The New Shiny Escapist

[Itsthefuzz]

Is it possible to get enough feedback to change it back?

 

[-Dragmire-]

I also enjoyed being able to click on shows like The Big Picture by clicking the video series button on the right side of the page. Now the website is confusing to navigate, and hard to read. I am not a happy camper.

Doesn't the top bar cover the same function? Just hover your cursor over the VIDEO section and the drop down menu has The Big Picture there.

 

[Kyogissun]

It may sound odd, but the design makes me want to not come here anymore. It's just very off putting and boring.

As much as I hate to say it (and I really do) this is how I'm feeling now.

I guess I just wanna have my last bit of input on this topic, so here's what I've got to say to the staff:

Whatever feedback you got about the site being 'hard to navigate' in my honest opinion is absolute BULLSHIT. The site was, I'd argue, damn near 'perfect'. I've considered the escapist to be one of my favorite sites purely on the ease of navigation alone for the past... What, 2/3 years?

Whatever people were telling you was wrong, I'm sorry, 'they' were wrong and the ones who believed the site was fine or fellow staff members who felt that aside from coding that the site didn't need a change? THEY were right.

You don't need to bust your asses and overhaul the site. It was absolutely and completely fine the way it used to be... And that's saying a lot in my opinion, as there's one glaringly annoying problem with a certain favorite gaming site of mine who's god damn 'features' window decides to scroll with the speed of a child under the age of 10 who just drank 4 cans of soda, all because I decide to open and browse other windows.

tl;dr: I'm not mad at anyone who decided to contribute to the new design, but please change the site back because there was 'nothing' wrong with it whatsoever. I KNOW it took you guys six months to put this all together but... I liked the old escapist, it just... it 'worked'.

And I know I may be getting a bit snotty or cocky or obnoxious by saying this, but if any users after this post feel the same, I'd like to request you quote or re-iterate that last statement of mine. Not because I wanna 'stick it to the man' but to show that we genuinely liked and had no problems with the way the site used to be.

I'm not being critical here, I'm reinforcing the idea that there was nothing wrong or necessary for change in the first place, at LEAST visual interface wise. Aside from occasional video crashes (which were usually rectified later that day or in a few hours), the escapist has been by far one of the most 'stable' sites (visually and functionality-wise) I've browsed in the past 5 years and I hate to see that otherwise awesome and familiar interface just completely up and disappear to a new format that just feels stark and unpleasant.

And I'll also admit here and now, I have not bothered to try and use the new site layout and adjust to it, because I see no point learning how to use something that I hope and believe will go away soon. Might be stupid but... I have a sort of hope and faith the site will go back to the old format, even considering that 'timesink' you put into working on it.

But again, if it ain't broke, don't fix it and the Escapist's old layout was the 'epitome' of such a statement.

 

[FEichinger]

So ... more time has passed and I currently view the site at like 300% zoom (just enough to have around 1 inch of white border each side ...)

Feels better, but ruins my eyes even more in the long run ... And now I have to scroll for entire minutes to find what I'm looking for ... Still not the perfect workaround, but injecting jscript isn't a viable choice either, imho ...

That said, reason for the white hurting anyones eyes is likely that the borders aren't in the immediate field of vision, yet the brightest overall element of the entire site ... Which of course hurts, if you think about it ...

Guess I'll just prepare for my old days when I can't view any site in any way other than this ... ^^

 

[TheSchaef]

I'll let other people comment on aesthetics and ease of use and such, as these don't matter enough to me to get up in arms about them. I just want to report an ACTUAL problem and hope it doesn't get buried (or wasn't already mentioned three other times) before someone sees it to fix, because it's a pretty significant impact on usability.

The videos page is not showing the most recent videos for nearly all of the series. A lot of them are backdated to around the last week of November. The people who miss the sidebar video list (of which, admittedly, I am one) could adapt by just clicking the Videos link at the top of the page and looking at the resulting page for recent updates... except, they're not updating properly.

 

[Varrdy]

The only real gripe I have with the new look is oh-so-very small but I feel it's important.

While the forums are fine, I've just read through the latest Extra Punctuation and now my eyes hurt. The text on the main screen and articles needs to be darker or starker as at the moment it doesn't stand out enough to be comfortably readable.

Just my 2-cents

Wardy

 

[F4LL3N]

I'm already used to it. I already forget what it used to look like. The grey background makes it a lot easier on the eyes. But I'd still like to be able to pick my own themes and colors. Surely can't be that hard to implement. Something like Windows has.

 

[GundamSentinel]

I'm getting used to it. I still say I need the blue borders and the bar to the shows back, although I must say the dropdowns work very well.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

It just looks to busy and messy. To much stuff everywhere, complicated, cluttered. The previous version was compact and simple. I have no idea why they bothered with a redesign if it just makes the site look worse. But I guess I will just get used to it so i can catch up with Bob and ZP.

 

[Santhenar]

Bye bye escapist. I used to use this site as an example of unique and beautiful web design. Now it makes me want to dig my eyes out. Bright, impossible to see anything. While a navigation bar may have seemed like a good idea, it just makes you look like a cheap rip off of every other gaming site out there.
Somehow all the white space actually makes the site look much more cluttered.

And what happened to the news feed? I loved that thing. And the video bar on the right?

I'm sorry about all the time and effort it must have taken to make this, but it just cannot remain this way, and if it does then I cannot visit it.

 

[_Russell_]

this revision not only creates a more beautiful and readable site,

A more readable site?

If you needed to make code/layout changes then fair enough, I?d deal with it. But almost every piece of text on the whole site is hard to read and the colour scheme seems to be designed by someone wants to users to go blind.

I'll have to adjust to the new layout but I can't adjust to horrible new 'eye-strain' text, please fix it, I like the Escapist & I rather not abandon it.

 

[Buizel91]

Possible lag solution
Clearing my chase with Ctrl + F5 on Firefox worked for me. Now it seems to run as... well as before.

This post is underrated...

Thank you for that, my internet, and this site are much faster!

 

[Buzz Killington_v1legacy]

Is the "this forum has yet to receive a topic" problem showing up a lot lately for anyone else?

 

[McNinja]

As much as I like the design, I'm still having a plethora of problems... 404 errors after posting, site freezes, long load times, etc. I would like to at least not get a 404 error every single time I try to post something.

 

[lRookiel]

Is the "this forum has yet to receive a topic" problem showing up a lot lately for anyone else?

I did get it a couple times today, quite an inconvenience....

 

[N3Burgener]

In the end, I just wish that you had at least held on to the old sites color-scheme and design, because that "cluttered" feel actually gave it personality,rather than what i'm currently looking at.

This is exactly how I feel about the new design. It looks bland, like it's deliberately trying to be void of style or aesthetics, mostly because of the lack of descriptive text and the way everything just "floats" on the background. The old design may have been "cluttered" but it was descriptive and gave context to all of the features.

All of that extra "stuff" on the website glued things together and gave an overall consistency to the site. Now, it's like you replaced that "glue" with "air" and it just doesn't look tight any more. It's just random pictures and headlines floating around.

It used to be that I'd visit the front page and click an article because I thought "that looks interesting, I'd like to know more," and now I'm clicking articles just to figure out what the hell they're about. "Thanks for Failing," "Console Revolution," "My Love For You is Ticking Clock"? These are just random headlines to me, and that scrolling window is even worse because sometimes we don't even get the full headline.

Because of the new "airy" design there's even less content "advertised" on the front page, and I have to click to a few different subpages to get to get a better picture of what all is happening on the website. In the long run it's not a big deal, but I miss the convenience of being able to casually browse the front page and see everything of interest, complete with the descriptive text underneath everything.

 

[ultrachicken]

I preferred the site when it was predominantly blue, as all this bright white is making my eyeballs bleed, but as for the actual functionality of the site, I'm sure I'll get used to it.

EDIT: I just noticed the drop down menus at the top. I love this redesign now.

 

[RJ Dalton]

I have a minor complaint that I'd like to see resolved at some point. Okay, actually I don't think this one is very minor.
I can't for the life of me find a direct link to the video galleries anywhere. For example, if I want to get to the collection of Zero Punctuation videos, I have to run a search on Zero Punction, bring up a video, go to Yahtzee's profile and then click the link from there. And for the ones who don't put their escapist video gallery as their homepage, like, say Moviebob, I still haven't found a way to get there at all.
I mean, you can play around with the colors and design all you want, but a good rule of thumb for good design is that a person should be able to get where they want to go in as few clicks as possible.

Edit: Ooooooooh, I see. There are drop down menus that don't come down because I use noscript. Well, glad I figured thet out.

 

[kiwi_poo]

hey, just posting this here to report what I believe to be a glitch:

I'm in the MLP: Friendship is Magic user group, and sometimes the group chat entries won't show up. so I don't see what anyone has been saying.
I don't know if this is the case with other user groups.
this never happened with the previous lay-out of the escapist, so I think it has to do with the new version

it would be nice if you guys could fix this
thanks

 

[kiwi_poo]

okay, it's also with the forums