After about two years we decided to do a makeover of the front page of OSNews. This new design focuses more on the original content we host rather than the previous “newsbits”/portal nature of OSNews. Let’s just say that we try to have a… mini focus shift.Another reason that led us to the redesign was the fact that we noticed that many readers are “missing” stories sometimes and even submit news for stories that are already in our front page. This happens because many users generally don’t… scroll enough (we usually post 10 stories per day so some scrolling was required with the old design). This new design will be able to make visible all recent stories at a glance, with less scrolling.
Additionally, we had to find a way to fit the big 728×60 ads (the normal size ads just don’t pay well the last few years from what I hear), so a rearranging of the menu had to be done too.
We know that not everyone is going to like the new front page of OSNews, so this is why we have left the previous front page intact. So, if you don’t like the new default look, bookmark the old one (no, we are not going to offer cookie-based preferences, so don’t ask ;).
Some users argued that the new design requires more clicks and it has smaller descriptions, and this is true. It is the same way sites like Newsforge and News.com or InfoWorld are designed. To read a story fully or get access to the external links, you will have to click through (except if you are using the old layout).
Please note that the rest of the pages and the mobile version of the site will remain the same, only the front page and the menu received an update.
If you would like to get rid of the ads and the sidebar, you can subscribe to OSNews for a year for only $20. Here is a demo of how it looks like without the ads.
The new design makes it much more difficult to get an overview of the content.
I think it’s a good idea to focus on original content, but I think you should rather make a single column (like before) and then separate original and non-original content vertically by making a header of some kind.
Let me stress that the two column design is a /really/ bad idea.
Thanks for keeping the old one online, it will take some time before I get used to the new one
. But I like the idea of giving OSNews articles more exposure.
>Let me stress that the two column design is a /really/ bad idea.
TheRegister has many more columns.
Besides, this way helps to do less scrolling. I guess it is just a matter of getting used to it. If you don’t like it, please bookmark home2.php
The two column thing is confusing to look at. I’m not kidding. Something very distracting about it that takes focus. One thought, if you must keep the two columns, have them most recent > oldest going from the top to the bottom in column one and then continuing in column two. For some reason that’s just what I expected.
I don’t like the design, but you deserve kudos for leaving up the old version.
IMO much better than old one
great job!
I agree with the other posters comments that the multiple columns are hard for me to process quickly. Maybe having some bold delinieation or boxes would help focus the eyes more than the openess. But I suspect, for my brain, a single column is always going to be easier to process.
Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad!!!
Please, please don’t ever take down “home2.php”
*sits in corner and sobs*
I already emailed the OSNews crew describing my problems with new layout. The new two column design is so hard to read that I didn’t even notice this article until after I sent the email.
Another suggestion, make the dividing line between each row MUCH darker and more defined, that allows me to glance at each row as a “unit” and process it quicker than the current design. Do that and I say strike my earlier comment about doing a register style columns.
After getting over the shock of seeing OSNews eaten alive by savage beasts…no, wait…seeing OSNews sport a whole new home page design, I thought was well implemented and should help give a more concrete overview of what sort of content is new on the site at any given moment. However, I do have one complaint, and it’s to do with the linkbar at the top. It’s reeeeeealy ugly! A big white box with an ad in it…the OSNews logo *smashed* into a dinky white box, big honkin’ grey buttons for links…ugh!
My recommendations:
* Move the ad below the logo/linkbar. Get rid of white background.
* OSNews logo needs to be bigger. It’s a nice logo but it looks puny right now. And get rid of white background.
* Make the buttons a little smaller, and choose a better color. Perhaps a lighter shade of grey with just a slight olive tint, to follow the logo color scheme more.
As a Web designer, I tend to go for the graphically rich and colorful look myself, so I know I’m probably not the best candidate to comment on OSNews designs which are going to be fairly simple/plain. However, I really dislike this new look at the top — it doesn’t even fit the rest of the site when you think about it.
Best regards,
Jared
First of all thanks for keeping an option for the old design. I wish every site would do the same.
But I agree with the folks here that now it’s too hard to know _where_ to look, it’s all mixed up. Some boxes around the articles would help us to focus in one item at a time.
>Move the ad below the logo/linkbar.
Naah…
>Get rid of white background.
I can’t.
It is part of the ad code running from another server, in the IFRAME.
>OSNews logo needs to be bigger.
Too many buttons need to fit on 765pix wide. This is why I had to resize it down to 130pix.
>Make the buttons a little smaller, and choose a better color.
Other OSes come by default with larger fonts, so I need to make sure that there is some lax space in the cells.
Like the new layout alot better than the old one, nice work.
That white background has got to go. While your at it the news items need to be more clearly defined, white space just doesn’t cut it. Each news item also needs some cleaning up, right now it seems all clumped together. Maybe different background colours are needed, for example the news item title just doesn’t stand out enough in my mind despite the bold text.
exactly
Although the new design looks attractive, I feel it’s harder to see what you’re interested in, the page to me looks too cluttered. A simple solution to this which would also give readers the option of choosing the layout without the need for two separate pages would be to use 2 style sheets. Good standards compliant browsers such as Mozilla and Firefox allow you to switch style on the fly. If you seperate style from content, there is no reason why you could not offer both or maybe even more layouts so readers can pick the one they prefer. This would also fit in with your Pocket PC offerings, as that’s what CSS and XHTML were designed for. Just a suggestion btw. I still thinks it’s a great site and will continue to visit regularly..
Till
If you wanted a new design you should have asked for a new design. The web designers community would have put up a contest and you would have gotten a webpage designed with standards in mind, smaller in size and more flexible via alternative views (alternative css) and all that FOR FREE.
Personaly I don’t mind the homepage design as I never use it, I get my news via the newsfeed.
Well, wanting to highlight original content is a good thing. But.. oy. I hope that this two-column design will still be tweaked.
I think my biggest problem with it is that it strips away the article description text. That was the stuff I read to decide if I wanted to read the article or not. That text has been shortened to be nearly useless, it seems to me. Brevity is the soul of wit, but I’m not smart enough to keep up.
Basing the new format on the behavior of story submitters seems kinda strange to me… the amount or readers who were fine with scrolling seems like an unobtainable dataset. So it’s like comparing apples with the mystery fruit under a cloth.
Meh. Please leave a prominent link to /home2.php
This new look is really ugly… too confusing.
> Additionally, we had to find a way to fit the big 728×60 ads
> (the normal size ads just don’t pay well the last few years
> from what I hear), so a rearranging of the menu had to be
> done too.
I usually block ALL advertising networks by default (including burstnet) so I never see advertisements….
127.0.0.1 http://www.burstnet.com
in /etc/hosts and…. game over for advertisers.
Until they came up with decent small banners that don’t fit SO much space on pages I will keep ads disabled…. forever.
The old design was much better, and a lot easier to see the news, now they are cramped together 🙁
Some people say The Register has even more columns, that is true, and is also even worse to get a overview of, and their design is really really bad.
I like the new layout, it takes a bit of getting used to after so long with the old one, but it looks more modern, and more importantly you can get uptodate on whats going on faster if you need to.
I also appreciate you keeping the old design around, although I probably won’t use it, the option is there.
I also think that the storys need to be broken up in to boxes. That should make it much easier to view as of right now it all just looks like one huge blob and not alot of individual articles.
but will the OSNEWS specific items still have a red heading?
Posting this from SLAX, slax rocks!
😀
I agree with Axord that my favorite way of processing the old page was to read the short synopsis and decide if it sounded worth reading more. I can’t really do that with the new layout. In fact, the new barely there article explanations are hardly better than just scanning the titles in the RSS feed in the sidebar on slashdot.
After opening the page, I think too much place is occupied by ad’s, huge menus, empty pads.
Please take a look at http://www.google.com I even look and shop on those ads because those advertisers don’t make me annoyed at the first “conntact” time (but maybe I’m an exception).
Thank you for keeping the old page available!
>but will the OSNEWS specific items still have a red heading?
The osnews-specific items are the first headlines, above the “Today’s Headlines”.
Regarding more descriptive text, part of the point of the redesign was to lead visitors to “read more”, because we wanted to not have scrollbars because of so much text. People were really missing stories out! Sorry.
Adding some shading the the article baclground to create a box is a nice start. I’d prefer it a little darker (or a single pixel black box outline would be even better), but it’s much better than the white was. The added dilineation makes it much less work, but my eyes still have to scan left to right much more than the old single column. Well maybe not more, but there’s an extra place find in the middle instead of alawys starting in one location and then just scrolling the page.
>or a single pixel black box outline would be even better
I have already tried to add a border to the news items. It looks terribly boxy when I do, so it will have to stay as is I am afraid..
Well, I commend you on trying to improve things, but ugh. Far as ads, i don’t care, they don’t bother me. But the thing that was so nice about OSnews is the layout, it had the easiest/nicest layout around. Before you can just scroll down and see whats going on. Now I don’t have a clue, you don’t have the blurbs to tell you what something is about. It’s very hard on they eyes and hard to focus in on something. I don’t see how scrolling was bad at all. Far easier to scroll a tad then to have to work hard to figure out what you are looking at. And there isn’t much information given for each topic. If it was a single column with more info it would be ok. I think the original content bit could be moved to the bottom. I also don’t understand the design to eliminate scrolling if now you have to scroll down since no topic is visable till you scroll down, where before you could see the latest couple topics without scrolling.
Seams like it would make more sense to move the original content stuff and the two articles to a block on the right hand side so they remain at the top to get you effect of keap original content up top, but then bring back the single column up the middle again.
I also don’t get people missing articles, thats hardly a flaw of the old design, thats a flaw of their eyes, or simply them. The new design will only make it easier to miss things.
“focus shift” you dare call something a focus shift
guess we are no longer looking as OSnews, but IAnews.
This audience likes skimming text, I don’t think anyone would be too terribly opposed to removing all of the topic icons and replacing them with more text from each article.
I like it, i miss having at least a sentance telling what the story is about but not bad.
As for ads.. everyone pay the dang 20 dollars. Thats freaking cheap to support a site like this. FREAKING CHEAP!
absolutely horrible. impossible to navigate, sparse taglines, too much info crammed into a small space. almost bad enough to make me run screaming and never come back.
Remember people, the newsbits on the bottom of the page don’t have yet text because this is a new field in the database, added only a few hours ago, so they don’t have the text yet.
where are the short article summaries… they were just right for scanning. not to much and not to little. these box with titles and one liners don’t cut it.
thanks for keeping the old design alive.
I’ve never got this. I don’t see them bothering me at all. No I don’t use an ad blocker, I find ad blockers make things look worse (yeah, not ad, now you got nice dead space). I think I would be more down with paying for the old format then removing ads.
Nah, I really do not like this new one.
I think its quite funny that OSNews is always going on about usability these days, and yet Eugenia comes up with a page that confuses me no end.
Can you offer some cookie-based preferences?
i am surprised to read that people were missing some stories. (are they to lazy to scroll ? ;o)
ok i’m waiting some days to see if i can get accustomed to the new design or have to switch back to the old one.
BTW, i really don’t care whether the story is original or not.
I prefer a FIFO layout — and what matters is the quality of the information, not the source (IMHO).
I think it should be vice versa – the old look should be default and there should be a link to change to alternative(current default) view as the new look is just too bloated/complicated.
Also there’s no introductory text about topics and no info about who posted the news at the first look.
Then there’s the “Todays headlines” subject which doesnt seem to be appropriate because many news have been posted 2+ days ago, not today.
hope things get better…
Hello
this pages very very beautiful,also text.
Muhammad kargar in Larestan ,Iran
Here’s my browser info:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8
And the first two topics seem to have crashed into each other. Other than that, I don’t mind the new layout.
-Apollyon
I like the new design. Well done Eugenia.
I have the same firefox, and it doesn’t have this problem. Please reload the page and email me a screenshot.
The new design is awful, and really offers no improvement over the previous one. If people are too lazy to scroll, tough, and is hardly a reason introduce the awful new design.
Awful:
2 columns, don’t “look and feel right”
decreased article summarization is annoying
Multicolumn design is so-so for magazines.
But in news-site it is really confusing and annoying.
Too much work for eyes and brain to select/sort out.
Mmmmmm
Not so good : we must click on the news to know what is about. It was better when we can read almost 2 or 3 lines about the news (like before). But the general design is beautiful, BTW.
Eugenia,
It seems to load fine now, must have been my crappy dialup connection. Sorry to have made you worry. But if I see the same problem again, I’ll e-mail you a screenshot.
-Apollyon
First of all, thanks to the osnews team for a great site.
The new layout is however a major step backwards. It a lot harder to read with two coloumns. The short summary of each atricle is not there any more which means I have to click on each article to know if I’m interested in it. And I don’t get the arguments for the new layout, what’s the problem with scrolling? It’s much better to scroll than to cram everything into an unreadable mess, IMHO.
>TheRegister has many more columns.
I wouldn’t take design ideas from TheRegister.
Sorry, but the new look is awful (not as bad as el reg, but bad enough)
It’s nicely done, but very hard to read, and you have to click on each story before you even know whether it’s of interest to you or not. I’ll be sticking to the old layout I’m afraid!
Well, some things are nice. Such as the switch from absolute dates to relative for article freshness, that’s good. This doesn’t yet apply to the home-brewed content boxes, nor the inside-the-article headings, but I’ve got hope for consistency in the future. The menu block at the top is pretty ugly, but it’s obviousness had thrown aspects of the site in my face of which I was ignorant. Usability wins out here, hands down.
In terms of highlighting original articles, sure the latest two get pride of place at the top of the page, but the rest of your content is diminished to headline-links. Easy for my eye at least to skip over that one column-spanning bar, directly to the iconified articles.
Now that I think about it… Perhaps that transition space is the source of much of the cognitive dissonance people are reporting. There’s the split boxes at the top, each enclosing an article. then there’s the column-spanner, holding many articles in a list fashion. Then there’s the main column-spanning box, holding articles in a two-column table. All three are presenting data in a different format. It seems to me that there’s at least a mental pause in switching between the parsing of each area.
It could just be the transition period talking, but the simplicity and cleanliness of the old linear article stream strikes me as being a friendlier format on the eyes and mind. But I’m only one data point–what were the results of your usability testing?
man it’s just wrong in so many ways.
it is really hard to read and totally unfriendly to ones eyes. with the old layout it took me usually like a few seconds to glimpse over the headlines and filter the stuff that interessts me. i dont have any problem with the stupid uberbig ad on top, but this headline listing is really terrible.
i can sympathise entirely with a design which works with lowest-common-denominator browsers, but the rigidity of 800×600 designing makes the site look silly for me at 1024×768
and if it looks silly at 1024×768, lord knows how 1600×1200 users feel.
other than that, i quite like it. makes it easier to catch up after a day or so, somehow feels cleaner
> lord knows how 1600×1200 users feel.
I use 1600×1200. I never maximize my browser. I always have two windows open perfectly aligned vertically: my email client at 800×1200, and my browser, at 800×1200.
IMHO, new should mean better.
The new design is “readability impaired” to say the least.
(you might read that as “ugly”)
And even worse, is it not valid HTML according to http://validator.w3.org/
You should definitely look at XHTML 1.1 compliance.
Have a nice day,
The new design is really ugly, the old one was nice.
Maybe you should make the top-advertisemet a little bigger, maybe 300-400px height? [/irony]. I need to block the big, white and ugly ad-space.
The small form-search-space is not usability friendly.
The OS News Logo is too small.
OS forums?
I don’t think that pumping up the logo size is overall a good thing–the menu box height would have to be increased as well. I think keeping that menu slim is all for the greater good…
I rather scroll than have to read in weird ways.
Focusing on your own content might be a good idea, I’m just here for the news thought
I can understand if the osnews admins look at “original content” as something special, with higher priority, etc. I guess that’s why it is more exposed in the new web design. However, I think it’s quite important to realize that readers don’t care who wrote the article, if it was produced by osnews or by some other new site. We just want to read it. Having “original content” separeted from the other news items doesn’t make sense to the reader, it just adds to the confusion.
I strongly vote for going back to the old design.
We need some body text just like we used to, i’m sure
there are alot of people like me who decide by that body text if the news item is worthy of our attention or not… I simply don’t get what was wrong with the old style… the KISS system works wonderfully, and if people can’t work out to scroll down the page, then a topic such as OS development simply isn’t for them, lets be honest here
The multicolumn system simply hurts the eyes i’m sorry… I’ll be a home2 person as well it looks, but thanks for the effort
I have no problem with scrolling, yet I swear articles disappeared on me. The behavior I noticed was that new articles would sometimes insert themselves in between two older articles when I reloaded the main page. I’m not certain whether these ‘new’ articles were in fact newer in date than the articles they appeared between; I never thought to check.
I personally find the orininal content more interesting most of the time, even though there are too many reviews of the same linux distros, but I guess you can’t blame OSNews for not getting enough variation in these articles. but yeah some readers care, I’m one.
The new frontpage looks nice BUT it is much harder to get a good grip of the news with a 2-column layout.
Yes, the Register and Inquier have it but those are generally considered very hard to get a good overview of.
You really have to think of how you read a page. Having two columns is fine on a flowing text on a page where it is natural to continue reading. On a newspage where you have a headline and then a few lines of descriptive text you scan for interresting headlines and then you read the text of those. This is extremely frustrating to do with a two-column view.
I have to say that I’m a bit surprised that OSNews of all pages would consider this layout given Eugenias and others statments about usability in OS:es.
Would it not be possible to have original content slightly separated above all the rest of the news and simply let the two listings (original / linked news) tick independently of eachother in a single-column layout?
Other changes are good and is more easy to get used to but two column view is a make or break feature for me (and to many others as well).
Like everyone else here, I am not too fond of the two-column layout. I also prefer chronological organisation of stories, it just makes more sense (like email/usenet). You can find stories by remembering what they were near to.
I like that the original content takes a prominent place at the top, it is OK that they are in two columns like that in this case because there are only two items.
The Register has a crap layout.
I run at 1600×1200, often with the browser maximised, but the design doesn’t really bother me at all. Sure, it only uses 1/3 of the horizontal space, but I am used to sites looking like that, I even designed my own for 800×600. I think with a large monitor you have more of the screen in peripheral vision so to make the site fill the screen would be harder to read. But I dislike sites that are aligned to the left (Register again), which OSNews thankfully isn’t.
Traditional banner ads don’t pay well… have you considered Google-style text ads? These provide just enough useful information in text, and Google does a good job at selecting ads that are relevant to the context.
I click about 10 times as many Google text ads than all banner ads on all other sites combined.
Of course it is, every comment that criticizes anything about OSNEWS gets moderated. The only opinions allowed are those that agree with eugenias.
I’m the one who reported your post. And I did that because I found it offensive. If you want to criticize OSNews then post some constructive comments becayse insults won’t get you anywhere.
There is nothing to agree nor disagree with in your post, it’s just an insult.
And trust me, I disagree with Eugenia in a lot of subjects.
Gotta say, the 2 column design is quite hard to read. The size of the headline text is just too small to be able to skim over the page and find interesting articles quickly. You end up having to “engage” with the page more which is a bad thing when you just want to quickly see if there are articles you are interested in.
Also I am sure people with visual impairments would find it even harder than me.
Chronological was better too IMHO. If you want to differentiate original OSNews content, give it a different color background or something like that, don’t make us have to scan 2 parts of an already difficult to read (see above) page.
If you really really must have that design then please *never* take away home2.php. At least until you notice the drop in visitors clicking through to stories when a graceful rollback may be in order ;o)
For what it is worth, a new design in 2004 really should have design and content seperated. Maybe have a couple of stylesheets to put the page content into different designs. Heck – users could even upload their own stylesheets and it could become a cool thing to try out other users stylesheets.
Yeppp. Totally agree that the new design makes it more difficult to get an overview. The Register may have many more columns, but then again it is almost impossible to read …
.odderik
Where is the insult?
You should try utilising some of that screen real estate for users using higher res.
right here:
screw that, your pathetic little site isn’t worth $1 a year. Get a real editor and I’ll pay up.
besides, you don’t have to hang around this pathetic little site. If it doesn’t suite you, then just leave. Perhaps start pathetic little site of your own?
If the truth is insulting, then is the comment the insult or is the insult the demand for money?
Keep it simple such as a left page column with catagories (ie: OS Forums, Linux Security, Hardware Tech, Archives, Links, etc), middle page for current news, right page a column for hardware/software sales, bottom page banner ads, top page the OS News title in a cool but eye pleasing graphic. What also needs to be added is an actual login for people to post and the ability to edit your own posts.
There’s no demand. There’s just the option to pay $20 to get rid of the ads. Running a website costs money, they need to get it from somewhere.
There’s different ways of expressing your opinions. Simply saying “It’s not worth $20 for me.” would be enough. But then again no one would care.
As for Eugenia being a bad editor, you should try to prodive some useful information about why she is a bad editor and how she could improve. There’s no need to act like a 5-year-old kid just because you don’t like the site/editor.
information..
Easier said than done. Anyone that makes a comment that she does not like gets moderated. Posting one’s opinion is not acting like a 5-year-old kid, it’s called posting your opinion. Look back a few days ago to the post that was made about Ximian dropping RedHat support, she must not have even have followed the links before she posted it with a headline that was as bad as the misinformation contained in the article. With that, I rest my case about the quality of this site. I would go away, but I have been reading OSNews for over 3 years DAILY and REALLY want the site to become reputable again. I am 100% sure I am not alone.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=6542
It wasn’t even cleaned up to show the truth after it was brought to the editor’s attention!
Pathetic.
could you make it so it dynamically resizes the area so there isn’t a box of white
Just wanted to say the new design is better. Not amazingly better(the old one was good as well). But better.
Its really about what you’re used to.
In one month most will get used to it, and think the old one
was bad
It reminds me of http://news.google.com/ which also has a multi-column view. There’s only one thing i don’t like (in both the new and old design) and that’s the fixed width size, it just doesn’t maximize well.
The two-row menu is fugly. There is not much more I can say about it. It reminds me of the file chooser mock-up (http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=5582). That was an ok design, but it doesn’t work for your main page on OSNews.
My suggestion is to keep a menu up there, but only have the _most_ important subjects up there, and move the rest to the left just above the ugly advertisements (the ads are terrible looking).
Oh, and what’s the “Go” form button for? It’s perhaps a search field, but it is not mentioned. Don’t expect that _everyone_ is essentially familiar that every good site these days offers some form of searching the site’s content.
“And even worse, is it not valid HTML according to http://validator.w3.org/“
*Yah the thing is you could have just looked at the code to tell it’s not valid. Or open it up in IE and then Mozilla and you can tell some big differs. The thing that get’s me is the site is base on news about differ OSes and mostly around open source but the code just shows how some ppl dun know anything about good coding.
“Lets rush out and spend $20 a year so we can get the MOST BIASED SLANTED JOURNALISM on the web!”
*Not trying to sound rude here but I’ve not found one site on the net worth 20 dollars a year. One reason why I would not pay OS news 20 dollars a year is over half the stuff posted is base off another news site! The site does not use clean valid web code and has more white space in it then the sky has air. There other reasons but those will do for now.
“Traditional banner ads don’t pay well… have you considered Google-style text ads? These provide just enough useful information in text, and Google does a good job at selecting ads that are relevant to the context.”
*That’s true and text base ads by google is far far faster for us dial up users who can barly afford the net let along 20 dollars a year.
“As for Eugenia being a bad editor, you should try to prodive some useful information about why she is a bad editor and how she could improve.”
*That’s true as well. Everyone can come up short and they should accept the opinions and advice. However those that does not listen and want to improve are just hopeless.
I do enjoy this site in some ways thoe. I can come here and get some fast news and such, read some feedback, and I do like the simple look of the site. I have nothing againts Eugenia and just hope in time she as most other humans can work to improve things.
–Idoxash
The new design wastes valuable space “above the fold.” I’ve never clicked those menu links when they were on the side, and I won’t click them when they’re at the top, so it’s best to keep them at the side where they won’t make me scroll down so much.
The old is much better. I don’t like the new.
As long as it doesn’t affect the RSS feed it doesn’t affect me
I have not seen the new layout yet. I just checked OSNews for the first time since mid day yesterday and the new site is offline for some tweaking. I have no idea if I’ll like it or not but I have two comments.
1. Thanks for offering to keep the old site current and online for those that like the old way. For a bunch of trend setting udergeeks we sure can get wrapped up in change. :p
2. 90 posts in less than 18 hours is great. Anytime you have a slow news day you should tweak the site. Great fun to read about.
I agree with most of the posters. The new layout almost hurts my eyes. My eyes have to shift left and right continuously. I also noticed that I missed some of the articles on the left side after I had scrolled down. I then had to look up again to see it.
I also need more text to decide if I want to read the article. If I’m not sure, i won’t click the article to read it. There are too much information available on the internet to use too much time on a single site.
About cookies. As long as you have an alternative site, configuration stored in cookies are not hard.
I know you already am aware of this, but I’m posting this example to non-PHP coders.
Just put this on the front page:
<?php
if(isset($_COOKIES[‘view’]) && $_COOKIES[‘view’]=’old’)
header(“Location: http://www.osnews.com/home2.php“);
?>
Fixed a minor bug:
<?php
if(isset($_COOKIES[‘view’]) && $_COOKIES[‘view’]==’old’)
header(“Location: http://www.osnews.com/home2.php“);
?>
This new format hurts my eyes. Now OSNews looks like Yahoo with flashing ads and confusing layout. Too bad. I used to think this site was the best from the standpoint that my eyes didn’t go into overload trying to get to the content. For those of you, and I suspect there are more than a few, who have had enough try this page:
http://www.linuxhomepage.com/
It’s just a list. At least you can easily see the article headlines and there is nothing flashing. You can also check out the new content on a few more sites.
Looking at the new design was such a bad surprise that I thought it was April’s fools day all over again
keep the good work.
Eugenia, would you please consider another way to achieve an emphasis on original content without making it more unpleasant to view the portal content.
I love the site, and have now for some time. I understand and support your ‘mini focus shift’ toward original content. It makes sense. I find the two-collumn format, however, a bit too taxing on the eyes and on the brain. Shorter columns make you take shorter sips of information by requiring you to be
interrupted
more often
for a visual
‘carriage return’.
Basically, it’s the visual equivalent of a speed bump. I must agree with some of the previous sentiments that I find the two column format annoying, and hope you consider other creative means of accomplishing your goals.
HI!
I wanna see the new design
)
greetz
cocaxx
Until the new look is brought back online, you can check out the no ad demo version here:
http://www.osnews.com/demo.html
When I first looked at it, even though I knew there were no ads, my sub-conscience computed the two featured articles at the top as ads (force of habit) and I scrolled right passed them, completly missing them.
I have no idea what the ads look like and since I’m using Firefox with the adblock extension installed, I never will
I agree with other people who say that the articles should be posted from newest to oldest down the left side of the screen, and then continue down the right.
IMHO, this would be much better than the ‘left/right, left/right’ thing you’ve got going on.
Other than that, it is ok.
One vote against, please. I have several readability issues with the new design, and I also don’t care about the original vs. unoriginal distinction. I read OSNews for the decent article selection (wherever they come from) and for the higher-than-average-quality comments.
One thing the new design makes me realize is how easy it is to read article titles in the old format, where they have enough space to flow across the page in a single line. Also the category icons are more visible/scannable in the old design, which I use a lot to scan for stories I care about.
i dont like it. the OSNEWS logo is too small and the advertisements are more easily seen on the side.
But, thanks for keep the home2.php for us. 🙂
The new design has few problems:
1) The ‘More original content recently:’ table shouldn’t touch to the two columns in the top. It should be same what it’s in bottom, seperate.
2) Two columns… Ouch.. I probably will like it if you can come out with the better design of layout. For example, two columns in the top look good. But, two columns in the bottom is just look awful and hard to read; it’s is just too crowd and little messy.