The New Shiny Escapist

[Stefan Rogen]

Still quite impressed how something that ugly is also engineered to be so slow.
Seriously, pretty much everything that can be critized has been. If the best response you get is "It doesn`t bother me that much" you might have been heading in the wrong direction.
So pretty please with sprinkles on top, get rid of that new crappy stuff and restore the old escapist.

 

[Ethring]

Okay, I'm sure everyone else has said what I'm about to, but I will go ahead and pile on as well. First off, I understand why sites want to change things up from time to time and sometimes it is a good thing in the end. The changes here might eventually make for a much better site for all involved. However, so far, the site is insanely slow to respond, keeps crashing, and is difficult to navigate. You've made it harder to find the content many of us come here for and while I understand the thought process is to make the reader spend more time on your site, much the same way retailers put their most popular products in the back of the store to make you walk through the whole place and possibly impulse buy, it also, frankly, pisses off people when they can't find stuff. Case in point, "Zero Punctuation" one of your most popular features, was always found under the, "review" tab before. It's not there now, and I tried to do a simple site search, but that keeps crashing. After just randomly clicking for awhile, I found it listed under the, "video" tab. Now I understand that it IS a video after all, but it is also, most assuredly, a REVIEW and that is where most folks will look for it at. Maybe a better look at how people use your site before you go tinkering with it would have been a good plan.

 

[BRex21]

I just don't understand why, I see less information on screen its less visually diverse, and things just blur together. I see what changed, but i dont see any reason for it, this is just change for changes sake, it takes longer to load anything its more complex and its something new to learn, and why?

 

[Coldster]

I have to admit, if the Publisher's Club members approved this, then I don't think they really care. No one is naive enough to not notice an aspect 98% of the people here are complaining about (the brightness). Sorry, but the facts are there to back me up.

Actually we didn't. All these issues were brought up and the first design was ACTUALLY worse on the eyes. They added a VERY subtle gradient and thought well this is fixed. I told them to stop giving me headaches and hire a real designer and they told me I was too mean and people had worked really hard on it.

I wouldn't be so pissed or actually care about the terrible layout, hard to use, terrible performance or even the bad colour scheme if it did one thing. One simple thing. NOT STRAIN MY EYES AND GIVE ME A HEADACHE... RAGE MY HEAD HURTS!

Fair enough. This is exactly the answer I thought I might get. Thank you for confirming it. As for the other person...

Ah cool, that's fine then

I was worried that I was coming across as trying to sound superior over non-PubClub users. Which I obviously wasn't, because all PubClub users have been warned that using the PubClub as any kind of leverage or argument point is a no no, and oh god I'm doing it again xD
I'm just going to stop now, but thanks for understanding

No sweat. Thanks for contrabootin' and clarafiyn'.

I have to admit, if the Publisher's Club members approved this, then I don't think they really care. No one is naive enough to not notice an aspect 98% of the people here are complaining about (the brightness). Sorry, but the facts are there to back me up.

Be reasonable; the PubClub could well have raised issues that the Escapist, in their better 'judgement', turned down in the end. The article makes no mention of 'approval' by the PubClub for the new format, only that they've taken on their 'feedback'.

There's no guarantee that they've implemented all the updates to this incarnation of the website yet, either. Just relax, and don't be so ready to paint bulls-eyes, Mr Facts man.

Not only are you unnecessarily aggressive, but also wrong. I never said it was the Publisher's Club members fault. Its not like they were the ones to make the change anyways. All I was saying was that I hoped it was brought up before this new layout was installed, since it is the most prevalent problem.

 

[themerrygambit]

Incredibly slow website, Bland, boring looking. Let me guess you had an "SEO" company redesign your page?

Thumbs down.

 

[Sansha]

It looks horrific. Amateurish, bulky and difficult to navigate.

 

[krellen]

I don't understand the complaints about the white. Books are black on white, and everyone has been fine with them for the past six hundred years.

Books are reflective surfaces, and do not emit their own light. Monitors do, and this makes the ascetics and practices of electronic media entirely different.

 

[Noceus]

I think the site should be a shade of green, since green is relaxing for the eyes. But I did like the previous colour scheme better. Otherwise not bad, as soon as I get used to the new look that is...

 

[MadeinHell]

The new "look" is utterly horribe.
I can't READ anything because the text is distorted and corrupted all around the place. The site takes forever to load and on top of it all it looks bad too.
At least give us an option to come back to the old way because this is just BAD.

 

[Brockyman]

As the horse from the old Ren and Stimpy show would say:
No sir, I don't like it.

 

[sir.rutthed]

I like the effort, but it's harder to navigate the site now. The drop down menus are nice, but the layout of the actual pages is confusing. I kinda hate the color scheme too. Too much white makes it look sterile and boring. This site has great personality, let's see a color scheme to reflect it.

 

[Alexchaser]

Hate the back colour i cant make out the borders other than that i like the new layout

 

[awdrifter]

I hate the new layout. The lack of a side bar showing all the popular shows is really annoying. A lot of the times I see a new episode of a show is out then I go ahead and watch it. Now I probably will forget to check on some of the shows.

 

[Emz]

I really hate the size ratios that have been decided for the site's design. The padding is too small, most text is too small and to top it all off the colour scheme then makes that small text hard to read.

You have so much horizontal screen space these days (as a lot of people have widescreen monitors) so why not use a bit more of it. Now I am not saying make everything really wide but there has to be a good balance of information both horizontal and vertical. It seems like the goal was making everything as vertical as possible resulting in you having to scroll a lot more, which to me seems like a downgrade in terms of the site's ergonomics. The whole site feels clumsy.

I rarely post but I did feel the need to add one extra criticism to the list of feedback.

 

[tzimize]

Where's the blue? Blue is the staple of Escapistmagazine.com, and now you've gone and fucked it all up.
Other than that who am I to complain since I don't care for this site anymore. Although I if I were to truly complain about something it's all the open areas which could be used for something. Also the blue is missing.

Yes. Bring back the freaking blue.

The site is NOT easier to read. Who the hell tests these things? Blind people? Because that might make sense. Its NOT EASIER TO READ! And really, reading is what we mostly do around here.

Layout design is different, and imo worse but the absolutely worst part is the visual design. FOR SHAME escapist.

 

[Rory Beck]

My thoughts can be summed up by what just happened. I spent 5 minutes writing a post, then when I tried to post it, there was a server error.

It wasn't broken before. Now it is. This is progress in the same way suicide is progress in curing a head-cold.

 

[Findlebob]

I thought my internet crashed when i first saw it. Im dislexic and it isnt very easy for me to read compared to the last version which i had no problem's. It allso takes ages to load out.

I like what they did with the post's though but it would flow better i think if it started on lastest or popular but on that day insted of the week.

 

[justnotcricket]

I quite like the new site design (and really, I think all the people raging and threatening to leave have got their priorities wrong - I thought people came here for the content, not the order in which the boxes appear on the screen?)

BUT... it is absolutely murdering any browser I try to open it in. It's the slowest site on the web for me right now, and I don't have bad internet.

Is there something I can do to make things go faster? If not, is there something you guys are doing to stop Firefox and IE and Chrome (etc) from choking on the site?

=(

 

[viranimus]

Well Not getting this. I know I expressed that I was not fond of the preview for pub club and now there more issues.

What I dont get is the complaints about color/font considering every modern browser has the ability to bypass what the website designer intended to display as font size/color, etc.

What is bothering me is the flash design elements that get in the way or now, do not even work like for example the latest posts no longer show anything but a blank section.

And on top of that the link to revert to the old layout does not work either.

And yes today the website is running slower, but I think that even at this hour its still related to ZP, because when I used the new layout last night it seemed to run smoothly enough.

 

[Auxiliary]

I don't like it at all.