Come Try Out Slashdot's New Design (In Beta) 1191
Slashdot's biggest redesign effort ever is now in beta
and you're invited to help guide it. This redesign has been shaped by feedback from community members over the past few
months (a big thanks to those of you who participated in our alpha testing phase!), and we'd like your thoughts on it, too. This new design is meant to be richer
but also simpler to use, while maintaining the spirit of what Slashdot is all about: News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.
Read on for the details of what's included, or read this
blog post. Update: 10/02 19:16 GMT by T : Since this post went live, we've been reading through the comments below as well as your (hundreds!) of emails. These are all valuable, as we continue to implement our current features into the Beta. Keep 'em coming; we love the feedback. Please keep in mind that this is called Beta for a reason; we've still folding in lots of improvements. One important thing to bear in mind is that the images are optional: check out the Classic mode by clicking on the view selection widget (just above the stories) on the Beta page.
What's in the Beta?
- Cleaner, simpler homepage design with option to view stories in three different layouts (Standard, Classic and Headline View)
- More community-promoted content in the All Stories view
- Improved profile pages to give you a snapshot of other community members
- Better, more prominent filters to view stories in different dimensions
- Easier browsing of popular topics straight from the main page.
Please keep in mind that this is a beta and some features are not yet available or fully baked. For features not yet available, you'll see a "Coming Soon" bubble if you hover your mouse over those areas of the site. Here are a few key areas we are still working on:
- Sign up
- moderation
- story submission
- replying to comments
Update: 10/01 20:54 GMT by S : For those of you who would rather browse Slashdot without pictures, click the icon at the top right of the story column, and switch to Classic View.
Digg version 2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want the site to look like Digg, maybe you should just buy it.
the new DIGG redesign. (Score:1, Insightful)
Goodnight sweet prince, slashdot will be missed.
Re:Link broken? (Score:5, Insightful)
it's fixed now.
but. the new design wastes 50% of my screen.
just make it like it was 10 years ago.
How about the old design? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway we can go back to 2001 or so with the design?
It just keeps getting worse with every redesign.
Re:Digg version 2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to agree, looking like every other "news" site that provides no news is not a good place to go. It deigns to promote everything except what we come to the site to see above the actual stories, and pushes the stories themselves into a narrow column that limits how many you can fit on a screen at time(presumably to boost ad-to-content ratios on screen). Were it not for the fact that I can adblock the header and the whole right column, I'd leave and never come back.
Blog (Score:5, Insightful)
It looks like a cheap ass blog...
Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
Please! leave a way for people to use the old look forever. stayoffmylawn.slashdot.org or some such.
Wasted Space (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we please stop making columnar layouts that auto-margin? I am on an 11" screen and you're intentionally placing almost 3" of that into whitespace. Also, the photo headers are horrible.
Use the Space, Cowboy Neil (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Link broken? (Score:4, Insightful)
Going back to a design from 10 years ago would give them less opportunity to hide adverts and trackers in the code. It's much easier when the site code is needlessly complex and hard to analize.
Re:Digg version 2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Link broken? (Score:4, Insightful)
Going back to a design from 10 years ago would give them less opportunity to hide adverts and trackers in the code. It's much easier when the site code is needlessly complex and hard to analize.
That is absolutely part of it, and part of it seems to be the %of screen that is ads. More real estate=more eyes=more mind control=less reason to ever visit the site.
Re:Link broken? (Score:5, Insightful)
It makes the comment section - which is a large part of the slashdot experience - seem like something tacked onto the end of a news article where people post one line responses.
Awful (Score:5, Insightful)
Why on earth did we spend all this money on beautiful 1920x1080 screens, AND spend so much time developing so called "responsive design" stylesheets and javascript, that we are still suck with extremely thin websites?
How on earth is this even remotely an improvement?
Bah? (Score:5, Insightful)
The threading isn't nearly as easy to spot so far, and I agree with others - why all the empty space?? It feels like it's a waste to at least not be able to choose a layout that really takes advantage of screen real-estate. Also, I don't see indicators for friends/foes...HOW DO I KNOW WHO I AGREE WITH!?!?
OH GOD IT BURNS (Score:5, Insightful)
If you loved the old design, you'll hate the new design...
FTFY.
Pastels, rounded edges, and large whitespace stripes on the sides of websites make me gag.
Ugh (Score:5, Insightful)
I am so fucking sick of the "image with rectangle overlay so we can put text on top of it" theme.
If your image isn't indicative of your content, it doesn't belong there. Get rid of the image and just use text for your headline.
If it is indicative of your content, don't cover up half of it with a semi-transparent rectangle with text and icons in it. Put the text above the image.
Furthermore, shoving multiple images together so that they actually adjoin when they represent separate content is retarded. Even if you want to adopt the "flat, sharp, "modern"" style (really, the Windows 8 "formerly-known-as-Metro" style), you should use the space you have.
I've got a 1280x1024 window for you to work with (minus scroll bars). This has been bog standard for a decade. There's no reason I should be looking at a filmstrip of content that's 600px wide and off center, with 3 adjoining images in a 560px wide square, each 50% covered by a white rectangle with text.
Furthermore, the bottom left image links to Story B but the bottom left semi-transparent rectangle links to nothing (it only the text links), and the bottom right image ALSO links to Story B, when it should link to Story C (the text for Image C does link to Story C).
Re:It looks alright (Score:5, Insightful)
eeeeew (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh yea, it's fantastic (Score:5, Insightful)
On my 1920x1080 LCD, it looks retarded. There's as much whitespace running down the sides as there is content running down the middle.
It's even worse if you try to read the comments on a story. You know, the only reason why people actually come to slashdot rather than other websites with editors that actually make some effort. At 1920x1080, the comments take up a maximum of about 575 pixels -- less if they're nested. That means that more than 70% of the screen is wasted whitespace.
I have a large screen for a reason. If I want to read text in a narrow column, I'll resize the browser window.
Comments are hard to read (Score:5, Insightful)
They're not indented very far and that makes working out a comment's descendants take some work. Most of the value of slashdot compard to any other aggregation site is the discussion so I'm leary of any change which would lessen this sites commenting.
Now, just about any OTHER site in the world taking comments is a different story!
Terrible (Score:5, Insightful)
It's awful.
The right 1/3 of my screen is filled with polls and ads I don't care about
Scroll down past all those polls and adds and now that 1/3rd of my screen is just blank. wtf?
The headlines are in 30pt font and take up huge amounts of space like I had set windows to "I'm f#$@# blind!" mode.
Lots of white space (have you ever taken a webdesign course?)
Pop-up notifications that cover up the content until you are forced to make a choice? Really? Am I on yahoo or something here?
Under my account... again with 1/3rd of my screen taken up my nonsense. Now I have tokens? What?
Content Width (Score:4, Insightful)
Lovely. (Score:2, Insightful)
I can fit two more entire Slashdots in the waste of space laying alongside the "I'm an asshole hipster designer and it looks fine on my 14" Viewsonic at 800x600" column.
Yuck (Score:5, Insightful)
My first impression was that I accidentally clicked through to news.yahoo.com, which I abhor.
I think you're missing the point of your legacy readership wanting information-dense content, with a minimalistic "user experience".
Re:Digg version 2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Try out the comments section before making a judgement.
Slashdot does comments better then 99.99% of the sites out there and while this upgrade may have the same back end the graphical representation of the parent/child/sibling/etc is horrible. It seems that whitespace is the only indication of a parent/child relationship and I can't quickly determine who is responding to what. Following a thread of conversation is gone.
100% WIDTH PLZKTHX (Score:5, Insightful)
The sidebar on the story listing is OK. Please, for the love of God, remove it for the comments. If I scroll down beyond a certain point, it's just going to be blank anyway, which means more wasted space.
Also, on the subject of wasted space: Please make it 100% width and not a center column. Everyone has widescreen monitors now. You're wasting our space. Keeping the center column design discourages people from spending significant amounts of time on the website.
That all said, I'm 99% certain that all feedback in this thread will be completely ignored because your designers say we're all dumb. When Slashdot tragically fades away as a brand in a couple of years, we'll say we told you so.
Another cramped canyon (Score:5, Insightful)
Current Slashdot flows to my display and still looks good. New Slashdot is yet another "cramped canyon".
It'll be sad if Slashdot succumbs to the "looks good on our iPad so it's done" mentality. If nothing else, sniff the screen size and give us the option of flowing to the screen like it does now.
It's probably too much to ask for you to just... you know... fire everybody except the maintainers. If you want to task a bunch of web developers, how about tasking them with something that would be truly innovative--such as a UI that has reasonable defaults (wide on my wide screen, narrow on somebody else's phone) and that lets us hackers out in the peanut gallery configure it a bit ourselves.
That should be your real, new, innovative design principle: Let the user configure it as much as possible.
In fact, that's what HTML and browsers were supposed to do in the first place. HTML was never intended to be a layout language. The view was supposed to be configurable by the end user in a lot of ways. The web strayed from that, so now we get designers fucking over users, forcing them into a one size fits $foo design, where $foo is usually the set of users that are thought to be the most easily monetized.
Too little room for comments. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, designers; have you ever seen the sheer epic scale of some of the slashdot comments. Not to mention the vast amount of them?
With the small column design, it's going to take minutes just to scroll halfway down.
Also, the boxes around the comments in the old design make it easy to see where it is located in a thread.
Whitespace is great for purely visual design and VERY, VERY, F**KING BAD for actual usability.
One of the things I like about slashdot is that it doesn't try to look flashy, popular and hip but is all about the content. The old design does not waste my precious screenspace nor my time. It doesn't require me to scroll huge distances while half the screen is empty. It doesn't require me to show more comments and it lets me hide threads I've read or don't care about.
Old Slashdot looks like shit, but works great.
New Slashdot looks great, but works like shit.
OMG! Ponies! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Link broken? (Score:5, Insightful)
It makes the comment section - which is a large part of the slashdot experience - seem like something tacked onto the end of a news article where people post one line responses.
This.
Slashdot's biggest selling point, as it's always been, is the conversation the stories generate. If I wanted day-old news with a barely-considered comment section, I'd go to Yahoo or visit the local Gannett affiliate's website.
Cut the images (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This reminds me of... (Score:4, Insightful)
that "flat", pastel, square look. Like, Windows 8. Or new iOS.
There needs to be a word for this: eliminating functionality in the name of creating a "new" way of doing things.
Re:Blog (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is this modded troll? It looks exactly like a crappy wordpress blog, right down to the massive white bars and comments
that are less than ten words wide before they wrap
into unbearably hard to read columns.
Really how are we supposed to have big, long, in-depth [discussion|flamewar]s with column format comments?
DO NOT WANT! (Score:5, Insightful)
Please let us keep the old design if we wish. The new design is annoyingly narrow and looks ridiculous on large desktop monitors (the kind used by most /.'ers when we post from work, you know that time of day dedicated to /. and sometimes work.) The new design is passable as a mobile site for phones and tablets though when I browse on my tablet, I request the desktop site and read in landscape mode like god intended. I still use the old comment system layout as well. It works and is easy to read.
*Warning* Cranky, veteran /.'er rant: ./ is one of the few sites that I care to read as its uncluttered, organized and lacking in flashy bullshit that bring nothing to the table but cheap glitter. We don't need giant pictures the width of the emaciated layout to go with each article either. This isn't kindergarten where we need a picture book, we are adults looking for information. Take for example this pile of shit: http://tech-beta.slashdot.org/story/13/10/01/1521222/the-next-big-fiber-showdown-austin [slashdot.org] What the fuck is the point that picture? Please someone tell me what the FUCK this picture of someone jumping into a pool has to do with google fiber? It does NOTHING besides waste screen real estate and bandwidth. It doesn't catch my eye, it irritates it. Even the ads on the beta site appear larger and more intrusive even though they aren't simply because everything is smashed together. In summation: Fuck the new design up its ass with a creosote soaked telephone pole wrapped in barbed wire and covered in rusty nails - SIDEWAYS.
To be frank: it looks like a shitty blog. This is what your masters at Dice think is hip and cool? They can go fuck themselves along with everyone on the design team circle jerking each other in meetings while patting themselves on the back for doing such a "good job".
Whew! Sorry bout that but I am tired of ohhh lets make it shiny! yay! web 2.0 bullshit.
Re:Oh yea, it's fantastic (Score:5, Insightful)
In my years here, UTF-8 / Unicode support seems to have been the most requested site feature, by far. Maybe even the only requested feature. Though I myself have no need for anything beyond 7 bit ASCII, I can't help but have noticed that people want their crazy characters.
So finally, the good folks at slashdot have engaged in a massive site redesign. God only knows how much work went into this effort. The end result?
A giant middle finger. "You want UTF-8? Here's some whitespace instead. You're welcome!"
Oh F*CK That! (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously. That fucking sucks. I've been on this site a while ("Look Mom, he has a 4 digit user id"), and that is by far the crappiest design I've seen.
I want lots of news stories all accessible with a short blurb of text. I don't need videos, I don't need animated thingies swirling around, I just want news. News for nerds.
In contrast, most of the other redesigns and tweaks over the years I've enjoyed. This one sucks. It'll probably be the nail in the coffin that sends me over to Ars Technica, who's doing a much better job these days.
Re:Ugh (Score:5, Insightful)
Goddamnit yes.
IF THE IMAGE ISN'T INDICATIVE OF YOUR COMMENT IT DOESN'T BELONG THERE.
Cut the cutsey, generic picture crap. We all know what an airplane looks like. Hire a graphics artist like Aurich on Ars (or make it a game here or something) but if all you can do is find some random picture on Flickr, cut it out. If I want to look at random stupid pictures, I know where to look.
Look, whoever you hired is not smoking the same thing the rest of us are. Can you maybe take a spin through a local nursing home and see what the smart people are doing?
Re:Digg version 2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever since Taco left and Dice took over Slashdot has been trying to increase its readership by modernizing. It's misguided and fails to understand the fundamental appeal of Slashdot that keeps bringing us back to it: the comments.
Adding more pictures, jazzing up the UI with Web 2.0 features, Javascript frameworks and the like is all just making it harder to get to the valuable content. Everything of value is text, and some basic layout to show the relation of comments to each other. It may look old fashioned, but there are a million other sites with crappy "blog" style comments and stock photos to break up the content into one or two paragraph blocks.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the current layout, other than a few minor issues like a lack of unicode support (or even European characters). If you want more people to come to the site just do your jobs better: edit the stories. Cut the obviously biased bullshit and present the facts, then let the debate run.
That's probably not what you want to hear, I know. It would be lovely (for you) if Slashdot could become the new hot tech blog, but that isn't what it is and if you try to make it that even more people will just leave.
PS. Buy the PlusFive app and fix the few remaining bugs. Maybe fix the mobile site up a bit too. I'd comment a lot at weekends more if the mobile experience was better.
Re:Digg version 2.0 (Score:4, Insightful)
And just watch this new design go through mostly as-is just because some really high higher up thinks it looks cool. That's the problem with something owned by a company, can't leave well enough alone and got to screw it up to make it look "new".
Taco had it right back in 1997 when it was his personal blog.
Re:Link broken? (Score:5, Insightful)
giant white bars down the sides
I hate this and I hate every web site that does this. Get it through your thick skulls: my web browser width is different than your preferred width.
I LIKE my wall of text! (Score:5, Insightful)
The current format is more text-dense. The latter sparse and space-wasting. The beta looks just like every other lame web 2.0 crapapalooza wordpress blog. And it's an inefficient waste of space.
Re:Digg version 2.0 (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, yes, this is absolutely a "beta, so you'll get used to it" not a "beta so we can get feedback". Otherwise you'd see at least a little editor participation in the comments.
Re:Link broken? (Score:5, Insightful)
It makes the comment section - which is a large part of the slashdot experience - seem like something tacked onto the end of a news article where people post one line responses.
I hope to hell someone with a say in the matter reads this and understands what it really means. I'll give you a hint:
If you make this change, you will kill Slashdot.
I'm not exaggerating even slightly. Many people spend time here to read and participate in the commentary. By shoehorning the comments into that tiny space beneath the article you're saying "comments aren't important", something which will in all likelihood be soon followed by "comments are a liability" and then "comments now require moderation before being posted". People tolerate the Slash-Bi(sexual) crap now because it takes a second seat to the real meat of the articles and commentary. By reversing those roles you're telling 85% of the active userbase that they're no longer welcome.
Whatever site is left after this change takes effect -- maybe it will make enough advertisement and tracking money to satisfy Dice, but it won't be Slashdot and it won't last a year. Remember what happened to Digg? Yeah, I didn't think so.
By the way, if anyone hasn't gone and looked at the comments section on an article, go look now [slashdot.org] and then tell me I'm wrong.
Re:OH GOD IT BURNS (Score:5, Insightful)
If you loved the old design, you'll hate the new design...
FTFY.
Agreed. I left Digg because of a crappy redesign, I came here. Now they want to make it yet another crappy 2 column blog style instead of thinking about how their readers use their site. This goes live I go elsewhere (or just give up on this style of site).
Re:Link broken? (Score:5, Insightful)
I was going to say, it looks like every other blog out there. That and it doesn't work on Firefox 3.6, which is what I primarily use. It also works poorly on IE, though the layout IE is showing is probably better than the layout Firefox 23 is showing.
My opinion? Kill the fancy graphics and the fancy Javascript/CSS/HTML BS. Just make something that's simple and will work irrespective of browser. Typography issues are more important than adding useless pictures.
tl;dr: Go back to the serif font from 10 years ago, keep the current layout.
Re:Use 100% width please (Score:5, Insightful)
Absolutely agreed on the comment filtering. I instantly left as soon as I realized I was reading every inane comment by an AC and couldn't find a way to filter. That's a dealbreaker.
Re:OH GOD IT BURNS (Score:5, Insightful)
Very much this.
Even compact mode is horribly verbose and wasteful of available space.
Way too much white space. The insanity inducingly narrow content design is made twice as bad by a massive 2nd column eating into much of the sparse space given for content.
The old design was already irritating for only featuring 4 or 5 articles per scroll. The new brings this down too 2. Turning browsing into a terrible scrolling finger chore.
Re:Link broken? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not necessarily kill the fancy graphics, destroy the useless big pictures. I get very irritated at the wordpress blog sites that have to Google for some barely-related huge picture to stick at the top of a story; do that and you've started down the path of making Slashdot just another blog with comments. On Slashdot, the comments are the content.
There should be something for a 2540px wide browser to do, maybe like another site [theregister.co.uk], use multiple columns to display stories, or at least show "most commented/hottest stories of the day stories" or replies to a user's posts in the sidebar instead of a poll.
Re:Link broken? (Score:5, Insightful)
I run slashdot on the "very" old classic mode. not even the web2.0 mode that is now slashdot default but an even older version. Iknow when I am not logged in as I see the useless web 2.0 interface.
Not only is there huge amounts of wasted space on the sides, but even in the comment boxes. It is like the new mobile slashdot. You scroll and scroll and scroll just to go down 5 comments out of hundreds or thousands.
When you fix something try to figure out what is and isn't broken.
The voting system is broken you can now vote multiple times on the same poll.
For fun goto slashBI. talk about ugly, hard to read, confusing with no delineation between topics.
I really wish slashdot would fire the idiots who think up the new web layouts. none of them are worth my two cents let alone the tens of thousands of dollars they are being paid.
Re:Link broken? (Score:5, Insightful)
A-Freakin'-Men. /. is to not have my time wasted (too much) with useless fluff. The new design = all useless fluff.
When I saw it my first thought was, "this is every other new site on the planet." One of the reasons I come to
Re:Link broken? (Score:4, Insightful)
While Slashdot or any bulletin board system is not the same as an ad. . .
Herein lies the point for me. For ~15 years, I have been reading Slashdot as a bulletin board system. Not a "news" site. Not a blog.
Ideally, the front page would only be headlines with expandable summaries. Unfortunately, manipulative, click-whoring headlines have become the norm, so it is more useful to see summaries even though most end up being wasted screen space.
But I digress. . . .I don't know what Slashdot wants to be in the future, but they haven't made a compelling move away from their original intent, and as such, these layout changes only add confusion and reduce efficiency.
Re:Nice! (Score:4, Insightful)
Your signature perfectly sums up the issue. Threads aren't enclosed. You can't tell where one ends and the next begins. Visually hugging the left margin is not enough to demarcate a new thread.
Re:Link broken? (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. Slashdot is one of the last bastions of proper threaded conversation (I'm glad the "giant list" style of comments is finally evolving a sort of pseudo-threading, but it's not really enough).
If you change the list order, you'll make a return to conversation impossible -- this goes for both designs. With this design, you make First Post critical and basically the subject of every subsequent post. Like every blog on the planet.
So I'll go to some other blog, because there will be no other reason to return to slashdot.
Constructive criticism... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not too bad. Slashdot does look dated these days, though that's up to individual taste whether it's a 'bad thing'.
Anyway, two things jump out:
In short I guess: change the design if you like, but keep the layout. It works.
I'm also surprised that you've appear to have opted not to use one of the layout frameworks (e.g. Foundation). Sure you can code it all up yourself but even the bare bones of Foundation would give you a layout the fundamentally 'just works' on different platforms.
Re:Link broken? (Score:5, Insightful)
Simply put, if the new design becomes the norm and there's no way to fall back to the current (non-beta) design, I will be visiting a lot less, and will consider it a great loss.
Hurr. (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot's biggest redesign effort ever is now in beta and you're invited to help guide it.
Yeah, whatever.
This is so visually insulting that the only criticism I can give it is "start over." That's not even getting into the page navigation. I can't navigate to the message number from my ~bmo page to catch up on replies? That really leads to intelligent conversation about topics, doesn't it? Wow, what a POS.
I am reminded of the Yahoo redesign of the Y! Finance fora in 2006. People left in droves, and it's only gone downhill since then, to utter unusability. Because someone somewhere had to "make a name for himself."
I will continue to come here only if certain people come here, but I doubt they will.
--
BMO
Re:Link broken? (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot's biggest selling point, as it's always been, is the conversation the stories generate.
Exactly. And how does the new design reflect this?
On the new design it looks like you cannot link to a specific comment or thread. Check out your user page and look at your comment history. No links to comments, no comment scores.
I suppose comments are simply an unsightly appendage in their new "modern" design (they must clash with all the bullshit social media icons everywhere). Just think of all the "old cruft" they could get rid of if there were no comments: threaded layout, moderation, meta-moderation, karma, all users with a UID less than 7 digits, etc. Replace all that with a flat "top 20" comments listing and a little "Like this on Facebook!" button and it'll be nirvana.
Re:Link broken? (Score:5, Insightful)
This, plus get rid of the pictures. They add nothing but a waste of bandwidth. /. looks like it's work related. Don't make it obvious that we're fucking around.
Re:Link broken? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Digg version 2.0 (Score:5, Insightful)
That might be what they think they're doing, but all they're accomplishing is making Slashdot's corpse look like every other website out there that has comments. The new version is ugly, utterly unusable unless you turn all of those pointless images off and there's no threading of comments. Hell, even the Disqus widget that some comic strip sites use to manage comments handles threading correctly. I don't know what Dice thinks it's going to accomplish with this New! Shiny! Improved! layout, but if Slashdot survives this, I'll be very surprised, and if it's still worth reading, it will be a miracle.
Re:Link broken? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ditto. But do you know what would be really awesome? NNTP interface. Slashdot already allows disabling advertisements (at least it offered the option to me), and the discussions are thread-structured, so why not offer them up via Usenet server? Every section would be its own newsgroup, articles would be top-level posts, and filtering could be handled by having multiple newsgroups with different tresholds for various topics.
That way, you could have Web n+1.infinity for the ooh shiny -crowd, a program of their choice for hardcore users, and a good API for mobile access.
Re:Link broken? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would actually prefer if the information density of the existing site could be increased. There's still a bit more vertical whitespace than is required t make it readable.
Re:Link broken? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Link broken? (Score:5, Insightful)
Additionally there was less content on the initial screen than there is on the current design. Much of the time I skim the headlines, if I find one I find relevant I immediately read the blurb. If the blurb appeals then I follow the link(s) or read the comments. This new layout doesn't offer as much content on a given screen, and one thing I learned in design in general, if you don't grab your audience with little more than a glimpse, then you've lost your audience.
This. It took me about 5 seconds to conclude the new design for the front page sucks so much I didn't even bother to look at the comments. If it fails in the most fundamental criteria for being useful, as you so well described, then I can't imagine any real thought went into this design other than "we need pointless pictures" and that for some reason it needs to follow along with the stupid new fad of having an absurd amount of white space.
Re:Link broken? (Score:5, Insightful)
I really wish slashdot would fire the idiots who think up the new web layouts. none of them are worth my two cents let alone the tens of thousands of dollars they are being paid.
Unfortunately, the design seen in this new Slashdot Beta is extremely similar to the design used in all new web-based stuff; just look at Google's stuff for instance. All the web designers have drunk the kool-aid.
Just what is so difficult.. (Score:4, Insightful)
...about layout that is fluid/elastic? What makes it on par with aerospace engineering? IT ISN'T THAT HARD! It is not that much to ask for really! Using browser's full width has been done successfully on /. for many years now--what is with this throwback to fixed width that leaves 50% of my maximised browser window blank? I to NOT want to party like it's 1999!
Leave the shiney-chromey left and right columns fixed for all I care, but PLEASE--push them to the EDGES and use the flexible space for the main content.
I do like the updated style/presentation, I am not looking for the site to do ALL the thinking for me--the ONLY thing I am really wanting is a website that uses the width of my browser! The existing/old site does this already so it CANT BE THAT HARD. In my opinion that ONE thing would transform the beta site from one I'd spend minimal time on to one that would be my home page. HONESTLY.
Don't fix what ain't broke. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Use the whole width of the screen. The narrow width gives the individual comments a ridiculously tall aspect ratio which destroys the flow of the thread. The threads need to stick out like dogs balls for an old fart like me to follow them.
2. Get rid of the pictures on the front page or give the option of a list format that reflects the style of the current front page, thumbnails perhaps?.
Like many other loyal fans, the reason I have posted well over 5K comments, a few stories, and the occasional small donation in the past 10+yrs, is the comment system! There are a billion sites where I can post comments at strangers, but other than chat rooms full of sexually frustrated people, this is the only site where I can hold a conversation with them.
Slashdot will never be the "cool kid", but this "new look" is like Sheldon picking out his own suit, even the geeks are shaking their heads in bewilderment.
Re:Link broken? (Score:5, Insightful)
Bingo. And I actually fear that the danger may be more insidious, since a narrower comments section not only makes it harder to read, but also implicitly encourages commenters to leave shorter, more trite comments. I'd expect that a load of users who would have others left a +5 Insightful/Informative/Interesting comment will instead just leave a quick quip. And while I love the +5 Funny comments we have, I'd hate it if we had a design that essentially encouraged them to the detriment of the others.
The current design(s) do a good job of supporting long-form responses, while at the same time encouraging the user to make their point clear from the get-go by having only the first line displayed when the comment is initially collapsed. The comments need to use the full width of the page, or darn close to it. As it is, the beta comments section looks like a standard Disqus-style thing, and I don't exactly associate sites that use Disqus with places where quality conversations can be had and reasonable people can be reasoned with. In contrast, I do expect that of Slashdot, and I too see that as its biggest selling point.
If they neuter the conversations, they'll strip away the most defining aspect of Slashdot, since I'm entirely with you: I can find my news elsewhere and faster with better signal-to-noise ratios.
To narrow and to small on my 1920x1080 screen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Old site is better. You should fire you designer because there last job was obviously doing wordpress themes.
Re:Low Res (Score:4, Insightful)
Images at the top of each article are a waste of space; dump them and display the full bloody summary instead !
Seconded. Summaries are infinitely more informative than images. Images don't tell the story - words do. Do people really need to see a picture of Edward Snowden or a Kindle to better understand the article? No, they do not by any means.
Just generally speaking, are you guys even asking why you need to make these changes before you do them? How do you think they possibly help the site? In /.'s 15+ years of operation, have you not figured out the formula yet? Your audience is unique, and your website is too. Don't just turn /. into a generic site - there's plenty of other ones just like that. Keep it like it is guys, it's not broken, don't try to fix it.
Re:Link broken? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah the only reason anyone comes here is for the comments. If I have to work harder to read them, I have less reason to come here. Seriously, widen the comments section and make sure I don't have to click TWICE to get to something I previously had to click ONCE to get to. Especially if its the only reason I visit. This design will kill slashdot.
Re:Just what is so difficult.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously though, You're still voting in favour of:
1) larger default text
2) huuuuuuuuge amounts of whitespace (which we are cynically certain will become ad space as soon as it's out of beta)
3) useless stock photos whose sole purpose are eye magnets
4) a photo-mosaic approach to summarizing the top stories in the default view. (I'm sure anyone with vision issues is gonna hate this)
5) Crippling the nested/threaded comment system. Which; as many have pointed out, is an important, I dare say critical and fundamental component of /.
6) More obvious whoring out to social media venues, a phenomenon which a rather large and vocal portion of us hate and bash at every opportunity. (C'mon Soulskill, do you really think many of us are going to link to here on Facebook? And even if we did, would you *want* the kind of yammerheads you'd catch casting a net in those waters?)
7) an overall marketing and packaging approach more suited to a glossy magazine than a salon where the articles are stimulators for lively conversation, debate and even outright arguing over by a self selected group of reasonably intelligent people. (trolls notwithstanding) Shallow glitz over actual content.
Re:Link broken? (Score:4, Insightful)
That was my first thought, too. It looks like the mobile version. At least the comments don't show a huge number of worthless entries that read "Filtered due to preferences." like the mobile site does. (Here's an idea, guys: If a comment is filtered, don't show it at all! I understand that when I have the reading threshold higher than -1 I won't see some things. That's kind of the point. You don't have to tell me about each of the things you're not telling me about.)
That said, I'd actually come here to defend the new layout. I chalked up most of the actual problems to things not yet implemented, and most of the visual mess to just being unfamiliar. But since the reply link is one of those things not yet implemented I had to go back to the old layout to post this.
Wow.
The difference in readability is huge. Compared side-by-side, the old format is much, much more readable than the new format. The new summary does not include the text from the main page, just the "read more" text. Bullets are missing from the list of changes. (list-style-type: none; Really? You went out of your way to achieve this?) I thought maybe the text was printed in a lower-contrast color, but that's not the case -- it's that the font-weight has been reduced to less than normal via CSS, presumably to emulate the skinny unreadable text in iOS7. (At least Apple provided a way to change the default font to bold in the accessibility preferences.)
In short, it's not just that it's new and unfamiliar. It's objectively less readable, by design. Knock it off, Slashdot! Maybe (maybe!) choose a non-default font, but once you do don't try to tweak it to make it look hip. It looks like ass.