Here's a Firefox extension to fix that and print a clean page:

https://github.com/xlvisuals/thereg-print-fix

Appreciate The Register, thanks heaps for your work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actual bug (if staff are reading)

The quote box has inconsistent margins. Seeing it in Firefox on both Mac and Linux. Haven't tested other browsers.

Article reference: Firefox integrates an ad-blocker, but not to block ads

[AlanSh]

Yuk

Seems to be designed for those who can't read very well (or much). Very LARGE writing and not too many words. Pictures scattered around, apparently at random (though I am sure there's some logic in there somewhere.

Who signed off on this and how much testing did you do?

I guess there's no going back but please have a think about an update sometime soon.

[Jason Bloomberg]

Re: Yuk

Pictures scattered around, apparently at random (though I am sure there's some logic in there somewhere.

It seem to me, for each section, though I am not sure what those sections are when scrolling through, articles run down columns then on to the next. When a new sub-topic begins the first gets a picture and an overlay - But not always! Sometimes it's the second which gets the image attached - possibly to avoid two images at the top of adjacent columns?

In the first section after the hero article block at the top it's; "Offbeat", "Site News", "Security", "OFFBEAT". I suspect that last is a typo and should be in the first, but who knows?

The problem is, as newer articles appear in different sub-topics they all shuffle and images move all over the place, so it does appear random.

The "Columnists" section is utterly confusing to me. Not sure what logic applies there. It's neither ordered by columnist nor date.

"Archive" is suiting me fine. It doesn't include some stuff but I can live with that.

[YetAnotherXyzzy]

Duplicate articles in RSS

This morning (in the Americas) I noticed that some, though not all, articles in one of my RSS readers were duplicated. That problem went away (was fixed?) before I had a chance to determine if the problem was with the feed or with my fead reader. If it was a bug, kudos on the quick fix.

[Jason Bloomberg]

Was the banner always locked in place as foreground?

I don't recall it was. It wastes a lot of space and I can't see top or bottom of some embedded videos now, have to scroll to go from video to timeline slider and back.

[Guido Esperanto]

you're a fickle bunch

You'll bitch and moan and in 10 years time you'll still be treading these boards (assuming fate doesnt intervene)

You like your tech news like your systems.

Strong, dependable, barely changing...

But remember each and everyone of you...at some point looked at your system and went...time for the upgrade.

I guess i'm in the camp of "cant be arsed shouting at clouds"...

[jake]

Re: you're a fickle bunch

"I guess i'm in the camp of "cant be arsed shouting at clouds"..."

On the other hand, squeaky wheel and all that ...

[LikeAStone]

Small screen, and zoom

I use a small laptop (1366x768) to read this site. For years, I've been using page zoom of 125% to have everything at the proper reading size.

Try that with the new layout and see the mess you get. At 100%, articles look just slightly misaligned, but at 125 they are all over the place. The ads when scrolling are now more than full page ads so you get a full screen ad + block of two pages for "columnists" (Goodwins) + another full screen ad... a 4-page gap to scroll between actual articles.

And as almost everyone has said, ordering "per column" is just a pain instead of the old way of old at the bottom (aka, scroll until you reach something you had already seen before, and start there)

Really, don't just test on your big monitor and a phone before deciding that everything looks ok. Try the config I mention and you'll see it's not just a matter of taste.

(and yes, I definitely noticed the introduction of that annoying pop-under ad that you've been using for the last few months... again, see what that does to the usable real state of the page... do you really want everybody to use ad blockers?)

[Gene Cash]

Not usable

Now if you read an article, there's no change to indicate what you've read, and what you haven't. No link color change or anything like that.

I don't have time or inclination to sit here and try to remember what the hell I read yesterday or an hour ago. That's what computers and browsers ARE FOR.

So now there's friction when I come to the front page, and I go "ugh I don't want to deal with that"

I guess I'll probably just drift to TWZ.com, or more webcomics forums, or YouTube and browse Big Clive or OutsideXbox or How2Drink or something.

See ya.

You did have a nice long run before enshittification. I've been expecting this sort of thing since Lester Haines died.

[jake]

Re: Not usable

Don't run away yet, Gene. At least give 'em a chance to address the issues raised by actual users.

Hint to ElReg: It seems to me that last time you did a re-design and dumped it on us without so much as a by-your-leave, many users pointed out the utility of selecting a random sample of folks to help beta-test the system before going live with it.

_{Maybe that no longer matters, what with DevOps and AI shamans brainwashing management ...}

[jake]

It's probably been mentioned, but I ...

... can't be arsed to manually search through 100+ comments to find it.

Page search is completely b0rken. For example, searching on BOFH in comments takes me to the so-called "hamburger" menu. Not exactly what I was looking for.

Slackware-current, Firefox 14.10.1esr

[Bebu sa Ware]

The Question I Ask Myself…

of any web page - would I be comfortable reading a (text) book with the same layout. The answer is invariably no.

Texts are designed to convey the maximum amount of information with the fewest distractions - in a word: minimalist.

Of course a lot of student textbooks now sport the designer website look which for the classics of my student years really is the emetic finger down my throat.

My el Rego goat is well and truly gotten by the red boxes over the article's graphic informing me 'hey, this is an AI story' - dah! About as welcome and subtle as a blinking block cursor (for good measure flashing red·green.)

The article's text occupies roughly the central ⅓ of my screen - presumably pi-hole stops the advertisements in the blank ⅔ from displaying. As I prefer wider lines even on e·readers, I am wondering whether I can override the Rego stylesheets in my browser to widen the text lines.

Heaven knows what the visually impaired make of this. Suffering glaucoma I may eventually discover the answer.

[Sleep deprived]

It's a HUGE change!

The main page now probably use a 36-pt font. No reading glasses needed anymore, but what a waste of screen space!

Trying the desktop mode on my Android tablet (Waterfox) in portrait mode brings back 4 columns in main page, but articles appear as a narrow column and comments are tiny. Did you actually test this before release, or did you just adopt Microsoft's strategy?

Please make this new layout optional while you fix it.

[Chet Mannly]

Sorry not a fan of the article layout

On my screen the article text is in a really narrow (like barely 50% screen width) column with huge white space on either side. Zooming increases the text size but keeps the column the same. You really need to fix the margins...

[Patch Wombat]

Not a fan of the huge font, double line spacing and spaghetti on the wall layout on my phone. It's just a pile. I love the reg but walking away. I'll read other people's summary of your stories and come back in the fall to see if the tar and feather redesign sucks less. Loved on call and bofh but search returns slop. Bookmarks return 404. The Reg recently showcased a Norwegian video on how to make things shitty. I think your staff misunderstood the point of the video.

[Arkeo]

A toggle maybe?

Like in arstechnica.com - what's relevant to you may be not relevant to me: on Ars I can re-arrange news in chronological order and I'd appreciate something similar here. Now I have to peruse the titles to find one that's potentially interesting, and check whether it's old stuff or not. For every single one. Of all the "Topics" - which I never use anywhere - "Latest Posts" would have been the only one appreciated. Plus, on my 27-inch there is still too much wasted screen real estate (way too much white, ElReg can light up the whole room).

A redesign that breaks what worked and doesn't fix what was broken. Nice.

[T. F. M. Reader]

From The (original) Devil Wears Prada: "I liked the old clothes"

I really don't like the look of the front page. What follows is only about the front page.

The fonts are horrible. I am not a web designer, so I don't know if it is a function of the page/scripts or it can be controlled by some obscure client configuration parameter, but it's changed: what I see now when the site loads is a momentary flash of the front page with the fonts I like (easy to notice as it's serif) that disappears in a fraction of a second and the page is reloaded with the almost unreadable sans-serif.

The top line below the red banner - the one with section names - is way wider than the article headline arrangement. Either a good portion of this line is not visible (and it's visible that it's not visible - you can see parts of section titles on the left and on the right, - and the horizontal scroll bar shows at the bottom, which I hate because it is so confusing - what else can't I see?) or one needs to use a smaller font which is too small for comfort and a big part of the window/screen is unused. I don't care what you do - fire either the UX guy or the CEO (just kidding - only if they get stubborn!) - but please keep the width consistent across page elements. Make the section list a drop-down menu for all I care - personally, I don't need it on the front page (but mileage may vary, I know).

I do read El Reg regularly, so for me reverse chronological order of the headlines is best. A few "most read" or "most commented" entries would be tolerable, if you insist, but only because I feel particularly tolerant today.

I'd trade a few images for a tighter layout.

Finally, something that didn't work wearing the old clothes, either, but I'd want it to: make comment+count icons next to each headline separate links directly to the comments on same article. [In the best Jeremy Clarkson's voice possible: "How hard can that be?!?"] Thanks.

FWIW, Firefox 149.0 on Fedora 43.

[blu3b3rry]

Mmm

Bit of a mixed bag. The font is fairly fresh and seems easy enough to read, and I don't dislike the off-white background behind the top articles and the columnists, but it is a bit jarring not to have it consistent all the way down the front page.

Likewise the top bar floating about and scaling with zoom is quite annoying. I'm sure it occupies more screen space than it used to, too...!

[may_i]

Looks nice

I won't just naysay for the sake of it. The new layout has slightly more whitespace and looks quite nice.

The only thing that bugs me is that I have to allow cookies from gstatic.com to get the page to render properly and I don't like having Google set cookies on my computer.

[shd]

I normally browse everything with Javascript disabled (as drummed into me by elReg and its commentards over the years). So its very irritating that the comment links only show up with JS enabled, especially as they are often the best bit of an article.

[Doctor Syntax]

For me it wasn't only Javascript but I also had to change browser.

[Empire of the Pussycat]

Seems designed for narrow screens, i.e. phones.

Q: Since when has it been a good human factors practice (for english text) to make the article timeline zigzag down and up then move across the page, down and up again, etc. and ad nauseam when viewed on a proper screen?

A: Never. It's bad design, there is no excuse, it is pure fail.

Make the timeline read left right, then go down a row, like it should.

[Always Right Mostly]

Re: Seems designed for narrow screens, i.e. phones.

Or, you know, admit they fucked up galactically, swallow pride, write off the cost and go back to what it used to be. Really, there's no other way forward. You can successully make shit not stink.

[Zebo-the-Fat]

Not bad.

At first I thought my browser was having a hissy fit, but overall I think I like it. It may take a while to get used to the new style, but it does look cleaner on my desktop (not tried it on my phone yet)

[Greybearded old scrote]

No biggie

OK, I guess that's not the reaction you wanted either. What I mean is that it's not exactly the end of the world is it?

I've long used "/Week" to avoid having articles I've already seen above the fold, and get straight to the new stuff. I'm pleased that you redirect that rather than 404-ing.

The mobile version is a bit in yer face on a 10 inch tablet, at least with Fennec. Who knows though? Perhaps I'll need the large text soon.

It's nice that the shouty people have nothing more urgent to get upset about. Not telling them to get a sense of proportion though.

[Greybearded old scrote]

Re: No biggie

And another thing.

I still don't have to wait for a ton of JS which only then loads the actual text. Or whitelist several different cdns in noscript or else get nothing. It loads quickly even in my horribly over subscribed mobile cell.

Well done for doing the sensible thing there.

[aversfeld]

RSS is now unformatted?

The RSS feed is now completely unformatted. That's mostly fine, I like plain text, but could you maybe put the paragraph breaks back? A wall of text with no breaks in it turns out to be a bit of a slog to read!

[jiho]

Refreshing

So many sites on the Net rearrange their junked-up deck chairs only to produce a site that looks and works more or less the same, but requires you to update your browser in order to access it. Not The Register. This site actually looks and works different, and I can still access it.

[Always Right Mostly]

Re: Refreshing

Really? It's objetively crap. On every possible level.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Refreshing

I had to change browser and it's still a junked-up pile of deckchairs.

[Anonymous Coward]

"We've only gone and done it: Changed what you're used to"

Change isn't the problem. (Well, it is *a* problem - whatever back-end article placement bugs may have existed there was nothing particularly wrong with the old design.)

But the reason EVERYONE is complaining is because what you've changed to is the problem.

Whoever designed the new look should be repeatedly slapped* until they realise how bad it is.

*(Other methods of re-training are available.)

The front-end developers responsible for the mess of styles and scripts need similar treatment until they understand what they've done wrong.

The QA department needs... well, to exist at all in the first place, then they might have pointed out the numerous obvious bugs *before* you launched.

Most likely the focus groups (which any competent organization would have used) didn't exist either; that would be preferable to the alternative that they existed but were ignored when pointing out how unpopular the changes would be.

A publication that prides itself on irreverent critique of others needs to do a hell of a lot better if it wants to attract complements.

[STrRedWolf]

Dark Mode anyone?

Ugh, white background... tons of padding... small text. I have to use DarkReader in Firefox to force a dark mode and stop giving me headaches from long spans staring at screens.

[Greybearded old scrote]

Re: Dark Mode anyone?

Your screen has a brightness control.

[KittenHuffer]

Re: Dark Mode anyone?

Thanks! DarkReader installed and running! My eyes feels better already!

[Zebo-the-Fat]

Re: Dark Mode anyone?

Do you read books with white print on black paper?

[IGotOut]

Re: Dark Mode anyone?

Do you have books that are backlit?

[Wick]

Overall I like it but ...

The one thing that does annoy me is the articles are organised in columns and not rows. On my screen, after the first section of articles and scrolling down to the next block, it is too long to display without scrolling, so I have to scroll down, then scroll back up for the next column, scroll down, scroll back up for the next column etc. I much prefer the ordering to go across the screen instead of down the screen. I am fine with the rest of the changes (so far).

[Rob]

Works for me

Good job, I like it, find it way easier to read and feels clean and sharp. Old design was a bit to hectic for me. Everything seems to be working fine on my Macbook (work device) using Firefox.

I'm a creature of habit (my El Reg habit as been going since early 2000s) so you'd have to do something pretty bad for me to bog off, that wasn't a challenge by the way (unless you want to get rid of me!).

[Flocke Kroes]

Another /Week/ user

First thing this morning /Week/ was 404 not found. I checked the front page and my immediate response was "Ouch!". It has been years since I saw the front page. From what I remember it was mildly inconvenient but not so awful that it would send me to look for an alternative site. I missed this article entirely and complained direct to webmaster.

My eternal gratitude goes to the vulture who promptly redirected /Week/ to /archive. It is not perfect but anything is better than that awful front page. I hope /Week/ comes back after the more serious issues have been dealt with. Extra bonus points are available for implementing dark mode.

[luxor]

Thought it was broken.

Not gonna lie, but my first visit to this new style I sat hitting reload a good few times as I thought something wasn't loading properly. Opened in another couple of browsers but it was still the same. Sigh! I suppose I'll have to get used to it.

[FIA]

Some days are different. Today is one of those days. After more than two decades of the same old look, Vulture Central has a new coat of feathers.

I'm really starting to worry that time doesn't work the way you think it does.

[Alan Mackenzie]

A second system, missing elegance

The former Register was elegant. The current one is no longer so. Feature after feature has been heaped upon it, lots of "good ideas", such that the result is an incoherent jumble. It seems like an archetypal "second system" as described by Fred Brooks in The Mythical Man Month.

It appears to be full of bugs, as reported by many posters. Here's another one: In a comments list, type <Ctrl>f and a search string. Instead of finding the desired string, it goes to a dead content-free page, and one cannot go back again easily. This was in Firefox 140.10.1 in GNU/Linux.

Please, Vultures, reconsider these changes. Eliminating technical debt does NOT force the elimination of elegance.

[MadocOwain]

Re: A second system, missing elegance

"In a comments list, type <Ctrl>f and a search string. Instead of finding the desired string, it goes to a dead content-free page, and one cannot go back again easily. This was in Firefox 140.10.1 in GNU/Linux."

Same, but Firefox 150.0.1 on Linux. Please don't break browser search-within-page functionality!

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: A second system, missing elegance

So it does. That is really. really bad.

[Graham 32]

Horizontal scrolling? yuk

This is all in Firefox, noticed after about 2 minutes of usage:

- Horizontal scroll bar appears in Firefox because of the sub-heading ("Datacenter" [sic] / "Security" / etc). (Also there, but less so, in Vivaldi.)

- Can't get to comments page with Javascript disabled.

- Cannot upvote/downvote a post if the buttons are at the bottom of the screen. Have to scroll the buttons up a bit. Seems .forum_post_action_vote_msg element is there and transparent.

- Image "zoom" button shows the image at about the same size with some text on the right. Then actually zooming the browser with ctrl and + just makes text bigger. At least I can right click and open just the image to zoom (Reddit went to great lengths to make that not work in their last redesign). If it doesn't let me see the image any bigger it's a totally useless feature.

[alwallgbr]

Reinstate the no images option

Please reinstate the "no images" option. Yeah very pretty but I prefer text only. Ta

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Reinstate the no images option

For some values of pretty.

[riverrock83]

Confused where to look

Firstly - the set of links along the top are cut off at both ends (Edge on Desktop, zoom 100%) making them annoying and unusable.

But I'm confused by the layout - I don't know where to look.

It isn't clear what each section represents. Which sections are together - which are separate? Which are hights, which are just lists of articles. How to I ensure I've not missed something. Do I need to check every highlighted section in case something has been added to a highlighted section instead of left in the general list of articles?

There seems to be a set of heading articles

Then there seems to be a random list of fairly current articles

Then there seems to be columnist section (which is at least labelled and in a grey box to contain it)

But then I've no idea what the next set of articles relates to, before "live soon"

Then two rows of contained "features"

Then another random set of articles I've no idea what they relate to.

Then Systems

Then another random set of articles I've no idea what they relate to.

Then Events

Then another random set of articles I've no idea what they relate to.

Within the "random" sets of articles, some appear highlighted with images instead of just categories.

Its just confusing. I'm guessing that the random articles are any article that isn't highlighted in a box in date order? So does that mean, to make sure I don't miss an article, I have to go to every highlighted section.

Look at the "science" section. Some articles are re-highlighted as "Science" - well yeah - they are in the science section. There appears to be a "more science" after 5 articles - yet more articles after it.

It all needs a proper rethink.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Confused where to look

"It all needs a proper rethink."

Or an unthink. Just go back to what worked.

[Mike_R]

Perhaps...

You could run for a while and give your readers an option to see 'Old format' or 'New snazzy format'

,,, and keep sccore as to which gets more clicks.

Your (apparently new) web designers mght learn something.

El Reg has a reputation to uphold. Losing readers will not be helpful

[User McUser]

Two Things

Put the publishing date back under the article slug, please - I can't find new articles now without using the "Archive" page (which is in chronological order so if that's my new landing page, so be it.)

The link to the comments page for articles doesn't show up if Javascript is disabled (my preferred browsing experience.)

[TrevorH]

Re: Two Things

The comments section links are gone completely in the Seamonkey web browser. I have to use chrome to see anything.

[Doctor Syntax]

Re: Two Things

No need to go to such extremes. Firefox works but, yup, it needs to work in Seamonkey for me too.

[I could be a dog really]

Hmm, so is this change why my RSS reader can no longer get anything ?

So, grabbed the updated URL, plugged it in (Vienna on Mac), hit the Validate button. Oops, ElReg ought to try looking at the W3C validator results for their feed.

Also, I now see loads of articles stating "This article contains an enclosed file". Just looked at one, and either downloading it or clicking the link to view it online I see an image that doesn't appear in teh article on the web site.

[CorwinX]

Use the Archive page

https://www.theregister.com/archive

Close to the old site but it doesn't have section names next to headline.

Then again, even when opened, some articles have "Add section name here" where that should be.

Easy to switch from there to the new version by clicking the banner logo.

It does at least have all articles in chrono order, up to the minute, and is my new Reg landing page.

Note - I have to refresh the page to show how long ago the article was posted but that may only be in my browser - Firefox Android.

[Slant Four]

If I was less of a Man...

I would reach out over the intertubes and hug you!!!!

Peace restored in my Valley.

Lets hope the kids who perpetrated this atrocity and afront to good UI design leave the archive page alone.

fonts still suck and margins are crap but it readable

Bluck

[Doctor Syntax]

we could only ever feature four stories "above the fold," and none of them could be our newest

Above the fold? So that's what that useless block was called. Just getting rid of it entirely, "fold" and all and leaving everything else as-was would have been a good makeover. What we've got is a prime example of solving the wrong problem.

[David 132]

Allowing comments on the Blocks & Files or DevClass partner sites would be a huge step forward. Is it unnecessarily cruel/suspicious/mean of me to suggest that the reason for disallowing comments is so as not to upset the sponsors?

[Will Godfrey]

No... JUst NO!

I suppose the rot started when the vulture lost it's Christmas Santa hat. Since then it's been a downward slope, first one step at a time, but now it's avalanche.

Whatever happened to "If it ain't broke don't fix it"? At this rate, I might not be here much longer.

[ragb]

Margins too wide

Thank you ublock origin:

theregister.com##.bodytext > p, .bodytext > h2, .bodytext > ul:style(padding-left: 50px !important; padding-right: 50px !important;)

[Alumoi]

Re: Margins too wide

Beer! Barrels of it!

Now do the font size, please.

[ragb]

Re: Margins too wide

I am really new to writing ublock origin filter rules, but El Reg inspired me to try. The following increases font size and shrinks margin width. Maybe someone who knows what they are doing can put in much better rules.

theregister.com##.bodytext > p, .bodytext > h2, .bodytext > ul:style(font-size: 125% !important; padding-left: 50px !important; padding-right: 50px !important;)

forums.theregister.com##body:style(font-size: 125% !important;)

[goblinski]

We're not quite fully into iOS7 Nicki Minaj territory yet, but the "Confused where to look" cited above right about sums it for me.

[Maurice Mynah]

Sigh.

I can't add anything to the 200+ comments above about the new look; only that I would like to have had some warning it was coming before plunging like Dr Foster into the cold puddle.

[HereIAmJH]

On a bright note

This article has had more user engagement than anything except American politics. Traffic is traffic. YouTube would be proud.

[sbt]

What happened to tags like "Sponsored Post" and "Partner Content"?

Really think it's poor to remove these disclosures.

[Anonymous Coward]

No comment links anymore without JS

I generally browse with as little JS enabled as possible. It used to be possible to go to an article's comments fine with JS disabled, however since the "makeover" no links to an article's comments appear if JS is disabled.

[This is with Firefox on both Linux and Android]

For me this is a step backwards...

[YTC#1]

unreadable on smart phone

Am I the only Android user?

Font now way to small, if I zoom in it means I have to slide the page left to right.

Please can we have an "revert" button?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mum, Mum!

I want to get off. I’m feeling sick!

[_wojtek]

I read mostly on mobile and basically the only thing that bothers me is two column layout on article list.

The view is already narrow so it makes really weird reading experience.Would be lovely if you could make it one-column again

[David 132]

Disappearing Comments links?

I was initially hostile to the new layout, then learned to accept it, but logging on tonight - Firefox, with uBlock Origin and NoScript disabled, I add - none of the stories seem to have a link to their Comments at either the top or bottom of the page. Even stories that I was commenting on earlier today.

A temporary glitch?

Mercifully, I remembered the direct address https://forums.theregister.com so was able to come here!

[luminous]

As a web designer of 25 years with a speciality in design and UX I'll offer constructive criticism here:

1. The bug previously mentioned of Ctrl+F then search and BORK needs a fix. Sort of amazing that got through testing.

2. The colour palette of white, red, but then different shades of grey, even a pink grey just doesn't work. It looks like some boxes have typical AI bordering, each with different thicknesses. It's not an improvement on what you had before.

3. Roboto.... if you are going to have a refresh.. at least change your typography. Roboto is just so bland and used everywhere. Most sites have 2 typefaces (any more than 3 doesn't work), just one is a bit limiting. It's devoid of any character or spunk, and oh boy.. does El Reg have plenty of both of those.

4. Arranging content in columns on a desktop browser makes little sense. There may be some very isolated cases where it works. You end up with everything not aligned with each other which is hard on the eye. However, if you are going to have something that resembles a masonry layout... at least put the bricks/ cards. But instead you just have floating content with just a line at the bottom of each story. They just bleed into each other and the eye doesn't know where to look. Some sections have 3 columns, some 4 equal, some 4 of differing widths, it's a mess. I think on one page I saw a card background but it was so faint, I hardly noticed it.

5. The images on the website are not particularly useful. A massive image of a finger pressing an OK button that takes up about 30 % of the screen has no value. A box with a chrome logo on it at a beach does not help its story. Not saying don't have images (you need them for sharing), but less emphasis would go a long way and an option to turn them off would be good.

6. You have buttons and badges that are similar (red boxes with white text). This is just confusing. I realise that the reds are different shades but still. Then further down the home page you have a HUGE transparent button with a black border. It looks like it doesn't fit. Additionally some badges are opaque and some are transparent. It's just all so disjointed and out of place with each other. You should have a brand style and stick to it.

7. You have an italic header style that starts to appear down the page but looks like it's from another site.

8. You have section titles on the home page - some are underlined, some are not. Some of the underlined ones link, others don't. So what is the underline supposed to represent?

Overall I don't want to throw out insults. Graphic design is subjective and criticism can hurt a designer, I've been there many times. But it just looks like you wanted something modern but you've ended up with a mismatch between what you had before and what you should have. Nothing is coherent or easy to use. Don't get me wrong... I LOVE El Reg and have been a member for 19 years and reading probably a few more years than that. I just think the site deserves better. I understand and fully agree you should not go back, but hope over time you can improve what you have.

Credit where it's due for fixing the read /unread bug so quickly.

[Phil O'Sophical]

5. There is an option to turn off images, in your account settings. The new redesign seems to ignore it.

[DJ_]

I don't think I can add anything to others' concerns - though I will repeat the fact rows not lining up and having to scroll up and down to work through new to old posts is literally giving me a headache.

I love reading the Reg. I know you guys wanted to spruce it all up a bit but please - I am really not sure this was the answer. This kind of "UX" change is exactly the kind of thing we all moan and joke about on these very forums when others do it :-(

[jake]

Thank you ...

... for separating /week and /archive.

Makes life much easier, I'll be using both regularly.

IMO, losing the stock photos on /week makes sense, but if people found it useful, I won't bitch if you put 'em back.

My round, I think.

[Jason Bloomberg]

Re: Thank you ...

'/week' still suffers the problem of no row alignment after the first row, timeline going down columns then across, and split into sections where the timeline starts again. - If there are headings for those I don't see them so it's still a sea of chaos for me.

Archive is how it should be IMO. Take away the links at its end and that could be Week. I was a little worried that "BOFH", "On Call" and "Who, me?" weren't included on Archive but they are, though the last two being so isn't obvious.

I feel that images on the first or first two rows is what works best for me, the rest without.

[DoctorPaul]

Some things still seem broken

Happened to look at the site on my phone instead of my tablet and I see what people mean when they say that the new design seems over-focussed on that particular format.

In the meantime, yesterday's email never arrived. Got one today (my normal way to access El Reg is read the email and click on any stories that interest me) but when I clicked on an article about Anthropic and a single click exploit I got taken to a story about Union Jacks and dog poo!

[ICL1900-G3]

Dabbsy

It's just got worse and worse since the tragic departure of Mr Dabbs.

[Anrtryg]

Testing? On mobile? Hails of ...

Vivaldi, mobile. Scrolls sideways like mad. Very, very hard to read articles that way.

And the RSS is, as has been pointed out, somewhat difficult as well. Do stop, please, and go back to what worked. This is a case of "If it ain't broken - and it wasn't - don't fix it"**

** What you do to "technical debt" in the backend is not something we care about***

*** What AM I saying. We're geeks. Of course we care.

[David Newall]

no comments at all

Samsung browser, no comments link, no comment counts, in fact, it looks exactly like a site that supports no commenting. I've only managed to leave this because i typed forums.theregister.com in the address bar.

There's a pop up menu that appears on the left third of the screen which contains arrows that open and close empty space.

The new site is a triumph...

of style over function.

In short, epic failure.

Get rid of the spotty faced kid who thought the nicely working site needed fixing.

[RachelG]

Late to the party, because I use the RSS feed, and there wasn't any for two days. They all showed up just now.

And my main comment is: The complete text is in the RSS version now, which is good, but there are no paragraph breaks, just a continuous wall of text. Please include paragraph breaks!

(At least as seen by NetNewsWire.)

That's it. Don't mind the site design changes, fine with that. (Although I suspect some things people have been moaning about the last couple of days have been fixed. Like visibility of comments.)

[yet_another_scouser]

Ugly as f*ck and looks very old in the font chosen. Enshitification accomplished.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Reg is dying.

The Reg was a refuge from the phone based format, no longer.

The site has become a marketing site lacking the humour and useful content that made it great. It's time for someone to setup a competitor site.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The Reg is dying.

whilst what you state is true, it is still better than TheINQUIRER. Mainly because that site closed in 2019....

[Anrtryg]

Re: The Reg is dying.

The phone based format?

The NEW design doesn't work on my phone. Methinks you've got it backwards.

[Smylers]

Well done, everybody

Well done everybody on the refresh. And apologies if any of the technical debt was mine from the 2004 refresh. Hello to Phil and Matt: nice to see you are are still there!

[AaronCake]

Now my problem is probably very much in the minority...

It is likely my issue with the new site is in the smallest minority but here goes.

When browsing on my BlackBerry Classic, no matter which browser I use, the comments icon and link do not appear anywhere. So I can't read comments without manually entering the forum URL with the correct article ID.

So likely there is some new-fangled JavaScript that relies on some not-quite standard to render that icon/link that doesn't work on older browsers.

Would be great if this was fixed.

[MattRosoff]

Hi, everyone.

Thanks for your commentary. Even the hate bombs. We honestly appreciate that you care enough to comment. At one previous job, after the business leaders burned millions and went through three design firms, we launched to...zero fanfare at all. Nobody even noticed, really. You noticed. So, thanks.

Here are some things we're doing based on reader feedback:

1. Want a straight reverse-chron listing of all stories? Go to this URL: https://www.theregister.com/week

2. When you've followed a link, you'll now see that it's changed color.

3. We know the font is enormous on some mobile platforms. Dev team is working on resolving that.

4. We're aggressively triaging problems with RSS feeds and we beg your patience; hopefully you will have noticed changes already.

In coming days, we'll be posting a longer article with technical details of exactly what we did and why. We hope you'll read it, and keep reading. And please, let us know if there's anything else that's driving you crazy and we'll try to fix it. If we can.

[Graham Cobb]

Thanks for fixing the time ordering in the RSS feed. That ticker is the way I keep an eye on the world - you, BBC news, Sailing and a couple of other feeds cover pretty much everything I care about!

[ThatOne]

> 1. Want a straight reverse-chron listing of all stories? Go to this URL: https://www.theregister.com/week

Thanks, that is really helpful. It would be perfect if the article boxes also contained the little blurb (sub-title or whatever you call it) you see in /archive.

[hayzoos]

More than just font size on mobile

"3. We know the font is enormous on some mobile platforms. Dev team is working on resolving that."

The font size change is erratic. The layout and flow is erratic. I use 133% zoom level as default for my laptop using latest Firefox ESR. The sub-header menu line is truncated on both left and right. At 110% it is not. At 170% it disappears but the truncation is consistent from 120% to 170%. At 210% the text reaches maximum constraint in wrapping to only about 20 characters, but the More Context inline section flows off the right. At 220% the text spans full width and the More Context wraps like it should. This is how the text should flow, but it is now so large I could read it from the other side of the room and there are only seven lines. If the window is set to half screen width, at 100% the text size is much larger than full width window and there is no blank space on the sides of the text. At about two thirds screen width the spacing on the sides returns and the text shrinks. If I span the windows across the width of two monitors, the side spacing is wider than the text even just one side is wider tan the text. The comments section has the best layout now.

On mobile Vivaldi the content of the header content wraps at any zoom over 112% and coincidentally my default zoom is 115% so poor layout. Reader mode only shows the top story on the front page. Trying to zoom an article is of no use, the text stays relatively the same size and the layout goes bonkers. Reader mode for the article is acceptable for reading at 100% zoom but not in normal mode. Desktop mode is also bad, 80% fits the text left to right, but too small. By the time the zoom is readable in desktop mode there is so little text on the screen you have to constantly scroll. And just like on the desktop browser, the comment section has the best layout.

I'm thinking I need to find a reader mode plugin for the desktop. Yeah, this needs fixed, it is not just a bunch of old techies being grumpy.

[chuckufarley]

You are still using a fixed width fomat...

...Which has ZERO benefit on a wide screen monitor. I could read El Reg on my my phone, but only if I was 30 years younger and could see the screen.

[Pete Spicer]

No more standards converter

RIP The Reg Standards Converter, formerly of https://www.theregister.com/Design/page/reg-standards-converter.html and now just a 404.

It is an ex-page. Bereft of life it converts no more. Gone to meet 'is maker, etc. etc.

[Norcool]

With all respect - WTF is this?

Seriously, WTF?

On my S25 Edge phone, the top banner is too wide and the hamburger menu on the left does not even show. The front page and article text is way too small, and barely readable.

Opening on my 11" Samsung Tab 9 pro, the text is ginormous, like font size 80 or something. Opening on a desktop, the text is still very large, but now with large white spaces both left and right. Each line has no more than 10 words.

I have been reading the Reg since the 90's but now will actually stop. It was fun while it lasted ...