Welcome to the new Boing Boing!
The new look comes from Jemma Hostetler of Studio Sans Nom. Her redesign is cleaner, easier-to-read, and built to incorporate additional new features that we'll be adding to Boing Boing in the near future. The redesigned logo and new character mascots were created by the fun-loving folks at eBoy, a collective of awesomely talented pixel-pushing artists from Germany and New York.
We're also happy to be reintroducing comments to Boing Boing, a feature we reluctantly dropped a couple of years ago. At that time, we lacked the resources to manage the comments, and felt that a lousy comment system was worse than no system at all, so we pulled the plug. We've never felt good about it, though, because our readers' comments added a great deal of value to the blog. To correct this, we hired a terrific community manager to oversee the conversations: Teresa Nielsen Hayden. At her own blog, Making Light, Teresa has proven herself to be a wonderfully wise and talented tender of online conversations. Teresa worked closely with our designers to develop a commenting system that supports the Boing Boing community while preventing noise from drowning out the signal. "We want this new community system to make Boing Boing even more fun and informative," says Teresa. Under her supervision, we're sure it will be.
Our third major change is the launch of a brand new blog: Gadgets.boingboing.net. While Boing Boing has always covered personal technology, the four of us (Cory, David, Xeni, and I) believed a critical, intelligent, optimistic, and selective blog about personal technology and consumer electronics would be a fine addition to Boing Boing. But who could we trust to oversee a tech blog that the four of us would want to read? Actually, it wasn't hard to find that person. We went straight to Joel Johnson, a former Gizmodo editor and founder of Dethroner. Joel is smart, funny, knowledgeable, and curious about technology. He was our first, and unanimous, choice to run Gadgets.boingboing.net. And we're grateful he agreed to come on board.
We'd like to thank the happy mutants who helped make this major relaunch possible. These folks went under the hood and untangled the mess that Boing Boing's code had snarled into, and created an elegant, powerful system that positively shines. Federated Media's Jonathan Schreiber and Ivan Kanevski did an amazing job of dealing with the technical aspects of the redesign. Our beloved system administrator Ken Snider worked his magic on the server side and made sure all changes to the site wouldn't impact the speed of page reloads or clobber us with high bandwidth costs. David Jacobs at Apperceptive upgraded Boing Boing to the newest edition of Movable Type, and designed and implemented the new comment system to Teresa's specs.
Special thanks go out to the gang at Federated Media: John Battelle, Chas Edwards, Josh Matison and everyone else that contributed a significant amount of time and hi-octane mental effort on making this relaunch a success. We're grateful to all of you for everything you've done. Extra special thanks to FM's Jason Weisberger for endless advice, encouragement, and, well, adult supervision. Thank you!
We hope you enjoy the new Boing Boing. Let us know what you think by clicking on the "discuss" link and adding your thoughts.
the latest
latest episodes
Congratulations! The redesign looks great.
Sigh. Make it harder to read through everything, great. Oh well. All good things....
Long live BoingBoing! I think I likes the older format better.
- Andrew
Looks pretty!
FIRST!
Ok, someone had to do that. :)
Nice new look. Congrats.
Your clock is off.
Yay, comments!
...oh, come on, someone had to say it.
frist psot!
Yay! congrats Boing boing! I've been reading the directory for years now, it really fits my way of life.
err, I suppose I'll get used to it, but could you maybe add in a way to decrease font size?
Perhaps a left margin or some padding would be nice?
...I fear change.
It looks nice! Glad comments are back, even happier that Teresa Neilsen Hayden is in charge...
Yay indeed !
I believe in evolution, and evolving is surviving... This is great news for the many years ahead !
My favorite site on the net
Looks different than the last iteration, but as long as the info's still the same, great stuff that we've come to expect, I'm sure everyone'll still be happy. :) Congrats!
I CAN HAZ COMMENTS!
w00t! comments are on! Thanks boingboing! Now I can leave snarky remarks and corrections with ousing the suggest a link interface...
(that planetarium timepiece you posted last week WAS NOT A CHINDOGU btw ;)
You should move the discuss link to underneath the article.
Otherwise, really digging the new design :-)
Outstanding new look! Now with comments, again. Finally!
oh hai
i IZ in Ur Comnts
.
\`-"'"-'/
} 6 6 {
=. Y ,=
/^^^\
kepping ya memez alive
I'm really happy to see the comments back!
Very nice redesign, left hand formatting makes for an easy read. Having comments is like a dream come true. I remember hearing about the redesign a few months ago and when commenting was mentioned I wanted to shout for joy! Now if I could just get the registration to work, I'll have to work on that one.
wow. this is going to be fantastic! looking forward to having a great community here with all you info-loving-folks
huzzah!
Comments for everyone!
Hooray! Comments!
It looks like any other blog now, I'ts already losing my attention.
Glad to see comments back. With TNH moderating should we expect frequent dis-envoweling?
good to have comments for sure... will probably save floods of emails to the boingboingers too!
Very good. Congratulations.
the archive page is currently broken. i guess that it's a work in progress? are there any plans to import all that legacy content into the new look and feel?
Comments! Hooray!
Congratulations on all the changes. Things look good. Great choice for a community manager, too.
Congratulations! Great design. Love the resurrected comments feature.
Hmmm... i dunno... seems I'm one of the early birds. Comments: GREAT, Design: hmmm... i actually liked the old logo better...
Now excuse me I HAVE TO EXPLORE
I like it. It looks really clean and nice.
But what I liked about the last design was that it was roughish and fun. I'll probably get used to it soon.
Outstanding! You've made my mornings even better, I always say 'the day don't start until I've had my cup of Boingboing!' Love the comments (a bit obvious that) and the page is easier to read, much coolness is had by all.
yay, comments!
by the same token, i immediately noticed a couple of bothersome things you should consider tweaking.
1. because of the narrower content column there's a lot more scrolling required. bah.
2. discussion link is more effective at the bottom of the entry.
Cheers!
i appreciate the large type from a usability standpoint, but it is a bit harder to scan the site.
i second (or maybe third by now?) the suggestion to add a font-decrease option.
the design is super awesome by the way. much less clutter, and the adverts are so much more managable this way.
kudos!
It looks like the upgrade broke the site's formatting via distributed boing boing. No love for the firewalled.
I love the new logo redesign! But I feel like the page is too squashed now, it looked like a lot less can fit on the main page... Love the comment option, but maybe it should be put at the end of the entry instead of the top?
*is still a fan of the old boingboing but is open to trying out this new layout*
On one hand the design is an improvement and is obviously very professionally done and polished, but on the other, lots of other blogs have done something similar already. Now BoingBoing looks a dare I say it, a little generic and doesn't have the rough edges 'zine style of the old.
Oh God, comments. BoingBoing has comments.
Oh Happy Day! (Oh Happy Day) Oh Happy Day! (Oh Happy Day)
Looks good. Keep up the good work.
I will miss the Old format. Sorry but the new font looks like a million other blogs now (literally). The value of comments is debatable, after all you did post responses conservatively in a few cases.
It's like a Doritos or Lysol label makeover-- decided to be an improvement by management but no one would have complained if you left it alone.
Nice job on the redesign. But you should do something to style links differently. If you have link-underlining turned off in your browser (I do), they look no different from the rest of the text.
omg now i have to wait for all the comments to load too?!? dear god
I can't say I like this design but I like the fact that we can comment again
Sorry to be a wet blanket, but I can't say I was excited about the new look. Less efficient, and the headlines don't stick out as boldly as before. Does seem more bland, and more like other blogs out there. FWIW, my experience visiting boingboing is now less enjoyable than it was before. It wasn't broke, don't fix it.
Hooray for comments! Thanks for bringing them back - I've often wondered how BoingBoing could call itself a 'blog' without them. As far as I'm concerned, a blog that doesn't allow comments is just traditional broadcast media by another name.
The new "design" is much harder to read. Actually, close to impossible. The type choices and headlines bleed together in a way that fights readability. It is why people should PAY for professional graphic designers- as opposed to free favors from ambitious friends with little or no talent. You need to find someone else- or go back to what you had-- it was better.
WOOHOO! That's all
The new design looks good. Looking forward to all the other new features. And, thanks for bringing back comments!
Good stuff! Always glad to see an oldschool publication continue to grow in current times. I may not always like comments, but I like to be able to leave them =)
This is harder to read, please insert a margin to the left of the text at least.
MOD THIS MOD FACES!!!!!
sorry... had to
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned that the font is far more difficult to read. I've tried resizing it past the point where it gets bold just to see if that makes a difference. I thought serif fonts were harder to read on a screen in general. Does anybody else find this?
Meet the new blog, same as the old blog.
looks great. Good to see Joel on the team!
In addition to the nice outdoor life, there are lots of great restaurants in Boulder!
I'm using Safari 3.0 and the new layout is horribly broken.
I really like the new font and layout, but the titanic add space and smaller content space is really pretty aggravating. i love me some boingboing, and am down with the whole add space is necessary thing, but to have the awesome content undermined to this extent is no fun. trust me hp man, ze goggles, zey do nothing.
Bacn
Very, very cool. I've missed comments, and am really happy to see them back!
HOLY CRAP THANK YOU.
Three years on reading this website, and lately it has made me want to kill myself. This is soooooooooo much better, that it is almost overwhelming.
Change is scary, but this is wonderful. Really like the Gadgets page. Okay, okay, I have to say it: I just love you guys!
AnonyDave
LongLive BoingBoing!
Mark do you have any speaking engagements in Boulder, Colorado, or are you just visiting for a small taste of that Rocky Mountain High?
Hate the new formatting. Only 5 or so posts fit on the first page. Boo.
Like the content, hate the layout.
Wow ! What's happening ? Digg and now BB ??? Is this some kind of design revolution ?
Style looks good, but I agree that links need to be made to appear obviously as links. Thanks for adding the comments!
Aesthetically, the change isn't huge, so I like it. (I hate having to relearn how to navigate a site.) However, I love that comments are back.
Wonderful redesign! Boingboing and digg in the same day.... make sure to say hi to the flatirons for me!
Much harder to scan down- the headlines don't stand out nearly as much, and the left border is sadly missing.
Massively worth it for the presence of comments- congrats on the upgrade!
Is there any rationale on not using some user community comment rating system? I think browsing slashdot at +4 or +5 or reading highly rated comments on reddit tends to work well and is automatic. I guess I just really don't trust a single subjective human "tender of online conversations" to be fair and unbiased.
nicely done, congrats boing-o-nauts.
Change is always good, but this is actually harder to read than the old Boing Boing.
PS: YOUR TEXT IS HUUUUGE!
Not sure I care much for the re-design, honestly. Looks like a lot of wasted space on the right, even without AdBlock enabled.
Still, a comments section is nice. I imagine you had a lot of trouble with it before-- here's to hoping it works out this time around!
You should consider the innovation at HackerNews for comment policy. Allow users to mod comments up and down. In addition, have oracle users whose mods count as truth. Users who approximate the votes of oracles matter more. Low modded comments go unseen by default. In this fashion, you can have a few people guide a community to stay on the right track.
http://ycombinator.com/hackernews.html
Also, it is essential that you allow threaded comments.
There goes all my free time.
Very nice work guys!
All this negative space on the right side of the layout is a tad disappointing.
As I scroll down the numerous daily links, I can't help but question how the added empty white space is an improvement.
I've been reading for a long time. I'd like to say that I miss the old format, but it would be a lie. The new look is truly sleek and modern, giving a fresh, and yes, more easily readable design. Congratulations on the upgrade, and thank you for comments!
Excellent design!!!
very clean and easy to read.
:D
I like the redesign. However, since we are all used to reading web sites with a left-hand margin and the content on the right, having the content on the left is very disorienting.
seriously, adding comments back is great. that was always the biggest thing lacking for a site that supposedly promoted the openess of the internets.
but... BUT...
this design looks like every other damn page on the internet. is it clean? yes. is it new? NO.
it's harder to read through because it's designed to be a one article page. like the nyt site or something.
so good and bad, but bad outways.
I don't really like the serif font for the heads and body text mixed with the sans for the posted announcement; it's somehow distracting from the otherwise clean new look. Thanks for the comments section.
I just want to say THANK YOU! I am so glad to have a comment section back on this site. And I promise, I will resist the urge to shout "FIRST!" every time I find the possibility!
~Longboxes
ps - "FOURTY SEVENTH!"
pps - sorry, had to do it once! ;-)
Yay, comments are good.
New layout is also good.
But serif fonts are bad.
OH NOES!
The conflict, it's immense.
Looks significantly less cluttered than the previous incarnation, which didn't start that way, just got crufty over the years.
Really happy to see comments come back!
I preferred the previous design. It was much easier to read, and a much better "traditional web" design. This web2.0 design asthetic will be dead in another two years, and this will be a prom night haricut.
ZOMJ hax!
Nice redesign.
I was going to suggest that the font size should be bigger, but I see that an Anonymous commenter above wanted it smaller, so maybe it's a happy medium.
I'd also echo the comments above that suggest moving the "Discuss" link to the bottom of each post.
Also, comments are great!
The new font is uncomfortable - I'm reading it firefox under XP.
Please include more than just a handful of articles on the front page.
RRenaud, having seen her work her magic over at Making Light, I suspect Teresa's job is going to be less making sure insightful comments are more prominent, and more making sure that trolls are contained and flamewars are doused.
Editors: I have a (somewhat) related question. With the reenablement of the comments section, will we continue to see important and insightful comments edited into the main post?
Good luck from Poland!
I am addicted to your site for some time :)
b
Yes, yes,
and yes !
darnit, now my customized de-Xeni greasemonkey script is broken! but, hooray for comments. design is decent, even elegant - and surprisingly un-masturbatory, coming from prate. One suggestion for comment system: implement a "featured comments", "best of", highest-rated type system. comments sections that have some kind of auto-filter, although aren't fair, make for infinitely better reading in a signal-to-noise kind of way. I don't have all day to read through 30 pages of incoherent rambling. know what I mean? :)
Redesigns are like haircuts; it takes a few days to decide what you really think. Yes, there's a lot of lost space on the right, but it feels like the main text area's about the same size as before. And as already mentioned, it's not a dramatic change, so we can all just ease into it. I confess I'm a bit neutral on the comments--I've pretty much broken myself of the habit of reading very long threads, because I'm often annoyed when I do read them--but the prospect of disemvowelling is enticing.
Beautiful, readable...very fine job.
Even the unicorns will look nicer! Nice work, BB team!
I don't know how I feel about this yet. I do agree with threaded comments and implementing the slashdot system of karma points, user moderation, and meta-moderation. Good lucks.
Hm, typical reaction to going to Boulder, I suppose :P
Boo! I fear change.
I posted a poll about boingboing's new design on pollsb.com. Check it out:
http://www.pollsb.com/polls/poll/1837/boingboing-s-new-design
I think your choice of Joel is a great one--I followed him from Giz to Defamer. Congrats to BB and to JJ.
Is it just me or is the entire right half of the page Yahoo advertisements?
Truly outstanding news... the perfect way to celebrate the new day rising from last night's eclipse.
Thanks, I really needed this.
Much less cluttered, I appreciate that. And the comments, too!
I like the redesign. Smaller font size would be great.
Is there anyway to have more content on the front page? I liked how long the old page was.
Looks good guys, as with all redesigns, time to take a deep breath and give things a while to sink in.
Oh, my boyfriend and I were just talking about you yesterday Mark, and we live here. Maybe we need to get together and have a chat.
Aside from the comments, which are awesome, I'm going to have to pan the redesign. Don't fix what isn't broken. The previous design was easy to read, and I'm not taking to the realignment.
Don't fall into a Diggtrap, wherein you throw out the system that got you popular in favour of a "refresh" that turns out to be flawed, but you stick with due to the psychology of previous investment.
Again, comments awesome and long overdue. RIP old easy to read format.
As a dedicated RSS feed reader, the redesign won't have much impact on me *except* that the return of comments may drag me out of that backchannel.
I'm curious why you chose to manage your own user accounts instead of using TypeKey, particularly since you're already using Movable Type, so users wouldn't have to create YA username/password for a web site. I like having slightly more identity than being Anonymous and creating & managing logins at each individual site is a disincentive to participation.
http://www.sixapart.com/typekey/
Post-Preview: oh, and no HTML support in comments (but thank you for the Preview button!). Bummer, particularly the lack of linking. You're autolinking URLs like the one above so I'm not clear on the benefit of disallowing em's, b's, i's, a's and so on.
w00t!
...thought adblock or [shit!] surfcontrol at work was messing with boingboing -- so glad to see i'm wrong! redesign looks great!
Glad that BoingBoing has begun to embrace participation. Needs a little padding on the left side.
I love Boing Boing.
I don't love the lack of padding, the huge wasted space on the right, or the nasty serif font.
Tough call.
I dig it! Nice, clean, easy to read.
Keep up the good work, fellas!
You'll get over it
Although you've cut the main page to a few articles this is a godsend for dial-up users. I was using the RSS to pick and choose what I read, now i can check it at least daily without having to wait for aton of images to load.
thank you
Wow, looks great! Congrats!
I agree with the comments that the discussion link would be better at the bottom. But yeah, awesome! I usually read BB through Google Reader, but I know I'll be bouncing over here more often with the addition of comments.
I agree with those who say it needs a little sumfin sumfin on the left side, such as another sidebar.
I LOVE that comments are back!!
Viva Boing Boing! :)
Sadly my favorite site now looks like everything else out there....
To bad, to bad.
Besides that, keep up the good work.
Wow, BoingBoing has a site? I haven't looked at anything but the RSS feed in 3 years.
This is better. Not good enough - but better.
;-)
Hooray to You supernerds.
At least make the pogo-girl jump up and down like the last iteration when the page first loads. I miss that!!!
Oh my FSM, now I can say "I Love boingboing" on BoingBoing!
Also, nice design, and cool new blog (welcome Joel!). Thanks!
First thing I saw was the large ad at the right. I dunno. To me the re-design looks over-simplified... America-dumbed down. Not representative of the readership. The design is horrible. Terrible layout. Looks like a first year web design student project. I'm disappointed. I guess I would have expected more. You should get your money back from who ever "designed" this for you.
Congrats to the whole team of people behind the relaunch -- the new site looks great! :)
I'm still warming up to the new look--it doesn't look as good on my work computer (Firefox, Windows) as it does at home (Safari, Mac)--but as they say the only sure thing in life is change. One teensy suggestion to consider might be a way to view the two blogs together so that you don't have to go to two pages to catch up on everything. But you guys do excellent work, so I suppose if an extra mouse click is all it takes to see the gadget blog I can live with that.
I like the basic layout. Not sure about the logo redesign, but maybe that will grow on me.
TNH as mod = w00t!
The Good:
Comments are back!
The Bad:
Comments on comments are awkward.
The Ugly:
1. The leading is awful--harder to read, not easier.
2. The new logo is even worse--isn't a logo supposed to be attractive?
3. Advertisements are more prominent than they used to be.
Yay, comments! I wish I had been able to comment on the story of books shaped like cigarettes (http://www.boingboing.net/2007/07/31/books_shaped_like_ci.html) because I did that years ago. (http://www.attemptednotknown.com/index.php?page=about&selection=ank9.php) But Technorati never could make sense of my home-built blog.
Yay! Go Boing Boing!
Wow, congratulations on the new design. I shall miss the old look as it seems like it's been round forever.
Keep up the great work.
Comments are back! Woot!
Nice, clean, and to the point. Looks like a winner to me.
Round of beers for everyone involved!
Nice design. Glad to see some user-feedback on boing boing. Now everybody has got to tolerate the trolls and spammers. Hopefully Teresa has enough experience dealing with this.
Nielsen Hayden, not Neilsen Hayden
--Robert
Woot, 63rd! or so..
*social commentary here*
Hitler would have hated comments
/trifecta+godwin
Love the design! Simple and effected, with the focus on the content and comments. Well done!
Nice choice going with Joel! He'll be the cherry on top :)
Phew! Glad you guys were able to keep all your ad space with this totally radical redesign.
I definitely like the new look, though I wouldn't mind the comments link going at the bottom of each post; I generally want to read the post first, then the comments.
One nitpick: it's "Nielsen Hayden" (i-before-e); it's part of the Making Light "spelling reference" section because it's often misspelled.
Hello world!
Movable Type ? Pah.
I like the new design. I was starting to worry that BoingBoing would get overwhemled by the two columns of ads that took up more than 50% of the page in the old design. Now that you've gotten on board with a more traditional ad-based design, the stories are going to be easier to read...
Glad to see that comments are back, too. Yay!
New Look: do no want.
Ugly font are ugly.
why cant hav beauty things?
Comments: do want!
I've been w00ting around in the archives, this is gonna be a blast.
The world will never be the same.
I'm very glad to see comments return here on boingboing :) Often the discussion around an issue or article is the most interesting part.
Oh how I have waited for this day to come.
Woo Hoo!! gratz on the redesign, its a bit on the plain side, but it will be good for bandwidth!
I notice that the font size appears to be fixed - a mistake. It's hard too read because it's too small, and it doesn't take the font-size settings of the browser into account. Always remember to use relative font-sizes, and to make everything in your layout scale accordingly.
Let this please be the end of lolcatz and other juvenile posts. Boing Boing's normal spelling and grammar is bad enough.
Have you thought about sending this through an independent usability tester? There's lots to like here, and I'm sure your creative team already did a lot towards the thankless, unseen task of usability, but one of the areas where there's room to grow is being friendlier to users. For example, as several have pointed out, putting the comment link where it's most logical - after you've read through the post.
All criticisms aside, congratulations on the big move, the change is refreshing.
I like it!
~Clutch
Why God, Why? This was my favorite site EVAH! Now I feel like I'm visiting some generic corporate website. At least center the column on the page so I'm not looking slightly to the left for years to come.
Glad comments are back. Hope Cory can hold his temper this time round.
Hmm, looks much more generic-news-site-ish than before. Like a lot of personality was sucked out of the site.
Call me slow but i just found BBGadgets. Now i can add another boing to my BoingBoing. WOOHOO
Add my voice to the chorus suggesting that the comments (or "discuss") link belongs at the bottom of an entry.
Also, neverminding the fact that I'm posting this anonymously because I don't have time to register at the moment, I think that anonymous commenting frequently changes the tenor of a comments section for the worse.
Finally, I think that the new design will take some getting used to. I'm especially not fond of the font. I'm respectful of the need for design evolution though, and really I'd be willing to overlook even the ugliest design because it's BoingBoing. (And the worst that could be said about the new look is that it's a tad generic.)
But anyhow. Long live BB!
tuas litteras sunt difficiliores quas legam.
-- Crispinus
Don't know if i missed it or what, Glad you put the BBgadgets at the top i hope i havent been missing it for long.
Congrats on the redesign, looks nice and clean! (and marginally less quirky, which helps when I'm surfing^H^H^H^H^H^H working on the clock :) )
My two cents:
$.01 - I second the above suggestion to style the links to differentiate them more from plaintext; maybe it's just me, but I'm not a fan of having to wave the cursor over all the text to discover the links...
$.01 - you may want to consider a bit more vertical space above the horizontal rule between posts - it's not entirely visually obvious which post the title and comment links belong to...
(of course both of these could be accomplished by a Stylish lazyweb-created css sheet...)
Oh good grief, so we have to wait for the moderator to approve posts before they appear? Sort of odd that a site that's so opposed to authoritarian control of information requires its comment be approved in advance.
I think the old one was more readable. What is the deal with serif fonts on websites? Sans serif is much much easier to read on a screen. Any chance of allowing the user to select a font?
And make the pogo girl jump, that was cool.
I love boingboing! I had slightly more affection for it before it looked like this, however.
Nice and clean. Good job!
This is great. I always felt something was missing.
plagio, Rome. Italy.
Best wishes, Boing. I've read since the print days and I'll continue to read until the pixels are all rusted shut or worth through.
The header is a little Christmas-y, though. As long as it doesn't break my rss reader, I'm a happy puppy.
The new format is nice. I like it. One observation: the sign-up process for adding comments is a bit awkward and could use a bit of tweaking.
1. You leave the page you're on and are taken to a page with a Moveable Type logo. You might consider putting the BB logo on the "Sign In" and "Create Account" pages.
2. The confirmation email has the subject line: "Movable Type Account Confirmation". You might want to add something about BB in there so people know it is coming from you w/o opening the message.
Good work guys.
Yay for stylish! Site looks much better to me in Tahoma.
Looks great! Simple and elegant. Links could use a bit of color...maybe the red tint from your logo? Congrats.
Named anchors are the spawn of the devil. Their resurgence among blogging sites is making me reconsider how much time I want to spend on the web.
Does anyone know a Safari and/or FF hack that will ignore them?
Secondarily, I think boingboing would benefit greatly from a standard "page 2", "page 3" archival paradigm. The current organization to look at "archived" posts (a misnomer in it's own right) is awkward -- it sends you to the middle of a long page with the top half of content being stuff you've already seen.
Let me read the stories on the front page. Give me a button to read more. Don't show me the same stuff again when I click "nexte page". A simpler interface which is designed for the user, not the database schema, would be better in this case.
Comments could be fun, though I usually frequent blogs like Boingboing for the articles and links, not endless and somewhat repetitive discussion. There's Slashdot for that. Or Digg. Or a million others.
I'll be honest: not a big fan of the new look. Guess it falls under the "If it ain't broke-" philosophy: the old design worked wonderfully, and comments could have been added without drastically changing things.
The extreme left align is annoying, the vast wasted space on the right is especially ironic on a web-design-savvy site like Boingboing, and the loss of color and visual variety makes it look crisp and soulless, the exact opposite of what Boingboing is all about. But worst of all are the ads. HOLY CRAP guys. Is Boingboing hosted on Blogger.com now? There's nothing wrong with advertising: just do it in a way that doesn't make the blog look cheap.
All that said, I'm a loyal reader and it'll take more then a bad makeover to shake me off. But to paraphrase one of Cory's favorite DRM sayings, I'll be reading in spite of the new design, not because of it.
I have nothing to add, but that hasn't stopped anybody else from posting, so.... :)
There's a sign up process? I don't see one anywhere. Not that I'm gonna create another login for yet another website anyway, but it would be nice to have the option that I could then ignore.
Serif fonts are bad, mmm-kay. Please switch to Helvetica or Verdana.
Looks good, although I wish excerpts from websites were smaller font (as before) or in some way discernible from the editor's comments
I'm insanely glad that comments are back. Awesome redesign too.
Glory be! Comments!
What - no rating system? And, no *markups*?
Congratulations on now looking like every other blog out there, I guess.
Excellent redesign. Love it.
Great design I love how easy and clean it is, the gadget section is great too.
Good job
I would like to say THANK YOU for restoring comments. It has really bit not to be able to add $0.02 to all the good (or not so good) stuff that gets posted on BB. IMO a blog ain't a blog if it's one-way. I believe this is the third manifestation of comments I've seen; hope it will stay this time.
So it appears that anything but the mildest criticism is being filtered (i.e. censored) by the moderator? It's certainly your right to run the site as you please, but it seems very hypocritical for a site like BB that professes to be about "openness" and "freedom" to present such a sanitized view of reader opinion. Very disappointing.
Here's a comment: The RSS subscription link for gadgets.boingboing.net is broken.
It's also slow as sin.
I REALLY liked the old site better. It was more original looking. The new site looks like every other blog out there.
I'm also not a fan of comments. Have you read the comments on Digg, Reddit, or YouTube lately? At least I can ignore the comments.
I just hope the content stays the same, and this won't be the end of Boing Boing. It already has less draw to me.
I like almost everything: the new logo is great, the site is much cleaner, and I'm very excited about the gadgets page. Don't like the font for some reason, it's hard for me to read. w00t 4 comments!
Takes a bit getting used to, but I like it, I think. And TNH is a great choice for the mod. Wll w s dsmvwlmnt?
Man, it's always jarring when a site changes it look!
I had forgotten how much I missed the old comments. Frankly, they never seemed that broken to me back in the day.
Very nice design, but the site feels very sterile now. The great thing about boingboing before was it was a feeling one gets when visiting a flea market. Tons of great stuff to discover all right in front of you. Now that everything is clean, only a few posts per page... etc. It is very... boring and a feels like just another blog.
You took everything that boingboing had going for it and removed it.
I'll agree with the others.
It's nice to have comments!
Awesome work, guys... Love the left-adjusted message bodies. Been hoping for this for a while now...
Looks great, peeps.
Woo! Hooray Boulder, I love this place!
-Andrew
Hzzh! Cngrtltns t Trs fr hr nw ppntmnt s mdrtr. knw sh wll d grt jb. ;)
Boing-Boing is Dead!
Long Live Boing-Boing!
Huzzah to all and to all huzzah!
-- SCAM
Wow a redesign I actually like. There have been some crappy ones lately Gizmodo, Fark etc. But this one really is a nice improvement.
Comments are really nice. Probably was the biggest thing missing.
You are even more fabulous today than you were yesterday!
The site has lost some of its personal look, and looks more like other blogs now. its a little harder to read too. padding on the left would be nice, to centralize the design. it leans.
Very pretty, very clean--but it does make it more difficult to get an overview of a lot of entries at once. It's a compromise, though; I get it.
Love the new look and the bbGadgets blog.
I have to agree that some coloring on the links would be awesome for readability, but other than that it looks great.
Here's to many more years of excellent reading!
Cheers,
- Brandon
@ Anonymous who said: "Named anchors are the spawn of the devil. Their resurgence among blogging sites is making me reconsider how much time I want to spend on the web."
Well... we'll miss you. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.
Nice change, and as good looking in its own way as before! Keep up the good work.
Sigh. Looks like every other blog out there, and that's sad. Don't like the ads all on the right, but I guess it was necessary, so you could run those huge HP ads, and please your masters at Federated Media.
Whoa where is Eli and Stephan and Craniac?
To clean for boing boing, but comments are nice.
I'm really pleased you've brought comments back. I could never understand why you ditched them. Comments is a really quick way of adding information to a thread. It's frustrated me in the past when you've posted something I know to be wrong and I can't add my comments so you can correct it. BUT I don't understand why I can't click on a commenter's name and go through to their blog via a hyperlink? I thought that was pretty much a standard in the blogging world? à bientôt, Malkie, Paris.
http://www.welcometowallyworld.com
great changes I hope the coments don't get all stupid but I know we can all play nice
I'm very happy about the comments. The ad column is huge. Please make it a smaller part of the page?
excelente noticia!
Wow. Thank you all so much for these comments, both the positive and the critical. Obviously we'll be tweaking things so all of your input is greatly appreciated. And thanks for hanging out with us!
Woo hoo, Boingers! Congratulations on Comments and Gadgets. In my book, the more Boing Boing, the better.
Everyone get out of here, this is my new section of Boing Boing and a horrible mistake has been made where you are allowed to add comments here.
I like it! Simple and balanced.
For those of us with old eyes could you make the font bigger?
Maaark! Come up to Fort Collins while you're out. About the re-design...can you drop the serif fonts? This new design makes you blend in like every other blag out there...bb was something special, and the re-design kind of took that away...
Are the feeds for gadgets.boingboing.net supposed to 404?
Excellent!!! Always wanted BOINGBOING to have comments enabled!!!
soy un fiel lector vuestro desde hace 3 años y me agrada ver buenos cambos. Los felicito y les envio los mejores deseos desde Chile, Southamerica
I wanted to congratulate you and thank you for comments, but by the time I got to the end of the page I wanted you to disable comments again.
Easier to read? I, for one, find it much harder to read. Hate the typeface. Bring back the old font!
Hooray for comments, and the redesign is serviceable, but did anyone else click over to boingboing today, see the new layout and wonder when Gawker Media bought the blog? Just sayin'.
Comments WOOT!
nom nom nom
Hello, all. It's been an exciting morning. The relaunched version of Boing Boing is definitely a work in progress. We're keeping a list of things that still need to be fixed, so thanks for your input.
One of the fixes waiting to happen is that comments are supposed to be sequentially numbered. They aren't yet. I'll do my best to identify which comment(s) I'm responding to.
Anonymous commenting: The line that's missing from the sign-in box says that you're free to post anonymously, but all anonymous comments will be held for moderation.
Registration glitches in general: Until registration got shut down for repairs, a bit after noon today, *I* wasn't being allowed to post comments. That's part of the reason I'm so far behind on this thread.
Crispinus, lege atque lacrima.
Hmmm. We don't have HTML in comments yet. I'll have to use separators:
=====
"Perhaps a left margin or some padding would be nice?"
I'm seeing a left margin. Do you have none at all, or is that a vote for a bigger one?
=====
Karl: "You should move the discuss link to underneath the article."
Already on the fix-it list.
(Current motto: We are approaching perfection ... incrementally.)
=====
"Glad to see comments back. With TNH moderating should we expect frequent dis-envoweling?"
Only if it's warranted. I doubt I'll have frequent cause to use it.
I'll be posting a piece about moderation when I have a place to put it.
=====
"the archive page is currently broken. i guess that it's a work in progress? are there any plans to import all that legacy content into the new look and feel?"
Work in progress, check. The legacy content is not going away.
=====
Adamrice: "Nice job on the redesign. But you should do something to style links differently. If you have link-underlining turned off in your browser (I do), they look no different from the rest of the text."
Thanks; that's another one for the list.
=====
Rrenaud: "Is there any rationale on not using some user community comment rating system? I think browsing slashdot at +4 or +5 or reading highly rated comments on reddit tends to work well and is automatic. I guess I just really don't trust a single subjective human "tender of online conversations" to be fair and unbiased."
Yes, I do have a rationale:
1. I believe that there's a fraction of the internet community that interprets all online environments as potential games. The more hard-and-fast the rules, the more game-like it becomes for them. This is fine if you're trying to run a game. In a conversation, it's not so good.
2. I believe that no system of automated numerical feedback has more than a tiny fraction of the potential range, power, flexibility, and motivating force of verbal feedback from your fellow commenters.
3. Yes, I do believe in the exercise of arbitrary power by me; but I'm grossly biased in favor of good conversation, so you still win. Think of it as a benevolent kink.
Onward.
We're slated to get a couple of small unobtrusive buttons that will let you indicate comments you think need our scrutiny, and comments you think are especially good. They'll be advisory, not determinative.
I promise to do my best to be fair, and to remember that I'm fallible. I don't pretend to be unbiased -- no human is -- but I do try to cultivate biases that produce interesting, lively, and reasonably civil conversations.
=====
I'd better post this lot of comments before you guys get much farther ahead of me.
-tnh
I've decided to comment just because I can.
Your redesign is awesome. Not so sure about the distraction of the comments, however. Just kidding.
Best wishes for the new Boing Boing,
Loren Coleman
Very cool... although I do kind of miss sending in my comments through the submit a link form and then waiting to see if I got picked up as a commenter. =]
Congrats!
not sure.
i generally like clean designs, but i find i liked boingboing's clutter. for example, i miss the links to thumbtack press, etc. i might not have found thumbtack press if it hadn't been there. although, i do note that mark's, cory's, etc's links are now at the top, which is also nice. undecided on this. maybe put thumbtack and the others that don't get space at the top over on the right?
serif typeface is awful and hard on the eyes.
comments link should be at bottom of posts.
waste of page space beyond the end of the right column. maybe wrap that column in a div an stick it inside the main content wrapper so that posts can expand to full page width below it?
and the end of the day though, it's about the people and the content. that's what makes boingboing what it is =)
sum.zero
I hope the comments thing works out.
The redesign looks terrific! I love the big text and the clean, light, open layout! Here's to another two decades of BoingBoing!
I'd suggest going back to "permalink" instead of "#", though. It's very obvious what "permalink" means, and it's also possible to search a web page for the text "permalink" to find one. "#" is cryptic and searching for it may not be fruitful.
I like the new look. Threaded comments would be a nice feature down the road.
Lovely redesign. Congratulations to everyone involved. Needless to say, I love the comments too... Beats the holy crap out of the old QuickTopic forums.
The use of serif'd font looks somewhat miserable at the chosen font size on an lcd display in firefox on OS X.
F1RST!!!!
Hoo-boy, people hates on redesigning. But I like it. You boingers did a good job.
this site always had a number of problems, and it only took you a few short years to fix a fraction of them, woo!
Great, I always wanted comments for the site. The new design looks great, but I think that there's some wasted space between the articles.
Too soon to comment on the design, but I'm SO glad comments are back. I look forward to hearing other boingboingers sounding off.
WAH! Do not want!
Holy shit. This feels like someone broke in to my home and redecorated my apartment - changed the shabby old cabin into a classy lounge.
I mean, it's great, but doesn't quite feel like home yet.
I'm not a fan. Now I have a narrow Boing Boing column and a full 1/2 of my screen is taken up by Google Ads.
Yeah, I could've done without the HUGE reduction in Boing Boing space.
clean reading sweetness = ponies
Comments = *Glitter* ponies!
Another gadget blog. I am almost starting to miss my old newspaper that used to be delivered to the door.
I notice you just removed author attribution from the RSS feed -- I just wanted to say that I hope it's coming back. It's very valuable to know who wrote the BB post I'm reading.
Go Boing Boing!
And go, TNH. You're going to be awesome in this role.
Wow, never thought i would see this...
Gratz!!
Much cleaner look, I like that the article title is the permalink, and I'm optimistic about the comments.
Times Roman (or whatever the hell font): DO NOT WANT.
Or do I need to use firefox to select my own display font???
It's not only that I don't like most of the changes, the thing is that I found the older version absolutely perfect.
I'm thinking about Jennyfer Gray....
it`s great! another site post my inane comments!
hot damn
Jubilation!
...but I agree with others: comments at the END of the article.
Looks better, and loads WAY faster!
Just two things with the redesign i'd recommend a tweak:
1. A bit more padding on the left margin. the content area feels unbalanced in the browser window.
2. The 'discuss' link at the bottom of the article instead of at the top.
I never missed the comments much.. and the site seems slower. Is that because it's being commented to death?
The design is not bad, but the other one seemed more fun somehow.
As many have commented sruf fonts are bat on the screen.
Trhe serif function is to easily distinguis small print on paper, so they are used in newspapers.
On the screen, small artifacts like the serifs blur the font borders, and make reading harder.
Change Georgia (which is a good font for serif) for Verdana, sans serif. Verdana is present in almost every machine and much nicer than Arial.
Huzzah! Comments are back!
Probably not going to happen but I would like a way to filter out posts by certain authors, Cory to be precise. Actually I just want to filter out his Disney World/Haunted Mansion posts. We get it Corey, you are obsessed with Walt Disney. I have obsessions too but you don't see me plastering them all over arguably the most popular website on the internet.
May be a sign of the times but my first view of the new layout was from my Windows Mobile phone and I'm happy to report the site is very readable.
I also concur that the comments link should be at the bottom of the post. Very annoying to have to go back up to read the comments.
P.S.
I probably shouldn't post this here but I'm guessing Corey will have a higher chance of reading this since you will all be watching the comments on this post more closely.
Anyways, Corey: WHAT THE HECK WERE YOU SMOKING WHEN YOU WROTE THE BOOK "Someone comes to town, someone leaves town"??!?!?!?
First of all, worst. title. evar. Maybe add a couple more sentences to it and go for the record of longest title. Not only that, it doesn't tell you anything about what the book is about. You might as well have named it "book". Next, a kid that's the result of a mountain and washing machine?? How does that make sense on any level? I dunno, maybe I'm just not cultured enough to get it. Overall the plot was good but the details kept me asking "Is he for real?".
I have to give you props for the wuffie idea though in your other book. That was pretty cool. The whole civilization living in Disney World though, not such a good idea. No one is that obsessed with Disney World. Well except maybe for you I guess.
i like the new font and the layout.
glad you brought back comments.
will check out the gadgets blog.
it's all good!
Baby please don't take my vowels,
You know that we love you.
Beep-beep, beep-beep, yeah!
Squajo here--I've followed bOING bOING since 1989 and I've been a big fan. Love the new design!
The glorious return of comments.
Like the new look, and it's great to have comments back.
The only suggestion I have is to add a discuss link at the bottom of articles on the front page. I had to scroll back up to the link at the top of the story to leave this awesome comment.
... maybe you should leave it at the top. haha
Just thought I'd come and have a look.
I see no left margin at all on the comment thread when I use my normal window size. If I stretch it or maximize it, a margin appears.
As for Teresa's moderating style...IME she seldom intervenes, and when she does it's clearly justified. That said, ll yr vwl r blng t s.
Hooray for comments!!!
i like and appreciate the new thought processes behind this design upgrade, but the main page doesn't look very good in my browser right now. i'm running camino on a 12-in g4 p.book, and the right margin takes up 1/4 of my screen, google ads the next ~1/4, and then the bb column itself uses the remaining little more than half, with a small/normal-sized left margin (~1/2in). it's not as if i would stop hanging around here even if the format was annoying to read, but since you, TNH, asked about the lack of left column, i figured that i would share what my browser sees.
If you're logged in, the comments link says "DISCUSS" as mentioned in your post, but if you're not logged in, the links to the comments say "COMMENTS"
It's a little weird and maybe not something you'd notice if you were logged in all the time. :)
Congratulations, Mark, Corey, Xeni, et al. It looks great so far.
Peace,
-royc.
Love boingboing, but hate the new blog-generica design. Where's the quirkiness? The old look had a personality, this one doesn't, at all.
Oh well. Love that I can now comment though.
How wonderful! Several screens full of text, with only half the screen with text on it. That's a fine use of browser real estate.
I kid... it's incredibly stupid and wasteful of my time and available space. Yeah, there was less use in the previous design, but at least it was all in the CENTER and easier to read than left justified with HALF A SCREEN of blank space on the right.
At least you haven't matched the incredibly f***ed-up-new design recently done at Wired (gee, let's make things harder to read and not use icons or graphics to help queue in advance what you're looking at).
And unlike most everyone else, let's put "discuss" with the title of the post with other information about the post just 'cause it wasn't that way before and people will love reading a long post then scrolling way back up to comment/discuss.
Bonus points for putting "subscribe" "don't Miss" and "Extras" at the BOTTOM of the page where they are likely to be missed.
You've made changes without really thinking this out and your designer outta get back to the basics:
1) make it EASIER to read
2) make GOOD USE of screen real estate
3) provide GOOD navigation aids
All in all, a classic re-design when one wasn't needed but "gee, shouldn't we because we haven't in awhile?" Your designer needs to learn that just because it hasn't been done that way means "let's do it" without understanding basic user interface principles.
Bad design, ill-thought out, wasted more of my time. Please post information about what you were smoking.
First!
boingboing? comments?
i was wrong, this IS the end times!
Left margin, please. Reading on Safari on dear old Mac 12" Powerbook. I've tried inching the window up the left edge of the screen, but this is a difficult precision operation --- too far and I lose pixels When not inched to the left, the drop shadow drawn to the left edge of an OS X window is not enough to obscure text from a window below. This is a pretty big oversight in usability design, not -- am I missing something here? My Safari/OS X settings are pretty standard. On no other site must I choose the window beneath the current window carefully -- have to find a nice empty text-free one.
Please fix left margin!
Nice to see comments back, though.
I think it looks great. I would just recommend that you add your author's byline to the RSS feed. I read BoingBoing via Google Reader, and now I don't know who posted what. I always like to see, because sometimes I'm just in a Cory Doctorow mood, y'know? (-:
How about a "Recommend" system like sfgate.com has for their comments. That's a good noise filter IMO, kind of like getting people to help with transcribing old texts via CAPTCHA. I'm not going to read through zillions of unrecommended comments. I'll be surprised if you read this request, I'm like number one million or something.
Thanks for the anonymous option though, saves time, you don't have to get freaked out and remember any passwords. Of course that means more noisy comments.
The font is quite uncomfortable to read. Serif fonts feel awkward for on screen reading.
Your Serif font for your body copy is really hard to read.
photoshoped! ;)
sum.zero
Who cares. You would think you were The NY Times announcing the smaller-sized page format. You're no different than any of the thousands of other blogs out there. Truly mind-boggling.
"Anonymous" ????
HHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHA
Ugly. Looks like every other blog. Font is hard to read. Lack of left margin stinks.
no, sir- i don't like it.
*much* harder to read. sure the headline size ids bigger, but doesn't stand out nearly as well as a smaller boldface. and serifs??? are you trying to be contrarian/ironic as some kind of statement? cos right now its mumbling "i am boring and difficult to read".
hate to be a hater but sorry....it's awful.
Hooray for anonymous comments!
Thank God (literally) that the comments are back. Now there's some way to respond to the unrelenting atheistic anti-Christian rhetoric that that this blog has spewed forth without any chance of rebuttal.
Movable Type? Really? So if we want signed comments we have to register with a Six Apart client? Even after this very site reported on 6A's misdeeds this summer?
Other than that, I'm excited. Last night my pals and I were happily discussing how much we love and use BB.
Crap, another TNH-modded community? This just doubled the amount of time I'm going to accidentally spend on the internut.
Welcome, congratulations, and nice job with the redesign. (The typefaces look great to me.)
I can no longer scan articles, bummer. Perhaps I'll get used to it eventually or start reading the rss feed instead.
Love the new look. Welcome to Web 2.0! Now, if we could just get that logo looking a little more 3D and shiny...
Spiffy. Like the new layout, still love the site. Rock on.
I like the design, cleaner, less cluttered. Hated the ads down each side.
Glad to see comments back, but I wonder if you'd be better off to disable anonymous comments.
Wait, you're not doing away with the practice of siting insightful reader comments directly in the original post, are you?
Comments are great, about time ! Glad you guys finally settled on a system. Personally I like the center justified site layout a little better, but it might just be because I'm not used to this yet.
In terms of content, BoingBoing consistently delivers, keep up the good work.
Hooray for comments! The new site looks awesome!
I have always preferred serifed fonts.
One thing about the comment thread itself: it's a bit difficult to scan for commenters by name. Could the names (even if they're "Anonymous") be bolded, maybe? That would also make it easier to find the boundaries between comments. The pale all-caps unserifed font that the POSTED BYs are in is about the least readable thing I can imagine.
Congrats! Its gonna be interesting to read the comments and the feedback.
I don't have much to add, other than an echoing of others' comments that the layout seems a little left-leaning (no pun intended), but I did want to try out the new commenting system and wish BB x.0 luck!
I like it.
I'll add my vote to the pile about the typeface though, this one looks dated and is hard to read.
Oh, and very much don't dig the new logo.
Very, very nice and long overdue. Congratulations!
No offense, but I think that the old design looked way better. The new one is to close to the left, it makes it hard to read. There definetly needs to be much more of a left margin, so that the text is centered on the screen. I think the old boingboing
design made it easier to read the other blogs. Now it looks worse then most blogs.
congratulations! nice. love the redesign. but why Movable Type instead of Wordpress? just wondering :)
keep it flowing...
~C
I like it.
I'll add my vote to the pile about the typeface though, this one looks dated and is hard to read.
Oh, and very much don't dig the new logo.
Hmmm, I will get used to it. I probably already have. I am glad to see Joel on the team, he left a vacuum at you-know-where.
Nice redesign. And I am glad that the minor bugs are being worked out, and there's a good moderator at the helm- her rules for running communities are a lot like my own. I agree that the rating system is like a game to some, and if they can game a system to destruction, they will.
But this Happy Mutant is happy to see BoingBoing evolving, and I'm looking forward to the little tweaks that will make it even more magnetic than it already is.
I miss the funky bar of links on the left. Well, in with the new. I've been a reader for a while, so I'll try not to abuse comments, nothing more humbling than being banned by people you like.
I welcome the addition (return? Not sure, only been around for 12-18 months ;^) of comments, but I have a nit to pick - once you scroll down past the first couple (top) stories, the screen on a fairly typical display (1280x1024) is 1/2 empty. There is nothing on the right side of the screen while scanning down the page. This give the appearance of "wasted space", esp. since your home page is fairly "long".
Have you considered adding "collapsed" links to stories over 24 hour old, to trim down the length of the home page? I feel strange arguing that you are providing too much of a good thing, but the home page does get a bit long some times, and can take a long time to load on my smartphone ;^)
Ken
I confess to not reading all of the comments but several of the initial comments mentioned the large font size. Maybe it was changed already, but on FF/Linux it is now one size too small to be comfortably readable. Alas . . .
meh, i dont like this layout at all. like other have said, things bleeds together, nothing stands out, even the site itself is now... "boring"
i am excited about the gadgets blog though. +1 for that, -1 for new layout. E for effort
I didn't wade through all the previous 300+ comments, but...
Don't like the font.
Don't like all the white space to the right with nothing in it.
Don't care much about comments or gadgets.
Looks like a zillion other blogs.
Seems to me you fixed something that wasn't broken.
Now you guys look like every other blog. :(...
The old design was better.
Dear Boingboing staff and readers,
I've been an avid reader of this site for years. Aside from great content, the one thing that has kept me here has been the simplicity of design. The re-design of the site doesn't really seem to make much sense to me. While more and more individuals are adopting widescreen monitors, web 2.0 sites seem to be focused more on vertically scrolling pages. Why? It only seems to add to wasted browser real estate and difficulty in browsing through content. Call me anal, but here are two images that illustrate my point:
Digg's wasted space (red squares): http://eightchainedourangoutangs.com/boingboing/digg.jpg
Boingboing's wasted space (red....blocks) http://eightchainedourangoutangs.com/boingboing/boingboing.jpg
I'll continue to read the blog of course, but just wanted to voice my concerns on behalf of my poor scrolling finger.
I think the new design is pretty nice, minimalistic and interesting.
I don't know about the typeface (unlike most people, I enforce my own fonts on my browser), but I do agree that the faded-out names of the commenters makes it hard to parse who said what...maybe keeping the faded look for Anonymous and bolding out the subscriber comments? That'd help make the comments thread better, I think.
Anon, somewhere up there ^^^^:
"As many have commented sruf fonts are bat on the screen."
The research (e.g. ) doesn't agree with your assessment. Serif fonts are no worse on-screen than sans-serif. According to that research, while it makes little or no difference to reading time or comprehension, Georgia is perceived as more legible than Verdana.
TomTheGeek, not so far up there ^^^:
Are you trying to tempt TNH to disemvowel you, or what? Testing the limits of how far you have to push?
-- Jules.
Please make the Boing Boing girl bounce again!
I like the new design, but I mostly view boingboing via RSS feed. One difference I've noticed is that the RSS feed no longer lists who posted each article, which is something I really liked. Any chance of changing the RSS feed to include the author of each post?
Given all the suggestions for improvement to Boing Boing's new site, it appears as if you have lots of pent-up love. Keep up the good work.
It's good to have comments: I've always wondered why BoingBoing lacked them. Not that keen on the new look, but time will tell...
I don't think you should have separated the "Gadgets" out to it's own sub-blog. That mix is one of the things that makes BoingBoing so attractive.
New redesign is not too bad, and comments are wonderful, so that averages out well.
wsnt rlly dsmvwlld; jst wntd t b th frst s tht lkd cl. hpflly, tnh thnks ts fnny, t.
A second vote for the Boing Boing girl going boing boing, again...
Sorry, this is awful. No hierarchy of text, links, or quotes, and now what was my favorite worktime pastimes looks like every other blog out there. Please consider some sort of redesign, this looks like blogspot or something.
OMG - comments! - I haven't read a single post denouncing them. That is because this is a wonderful thing.
I am not enamored with the new layout (too spread out, not enough on the page) but if it is the cost of comments, so be it.
1. Although I'm dead, I don't feel the design fits boingboing. It's a very surprising choice. I can understand however it has great potential for new widgets.
2. You're business is all about links. Come on:
links must show even with underline_links turned off. And once visited, links must look different, otherwise it's a loss of information.
3. Left margin matters for legibility.
It needs some tuning, but you're very courageous and right about changing. Thanks for all the good stuff!
I'm enjoying so far the clean and simple look, and the registering process was quick and painless.
Well, I can't add much to the discussion by now, with the massive ammount of comments and all, but I agree this is a great change, and the comments system was much needed.
The new layout is very nice. However the RSS feed seems to be missing the "posted by" info so when I read it on Livejournal I have no idea who authored each entry.
Thanks for keeping the awesome quotent of the internet at acceptable levels.
Drhaggis
www.slashboing.ca
fine, but serif fonts are hard to read on screen!!!
so, the idea is to slow readers down (with very standard layout, typeface, uncoloured links)? and to blend into the landscape? and to fuck with a nice logo for no particular reason?
judgement suspended, i guess, but the first impression is... pretty opaque.
and why let me make this comment?
p
Nice look, Mark. Very clean.
392 pixels of header images before the content starts. I am on a 20 Apple flat screen and I can no longer read even on post without scrolling.
Bad designer, very bad girl...
I'm a little cranky - like when that cool, dark magazine store I used to frequent that scrubbed the walls, evicted the store cat, installed lots of windows and went all upscale.
Thanks for not changing the DIV names too much, GreaseMonkey continues to get rid of all the ads.
I like fresh, but I miss "BoingBoing." Comments are nice, but with so many here, I don't feel it is appropriate for BB.
And another thing, I hate how the new feed doesn't display author names like before.
BoingBoing just isn't what it once was.
Please, please, bring back the author attribution in the RSS feeds! I mean, right now, it's sort of a fun guessing game, but I quite liked to know.
Congratulations. This is a wonderful showcase site for Movable Type and its ability to support community on a large scale.
What can I say? Awesome redesign and thanks!
I just have a small complaint: now, when we see the posts on Google Reader, I can't see who wrote it anymore... Is there a way to fix this?
All the luck!
Oh no!!
It's harder to read/ scan through... and there a few glitches, the text is running right against left hand side of browser in Firefox on mac....
Please change it back... as a designer it's bugging me, soz to those who have put time into it, but bring back the old!!!
Pab - in uk!
I love the new design. It looks so clean and streamline, like a nice new zen white couch.
I really liked having things organized by days with a list of recent days at the top of the page. I could see how far behind I was and jump back to a previous day to catch up easily.
But, comments good!
Left margin padding please!
I love the rest, though.
I can finally read it in Google Reader! Praise be!
I'm not sure if it's due to the redesign, but I notice the author of each post no longer shows up in the RSS feed. Also, the preview button seems to be broken at the moment.
-Jonah
Hey everyone, thanks -- seriously -- for weighing in with your feedback here, both the praise and the criticism. We'll be mulling over all of this, and reworking the site in days/weeks to come. Your thoughts matter a lot to us.
I'm glad the general vibe seems to be that you like what we've tried to do here, though! A lot of people worked super hard to make this smarter/funner/easier/more crossplatform friendly thn before.
We still have kinks to work out, though, and we'll do our best to address those quickly.
XJ
Love the new design. Honestly I'm a full time boingboing rss feed reader but had to check it out when I read about it. Love it. Love the comments but I already spend too much time reading bb, now i have to read the comments too. Ack!
Hope you continue placing good comments with the story.
Otherwise nice job. Love the footer.
Nice, but comments link should be at the bottom of the article. Also, it's not obvious how to join so as not to be anonymous.
And this is purely out of self interest - the filter at the school I work filters out www.boingboing.net (Adult Content,Entertainment (Global)) but lets boingboing.net (without the www) through. Any chance of dropping the www by default (it's really a little outdated in this web2.0 world :)
With all due respect, I don't see how this layout improves on anything.
Too much white on the right, font far too big etc.
Now this blog ANNOYINGLY looks just like as bland & bad as those trillion other blogs out there.
Comments are great though. ;)
Wow! Lovely. Everyone involved has done a fantastic job, it really shows.
One tiny suggestion: make the Google search page pretty like Khoi just did for Subtraction:
http://www.subtraction.com/archives/2007/0828_now_fully_co.php
(Oh, and previewing a post doesn't seem to work at the moment? It says: "Publish error in template 'Comment Preview': Error in tag: error in module Comment Detail: Error in tag:")
Looks hot and cool at the same time. Well done.
Sadly, the RSS feed seems to have lost the author, so posts saying "I.." and "We.." and "...me" don't make as much sense as they used to.
I don't know how I feel about the redesign, I've become so accustomed to reading BoingBoing through RSS that I forget how the frontpage was supposed to look.
Question about RSS: Sage (Firefox add-on and feed reader) used to show 30 posts at a time, now it shows 15. 15 is not very much for a high volume site like BoingBoing. If you could twiddle a dial that would increase the flow of posts to my browser, I'd encourage you to do so.
Thanks!
Also, yay for comments and for TNH.
I loved the old boing. I love the new boing. I tell everyone I meet about bb. They tell me I shouldn't block the intersection or wave my hands about like that, particularly while holding a loaded squirt gun filled with fish sauce. I tell them to go take a piss. Keep the good stuff coming.
It feels naked. Too much empty space on the sides. Otherwise quite nice.
Comments: Huzzah! I hope it works (and doesn't become a slagfest).
I've got left margins, as long as my browser (FF) is wider than about 920 pixels. No prob there.
Don't care for the serif font much (and I'm comparing "IT Crowd" posts in both formats side-by-side). But please no Verdana.
I don't know why so many are complaing about too-large text. I find it rather too small. Setting 13px as a font size is kind of a weird choice for knowledgable geek-types. How about 100%?
John the Anonymous
Comments can be interesting, but two things that cannot go away are the 'such and such says:' and 'update' that appeared in posts.
- anonymous.
Looks great, smashing job guys. I'm going to add my voice to the choir asking for the return of bylines/attribution to the RSS feed. That is how I read BoingBoing, and you all write in the first person. I have no begun to wonder which I I'm reading. =)
yeah comments.
Less charming design, and looks like most other pro blogs- but it's not bad, really, just typical.
Pleas keep Boing Boing from following the latest cell phones and things to buy. Though it is spiced up with miscellanea I'd expect from BB, it just seems like you are trying to attract a new market of advertisers for your geek [proud member] audience.
Nothing against Joel, I like almost exactly half his posts. but-
Morning Tech Deals Highlights
Posted by Joel Johnson, August 24, 2007 5:55 AM | # | Deals | Discuss (0)
...
But hey, whatever keeps BB going.
and someone said
"Please make the Boing Boing girl bounce again!"
I love the new redesign, it's so gorgeous and functional. But I'm sure you were already aware of that. ;) Best of all, the transition from old to new was seamless! A huge improvement the whole way around.
For God's sake man, make the boing-boing girl bounce!
It has a flavour!
And comments!
KThnxBai
Unknown if anyone has mentioned this yet, but bylines aren't showing up in the RSS feed version of boingboing.
Having comments here moderated by Teresa and her Disemvoweler will be fun. And for some reason, BoingBoing is getting through my company's nannyfilter today. We'll see how long that lasts.
Now that was special! Preview gave a tag error on my previous post, and there weren't any tags in my comment. On this one too:
'Publish error in template 'Comment Preview': Error in tag: error in module Comment Detail: Error in tag: '
Post works, though.
Comments rock and so does Joel!
Nice! Nice and clean and very well done.
But the comments, they almost don't seem worth it. All these comments, one after the other... is anyone really going to read them? Is anyone really doing to read this one? Probably not.
Where are all the links from the old sidebars?
Why the ugly font?
I'd like to second #247's comment, that having the author listed in each feed entry was really nice.
GO BACK TO PREVIOUS DISPLAY SCHEME !!!!
Love the addition of the comments.
But I have to agree with many of the other posts on the realignment. It makes the whole site off balance. Especially after the short ad section, I'm looking at maybe 1 1/2 inches of white space to the left and well over 6 inches to the right. It's very disconcerting. I didn't mind the ads that were there before, they were unobtrusive and helped balance the page.
***PLEASE RE-CENTER THE BLOG POSTS!!!*******
The new layout makes BB look like every other jejtone blog. Way to conform!
Joel Johnson was a good move. I used to love Gizmodo but haven't read it much at all since he left. New look is good too. Boing Boing!
Oh, and what happened to permalinks? I guess the post title is supposed to be the new permalink, but it doesn't look like it works.
I'm sure you guys will get this all fixed before the week's over.
I don't often see the site, since I read BB in GR, but congrats anyway.
Very nice redesign!
Comments. Hunh. Ah well. As ironic as this is, BoingBoing was kind of the last bastion of intelligent blogging on the net that DIDN'T NEED COMMENTS TO BE GOOD.
I mean, it takes one look at the comments at places like Fark, Digg, and YouTube to understand that comments aren't necessarily a good thing. Half of them make my eyes bleed. :( Even communities that have had great commenters slowly but surely get corrupted (eg, Lifehacker and some other Gawker blogs).
Here's hoping it's smoother sailing for you guys. Beautiful redesign, good luck with the community.
The RSS feed is posting tons of duplicates, at least on Bloglines.
I love BoingBoing, and I'm excited to see comments! I can't say I really like the design though. For some reason, I find it harder to read not easier.
Mostly I miss having the text in the middle. Having it on the left just isn't as good!
I came by to echo comments #277 and 317. Please add bylines back into your RSS feed so I can tell if the world has gone berserk and suddenly Xeni starts posting about Disney or Corey about being married to a craft-maven.
Please add blogger's names to the RSS feed. I'm seeing headlines and articles, but I don't know who's writing. Maybe I should try to guess, based on the subject, style and point of view...nah, just put the names back on please. Thanks, and I like the new look.
Love the new look folks. Keep up the great work.
I've always known Boing Boing to be a blog. It's amazing to think you guys have been around for almost 20 years :)
The new look is cleaner, it much easier for me to resize my browser so only text is showing and I can pretend I'm reading something work related :P ha! More power to you guys. I love BB!
I adore BoingBoing but I can't read the new layout. Maybe the site has always been a 60/40 split between content and ads, but the site really looks generic now. This is why Web 2.0 has become such a joke: It's homogenizing the internet. Great, so you used Movable along with how many other hundreds-- thousands?-- of others. The old layout was fine, and if it ain't broke, why kick it in the side of the head?
I also don't like the idea of a separate gadgets brand of BoingBoing. I like that they were part of the mix on BB. If I just wanted to read about tech I'd read Engadget or Gizmodo. Why make another blog? Were people complaining that they didn't feel tech belonged here? If not, don't make it annoying for your readership.
I'm just happy you've restored the commenting system. So many articles I wanted to comment on... too lazy to write an email about...
Nice work on the page and feel free to go ahead with that limited edition boingboing mag you /know/ you can get printed up through oreilly:p
"We fear change. Change is bad." -Garth Algar
I like it. I'll get used to it. Nice to see the comments back, but I fear I'll be skipping over a lot of petty nonsense.
Which actually also passes the time, so whatevs.
First of all, great to be able to comment. Thank you.
I must say the new design is awkward for me to read, some thing about the 2 column layout with body text on the left.
I am also a bit surprised that a site so in tune with the net still clutches on to the old skool ideas of a formal "launch" and "redesign". The beauty of today's net is evolution. Try something, if it doesn't work, change it tomorrow.
I also am a bit surprised to see such a soul-less design from a group of people fascinated with DIY and lo-fi technology and design.
All that being said, I am a huge fan and boing boing reader for life (patiently awaiting small tweaks and adjustments). Congrats on the redesign.
the redesign is perfect!
it'll take a day or two to get used to
but thats the way it goes for any redesign of a site i go to every day (well actually.. several times a day)
i love that the ads have been pushed over (i dont feel so attacked)
i dont get why people want things centered...
the flow of this redesign is exquisite
congrats everyone
@Stef: The comment preview should be working again, oops.
If the user turns off link underlining in their browser preferences, links are not visually differentiated from the rest of the text. Please remove the anchor styles, or choose a color other than black.
It is not unattractive per se, but how do I make it go back? Wide open type and lots of scrolling instead of just scanning the previously more compact list of stories annoys me deeply.
Worst case, I will simply stop reading it via web and only do RSS, but still it seems like you might want to explore the option for readers to choose a "compact" css perhaps?
awesome, love it.
Keep it up guys!
Very nice and clean design. The only thing I would prefer is a bit bigger font. In Firefox at 1920x1200 it's a bit small.
I know I can increase the font size easily but then other sites will be too big.
Looking at the font-size I see a lot of px sizes - that's really not such a good idea - relative sizing is a bit harder on the designer but easier on the visitor.
Merlin
The serif font makes my eyes bleed!
Your content is awesome though...
Should consult your readerz before you change the font "because it's easier to read"...
Dude!
You were in Boulder!
And I didn't know!
Wait! Maybe you're *always* in Boulder... *gets paranoid* ...er, welcome to the neighborhood!
Yay comments!
I'm finding the default font size just a little too tiny. Since I'm under 30 and only mildly glasses-wearing, I expect that's a bigger problem for others. I don't like needing to up the text size for things all the time.
I also... miss the old ads. Your new ads probably bring you more money which you need for all this new stuff, but... the old ones were so much better and funkier and actually expressed something about the site as well. These slick ads for HP just feel alien here, and not in the good way.
I don't wanna be a change hater, but please think about this stuff in any tweaks you do. I mean, I used to actually come to the site instead of just reading my feed so I could follow your ads to find neat new stuff (since only some of the ads went in the feed). Do you really want to get rid of ads people actually actively liked?
Another gadget blog? Oh joy :-)
The font is pretty tricky to read too. Yay for comments though.
I still use system 9...
BOING BOING was one of the few sites that would still work with system 9, but *now* all the text appears in caps, and the comments don't appear at all,
So I had to restart with the *new* system - no choice - no *X* no BOING BOING.
Too many changes...
Font is way too small on 1600x1200.
Usability improvement please. Add the link to comment at the end of the article instead of the beginning. Otherwise I have to scroll back to the top after reading it which is annoying.
It's way too narrow! Why is the width fixed ?? It really make things harder to read!
Hi, I just wanted to add my first thought on the new design:
While everything looks nice and clean, (and hooray for comments, YAY!) I find it somewhat annoying and detrimental to the readability that the posts starts flush against the left border of my browser.
Putting a margin there would help a lot
Bravo for this new desing and the comments back. Hope you will leverage all comments process...
Claude
It will definitely take a while to get accustomed to the new design, seeing that I've had a couple years of daily use to get used to the old one. The new design looks fine, though.
Just one little quibble: would it be possible to have the permalink at the bottom of the message again? This because I usually quickly skim over the message, and then open it in a separate browser window/tab for proper reading. This is now a bit awkward, since I'll need to roll back to the topic of the message for this operation if I think I'll want to read the message more closely.
What a great new look...
Looks great!
Congrats!
looks great.
Congrats to the new design and it's great to see comments back.
I love the gadgets addition!
Sans serif fonts, please! At least for body text :)
After all, this is the internetsssss
Default font size is too small. (Reading with Firefox 2 on Linux 1280x1024 on 17" tft) Problem is exasperated by use of a serif font.
Compared to the previous look the word that comes to mind it 'bland'.
Considering the size of the Boing Boing community, I'm surprised to see you didn't opt for a metamoderation system a la Slashdot... But anyway, it is absolutely great to see the comments back, they sometimes add a lot to the stories! Congratulations!
yah, but now i can't use IE's "use larger font" functio... can't see for SH**!
I guess I can no longer enjoy this blog...
It needs some more white space on the left margin, otherwise it's ok
The comments seem to fall into two categories:
Boingboing now looks like every other blog in the world and is boring
or
Boingboing doesn't look enough like every other blog in the world, please change it so it does.
I ask only that you ignore the people who hate serifs. Serifs today, serifs tomorrow, serifs forever!
Hmm. Before preview there's no input box for email address. Preview adds one. Something is borked.
doN'T LIKE it.
olD one back please.
please use another font, i get a headache reading the texts now. In fact i don't read them anymore with this font
Right, but who actually reads 400+ long unmod'd comment thread? Nobody, particularly not the authors of the blog.
PLEASE bring back the search-by-date feature you recently added and have now abandoned. It was much appreciated and a welcome addition to BB.
I'm sure a lot of your readers check out lots of other sites but Boing Boing is about the only one that I've found that is consistently interesting and easy to browse when I'm pressed for time at work. Not now. The text size is too large and half the page is made up of advertising. I don't like the design. It 'looks' like a blog which is a bad thing. In fact it looks like every other blog out there. I don't know how much you paid Miss Hostetler but it was probably too much.
I love the addition of comments and of the new gadget-targeted blog, but the design is not something I like at all. If it is using CSS perhaps a design more similar to the old version would be made available? The text on the new version is far too large IMHO.
How do you send people permalinks to a boing boing entry? Now there is only the option to copy the link away from the site.
what happened the email subscription service of boing boing? I received boing boing as email post but now I wanna change my email. and also subscribe to the new gadgets post
nais!
I love boingboing, I like the comments, I don't like this new design. It's hard to read, bothers my eyes. The old design was much better. Maybe the reduction in font size as mentioned in other posts would help?
Awesome. Hope the Mods are up to the task! Congrats BB, and thanks for letting the lurkers in.
rss feed is continually reposting every article since the change. may have to remove it from my rss subscriptions.
I decided to wait a day before commenting. Unfortunately, I still hate the new look. The previous design had a crispness and level of energy that this one lacks. Since the content is so great, I will still be a daily (well actually, 3 or 4 times a day) visitor. However, I am really disappointed that Boing Boing now has such a vanilla look.
after trying the new look for awhile now, I still like the old version better--it's much easier to read. Any chance there can be an option to choose our version?????
Shock.
Surprise.
Excitement.
Disappointment.
Resignation.
Delight.
Acceptance.
Integration.
Continuation.
Is it just coincidence that your RSS feed is now borked? Most recent item on it is from 24th August.
Yay! The new site is better for me. I need to increase the font size. The new site handles that better.
-Carrie
nice...although the font is a bit hard on the eyes for a high re display : 15.4' 1680*1050.
Good nonetheless, maybe a small scaling images loos of quality.
Boing Boing is great because of the content, is it not? Why all the nitpicking over fonts and column widths and the so-called vanilla/bland look of the site?
With a community of this size, they're never gonna please everyone. If you would prefer something different you have several options that don't require everyone else to agree with you:
1. Use a browser (such as Opera) or add-on that allows the user to override page styles.
2. Read BB through the RSS feed in a reader that allows you to customize the content how you want.
Having said that, there are a few small changes that would probably go a long way toward making more people happy:
1. Add a style switcher with options increase/decrease size and switch between serif/sans-serif. These are actually fairly simple to do.
2. Add some default margin to the body so that even at widths narrower than 800 (or whatever it is) the content has some breathing room on the left side.
3. Give the site a liquid layout, with a minimum width on the ad space to allow for whatever size you need. That way people will higher resolutions can get a wider column for the content to fill.
Personally, I really like the redesign.
I effing love this new look
the future is now!
I wish I wouldn't gripe. And yet I do...
I find it much harder to scan the new layout to quickly find interesting items:
- The headline size is so large that it's difficult for me to read. Reducing the text so the headline is easily scanned leaves the body text too small.
- Giant red quote marks draw too much attention, I feel. Simple indentation is the standard for block quotations. That works well because they're quickly identifiable yet draw no attention to themselves until they're looked for -- making them much easier to ignore when the subject didn't interest me.
I miss the more compact view. I don't mind the redesign itself, but the old one was so much easier on my eyes.
Thanks for listening. Now back to my regularly scheduled Boing Boing...
i think along the top nav where you have two options, boing boing and bb gadgets the highlighting is counterintuitive. When you are on the bb part of the site, boingboing should be highlighted to indicate where you are, and vice versa when you are on the gadgets part of the site. Wonder why you chose to against convention on that one.
I am also disappointed you chose such a narrow column for your main content; there is SO much white space on the right wasted once you start scrolling down past the ads.
are you guys going to put up an explanation of the steps it took to achieve this design, might give a better sense of why it was designed visually this way.
I love the new design. Great job! It's perfect.
1) your comments page hung up Firefox (current) for over 7 minutes (Adclick loading problem?) and I hadda re-boot the appl (esc on Mac OS X)
2) Why should I have to scroll ALL THE WAY BACK UP to leave a comment to an article read?
Really really dumb and ill-thought out. Site is also more sluggish than it uused to be.
Giant step backwards.
Definite minus for the new RSS feed format that doesn't put the poster's name at the front of the article. Some of us reading the blog would read more/less of an article if we knew which of The Three it came from.
Thanks for adding the comments.
Dang! Could we return to the old, readable and laughable Boing? Can barely make it thru this via the font and lack of balance. Love the content, hate the new format. Peace.
AHHHHH, the text is too small and you're not using scalable text, at least not for IE. Yes I use firefox, but I still use IE as well. I need to be able to bump up the text size!
I love bOINGbOING and have been reading since 1989.
I do not like this new format although I am glad it is better for the editors. The new format is lopsided, hard to read and looks like it set up for a 4 year old. What's with the crazy, silly giant red quotations? I miss the older, more readable blog.
EI cant see wat im writing from my Firefox (on Mac), a big & white rectangle appears over the text-box.
But commenting it's nice.
i don't like the new details of the logo, nor the gadgets logo. but the new style and everything looks good. it's clean and the ads are less annoying. why are you using MT instead of wordpress, anyway?
Looks great. Normally I don't like change but it seems to be an improvement. It also looks better with Linux than it does in windows.
No sir, I don't like it.
Very hard to read font (even at the larger size!), ton o' wasted space, I have to turn on link underline to find the links, gotta click to see more posts.
Looks like every other blog. 'Taint special.
BUT, the content does not seem to suffer so I'll just learn to be OK with the Boing I love so much.
Would prefer centered text. Or justified to the far right. I believe it's been said that, in film, what's on the far right of the screen draws the most attention.
bOINGbOING has been my steady friend since 1989.
But this new format is awful!
Hard on the eyes.
Silly red quotation marks.
I wish it was centered.
And, I liked the gadgets included with everything else.
It is the difference between regular Legos
and those giant child Legos. The new bOINGbOING
looks like it has been set up for small children's safety.
I am glad it is better for you guys, but it is not for us!
I love your new design, and I am even more in love with your having re-instituted commenting. You guys rock.
Love the new design. I've been an avid reader for more than a few years now.
Keep up the great work!
Thank You (!) for the redesign. Much more legible. Having comments is icing on the cake!
Signed
Grateful.
New is good... format is boring.! You had a unique look before. Now you look like everyone else. Boing Boing conforms to the masses.
Funny. I'm so used to just start scrolling when this page loads that I didnt' even notice until the third down. Very sleek.
redesign is good. many of the things i'd hoped for. easier to read. quicker to load. comments enabled.
good work.
The new design is nice, but the old was sooooo much better and easier to please my personal taste.. Reader comments are a great item to return however.. As an earlier poster stated..
All good things must come to an end..
I really don't like the new logo. The font hurts
my eyes, and it's not really legible. Besides
hurting my eyes, it just looks silly. What was
wrong with the old one? Clean, legible, fonts
are preferable to silly novelty fonts.
Maybe you could keep the new layout and go
back to the old, cleaner looking logo with
the non-painful font.
I iz not like the bukkit. Looks too much like Gawker and other popular blogs -- too much white space, too much scrolling.
The new design looks terrible. Mostly boring blank white space with large chunks of dense, nearly unreadable text.
I'm not sure entirely why, but BoingBoing now eats up my CPU. Whenever I have the page open, firefox takes between 75-95% of my CPU... no other page causes it to take more than 6% and thats rare and only for a moment.
BoingBoing makes it hover in the high 80s.
I'm not entirely sure what the problem is, but I suspect a bad script of some sort (Or my computer is just totally dumb)
The redesign is a vast improvement. The reintroduction of comments is even better. A-and if the gadgets blog means not so many gadget posts on the main blog, then that's also a good thing IMHO.
Gack! The redesign completely destroyed the RSS Feed. Boingboing used to have a good RSS feed, now it is completely unusable.
Is there a way to email entries to friends? I used to do that all the time, but can't figure out how any more.
(thanks)
BB is great but Xeni's (for example) artful distillations of the essence of an item to a short paragraph is sorely missed. So much text to scan now!
I, for one, welcome our redesign overlords.
comments! i never understood why a blog like BB wouldn't have comments. very glad to see this addition.
Was kinda strange to see the new site this morning. But hey, the only constant is change, right? Well, that and e.
Bring back the old format!
hate it. must write a greasemonkey script to ax out those massively distracting massive ads on the side
To re-iterate a lot of the comments above: like the design, somewhat; the left padding makes it better; don't like the font, don't like the fact that the headings blend into the text a bit too much; like the comments, but would like major points added to the post itself like you used to do. And if there are going to be lots of comments per post, threading might be nice.
What I really don't like is that it now looks awful when reading on my phone (HTC Wizard). Probably at least partly my phone's fault, since it does a bit of reformatting to fit everything on the screen without horizontal scrolling, but now there's a *huge* amount of whitepace that I have to scroll through to get to the text - which also means that I can't see how far I've read, and how much there is left, since the scrollbar thumb thingy is already as small and low down as it can be. The headlines also blend into the text terribly on the phone, and the link roundups are unreadable. Obviously you can't test on every single device, but it does make the site fairly unusable on my phone :(
ll cn sy s WW! Y gys stll dn't gt t. W nd lss pltc nd mr ntrstng cntnt. ls lss bck-pttng wld b grt. mn, cm n, "ntrstng sgns n Clrd"??? Th rdctn f pddlng f frnds' gds wld b grt ls. fl lk 'm t frkn' swpmt vrytm cm hr. Gld y brght bck cmmnts. t lwys smd RNC t m tht th pstrbys f "h h y bttr mk t pn src r y'r vl" ddn't llw ny tsd cks n thr ktchn. s fr s th xplntn gvn by Mrk bv, cll BS. Fnlly, wh gvs sht wht t lks lk n cll phn??? Gt ff th frkn ntrnts vry nc n whl ppl. JBS!
S t rcp: Nw lk=wh crs
Bttr, lss cndscndng tn=gd
my tw cnts
May we also have a working "email this post"?
Not sure why my previous comment submission got borked (unless vetting takes 3 days); seemed to me it was on a par with others who are long-term boingers, but don't love the new look.
So, just a simple question from that first submission: where is the privacy policy for comments sign-up? As in, who am I giving an email address to? Do I need to burn a throwaway account for this, or can I use a workaday addie with the assurance that I won't be deluged with crap?
i also prefer the old format for a number of reasons already mentioned. but the main good news is comments.
Joel Johnson! Yay!!
Elegant. Clean. Comments. What's not to like?
- chico
Since the main list of topics scrolls off the end of my RSS feed so quickly, I would like a way to subscribe to individual BB topics.
Please put bylines back in the rss feed!
And put the bylines back in the daily emails. But thanks for moving them to the beginning of each post on the website instead of at the end of the posts.
And maybe I'm getting old but I don't see any significant difference design-wise. But if everyone's happy (except for the email byline issue)....
How about making links and images as relative rather than absolute? i.e. rather than src="http://www.boingboing.net/foo/bar.jpg" use src="/foo/bar.jpg".
Strangely, my work blocks www.boingboing.net but not boingboing.net, so a lot of bits go missing :(
I don't like the font either. But it's all good.
I'm sure this is a good thing but my suggestion would be to let the hidden members of BoingBoing--those among Jonathan Schreiber, Ivan Kanevski, Ken Snider and David Jacobs-- have a monthly post about the stats of BoingBoing. THAT certainly would be interesting.
i hate the new design. the same thing happened to spymac and tao of mac and they both suck now. to see boing boing tamed by the design gurus, with the same homogeneous look and crappy google ads along the right side of the page, is sad. the gawker zombies attacked and won. it means the demise of boing boing, the spirit of which used to be evident in the slightly riotous layout and colors. maybe boing boing will go up for sale like screenhead, which was neutered by gawker and which then then "underperformed." i guess middle age happens to everything. i wonder what the next boing boing will look like... not like a gawker.com site to be sure.
congratulations from a China reader!
9/3/2007 7:40:04 AM
Addiction drug prescription
oh, i say! lovely, old bean!
poodle-tip!
timx
i have to agree with lots of folks here.. I'm not thrilled with the new BoingBoing. Font is hard, the page has too much wasted space, the logo is just weird though.. It was not obvious to click on the other side of the logo to get to the gadgets and it seems that gadgets are also in the regular BB. i liked being able to determine editors comments, etc. Can you give an option via CSS to switch to the look of the old format? I have been a devoted reader for a long time, I guess I'll try to get used to this one. Thanks for trying to make it better.
+1 for something to distinguish links from other text. It's all about the links!
And I'm also a proud member of the Put Jackhammer Jill Back to Work club -- I miss her boinging pigtails.
Otherwise, nice job. You're still my favorite site on the webs.
I don't like the new design much. The old design was a bit of a kludge, but it was more readable IMHO. The new design seems a little too corporate and clinical.
Holy scrolling, Batman!!
Yay comments (many, many yays, in fact), but while I wonder if this narrow thing is for the ease of handhelds? the mega-scrolling makes me a sad panda, and my monitor isn't even v large. I can't even imagine how frustrating on a big screen...
Nonetheless, love you, babes.
I LOVE THE NEW LOOK!
I've had to halt my reading of Boingboing because of how long and graphic heavy the pages got; they just bogged down my laptop!
Can you add the FARK link back in to the left margin? You've broken my daily routine!
Ww thnks fr nt pstng my cmmnt. Snds lk th cnsrshp hs bgn lrdy. Hw mch dd y gys py tht dmb btch t rmv th srfs? 'm sr t ws wrth vry pnny. Hr's n d: Whydn't y slf-prclmd "tch wzrds" jst mk pg yrslvs??? Bggls m mnd. Mc RLS!!! Myb my cmmnt wll b pstd nw lm. Gt rd f Cry nd mr ppl mght cm hr. vr rd ppl's crtqs f tht gy hr n th blg? H s crtfbly nsn n th drvs f tnfl ht shpl stll wtng fr F rqsts n Fs frm th Clntn dmnstrtn. nd t th dts cmpnng f wht spc??? Lss ds, lss pcs, fstr ld tm dmbsss.
Dreadful! It's no longer BoingBoing! Now it looks like just another Moveable Type Blog. BoingBoing had a unique look and feel and now that is gone. I like the information density of the old layout much better - you could see three or four entries at a time, now one or two. Yuck! Mark - bring back the look and feel that got you where you are today!
Look Great! I was out from my PC for a while. Long live BoingBoing !!!
Comments. Excellent. It was frustrating reading neat articles & not being able to comment on them. Thanks.
A longtime enthusiast for this blog, I like the fresh design and love your decision to put reader comments back on the blog...truly good websites HAVE to be interactive!
Thanks for making a good site better.
And let us know if you ever hear anything official from the TSA (Jeni's story about LAX "freeze")
J
Looking real 'purty'...
I would like the 'permalink' feature returned. It had a method of emailing that url, which I used often. now there's no way to email just the post that you want to share with friends. if I email the entire boingboing site, then I have to describe which post I wanted them to read, which takes a lot of time.
is there any way to get this feature put back into boingboing.net?
thanks
the new look is good and very readable now. keep it up.
Sorry....it's horrible. Not only does it not have the old homey feel.....the content appears to be less. I know there IS just as much content as before, but.....It's all such that I do not visit daily any more. Sigh. The world's greatest (and my favorite) blog has fallen.
The new look is awesome! A wonderful job, indeed. Keep up the great work everyone! :]
I'm late to the game as far as commenting on the new site design, but here goes anyway. I appluad your efforts, and appreciate the work, thought, and time that obviously went into it. However. I find the new format difficult to read, and greatly dislike the copius amount of scrolling required to take it all in.
Basically I'd say that the design in and of itself is pleasing, but for a news-type blog, not well-suited for content delivery. Please please make the old version available for those of us who loved it. Sadly, I find myself glossing over boingboing in my bookmarks since the change. I *want* to continue to read every day like I have for years...
Thanks
test