The New Shiny Escapist

[BlueGlowstick]

I went to theescapist.com and thought I went to the wrong site. O.O

The I looked at the domain name and realized I DID go to the wrong site! I don't like it. At All.

 

[BlueGlowstick]

It looks like facebook now. Like... the current facebook. The bad one. With boxes and feeds everywhere, and everything way too spread out and inefficient.

Before it was compact, streamlined, efficient, and warm. Now, its facebook.

Sort of what I was thinking, but then, I don't go to Facebook very much.

I hope they at least do what Wikipedia did and give out an option to use the older version.

that's what Twitter did. before it was all new and no old.

 

[mew4ever23]

My first thought was "Did someone go and poison my DNS?" then "WAUGH GET IT AWAY!".

Seriously, It looks terrible, and this is a trend I'm getting bloody tired of - Website redesigns that look like ass. First Facebook, then YouTube, now here.

Bloody hell, you guys need a better web designer. You guys must be joking that it took 6 months to plan, code, and implement this. This looks like something a highschool student could have thrown together in a double block.

What the hell was wrong with the old design? THAT was both beautiful and readable, as well as streamlined and efficient!

Hits:

... I'll get back to you on that!

Misses:

The site as a whole isn't loading in a timely manner.
Just had this weeks ZP playing twice in a popout w/ads (Which I STILL hate, by the way!).
Said ad popouts also don't have a close button. Might wanna look into that.
Too much blank space.
There's something going on with the new font - Looks like text in flash with the quality set to "low".

 

[Trujkin]

I used to read The Escapist, then I took a flashbang to the face.

Ok ok...

I like it, when the Publishers Club members got early access to it I wasn't sure about at first. After trying it out for the last few days I've got used to it and I love it now.

The same thing happened to me. I thought I would switch back and then never wanted to.

 

[red the fister]

3rd times a charm.
not gonna tell you any pf my problems with the new design.
because the last two times i tried the site crashed... i think. couldn't find the server at ant rate

 

[bakan]

Too bright, too much spacing, too 'clean', damn slow and harder to navigate.

Overall, the change is bad.

 

[Crystalite]

wow, this is bad.
I´m sorry, but its just really terrible.
The new look is really an eyesore, and the site is slow as all hell now.

But everyone is saying that now, aren´t they?

Yes, we will probably get used to it.

 

[DktrAgonizer]

Okay, I know I'm just going to be rehashing everything else a bunch of other people have said, but I feel the need to throw in my two cents.

My very first impression of the site today when I opened it was literally "What the fuck, did the CSS fail to load?", before I actually realized this was supposed to look the way it does.

This is exactly what I thought when I navigated to The Escapist. You know why?

-Because of the blinding white background. My eyes are starting to ache the more I keep this page open; what happened to the nice blue the Escapist used to be?
-The homepage is cluttered. There are no dividers to separate the sections, so it all looks kind of... smushed together.
-The lag is horrible, but hopefully that will go away in time. As in, soon.

You say the site is "shiny" now. Well, honestly, shiny does not always equal good. As it is now, shiny equals eye pain.

However, I do like the dropdown menus so... that's nice.

 

[Warachia]

Thank you so much for adding backgrounds now, at least it's MUCH easier on the eyes, now all you have to do is clean up the front page and the three boxes right below this comments section (light blue on white doesn't work).
For some reason this reminds me of a bethesda launch title. Horrible at first, then fixed later.

There are different backgrounds? How do I change mine?

there are no different backgrounds, but you see that grey on the left and right of the pages, as well as where the words are in my comments? That used to be white, and it was absolute murder on my eyes.

I don't like the new site, but at least now it's more tolerable. Still plenty of things that need fixing though.

 

[AmzRigh]

Okay, so this may have been said already; if it is, I'm simply adding my chip to the pile.

The layout, I've got no problems with, but some serious CSS work is needed, because the fonts look fugly. You know how fonts get at in-between sizes? When they're on the small side, entire strokes of letters disappear, making them illegible; when they're on the large side, random lines get thicker, and sometimes spiky. For a site that posts so many articles, making it difficult to read is shooting yourself in the foot.

Further examination implies you only tested your site in Internet Explorer, because it looks great in IE9. However, in Firefox 7.0.1 and Chrome 16.0.912.63, it looks awful. So please, do 40% or more of your readers a solid and work on your fonts.

 

[Segadroid]

Way, WAY too much white. It makes it look kinda cheap compared to the older design, which succesfully used several shades of dark blue as its base.
Profile bar is alright I guess, but it feels slightly unneccesary to display my latest post and badge.

If we're gonna change the Escapist's design that much, at least give us the option to switch between different layouts. Then, everyone's happy.

 

[Ddgafd]

I don't like the new font. It makes it difficult(at least for me) to read any text besides forum posts. Otherwise it's alright.

 

[Callate]

Okay, having tried this for a couple of days, I have to say that while I'm still okay with the interface (though seriously, shrink the font on that headline scroller, guys- we're getting cut-off headlines like "Obsidian Hopes Digital Distribution Stabs...") but I'm getting a little tired of the shebang running like a sloth on quaaludes. Sometimes pages take twenty seconds or more to load; sometimes they refuse to load at all.

 

[ShindoL Shill]

it feels... bluer.
just... more blue.
i realise it was blue before...
it's just... a different blue...
curiouser and curiouser...

It looks like facebook now. Like... the current facebook. The bad one. With boxes and feeds everywhere, and everything way too spread out and inefficient.

Before it was compact, streamlined, efficient, and warm. Now, its facebook.

YES! that kind of blue. a facebook blue.
not the same colour.
just facebooky.
the blue is facebooky.
it feels facebook.

*whimpers*
i dont like it, turn off the blue!

 

[ShindoL Shill]

it feels... bluer.
just... more blue.
i realise it was blue before...
it's just... a different blue...
curiouser and curiouser...

It looks like facebook now. Like... the current facebook. The bad one. With boxes and feeds everywhere, and everything way too spread out and inefficient.

Before it was compact, streamlined, efficient, and warm. Now, its facebook.

YES! that kind of blue. a facebook blue.
not the same colour.
just facebooky.
the blue is facebooky.
it feels facebook.

*whimpers*
i dont like it, turn off the blue!

 

[Demonicdan]

It keeps randomly making firefox non responisve for a few minutes, so not a fan.

 

[coheedswicked]

Ok major likes and dislikes.

Like: that little profile thing on the left with latest posts, badges, ect...

Dislike: Where's my sidebar? Also expand that "News" list to show at least 10 or 15 at a time

Also add "Hexproof" to the features dropdown thing

 

[Stammer]

I didn't mind it at first, but I take back what I said about "Just going to need to get used to it".

It's so friggin' slow to load ANYTHING. I clicked on my Escapist bookmark and it didn't even look like it was loading. So I clicked on my Zero Punctuation bookmark and it acknowledged that it was loading, but still took almost a minute to show up.

Half of the time the site doesn't even load what I want it to, and when it does it takes forever. It's like I'm using the internet I had when I got my first Windows 98.

Additionally, I notice you removed the video list. Thanks for that, I was tiring of the convenience of being able to click on any show right there on the front page and see what I need to catch up on. (/sarcasm)

 

[Dogstile]

I just read three pages and I have a headache. This means that its far to blinding.

 

[DJ_DEnM]

Slow as hell on mobile. The normal site looked great on mobile too, but this looks deranged as if it were all just thrown on the front page. Why not make the old homepage he mobile version as it workedso well?