The New Shiny Escapist

[Easton Dark]

I'm getting used to the layout, but good god is the background bright.

Make it a little darker, and make the "new messages" thing in the upper right more noticeable (and maybe move it to the center like it was before) and I can approve of this design.

 

[AMMO Kid]

I can't stand this layout! It HURST YM EYSE!!! No offense, but this has to be the most ugly website on the planet now... If not for Zero Punctuation I would quit using the site all together...

 

[viranimus]

Another facet I dont think has been mentioned yet is visual accessibility and variance.

Back in the early days of the mainstream net you had this pop up a lot when you had different people view a webpage via different browsers. You would get certain elements of that webpage displayed in different ways.

Ive found the same to be true here. For example when I added my first bug report It was extremely difficult to edit it on the fly. The text box was a table element that was wedged underneath other page elements such as the posts feed, bug report, write for us, etc. The reason for this is because I am currently viewing the page on a 62 inch LED television at 1900x1080 resolution. This PC is one that is being used in a "10 foot GUI" and as such sizes must be increased such as fonts and icons. When you use the instant resize functionality (Control + Scroll wheel) in firefox it increases the size of every element within the page. Of which that means enterable text tables are also increased in size as well even if that creates layout overlaps or not. With normal page elements its of little concern, however when you add things like flash driven elements to a page that will let you see thru unused spaces but will not allow you to access them because they are being blocked by invisible spaces for what will represent contextual flash menu popups it renders the obscured element inaccessible.

Now, with that said, and I also need to point out, that scenario just described is one that is specific to me, one that I expect would only truly effect a microscopic amount of people. Hell on my laptop or my main desktop it would never even be an issue. It is only an issue because of the specific setup that is being used to view the page. However, That is not why I bring it up. I bring it up to illustrate that there are infinite ways of to view a page in infinite variation. It is sort of like what game developers have to consider when designing games for the PC. You as a developer have no way of predicting how every single person will access your content. So, you have to take that into account and work to make your content as accessible for the widest set of configurations possible.

One extremely important element is to limit usage of superfluous items such as scripts, applets and flash.

Simply put The golden rule of page design.

Functionality > aesthetics.

And remember the distinction. that refers to the USERS functionality, not the developers. Users come first, developers invariably must come second in that equation.

 

[FEichinger]

-snip-

Certainly, Susan. Nonetheless is the site as it was redesigned ... not much aid to that goal of making it more streamlined. Yes, the old site was cluttered in some parts and I agree that it turned out better - in those parts. But the mainpage is still a clusterfuck of randomness.
(And it was before just as well, the main difference people see now, though, is that it has much less visible structures than before. But for instance the complaints about the randomness with the sizes and positions of the features on the mainpage are considerably misplaced, as the old mainpage had the same issues, just not as obvious as now.)

That said, I'm a Web Developer, not a Designer ... I can only tell as much, it's merely a radical turn that has some major flaws in some departments, but also some major improvements in others, and as such gives the viewer this classy "It's change, and I see bad points!!!!" feeling.
That doesn't mean, though, that, when people complain about the current design, it's an issue of them actually hating it overall. It's more that they feel the need to address those problems first of all, to get them solved immediately, or at least as soon as possible. And, in all honesty, I understand that. And I know that it's an issue of a bunch of hours to get everything done properly when such complaints pop up. And I understand that some things read like a slap to the face ... But that's what our, and our colleagues' jobs are like, and will always be like.

Dramatic calls for a boycott, or leaving the Escapist, may not be the most appropriate or most desirable way to express ones' complaints, but it's one that needs to be seen as a statement. People wouldn't leave, if their complaints didn't have at least some grounding - unless they wanted to leave anyways and just looked for a reason.

Sooo ... what did I want to say with the core of this post again? .. Ah right ... Noone wants to call you guys drunk clueless jackasses. But it's the way it reads, as the negative points are what immediately jumps to ones eye, and need to be solved asap. And that's all the community wants to tell you guys ... Wrong wording at some points, sure ... But it's neither anything new to the Internet or the Escapist. Heck it isn't even new to the human kind overall. That's how people express their issues with anything they don't like ... Stomping their feet. Either with rather ... soft and respectful wording ... Or with a can of shit spurted out.
Both are valid and both are just as true. The latter does sound worse, disrespectful and whatnot. But it's the same thing, and something one has to deal with in this environment ... As offensive and disgusting it is, it's unavoidable, sadly ...

 

[Brandon237]

Do not like.
But people have said that many times.

So some constructive ideas before I whine:

-Make avatar picture bigger, and give it a silver box or something! My avatar looks Hideous on the top bar.
-Please make the boxes at the top navigation bar look more... enclosed, they just irritate me as is.
-Please, and here I am begging you, please put the hot and recent topics section at the top of the page.
-Less White, my eyes kinda hurt.
-More compact, and a nicer font on the navigation bar. The Current front page and Zero Punctuation page daze me for a second before I can do anything with all this seemingly random stuff floating around in a sea of light colour.
-Maybe make the light blue, everywhere, slightly darker.
-Less square please. That needs no explanation.

Whine time:
My eyes don't feel so good (still), blue is not great, feels less homey, less compact, there is no feeling behind the design, the colour of the bar at the bottom of the page works nicely though, darker and with gradient
Honestly, the relics, like the bar and layout at the top of the forum and the bookmark, topic index et cetera buttons, look the best on this whole page. The new stuff neither fits with it nor looks good. And add some deviders! NOT sharp square ones please >.<

 

[silent299]

I don't mind the new look, everything looks a bit less cluttered. But its just too...sterile. Everything is white. This site is for gamers, you should know that if we don't have something shiny and colorful to look at, we get bored very quickly.

 

[priestswearseatbelts]

This site is popular. No one ever complains about the layout or aesthetics.

Lets overhaul the entire site.

Sense make none does.

If this is what it takes to justify the web designers full time position...

 

[Susan Arendt]

-snip-

Certainly, Susan. Nonetheless is the site as it was redesigned ... not much aid to that goal of making it more streamlined. Yes, the old site was cluttered in some parts and I agree that it turned out better - in those parts. But the mainpage is still a clusterfuck of randomness.
(And it was before just as well, the main difference people see now, though, is that it has much less visible structures than before. But for instance the complaints about the randomness with the sizes and positions of the features on the mainpage are considerably misplaced, as the old mainpage had the same issues, just not as obvious as now.)

That said, I'm a Web Developer, not a Designer ... I can only tell as much, it's merely a radical turn that has some major flaws in some departments, but also some major improvements in others, and as such gives the viewer this classy "It's change, and I see bad points!!!!" feeling.
That doesn't mean, though, that, when people complain about the current design, it's an issue of them actually hating it overall. It's more that they feel the need to address those problems first of all, to get them solved immediately, or at least as soon as possible. And, in all honesty, I understand that. And I know that it's an issue of a bunch of hours to get everything done properly when such complaints pop up. And I understand that some things read like a slap to the face ... But that's what our, and our colleagues' jobs are like, and will always be like.

Dramatic calls for a boycott, or leaving the Escapist, may not be the most appropriate or most desirable way to express ones' complaints, but it's one that needs to be seen as a statement. People wouldn't leave, if their complaints didn't have at least some grounding - unless they wanted to leave anyways and just looked for a reason.

Sooo ... what did I want to say with the core of this post again? .. Ah right ... Noone wants to call you guys drunk clueless jackasses. But it's the way it reads, as the negative points are what immediately jumps to ones eye, and need to be solved asap. And that's all the community wants to tell you guys ... Wrong wording at some points, sure ... But it's neither anything new to the Internet or the Escapist. Heck it isn't even new to the human kind overall. That's how people express their issues with anything they don't like ... Stomping their feet. Either with rather ... soft and respectful wording ... Or with a can of shit spurted out.
Both are valid and both are just as true. The latter does sound worse, disrespectful and whatnot. But it's the same thing, and something one has to deal with in this environment ... As offensive and disgusting it is, it's unavoidable, sadly ...

I'm just going to have to disagree with you on that final point, that it's unavoidable. Believe me, I understand people's reactions, and genuinely want to hear what people find fault with. But if you can't treat me with respect, I'm not going to listen to you - just as you wouldn't want to listen to me if I was being disrespectful towards you. (And I don't mean you, specifically, because obviously you're being perfectly civil and lovely. It's the greater "you".)

 

[keiskay]

the only thing that bugs me is the fact that there a less viewable articles now and theres not even a list of articles on the front page. the three important reading ones rotate out throughout the day, so if you saw one you thought sounded interesting but had to do something before reading it, your pretty much screwed.

 

[thalendiril]

I am not liking this new style very much at all. I feel that the front page is very cluttered with thumbnails and large amounts of space which make it really hard to read what each of the different features are. Some things feel out of place -such as the news feed- and there is less actual information to see. I miss the old news feed which took up the center of the page and went all the way down, by which offering MUCH more in the way of the most recent articles. I don't want to see just the five most recent articles on one page, but I want to be able to see everything that I've missed since I last checked the site, picking and choosing which posts I want to read as I go down the page.

 

[jFr[e]ak93]

I guess it looks o.k... I hate it, but it's pretty. It seems rather chaotic on the main page... video here, news there, article on the left, form on the right... the old page was super well designed... oh well. I'll get used to it I guess.... or I'll hate it still....

The Escapist was Awesome... then it took an arrow to the knee...

 

[PxDn Ninja]

So the new layout looks absolutely terrible. The load times are ungodly, and most of the time it just fails to load at all. With all the hate I'm reading that agrees with me, I can't imagine it is due to high traffic volumes.

I'll continue coming each week to watch ZP, but aside from that I might be pretty much done with the escapist. Pitty too, as for years this was my favorite site to visit.

 

[CoL0sS]

Will take some getting used to, but it's definitely not good. Bright, cluttered and too...sterile. Also, older videos are hard to find (unless you specifically know what you're looking for) and site is slow as hell. News should be at the top, it took me five minutes to find them first time. I'll adjust to it, but I think this was unnecessary. I don't mind change if it for good, but this...meh

 

[FEichinger]

-snip-

-snip2-

I'm just going to have to disagree with you on that final point, that it's unavoidable. Believe me, I understand people's reactions, and genuinely want to hear what people find fault with. But if you can't treat me with respect, I'm not going to listen to you - just as you wouldn't want to listen to me if I was being disrespectful towards you. (And I don't mean you, specifically, because obviously you're being perfectly civil and lovely. It's the greater "you".)

No offense taken, even if you had meant me in specific.

It might be that I've faced that often enough and just don't give a damn anymore, but ... meh ...
Ignoring statements based on their wording/the fact that they're blatantly disrespectful is just fine, it is of no aid whatsoever to stop such statements or to get the heating issue solved. That effectively means, it's considerably counter-productive - while it does help against some headaches.
That said ... Guess we're heading slightly off-topic here.

 

[Stormwaltz]

(leaving)

 

[Sabrestar]

I've had a chance to play with the look for a while now, so here are my impressions in case this thread is still being closely monitored.

On balance... I don't really like what I see. Here are my arguments, in the hope of offering constructive criticism. First, I agree that the front page desperately needed help, and this is much improved. However, I mostly access the site from an RSS feed and rarely look at the front page, so this doesn't affect me much, even though it's improved.

My main negative is the very bright colour scheme used. Yes, the old site was black text on white too, but there were a lot more dark-coloured borders and backdrops. Maybe I'm alone in this (I can't be the only thirtysomething reading this site), but I stare at monitors all day for a living, and too much white really hurts my eyes. I vastly prefer white-on-black for the sake of reducing eyestrain (a main reason I dropped iGoogle for Netvibes as my homepage - a white-on-black option), and this redesign is so much white, it actually encourages me to spend much less time on the site than before. This, obviously, is a Very Bad Thing.

I'm not crazy about the new article font, either. It's okay, but it seems like on all the computers and monitors I've seen it on (at least three by now), it anti-aliases really badly and turns very blurry for my eyes, making it even harder to read. It's not a deal-breaker, but combined with the above, it hurts. I've always had 20/20 vision and I try to be careful that all the time I spend in front of computers doesn't make it worse. But this is the second long post I've made on the site in the last few minutes, it's been about 10-15 minutes in this visit to the site, and my eyes really hurt by now. So much so that I'm looking forward to finish typing this so that I can let them rest. Not good.

DSLReports, a telecom news site that I also frequent, has selectable colour schemes (probably managed by selectable CSS stylesheets) that affect the entire site, and has let me switch to a less eyestraining set of colours. I'd love to see the Escapist do something similar. Some people may see this as being nitpicky, but when the redesign of a site makes me really want to stop visiting it for the sake of my physical well-being, I'm very concerned.

EDITED TO ADD: Let me also note that I could not find the "new message" alert, which was very prominent on the old site. I had to carefully search the page looking for where the messages were located; I'd probably have missed them for several days if I hadn't gone out of my way to look for the alert. (When I first saw the new site, there was a dismissable note appearing under the title welcoming me back; could this be a good place to put "You have X new messages"?)

A final note is simply that I don't think the site looks at all distinctive any more. It's hard to pick out anything (especially with all the whitespace) that stands out as "This is the Escapist". The first time I visited a news link after the redesign (before I saw the redesign announcement), I thought I was on Engadget. I had to double-take to remind myself what I had clicked on.

You have good ideas here, but I think they need some accessibility refinement. Thanks for listening.

 

[Brandon237]

For folks saying you didn't' ask for this...actually, many of you did. We got a lot of feedback that the site felt too cluttered and was hard to navigate. If you have constructive criticism, please let us know. We know the sudden change is a shock, but once you've had a few days to get used to it, please let us know what you think. We want this to be something you guys find can embrace.

I don't blame you guys for freaking out, but please, we'd really appreciate it if you used it for a few days to see what you think.

Problem is, I am NOT going to be using it for a few days to make up my mind if my eyes itch >.<

And I would say the lack of... order on the main pages makes someone as lazy as I am not even want to bother. I appreciate that the new layout and a whole new system for some of the navigation must have been a LOT of work (the actual mechanics are certainly better, the look however...), but it just seems like too little thought and fixing up was actually done, And I have to wonder if the effort couldn't have been better spent slightly modifying the old, Not-as-blinding-as-a-mirror-on-Mercury style

 

[Hashbrick]

-snip-

Certainly, Susan. Nonetheless is the site as it was redesigned ... not much aid to that goal of making it more streamlined. Yes, the old site was cluttered in some parts and I agree that it turned out better - in those parts. But the mainpage is still a clusterfuck of randomness.
(And it was before just as well, the main difference people see now, though, is that it has much less visible structures than before. But for instance the complaints about the randomness with the sizes and positions of the features on the mainpage are considerably misplaced, as the old mainpage had the same issues, just not as obvious as now.)

That said, I'm a Web Developer, not a Designer ... I can only tell as much, it's merely a radical turn that has some major flaws in some departments, but also some major improvements in others, and as such gives the viewer this classy "It's change, and I see bad points!!!!" feeling.
That doesn't mean, though, that, when people complain about the current design, it's an issue of them actually hating it overall. It's more that they feel the need to address those problems first of all, to get them solved immediately, or at least as soon as possible. And, in all honesty, I understand that. And I know that it's an issue of a bunch of hours to get everything done properly when such complaints pop up. And I understand that some things read like a slap to the face ... But that's what our, and our colleagues' jobs are like, and will always be like.

Dramatic calls for a boycott, or leaving the Escapist, may not be the most appropriate or most desirable way to express ones' complaints, but it's one that needs to be seen as a statement. People wouldn't leave, if their complaints didn't have at least some grounding - unless they wanted to leave anyways and just looked for a reason.

Sooo ... what did I want to say with the core of this post again? .. Ah right ... Noone wants to call you guys drunk clueless jackasses. But it's the way it reads, as the negative points are what immediately jumps to ones eye, and need to be solved asap. And that's all the community wants to tell you guys ... Wrong wording at some points, sure ... But it's neither anything new to the Internet or the Escapist. Heck it isn't even new to the human kind overall. That's how people express their issues with anything they don't like ... Stomping their feet. Either with rather ... soft and respectful wording ... Or with a can of shit spurted out.
Both are valid and both are just as true. The latter does sound worse, disrespectful and whatnot. But it's the same thing, and something one has to deal with in this environment ... As offensive and disgusting it is, it's unavoidable, sadly ...

I'm just going to have to disagree with you on that final point, that it's unavoidable. Believe me, I understand people's reactions, and genuinely want to hear what people find fault with. But if you can't treat me with respect, I'm not going to listen to you - just as you wouldn't want to listen to me if I was being disrespectful towards you. (And I don't mean you, specifically, because obviously you're being perfectly civil and lovely. It's the greater "you".)

Look Susan you guys are offering a service and while you may not need to count on every member as you don't essentially plan on sales except for the pub club members you still need them to load up your ads. Most of the backslash isn't even disrespectful I understand the Escapist is a brand to you that you hold dear and this may also impact the blow of the harsh words a lot are given. Harsh but still constructive criticism, I may be wrong but I haven't seen one post labeling anyone a jackass or belittle anyone. If anything I've seen where people referred (myself included) to the design/code as amateurish. It's a harsh realization but it's true.

I wish I could have talked the way you do to my customers when I was in retail. You don't get that type of freedom you sit there and listen to all the things that come out of his/her mouth cause they are pissed off without saying anything back except "yes sir" "yes ma'am". I might want to find them in a back alley someday but that still doesn't change the fact something is wrong to the point they are irate.

Most are willing to cope with the new design, they just asked for a simple background to kill the white something that literally would take a minute of a designers time and yet here we are day 3 with blinding madness.

Call it whatever way you want but when there is 857 comments and only 10 or so agree with the change without any kind of negative there is something obviously wrong with the way it is now. I know we are just sheep to you guys but still the sheep need grass to survive. Leave them starving too long and they will look for new grass.

 

[ballbarius]

It's exactly like IGN... Give us the escapist back

 

[Don Reba]

Also, folks, this should go without saying, but we're far more likely to listen to your feedback if you're not being a total cock while delivering it. (This obviously doesn't apply to to the post I'm quoting, which is perfectly fine.) We're not trying to fuck anyone over, or trick anybody, or just generally ruin your experience because we think it's hilarious to watch you all freak out. We launched the redesign in response to a great deal of feedback that we got, over several years, that our old site was confusing, cluttered, and just plain hard to use. If the new design we've chosen needs a bit of tweaking yet, that's ok - we didn't really expect it to be perfect right out of the gate. That's why we're asking for feedback, so that we can focus on the areas that really, truly don't work for you guys and try to find some kind of compromise.

Speaking to us like we're all clueless jackasses who just got drunk one night and decided to fuck up the site just for kicks doesn't help anyone. We all work very, very hard on The Escapist, not just because it's our jobs, but because we believe in it. We want it to be great. We want it to be something that you genuinely look forward to visiting every single day. And we're pretty sure you want it to be that, too.

So how about giving us the benefit of the doubt that we genuinely want to move forward in a positive way, and stop talking to us like we're beneath your contempt?

It is difficult to give you the benefit of the doubt when you made this design in the first place, then pushed it through in contempt of all the PC member complaints, and still acknowledge none of the criticism. Besides, there are real reasons why you would want to ruin the experience for regular members: to attract more new members or to get more ad revenue, for example.