Tim Baxter wrote:Fried, comparing the before and after, I think it's hit and miss. I think the old one is pretty bad. It's dated, slow, appears broken, and is fairly difficult to navigate around.
The new one looks better and is much faster, but... I think they've over-emphasized social media stuff, especially out of context. You don't want people to leave your site to go follow you on twitter or FB, you want them to post your content to FB and twitter to bring more folks BACK to the site.
I think it doesn't play nice on small monitors.
I think too much content is hidden away behind some menu or another, and the designer was way too excited by what he could do gadget-wise. Present the content first, then worry bout the frills.
It's still difficult to navigate, just in a new and different way.
I hate the photo/article scroller thingy. Annoying and in the way.
One definition of good design is that it bridges the gap between the business needs and desires and the visitor needs and desires. That one doesn't. It was just somebody trying to make something "cool". Neither the business nor the visitor is getting what they want.
And the story pages look like an afterthought. The photos have no sense of flow, and it's obvious whoever did it had no sense of typography whatsoever.
Still like it better than the old one, but I think they missed the mark pretty badly. I think it'll feel really dated really soon, and I think they'll really, really wonder why they downplayed the content so much, since they are ostensibly a content company.
Thanks for the critique, Tim. I suppose I should admit that I turn 49yrs old next month, and that I'm not like most modern internet users. IIRC, I bought my first home computer and logged on to this (then) new world of communications in 1995 or so. I'm still so amazed that I can find so much information by just playing around on my keyboard that I don't really mind old website design. I have to admit..sometimes, I actually prefer the internet of the mid-1990s to the current day..it seems that every time I place a query into Google nowdays, the first 209,384,752,093 (yes, that's an exaggeration) results are commercial interests trying to sell me something slightly related to my query, instead of pages that actually have something of value to share with the world. 
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