Who else hates the site redesign?

[KeyMaster45]

I dont like it, nothing seems to have updated in days, news wise anyway, and ill be dammed if I'm going to trudge through all this confusion to find them.

Agreed, It's a jumbled mess and worst of all the news (my main reason for visiting the site) seems to have taken a major backseat. To top it off it just looks ugly, bare, and boring.

This has nothing to do with the redesign but more with the tone the news posts here seem to have taken. They just seem...rude, like Cracked.com rude. It works great for great for a comedy website like Cracked, but it has little place in reporting news. The swearing in news posts has to stop as well, it just comes off as unprofessional.

 

[Chased]

Looks more like Facebook than a gaming website.

 

[Jfswift]

It looks decent but it's harder to read while on my phone now.

 

[Buizel91]

I'm going to copy my post from the main thread in the hope that some people actually see it...-.-

"Heh, i've just found out that many people are just to lazy to check things on here :')

You don't need to press the "Back" button to go to them homepage... See the big "THE ESCAPIST" right next to news...? Click that i dare you -.-

Second, can't find old ZP Or unskippables? Type them in the search bar or hover over the "video" button at the top and surprise surprise we get a list!

see, playing around with the site actually helps, instead of saying "OMG BLA BLA IS NOT HERE WAH WAH WAH" actually search the damn things! -.-

Also, click news, and guess what? we get recent news! the homepage just has the most popular i think. This community seems to be getting stupider...although admittedly admins if you had told us all this a few weeks ago you wouldn't be getting half the hate on here hehe

Now if everyone will excuse me, im going to watch old ZP vids...good day."

 

[n00beffect]

Yeah, it's pretty annoying and very inconvinient, at most times. But I am hoping they'll fix their issues soon, and we'll be able to get used to it again.

 

[Don Reba]

I think the new design is an improvement on the whole, except the improvements don't affect the way I use it, and the regressions are slightly annoying.

But then, I am here for LRR videos, not the community, so I am less invested than many others.

 

[Worgen]

I don't hate it but I don't really like it either, it seems harder to keep track of forum posts on the main page now and its much more annoying to navigate the news, especially when they clog it up with trailers like they love to do.

 

[Gecko clown]

I don't like the fact that there are no videos or comics down the sides now.

 

[Suicidejim]

As with all redesigns of stuff, I hated it for five minutes, before realizing it wasn't so bad. Now I hardly notice it. Aesthetically, I suppose I preferred the old look, but I have no issues with the current one either. I haven't really noticed too many bugs, and the ones I have experienced weren't particularly severe. All in all, I'm mostly 'meh,' haven't yet warmed up to the new look, but not really driven to some sort of rectum-clenching anger storm as some other users appear to be (despite the fact that they still don't seem to have left).

 

[commodorejohn]

Things load like molasses, somehow even the rendering of loaded pages gets all chokey, and it looks like it stepped straight out of that Godawful "yeah, every site is a blog now" phase circa 2007. Yeah, I hate it.

 

[Eumersian]

Like most new things, I like to put it on trial status for a bit. I'm happy to say that the new site design has grown on me since it's been up (what is it, a week now?) At first I thought it was too bright, and I know that looking at bright colors for long periods of time can cause eye strain, but I've really gotten used to it and it doesn't bother me at all any more.

The only problem for me now is the occasional glitch, which comes with introducing a new site design, after all.

 

[General Vengeance]

It's not bad, but it's not great. Typically when you introduce something new, it's to improve your image or product. This design was not given enough thought, and no feedback seem's to be sought. Someone must have a hell of a lot of influence at the Escapist.

Sadly for whatever the reason the rest of the staff kept silent, or approved of this bland vanilla looking nightmare. The majority of the people who frequent this site, have voiced their opinion on it's new look already and don't care for it.

I'd love to see this topic in a poll, and I know I wouldn't be shocked by the results. I'd say the result would be at least 75% don't like it if not higher.

 

[DazZ.]

Man some admin is going to get pissy at me soon, but I will link this again:
http://userstyles.org/styles/57994/escapist-magazine-fix-for-white-background

I prefer mine

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/120826

 

[kebab4you]

Snip

I prefer mine

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/120826

Oh hey that looks good, escapist should consider changing into something like that.

And in my defence, I can't code worth a damn for websites :3

 

[Cowabungaa]

I've encountered a couple small design and usability issues, but on the whole, I think it's a VAST improvement.

-m

Small? I wouldn't say small, looking at it from a design p.o.v. I actually discussed the site's new design with my webdesign teacher, as this semester is all about webdesign, and she applauded me for my analysis of it.

Basically it comes down to a couple of things:

1: They tried to put more air in their design, but honestly just failed at doing so. Air isn't just making everything white, spacing too is very important, and as it is now the homepage is still extremely full. Everything is still cramped together, regardless of the change in colours.

2: There's very little focus. Almost everything shouts for your attention at the same volume, adding more chaos to an already cramped homepage.

3: The colour scheme is pretty bad for overal readability. Especially for longer articles, which are an important part of The Escapist, it can be a real strain for one's eyes. I wonder what kind of feedback they had about this during user testing, because the complaints right now are numerous.

4: The 'feel' this new design has is just completely off. The layout and colourscheme does not say "This website is a cool, friendly and mature community for geeks and videogame enthusiasts." No, everything about this screams it being a cold and impersonal business site. The ice-y blues, the large amounts of white, the straight and no-nonsense fonts, it doesn't reflect what the content and actual feel of the site is all about.

They did make vast progress in terms of site navigation, not perfect but a lot better than in the previous design.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

Yeah I was deeply offended and felt that blinding "borderless" white creeping up on me once more. Greasemonkey to the rescue, I'm quite happy now. Navigation is better once you get used to it, and the initial complete freezes are mostly gone now. Slightly long loading times are still an issue, but otherwise it looks like a job well done. Not sure it had to be done, but who am I to judge. I am already grateful the links to articles are still mostly readable and DON'T LOOK ALL CHEW... OR CLICK HE... OR OTHERWISE ABBREV... like the new, modern, fondleslab-friendly style manifested itself on other sites.

Gawker handled things so piss-poorly I never felt like going there again. Not even Greasemonkey can fix that mess. Sometimes, there's an original article on one of the gawker network sites, and sometimes I click on some other article... most of the time I get frozen videos, non-functional links and the gawker 2011 equivalent of the perpetually spinning beach-ball... not much of a joy, and a good example of how not to handle things.

So, yeah, in comparison to that I think the new escapist isn't that bad. I couldn't stand the all-white without Greasemonkeyin' around, though.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

I've encountered a couple small design and usability issues, but on the whole, I think it's a VAST improvement.

-m

Small? I wouldn't say small, looking at it from a design p.o.v. I actually discussed the site's new design with my webdesign teacher, as this semester is all about webdesign, and she applauded me for my analysis of it.

Basically it comes down to a couple of things:

1: They tried to put more air in their design, but honestly just failed at doing so. Air isn't just making everything white, spacing too is very important, and as it is now the homepage is still extremely full. Everything is still cramped together, regardless of the change in colours.

2: There's very little focus. Almost everything shouts for your attention at the same volume, adding more chaos to an already cramped homepage.

3: The colour scheme is pretty bad for overal readability. Especially for longer articles, which are an important part of The Escapist, it can be a real strain for one's eyes. I wonder what kind of feedback they had about this during user testing, because the complaints right now are numerous.

4: The 'feel' this new design has is just completely off. The layout and colourscheme does not say "This website is a cool, friendly and mature community for geeks and videogame enthusiasts." No, everything about this screams it being a cold and impersonal business site. The ice-y blues, the large amounts of white, the straight and no-nonsense fonts, it doesn't reflect what the content and actual feel of the site is all about.

They did make vast progress in terms of site navigation, not perfect but a lot better than in the previous design.

Shush! I do agree with everything you say, but please don't make them "improve" things again... if you want to see how not to "improve" the usability of a site, go to kotaku.com or lifehacker.com or any other gawker site... change the background colour... be amazed at the mess unfolding. Compared to that, the new Escapist is absolutely Shangri-Lalaland perfect.

 

[similar.squirrel]

It is a New Thing and nerds, being the self-proclaimed pioneers of all things cutting-edge, are upset by New Things.

Personally, I like it. Don't know anything about web design, but I rearrange my room every two months because I hate the idea of stagnation. I'm guessing that the same sentiment applies to my reaction to this redesign. Never really had a problem with bugs beforehand, so I can't speak for that.

 

[MadeinHell]

For me the main page is still broken. The text is in a weird "broken" font that seems broken and unreadable.

Plus I don't like the new facebooky-super bright aesthetic.

 

[Skops]

The old design seemed more 'filled in'. This seems to have too much white everywhere. Also I hate the new way stuff is sorted on the main page, looks really thrown together in no peticular order.