How do you like the new look?

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• MadAd - Tuesday, November 20, 2007 - link

  Its boring to look at, sorry
  
  The gfx to text ratio has gone down hugely yet theres enough white space to enlarge the pictures in the list portion.

• DEMO24 - Tuesday, November 20, 2007 - link

  Overall I don't think it's too bad. Definitely helps get more articles up on the main page which helps if one wants to refer back after a week or so from date of publishing.
  
  However there are some issues that need to be addressed:
  
  The older reviews text spills over onto that right side vertical border line with the news. Also this section is a bit messy and unclean. I would not recommend having the text formated as it is, instead keep the description portion more compact. A little more space in between the articles would help as well, and the section description(video, gadget, etc) should be a differently colored hyperlink to that section.
  
  Otherwise its good and the idea is there!

• Rocket321 - Tuesday, November 20, 2007 - link

  I like the new layout. It makes new articles very prominent on the site. My only potential problem is if you post more than 3 articles in a 24hour period it could be easier to miss the ones that fall off the top part.
  
  Perhaps make the top display to show 4 articles across?
  
  You guys are awesome by the way. Thanks for doing all the hard work so that we can make informed purchases.

• nowayout99 - Tuesday, November 20, 2007 - link

  It looks more like you're trying to sell me those 3 products than review them.
  
  Unless you have an attention-grabbing, photogenic picture to use, the oversized thumbnails and not worth it. They're not attractive pictures. Blowing them up is a bad move.
  
  Those huge article promo spaces are also overkill in general. You could shrink everything down and easily fit more content into that space and it would actually have more impact.
  
  Really, the old design was very good. As you recall, we went to great lengths (and raised a lot of hell) to help you perfect it.
  
  The tabs are cool, but the main promo space needs to consider the above. Please!

• Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, November 20, 2007 - link

  Very valid points - those were just quick images I threw up there so it didn't look odd. The main point to moving to the three box layout on the front page is to give the three latest articles equal attention. We always get people saying that they missed an article if something else is on top of it, hopefully this will alleviate that problem. It also gives us the ability to promote good blog posts to the top of the site, once again, without pushing articles down.
  
  Does that make sense? Do you have any other suggestions given the above?
  
  Thanks for the response :)
  
  Anand

• jtok202 - Tuesday, November 20, 2007 - link

  The overall screen looked quite offensive more like a Ad ware pop up at first, The primary reason for this is I expected a clean text with graphics that didn't superimpose upon your viewing. Secondly the resolution to display this is a bit big, Working on school/work computer with 1024x768 the site looked like it had been hacked up and bloated. The 3 articles need to be scaled down to a more manageable size, and I would suggest that the option of putting up more or less than three depending on your output per week/day this way you don't have two new articles from Friday and just the last article from Wednesdays. Though you would lose that promotion on the last article, when I have not checked in a few days I will look through the previous days. If the point is to keep the 3 timely people will either check more often or will just search the archives anyway.
  @ nowayout99 text placement around pictures is very important and on top makes sense to me
  ads are not consistently serving atm, about 1/3 of the time they fail or 1/3 of the time they serve it can go either way.
  One thing I am loving and which I thought would have been convenient a long time ago are the three tabs.
  I would get rid of blog's in the articles section as it is a cross purposing when it has a very clearly labeled section for it, considerably more so than before, in addition unless it is something like. Asking for feedback on new website design, Armageddon will happen next week, or other big news/blog posts They should remain where people can choose to read them rather than be served on the front page. The consolidation of the daily tech is very nice.
  ..... Thats all I can think of

• jtok202 - Tuesday, November 20, 2007 - link

  Looking at it again the ads are screwing with your formatting and need to be cleaned up so as to minimize wasted space and to allow a good flow, More like what you see on CNN though I personally find the ads very annoying in the middle of the story They need to be clean too and have a defined border that does not infringe on the story/text and does not waste a bunch of white space. Thank you for keeping the ads minimal and tasteful.

• nowayout99 - Tuesday, November 20, 2007 - link

  Also, just a quick addendum about the thumbnails.
  
  Placing thumbnails above articles means the thumbnails will be the first thing we look at. They will supersede the actual article headline. So if this is really the way you want to go, the photo *must* identify the product *and* be attractive.
  
  For example, a stock photo of a CPU die won't be enough. You'll need to add "AMD Phenom Review" or "The Phenom is here" or "Anand Tears AMD a New One" or whatever onto the picture itself. (just joking about that last example, but you get the idea :-)). And the photo needs to look attractive when you do it.
  
  There are a lot of these very important nuances to consider. It can be a case of the dog chasing his tail a little bit. So keep it all in mind if this is the path you really want to go down. "Web psychology" lecture over. :-)

• nowayout99 - Tuesday, November 20, 2007 - link

  Yeah it definitely gives the last 3 articles equal attention. LOL.
  
  You can still achieve that goal with a smaller font and thumbnail, as the new background and horizontal layout of those spots does most of the work for you already.
  
  You could reduce the height/width of the spots and add a 4th spot, I don't know if that would be perfect, but it would tone them down and be an improvement.
  
  Tough love is still love. ;) Thanks for listening.

• nowayout99 - Tuesday, November 20, 2007 - link

  BTW, you're also probably going to get hell for pushing down the Daily News section for an ad.