Welcome to our latest design update, Ars 9.0!

More good stuff. Personalization, responsive design, and more...

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[Emon]

mobile still just completely broken. This happens on iOS Firefox inconsistently: cannot scroll or tap at all

Yeah this is why people were pissed. I recently paid for an Ars subscription and can't believe this is what I get. A "mobile first" experience that, apparently, wasn't tested on mobile but instead a desktop browser window that was resized.

Because this would NEVER SHIP if anyone even TRIED IT on an actual mobile device. OS doesn't matter, browser doesn't matter, I've tried numerous combinations.

If my money is going to journalism, stop wasting it on unnecessary, broken site updates.

If my money is going to software development, stop being bad at it. None of this "well you REALLY pay for the writing so you can't expect good software."

Don't have enough staff? Hire more. Have to raise subscription prices? Do it. Can't make any of that work out?

THEN DON'T BOTHER AND PAY YOUR WRITERS MORE

Christ the light mode isn't even light! It's both!

 

[Emon]

No, the "only better choice" would be it not being mutually exclusive with non-gigantic font options. It's 2024, why does every such negligible cost thing in a digital design still need to be seen as some zero sum game.

They're defending it because they have parasocial relationships with the staff here. They're friendly and so it feels like they're defending community.

FFS people are posting user scripts to fix the problem. That is sad.

It actually just occurred to me that this is probably all intentional. Ars knows their reader base will do things like provide fixed CSS.

Why bother hiring competent staff when you can just do a shit job and let the community fix it?

It's the Condé Nast version of Bethesda's "let the modders fix it."

This is an intentional beta release, they knew it'd be buggy as shit and rushed it knowing it would piss off the community. Know they'd do the hard work of debugging and finding root causes. Just look at the dialog of these threads...people are doing what SHOULD be paid work. It's a back and forth just like you'd see a developer working with a designer in the real world.

Aurich, know it or not but you're exploiting the community you claim to care about. This ain't an open source project but you're taking help as if it were. You're getting paid subscribers to spend time fixing your release. It doesn't matter if they "want to." It's still exploitation with extra steps and a pretty bow. Do better.

 

[Emon]

Edit: I know I'll get heat for this, but I'm wondering if the new design changes were spearheaded by a woman?

As someone who's been definitely unreasonably upset by the new design:

You're a moron and this is misogyny, stop being a fucking tool. It wasn't "spearheaded by a woman" and there isn't anything "feminine" about it. You couldn't define it so if you tried.

So yeah you'll get flak for your nonsense logic and frankly transparent misogyny. You're not being smart or clever, you're not "willing to speak up when others won't." You're. Just. Plain. Stupid.