The New Shiny Escapist

[Bobic]

Ok, I can get past the awkward design and horrendously bright white, but seriously, this barely even runs, it takes minutes to load each page, I know you may be screaming first world problems at me now but considering the last one loaded in seconds, I don't see how this is an upgrade. At first I thought it might just be my comp, but plenty of other people seem to be complaining. You may really want to consider changing it back.

 

[Domehammer]

Well loading times since this change for me are too high to really even browse. Keep getting blank screen that failed to load for some forums. Don't know if I'll visit website till loading times are not 30 seconds to minute plus.

 

[Deef]

I feel like I hate it, but I think it's just the shock of not recognizing anything anymore.
You guys really should have announced that the change was coming, and given some previews as to what it would look like. That way you would've had people hyped up to see it, instead of angry about the sudden change.

Edit: Upon navigating the site for a little bit, it's actually very fluid, a step-up from the old design.
The white is a problem though, I'm actually feeling forced to squint to look at the site. I don't really understand why though, because many other sites I frequent use plain white backgrounds too.

 

[Dryk]

Am I the only one who used the sidebar to see what shows had what episode up at the moment? The fact that it's gone is my only major gripe... although I do see the colour scheme getting old

Not sure why it needed to be changed.

Gives the graphic designers something to do

 

[Thamian]

Likes:

1)New nav bar. Shiny in the Firefly sense.

2)Kinda like the new front page. May just be that I'm running at 1080p but it don't know what these complaints about it being too widely spaced are.

3)Just noticed this: the text box for forum posts expanding as you type into it. Shiny! Again in the Firefly sense!

Dislikes:

1)The white. Bring me my blue borders back please! It's not quite so bad on a 4:3 display (even then there are bloody great empty white voids either side of the actual important stuff), but on my main display it's diabolical, and just makes it look... unfinished somehow.

2)It may just be that you're transferring between servers or suffering some other similar hiccups, but it's taking forever to load and often just giving me a blank white screen. This needs to be fixed. Before the servers get saturated at 17:00 GMT tomorrow.

 

[sb666]

I like a few of the changes but i don't like the color scheme and the front page is a bit of a cluster.

 

[StrixMaxima]

I didn't like it. Too Facebook-ey, harder on the eyes (mine, at least), strange priorities on the front page, harder to get to some of the best content in the site...

Frankly, not to my liking. Change is good, but going towards a unified Internet identity is a bad thing. Sadly, this is happening a lot, lately.

Oh, well.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

Has anyone mentioned that it's too bright, and that the news should be on the top of the page?

I'll do so.

Again.

Great work on the tech side, I just don't like it for this website.

EDIT: The site is running really slow as well. I'm sure people have also noticed and commented, but it takes so long for a page to show up, I haven't checked.

I'll also do so. Again. Seriously, how many complaints about the background will it take to have you change it to a darker color?

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Ow...

The new layout...it's ok. Will take some getting used to.

But the colours...please, for the love of my eyesight, can we get an option for toning them down? I'm having to look away just to type this out.

 

[monnes]

My biggest issue at the moment is that even when you go into the news section of the site, there's a very short list. I read the news here about twice a week, and then I read all of it, which means I open about 30 tabs a time. this is going to be very bothersome with the short list and no page number for news as there used to be, even more so. The brightness is also fairly bothersome.

 

[Susan Arendt]

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.

 

[CGAdam]

It's too stark, I think. I'm with the group that says the background needs to be some other color. I'm still exploring the rest.

 

[IndianaJonny]

Goodness, this was quite literally "out of the blue".

I didn't realise you guys felt the necessity to change the website's image. A little warning would've been nice (though maybe Premium members knew earlier or, in my ignorance, I missed the bulletins).

EDIT:

since the site was released to the Publishers Club a few days ago based on our own feedback. So keep in mind that some changes were made based on the comments made by members of this community.

(Ah, this little gem needs to be spread round. In the end it's the PubClub chaps who deserve to wield the megaphone.)

For a organisation with a white logo, was a white background such a good idea? It looks rather...unfinished, with so much white. A rich, blue backdrop might be a nice addition, no?

And Greg, while I preferred the 'newspaper' layout of the older formats, I appreciate and thank you for keeping up with competing websites, involving the community in your decisions and being generous (and fearless) enough to lay yourself out here in plain fashion.

(With my pragmatist hat on, I rather reckon few will actually leave over this change; I won't be. The covers might change but the content is still magnificent)

 

[MistahFixIt]

Okay, I decided to use SCIENCE! rather than complain:

PageSpeed Report: [https://developers.google.com/pagespeed/#url=http_3A_2F_2Fwww.escapistmagazine.com_2F&mobile=false]

~ Failed to Reach 2 times out of 3
~ Report Score of 87 / 100 (...Huh. Didn't expect such a high score.)

AccessColor Report: [http://www.accesskeys.org/tools/color-contrast.html]

~ Both color difference and color brightness do not meet the recommended standard for 0% of the total text.

~ Either color difference or color brightness does not meet the recommended standard for 41.65% of the total the text.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

Man a lot more rage than I expected, the forum is exploding with hate and its bot even that bad. I like this layout as well and I'm already used to this layout so if people want to rage about it that's fine but i will still be here shaking my head at them.

Did you notice the target of the rage? Not many people are saying "This is awful, your website is bad and you should feel bad" but there are a whole lot of people saying "well, I suppose I could get used to it, except for the bright white background.

It's a fairly minor amount of griping, considering such a massive website overhaul. I won't lie, I preferred the old layout, but I'm willing to give the new one a chance. Just as soon as it stops giving me headaches :-/

Guess what every other post in the PubClub early viewing thread was about? It used to be even more bright.

 

[JdaS]

One of the top boxes is overlapping with the news feed thingy, not sure I like that the video sidebar is gone and all around sluggishness has been detected. I'm willing to give it a shot anyway. Not like this is the only website that's trying new looks to varying degrees of success. Can't please everyone.

 

[514d3]

Just in case no one has mentioned this yet (which they probably have), the Zero Punctuation page is broken. Someone needs to set the width of those divs and float them to the left!

Not sure if this will help but eh... Here is some css that'll fix it right up.

.filmstrip_video {
width: 157px;
float: left;
}

 

[bismarck55]

Old Escapist was (imo) one of the most attractively designed and user-friendly gaming sites on the web. But, YOU MANIACS BLEW IT UP!

This is the worst site redesign I can remember.

 

[Skarvig]

There seems to be a misunderstanding. I come to the Escapist for Video Content. I love shows like The Big Picture or Loading Ready Run's Sketches. Do you know what you did? You hid them from me! Where is that neat little Series Index? You write that it is easier to find what is new and hot? NO! It is not! It's the same as before! New featured content is on the top end, like before. New news are in the middle, like before! It now looks cluttered and not finished. The white also makes the site look like my browser died halfway loading this site. The big blue bars on top and bottom look like they don't belong there.
Seriously this is what you guys are spending money on? Not so long ago you lost shows like Extra Credits because of fiscal problems! And you spend money trying to fix something that surely wasn't broken. At least give me an option to change it back to "normal".

 

[Volstag9]

I was going to say that i thought it was fine... then it took 4 minutes to go to the next page of this thread. I have a feeling that its just due to the high traffic since people are checking out the new changes and complaining about them. To be honest i have no idea how servers work.

Other than that the main issue is the color and how it hurts everyone's eyes... but i suppose you guys already know that.

The layouts nice though well most of it anyway.