The New Shiny Escapist
- Thread starter Trujkin
- Start date
Well I find it abhorrent but my opinion doesn't count for much. After all, this is here for good until they decide to arbitrary change it again. So whatever. I'll still lurk.
[sub][sub]Moo! [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9iIgQN5uZE&feature=related][/sub][/sub]
[sub][sub]Moo! [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9iIgQN5uZE&feature=related][/sub][/sub]
i miss the old escapist already!
so, maybe you felt the old page was too "cluttered" and this new "open air" is good. but i respectfully disagree. it was "cluttered" the way that a Tetris board is "cluttered" everything is tightly packed, but everything is also right where it should be. you know, i used to be on a website called LiveJournal that allowed you to switch back to the old format, would such an option be possible here?
so, maybe you felt the old page was too "cluttered" and this new "open air" is good. but i respectfully disagree. it was "cluttered" the way that a Tetris board is "cluttered" everything is tightly packed, but everything is also right where it should be. you know, i used to be on a website called LiveJournal that allowed you to switch back to the old format, would such an option be possible here?
Zombie headcrabs. White paint. Gravity gun.
http://cdn.themis-media.com/media/sites/escapistmagazine/themes/default/white_plaster.png
http://cdn.themis-media.com/media/sites/escapistmagazine/themes/default/white_plaster.png
I'm aware it might be seen as a tad mean to disregard 'months' of work behind the scenes, but the horrid new look completely over shadows any nice new features. I've found myself trying to work out how to do things that were second nature before now, a feature no forum goer wants to have to undergo.
Ehhh...I'll probably get used to it eventually. I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing, though.
The "open air" feeling is just TOO open aired. Now the site feels empty, whereas before, you could literally find something interesting around each corner. You even got rid of some of the texture and if you compare the old look with this new one, the current one looks bland and boring. See that texture where the page numbers bar is at? Now that looks out of place. I kinda liked that better. Even the typeface looks out of place. I don't know if it's a temporary hiccup or someone forgot to change everything or if it will be changed later...but again, out of place.
Smaller font size for thread's title? Um..I've learned in Graphic design that bigger is not always better. So I get that. But I kinda get that feeling that the title might get lost somewhere in the thread. That's not a biggie, though. We have the title on the web address bar and stuff.
The color reminds me of Facebook; that's not necessarily a bad thing. But I've seen tons of sites over the last few years go through some changes only to resemble Facebook more and more. Hope this is not the case.
I like the tab drop. Makes it easier to navigate around the site...if you know where you're going. I love the fact that I can just jump into the News Forum instead of going to Forums, scrolling down and clicking it.
Little hiccups here and there, such as the Badge indicator (It shows one of my oldest badges as my "latest" badge), your console tabs should be updated just a bit more (I clicked PS3 just for kicks and DCUO is the #1 PS3 game. I don't know where or when that poll took place but I doubt DCUO was even a #1 something. At any rate, MW3 or something close to that should be on top (And I'm not a big MW3 fan, but whatever, You get the point) and random Unskippable episode shows Battlefield 2. Why not Dark Souls? it's more recent,).
Like I said, it's not all bad. I can see what you were trying to do. But where I think you guys might wanna work on/bring back is the overall look. Redesign it if you want, but if you ask me, right now the whole site looks kinda dull. Normally, it's not a bad thing. But consider the kind of look you're going for. I hope you guys don't take this the wrong way, but you guys are just kinda silly. We have Unskippable, Zero Punctuation, No Right Answer, The Jimquisition; that's not a 100% serious game journalism, and that's fine! I'm sure that's why most of us are anyway. You deliver the news with a funny twist. So...I'm not saying add balloons and a clown somewhere, but I get the feeling that the site needs to look more dynamic. Right now, it looks all srs bsnss when it might look better if it looked more...relaxed, more outgoing, but without it being too casual. I hope I'm getting my point across...
As you can see, most people dislike the new LOOK, not the interface (For the most part). My best suggestion would be combine both your old look with this new one and then implement it on the site. That should help things a ton. As for the interface changes, I'm not used to them now and I find it pretty strange. The nerd inside me wants to rage quit all this, but that would just be dumb. I know it's worth the shot and this could actually work. We just need some getting used to.
EDIT: One last thing. Overall, the site is too bright. I've found most people dislike extremes (White/black). Too dark: You can't read anything. Too bright: Hurts your eyes in the dark, stuff gets lost, whiteness eats some elements (In this case, blue). I can see the background is not completely white; it has some sort of texture? But it just looks plain white! So I would also suggest switching that. But that's just me.
The "open air" feeling is just TOO open aired. Now the site feels empty, whereas before, you could literally find something interesting around each corner. You even got rid of some of the texture and if you compare the old look with this new one, the current one looks bland and boring. See that texture where the page numbers bar is at? Now that looks out of place. I kinda liked that better. Even the typeface looks out of place. I don't know if it's a temporary hiccup or someone forgot to change everything or if it will be changed later...but again, out of place.
Smaller font size for thread's title? Um..I've learned in Graphic design that bigger is not always better. So I get that. But I kinda get that feeling that the title might get lost somewhere in the thread. That's not a biggie, though. We have the title on the web address bar and stuff.
The color reminds me of Facebook; that's not necessarily a bad thing. But I've seen tons of sites over the last few years go through some changes only to resemble Facebook more and more. Hope this is not the case.
I like the tab drop. Makes it easier to navigate around the site...if you know where you're going. I love the fact that I can just jump into the News Forum instead of going to Forums, scrolling down and clicking it.
Little hiccups here and there, such as the Badge indicator (It shows one of my oldest badges as my "latest" badge), your console tabs should be updated just a bit more (I clicked PS3 just for kicks and DCUO is the #1 PS3 game. I don't know where or when that poll took place but I doubt DCUO was even a #1 something. At any rate, MW3 or something close to that should be on top (And I'm not a big MW3 fan, but whatever, You get the point) and random Unskippable episode shows Battlefield 2. Why not Dark Souls? it's more recent,).
Like I said, it's not all bad. I can see what you were trying to do. But where I think you guys might wanna work on/bring back is the overall look. Redesign it if you want, but if you ask me, right now the whole site looks kinda dull. Normally, it's not a bad thing. But consider the kind of look you're going for. I hope you guys don't take this the wrong way, but you guys are just kinda silly. We have Unskippable, Zero Punctuation, No Right Answer, The Jimquisition; that's not a 100% serious game journalism, and that's fine! I'm sure that's why most of us are anyway. You deliver the news with a funny twist. So...I'm not saying add balloons and a clown somewhere, but I get the feeling that the site needs to look more dynamic. Right now, it looks all srs bsnss when it might look better if it looked more...relaxed, more outgoing, but without it being too casual. I hope I'm getting my point across...
As you can see, most people dislike the new LOOK, not the interface (For the most part). My best suggestion would be combine both your old look with this new one and then implement it on the site. That should help things a ton. As for the interface changes, I'm not used to them now and I find it pretty strange. The nerd inside me wants to rage quit all this, but that would just be dumb. I know it's worth the shot and this could actually work. We just need some getting used to.
EDIT: One last thing. Overall, the site is too bright. I've found most people dislike extremes (White/black). Too dark: You can't read anything. Too bright: Hurts your eyes in the dark, stuff gets lost, whiteness eats some elements (In this case, blue). I can see the background is not completely white; it has some sort of texture? But it just looks plain white! So I would also suggest switching that. But that's just me.
Copying 1up's website because they are bigger is not a sign of innovation. Worse, my eyes are burning. Get a damned colored empty space again... FAST!
Menu bar is good, very 2.0-y. That's the only nice thing I have to say.
Hate the main page layout. It's a mess. Disorganized. Having a title bar on each table does not make it organized, it gives the web masters an excuse to cram as many topics onto the home page as possible. Waaaaaaaaaay too many choices.
Hey Escapist, when are you going to fix this broken reply box? I can't drag and highlight fucking anything in Opera for more than .235 seconds before it automatically refreshes and my highlight is cancelled and I am forced to drag what little i was trying to highlight to begin with. Shit, I'm appalled IT'S THE ONLY THING THAT HASN'T CHANGED! PRIORITIES?
On reCaptcha: I'm sorry is this site's forum getting carpet bombed with fake accounts plastering links to Russian goat pornography? Thanks for making it take longer to participate in this community and giving Google another slave pen for its crowd sourcing because its overmind is too busy to realize (talk,") and (malloof) are grammar errors and proper nouns that don't mean anything to 5,999,999,999 people on this Earth while its useful idiots scan every book on this planet and ignore every cease and desist order from impoverished writers (which I assume most of you are; and would quickly identify with your comrades' plight? No?)
I'm sorry for ranting. I love Escapist. I hate seeing it imitate its inferiors. Don't be that guy, Escapist. Don't be that guy.
Menu bar is good, very 2.0-y. That's the only nice thing I have to say.
Hate the main page layout. It's a mess. Disorganized. Having a title bar on each table does not make it organized, it gives the web masters an excuse to cram as many topics onto the home page as possible. Waaaaaaaaaay too many choices.
Hey Escapist, when are you going to fix this broken reply box? I can't drag and highlight fucking anything in Opera for more than .235 seconds before it automatically refreshes and my highlight is cancelled and I am forced to drag what little i was trying to highlight to begin with. Shit, I'm appalled IT'S THE ONLY THING THAT HASN'T CHANGED! PRIORITIES?
On reCaptcha: I'm sorry is this site's forum getting carpet bombed with fake accounts plastering links to Russian goat pornography? Thanks for making it take longer to participate in this community and giving Google another slave pen for its crowd sourcing because its overmind is too busy to realize (talk,") and (malloof) are grammar errors and proper nouns that don't mean anything to 5,999,999,999 people on this Earth while its useful idiots scan every book on this planet and ignore every cease and desist order from impoverished writers (which I assume most of you are; and would quickly identify with your comrades' plight? No?)
I'm sorry for ranting. I love Escapist. I hate seeing it imitate its inferiors. Don't be that guy, Escapist. Don't be that guy.
I also hate the new look. It used to look like a professional news website, with stories listed in order of publication and easy to find with not a lot of wasted space.
Now, I may as well be looking at G4 or IGN. It looks completely amateurish and like something that a website just starting out 7 years ago would throw together. Anyone just finding your site now would likely not find anything to separate you from the rest of the cookie cutter sites out there.
Now, I may as well be looking at G4 or IGN. It looks completely amateurish and like something that a website just starting out 7 years ago would throw together. Anyone just finding your site now would likely not find anything to separate you from the rest of the cookie cutter sites out there.
I like the new dropdown menu bar with every single column, video series and comic available for easy access, and as an added bonus it's less buggy and clumsy than, say, the one on That Guy with the Glasses despite being obviously JavaScript-based. Not having to put a sidebar listing all the video series that only appears on certain parts of the site is a plus, as is not having to hunt for the columns. But how do I get to the actual magazine content? You know, the articles and such? They're not under "Features" or on the home page.
I'm having a harder time getting used to the choice of fonts, which seem in some places (the titles of individual videos in a series' main page especially) to have been chosen without regard to how they actually render on a Web browser using Windows ClearType. Any site that uses a custom font for all of its body text is going to be a bit jarring when every other site uses either Verdana or Arial, so it'll take a while before I can tell how much of it is just me adjusting to the difference and how much of it is "Lato" just being a poor screen font. Not too fond of the oversimplified design aesthetic either, with everything just this sterile solid blue or blue gradient. What was wrong with the slightly shiny-looking bars with diagonal stripes? It was distinctive! This is just generic.
Speaking of those bars, I also see that the forums haven't actually been redesigned so now they don't match the rest of the site. Were you planning to do that later? I hope so.
My least favorite thing is probably the "PS3 XBOX WII DS PSP PC MOBILE" crap on the nav bar. It just screams mimicking every other gaming site and just further fuels the segregation of gamers based on platform of choice by making it so people never have to be aware of what's going on outside their little box.
I'm having a harder time getting used to the choice of fonts, which seem in some places (the titles of individual videos in a series' main page especially) to have been chosen without regard to how they actually render on a Web browser using Windows ClearType. Any site that uses a custom font for all of its body text is going to be a bit jarring when every other site uses either Verdana or Arial, so it'll take a while before I can tell how much of it is just me adjusting to the difference and how much of it is "Lato" just being a poor screen font. Not too fond of the oversimplified design aesthetic either, with everything just this sterile solid blue or blue gradient. What was wrong with the slightly shiny-looking bars with diagonal stripes? It was distinctive! This is just generic.
Speaking of those bars, I also see that the forums haven't actually been redesigned so now they don't match the rest of the site. Were you planning to do that later? I hope so.
My least favorite thing is probably the "PS3 XBOX WII DS PSP PC MOBILE" crap on the nav bar. It just screams mimicking every other gaming site and just further fuels the segregation of gamers based on platform of choice by making it so people never have to be aware of what's going on outside their little box.
It's very white, a little colour inbetween the comments and the background would be nice. I don't like the way everything mealts together.
Apart from that I'm ok with it.
Seriously?!?!?! I don't mind using captcha but at least make it useable >_<
Apart from that I'm ok with it.
Seriously?!?!?! I don't mind using captcha but at least make it useable >_<
It's hurting my eyes. I turned the brightness down on my monitor and it's still hurting my eyes. I'm sure all the other changes are great but I can't find out because IT'S HURTING MY EYES!
Come here O-Blinded-Ones [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.333428-Ideas-to-Fix-the-Escapist-Site] and tell the world of your ideas of fixing this mess. No "GO BACK TO CANADA!" or stuff like that. Just good, constructive ideas.
The color palette is too bright.
Some new features clash with the old ones.
For instance, why are there two profile tabs when surfing the forums, and what is the point of the new one, considering that you can't actually click on it to check your profile?
By far the worst, and most mindboggling change, is the removal of the content sidebar.
That used to be such a great way to see when new content was released, be it the latest installment of a show or comic, or getting introduced to an entirely new series.
Now you have to use the Videos tab, where the series aren't arranged in chronological order, so you have to click on Latest, and filter through the dozens of irrelevant trailers and shit that you don't care about. If you click on Popular, things are a little better, but it's still a terrible alternative to the content sidebar.
Some new features clash with the old ones.
For instance, why are there two profile tabs when surfing the forums, and what is the point of the new one, considering that you can't actually click on it to check your profile?
By far the worst, and most mindboggling change, is the removal of the content sidebar.
That used to be such a great way to see when new content was released, be it the latest installment of a show or comic, or getting introduced to an entirely new series.
Now you have to use the Videos tab, where the series aren't arranged in chronological order, so you have to click on Latest, and filter through the dozens of irrelevant trailers and shit that you don't care about. If you click on Popular, things are a little better, but it's still a terrible alternative to the content sidebar.