How-To Geek Forums / Site Suggestions
(Solved) - Hate the new layout
(42 posts)- View Accepted Answer
- Remove Solved Status
I really LIKE the New HTG Layout.
The header is clean, uncluttered and the drop down menus are efficient.
As for Windows 8 running on the OEM machines shipping now, Discussion Responders had better get up to speed with UEFI Bios and GPT Disk Structure because the questions will be coming soon. :)
Rick P.
Being a new member I am not accustomed to the old layout. Being "unbiased" or neutral I can say the new layout is very nice. I guess HTG forum is no different than when OSs have new releases. A lot complain because it is not like the old. We all will survive with the new layout. For those vehemently opposed remember change is a fact of life. It will and must happen in spite of us.
Like many people who visit the site I don't feel the need to come on the forum however after the changes to the main site I feel like making a post.
In the recent past 2 other major tech sites made significant changes to their home pages and both had to climb down as the new changes were not well received, initially both put on the front that all was rosy in the garden, it was just people not accepting change until finally after a few weeks they eventually did realise those changes they thought were great weren't actually as great as they thought and decided to listen to their readers.
Lifehacker - The changes were that bad that users actually migrated to Lifehacker UK which kept the old format, they eventually saw the light and created the blog format rather than load of scrolling columns.
Engadget - Took the same path, see here for the very large comments section:-
http://www.engadget.com/2012/1.....-engadget/
Also they mentioned load times were better etc etc but no-one seemed to care except the site managers themselves.
So what are my complaints? not much really
Well the Favicon is terrible, not such a big problem but it looks really tacky and designed by someone in paint.
The home page is ridiculously cluttered, the middle column should not be there, it should be merged into the RH column and be something like an information/resource centre.I would guess the majority of users come to read new articles and these are now condensed into the LH column or roughly one third of the page which frankly isn't enough. Simply put the 'sections' under the Main menu (windows, features, mobile etc) are laid out how the front page should look, more space for each article with the info bar on the RH side and no middle column.
If you are going to persist with the new layout, may I suggest that one of the options under the Main Menu box shows all articles in chronological order in the same format as the other sections? At least this gives the option of some sort of blog view.
Thanks
I prefer the old HTG homepage layout.
BUT... it's a website designed by, maintained by and funded by someone other than myself. IOW, I have no equity in HTG, therefore I don't see myself having a 'right' to complain. Personally, I tend to focus on the positive, being thankful for what I have rather than looking for something to whine about.
Thank you, Lowell, for providing us with HTG.
One of the biggest complaints that we got for 2 years of the old design was that people wanted to just read the good stuff without all the fluff. We provided that with this design.
The whole point of using 3 columns is that we have a lot of very different types of posts. Before everything just got jumbled together, whereas in the new design, the feature articles are on the left, the geek trivia, news, and links are in the middle, and the fun facts / geek glossary / (upcoming new stuff) are on the right.
Trying to arrange everything into a blog view just didn't work, and it wasn't working. When we ran a wallpaper post there's no need for words, so we ended up with a thumbnail and a bunch of dead white space that looked tacky. I was just unable to even include other things because of the format.
Comparing our layout change to Gawker / Lifehacker is rather silly, I mean, everything on HTG is still on a single page ordered by date. There's just more stuff. It's nothing like their original weird scrolling design. Instead of giant category pages with a list of 2000 links, you can quickly jump to the latest articles for Mobile, Windows, etc. And for those that don't have adblock installed, the site loads much better than it used to, with more content available above the fold, and it loads much faster.
Every time we change anything, we get hate mail, and a lot of it. And then eventually everybody calms down.
That said, I meant to include a blog view for those people that are scared of change, but I didn't get the code worked out in time, and I've been busy since.
Lowell, I personally have no problems with the new layout and appreciate your efforts. In some ways, it is more convenient; otherwise, it's just different and just needed getting used to (something that was easy for me). I do miss the cartoons that Asian Angel used to post, however, but I suspect their disappearance is coincidental.
The one thing I do not like is something I suspect is just broken and you haven't had the time to fix it yet (bugs happen, kinda like death and taxes). The text in the forum...er...discussion menu doesn't change from blue to black after a post has been read. I would really like to see that come back since it made reading the discussion menu much easier for my old ADHD "blessed" mind.
