Welcome to our latest design update, Ars 9.0!

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

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[unequivocal]

Looking forward to the update tomorrow. I’ve been waiting to post about this update because I wanted to give it a fair shot and not just be like “change bad”, but it’s still really reducing my time spent reading here.

I primarily read Ars on my iPhone and now with three of the default styles, the front page can only show one article at a time. It’s astounding to me that passed muster with anyone.

On the Neutron Star layout, you can see four articles but can’t see common byline and timestamps like we used to see on the Ars page.

This is really an example where the previous version worked very well. And the new version is objectively worse in every way at the goal of Ars which is to read news articles.

I know we can adjust the font size in our browser settings, but to make the articles readable, it shrinks the comments to tiny unreadable sizes.

Sorry to pile on here, but really need to make sure this user feedback is getting out there to all of you. I’ve loved this site for a long time and this new design is making it surprisingly hard for me to read articles.

I get that trying to make a single responsive UI that works for everyone is a near impossibility. I appreciate the hard work you’re putting in. I’ll try to remain patient. But please recognize how broken this is on iPhone.

It’s at least usable on desktop browsers for me. I could get used to how it behaves there, but like many, I’ve adopted the phone as my main device for catching up on news.

100% this - I don't want to win crankiest user of the day award. And I'm a long-time subscriber. But the site is near unreadable in the new formats - the only one even remotely close is Neutron, and it loses by-lines, which matter to me (your authors are not faceless content AI generators).

Neutron benefits:
1. Information density is high enough to be readable for me

Neutron problems
1. Why do I have to click to open a preview and then click to open the article? For being the densest / most efficient format, why introduce this UX nuance. Now I have to click twice on every article, or open in a new tab.
2. No by-lines
3. No article thumbnails. (I get why the densest format would suppress these, but I'm trying to just get back to a normal article feed, like what almost every major media company has followed Ars towards - you guys were the leaders in "just plain list of articles top to bottom with a thumb on the left" and now everyone figured out that's the best way, and you've abandoned it).

I'm hoping everyone at Ars affected by the hurricane gets through it safely and easily. Obviously that's more important than cranky users.

But I hope you'll consider the inputs above. The current site designs are really problematic for users like me who just want to scan for stories in a list, read them, and move on with our day. (Basically your old mobile design was like a very nice UX on an RSS feed, which is all I want).

 

[Aurich]

Neutron problems
1. Why do I have to click to open a preview and then click to open the article? For being the densest / most efficient format, why introduce this UX nuance. Now I have to click twice on every article, or open in a new tab.
2. No by-lines
3. No article thumbnails. (I get why the densest format would suppress these, but I'm trying to just get back to a normal article feed, like what almost every major media company has followed Ars towards - you guys were the leaders in "just plain list of articles top to bottom with a thumb on the left" and now everyone figured out that's the best way, and you've abandoned it).

I think you'll probably prefer the List view when we get that updated.

But have you tried using the keyboard navigation on Neutron Star? The preview part is really stronger I think when you can just flip between them, see the intro, and click L to read more if you want to.

That was the aim at least. It's the most experimental mode and I would be utterly happy to take sub feedback into account for adjusting it once people have given it a little more use.

 

[HitokiriEric]

I think you'll probably prefer the List view when we get that updated.

But have you tried using the keyboard navigation on Neutron Star? The preview part is really stronger I think when you can just flip between them, see the intro, and click L to read more if you want to.

That was the aim at least. It's the most experimental mode and I would be utterly happy to take sub feedback into account for adjusting it once people have given it a little more use.

I suspect they’re referring to Neutron Star mode on mobile and said click instead of tap.

On mobile, the Neutron layout is the only way to see more than one article at a time, but you still need to tap to expand and then tap to read the full article.

Like you said, it sounds like when List mode is fixed to behave more like the previous mobile site layout, it will probably be what most of the mobile users want/prefer.

 

[unequivocal]

I think you'll probably prefer the List view when we get that updated.

But have you tried using the keyboard navigation on Neutron Star? The preview part is really stronger I think when you can just flip between them, see the intro, and click L to read more if you want to.

That was the aim at least. It's the most experimental mode and I would be utterly happy to take sub feedback into account for adjusting it once people have given it a little more use.

Thanks for the reply.

List mode on desktop has two columns - with "Most Read" on the right. I guess I can try to find some CSS suppression tool in Firefox to kill that. Maybe that's just the path, because otherwise, List seems pretty much fine.

But I just want what I had (and I know how frustrating, and typical, that might be to hear as a designer): a clean list of vertically aligned stories with titles, sub-titles, thumbs, and by-lines. (And to have that same interface on both desktop and mobile.)

I'm very open to new UI and look/feel (even if it makes me grumpy and disoriented initially!). But I feel like this new set of designs has taken away core UX for me (that "clean list"), which was an integral part of me engaging with Ars content (which I've been doing happily for a long time).

 

[Aurich]

Thanks for the reply.

List mode on desktop has two columns - with "Most Read" on the right. I guess I can try to find some CSS suppression tool in Firefox to kill that. Maybe that's just the path, because otherwise, List seems pretty much fine.

But I just want what I had (and I know how frustrating, and typical, that might be to hear as a designer): a clean list of vertically aligned stories with titles, sub-titles, thumbs, and by-lines. (And to have that same interface on both desktop and mobile.)

I'm very open to new UI and look/feel (even if it makes me grumpy and disoriented initially!). But I feel like this new set of designs has taken away core UX for me (that "clean list"), which was an integral part of me engaging with Ars content (which I've been doing happily for a long time).

We're going to add the ability for subs to turn off that right column, no need for CSS.

 

[Sulla]

Does it behave the same if you use a different browser on the computer with the wrong format? Is there VPN that's giving you a weird route so that the webserver thinks you're coming from a different country on that device?, or something goofy with your ISP/DNS on the one computer that's causing a weird route?

No VPN (active). So in Firefox and Opera it shows the MMDDYYYY. It's only Chrome that shows Euro format. Weird indeed.

 

[unequivocal]

Thanks for the reply.

List mode on desktop has two columns - with "Most Read" on the right. I guess I can try to find some CSS suppression tool in Firefox to kill that. Maybe that's just the path, because otherwise, List seems pretty much fine.

But I just want what I had (and I know how frustrating, and typical, that might be to hear as a designer): a clean list of vertically aligned stories with titles, sub-titles, thumbs, and by-lines. (And to have that same interface on both desktop and mobile.)

I'm very open to new UI and look/feel (even if it makes me grumpy and disoriented initially!). But I feel like this new set of designs has taken away core UX for me (that "clean list"), which was an integral part of me engaging with Ars content (which I've been doing happily for a long time).

And to answer my own question, and to anyone who likes the List view, doesn't want the "Most Read" section, I installed Stylus into Firefox, and created a rule to remove it and reflow the page:

match URL: https://meincmagazine.com/
.mx-auto { display: flex; /* Ensure the parent uses flexbox */ } .component-most-read { display: none; /* Hide the right column */ } .grid { flex-grow: 1; /* Allow the left column to fill available space */ }

This basically removes the Most Read section, and makes the main article section full width. It's pretty close to the old way that I read Ars. (The thumbs are about 50% too big, but I couldn't figure out how to get Stylus to size them down).

 

[unequivocal]

We're going to add the ability for subs to turn off that right column, no need for CSS.

Thanks - I just posted a Stylus script that does the job for now, but I'll look forward to the config element whenever you get around to it! Thanks for being responsive.

I'll note that in List mode, if you remove the "Most Read" section, the images are too big, relative to the title/sub/author stuff. So if that image could "float" in size within the bounding box provided by these other elements, that would be pretty great.

Thanks again for being active and responsive at looking at all this stuff! It shouldn't be unexpected given what I know about Ars staff, and yourself specifically, but given how the internet works today, it is still a welcome surprise.

 

[Aurich]

Thanks - I just posted a Stylus script that does the job for now, but I'll look forward to the config element whenever you get around to it! Thanks for being responsive.

I'll note that in List mode, if you remove the "Most Read" section, the images are too big, relative to the title/sub/author stuff. So if that image could "float" in size within the bounding box provided by these other elements, that would be pretty great.

Thanks again for being active and responsive at looking at all this stuff! It shouldn't be unexpected given what I know about Ars staff, and yourself specifically, but given how the internet works today, it is still a welcome surprise.

Ultimately these things are a conversation. Users hate change, we know that, but we don't want to just stagnate. So we try things, people respond, and we tease out what's not working, what needs adjusting, what people are adjusting to, etc.

As far as I'm concerned this is a living design, not a "here you go, deal with it" kind of thing. We do have our own priorities that might need to be placed first, and we can't play design by committee, that's never a great idea, but we are always open to feedback.

 

[AjaxTelamon]

So light mode does not make the individual article placards light, they just stay dark. I'd much prefer black text on a white background for the whole site in light mode.

The old design was far superior on desktop, and the "Classic" view is just for mobile. Can we get Classic for desktop too?

 

[MiggityMikeB]

Hi Aurich - after living with the new Ars design for a while, I'm back to this thread for the first time in a few days because the "dark mode only" headers and dark mode only Grid View haven't been fixed/changed yet. Is fixing Light Mode something that Ars will be doing? Thanks.

 

[Aurich]

Hi Aurich - after living with the new Ars design for a while, I'm back to this thread for the first time in a few days because the "dark mode only" headers and dark mode only Grid View haven't been fixed/changed yet. Is fixing Light Mode something that Ars will be doing? Thanks.

It's not something that's a bug that needs to be "fixed", since it's a deliberate part of the design, not a mistake.

But I have heard enough feedback about it giving people issues that I'm more than willing to look at it, just not something that's a quick tweak, will require some time to solve how it would work.

I would say it's something we can look at once Jason is re-settled post hurricane and we have a chance to get these first major fixes out.

 

[mosis]

Is there a URL I could use to default to the list mode?

I used to use http://meincmagazine.com/?view=archive which looks to be the equivalent of the new list mode but it’s no longer applicable.

 

[MiggityMikeB]

It's not something that's a bug that needs to be "fixed", since it's a deliberate part of the design, not a mistake.

But I have heard enough feedback about it giving people issues that I'm more than willing to look at it, just not something that's a quick tweak, will require some time to solve how it would work.

I would say it's something we can look at once Jason is re-settled post hurricane and we have a chance to get these first major fixes out.

Thanks for taking it seriously, it's not something most people think about or even understand unless they suffer from not being able to use dark modes themselves.

 

[mdrejhon]

Hey I get it, you need those ads and I respect that, but see my earlier post requesting for text to flow AROUND the ads.

I run a site.

Let me add technicals to Aurich "seems dumb" perspective. I concur!

One big problem is the limitations of ad networks and APIs. It's downright annoying to optimize a responsive site around non-responsive boilerplate add templates, and I've had many head banging on desk moments, with a nice side helping of picard facepalms. Some of the decisions made by ad networks are downright byzantine but also has some legacy roots (e.g. support for really old browsers).

The pick-poison game of funding the costs of running a website... Be sheep and play the game the ad network obligatorily requires you to, or devote double-digit percentage of your business manpower continually trying to be your own homebrew ad network with fickle advertisers, or find another way to fund the costs of operating the website... Which devil do you hold your nose to & choose to sign your soul to, indeed!??!!1!!

Big clients like General Motors or Dell Alienware prefer to buy ads from the ad network, and your plug-n-play autobidder ad network script (from the ad network you chose) will place the highest-bidder ads on your site, automagically behind the scenes. This is the easiest way for limited-resources websites to get paid more to advertise. The ad network gets a cut, and you get the rest. The best ad networks with the highest pay for the least intrusive ads, get the most indie clients, while the other money-milker websites will liberally enable all intrusive ad options.

Instead of truly custom ad sizes you choose, you generally can only do things like filter categories (no casino ads, no adult ads) and reject certain formats (e.g. no dockable ads), but then you're signing away blank billboard space on your ads -- you can choose insert points and such, but the parameters are quite square peg in round hole. It's often, "Here. This ad network is providing this ad in this size, no scaling allowed, display it in full or else." after your page has already loaded & not allowed to detect its wrongly-provided size (because it's deep inside another ad networks' IFRAME, due to cross-origin security andboxing).

Some dumb inefficiencies occurs when ad networks embed ad networks that embed ad networks. You can have a third party ad network that includes multiple networks including Google Ads, which then also sometimes loads other whitelisted partner ad networks, and so on... This can mean you've got 4 levels of nested IFRAME's before the actual ad loads. How are you going to autodetect the size of the ad downstream if it's a smaller ad in a fixed cube (e.g. mobile ad loading in a desktop site because you loaded on an iPad, etc...). Site owners are always trying to switch between ad networks to either (A) have more options to design the website around and/or (B) earn more money.

This means there is no guarantee of being able to responsively adapt to size, especially if the ad bid occurs 3 seconds later (after your article has already loaded fast due to speed affecting good SEO). Banner ads as horizontal rules between article segments is doable, but reflow around ads side by side is extremely tough even for those sites that actually spend lots of programming to make it possible.

On top of it, the ad networks are also enshittifying themselves, sometimes without clearly explained consent to us site owners (except that TOS spew), in switcheroo games. And sometimes we have to rewrite our site to get rid of an ad network we now hate (E.g. switch ad networks can sometimes be painful)...

I freaking don't have time for it either, being at ransom for site operational costs to tolerate looser ad priveleges (how dare you attempt to do more tracking of my site visitors than yesterday etc etc etc).

Being hobby-turned-biz, I understand hobbyist disdain for ads. But also understand siteowner need to pay operational costs. The ad-vs-siteowner sometimes feels like cat and mouse game, to keep the ads at a Goldilocks level, without sabotaging too much cashflow, etc. Even to this day, I refuse to add ad networks to my most popular site (the ad-free motion testing site) even though it would more than quadruple my ad income (in theory).

Rated 4 out of 5 Picard Facepalms

P.S. Web Ad Trivia; Did you Know? Some interesting exercise, every site with ad network always has a public /ads.txt file listing authorized advertisers. Load your favourite website and add /ads.txt such as www.cnn.com/ads.txt or www.foxnews.com/ads.txt or www.meincmagazine.com/ads.txt ... Some of those are obvious big ad networks (e.g. Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Amazon Ads) while others are individual advertisers (direct bidders) or smaller ad networks (e.g. nextmillennium).

 

[sml7291]

It's not something that's a bug that needs to be "fixed", since it's a deliberate part of the design, not a mistake.

But I have heard enough feedback about it giving people issues that I'm more than willing to look at it, just not something that's a quick tweak, will require some time to solve how it would work.

I would say it's something we can look at once Jason is re-settled post hurricane and we have a chance to get these first major fixes out.

Ah, but it is a glaring mistake and something that desperately needs fixing, bug or not!

Way too much gray on gray going on in the light mode.

Some of us NEED more contrast to be able to read the actual articles. And the bits of light mode that are actually dark mode transplants, like headers, clearly are a problem that needs fixing. If I could use dark mode I might, but I can't because it's even worse than light mode for my eyes.

The only easily readable bits in the light mode are the comments, and only comments that haven't been down voted out of view, those are barely lighter gray on dark gray, so very hard to read.

At least for me, quoted content and the dialog for making a new comment have just enough contrast to be usable, but only just, and that's speaking for myself, I don't doubt that isn't true for everyone. This may come as a surprise but not everyone has 20 year old eyes.

And something completely missing with this "new and improved" interface is the click to see dialog on the front page that showed a list of recent articles I have commented on and highlighted articles with new content from others. That was a damn handy feature that's been removed (for no apparently good reason).

What was so horribly wrong with the old interface that it needed replaced by this?

 

[VelvetGlove]

I didn't comment at first because I wanted use the site for awhile before passing judgement.

Verdict: The new design is much less usable on desktop, and practically useless on mobile. The only positive is that I'm at lower risk of using my monthly data on my mobile plan -- because I no longer browse Ars by mobile device.

 

[Aurich]

I didn't comment at first because I wanted use the site for awhile before passing judgement.

Verdict: The new design is much less usable on desktop, and practically useless on mobile. The only positive is that I'm at lower risk of using my monthly data on my mobile plan -- because I no longer browse Ars by mobile device.

We have a bunch of fixed coming, hopefully tomorrow, but I can't tell if they're gonna address your issues because you didn't add any details.

So maybe see how it feels after we start updating, and feel free to follow up more after that.

 

[dkdean]

We have a bunch of fixed coming, hopefully tomorrow, but I can't tell if they're gonna address your issues because you didn't add any details.

So maybe see how it feels after we start updating, and feel free to follow up more after that.

Does this include a fix for changing the visited links color on the homepage in List mode? That is the main change I want to see. I would also like more information. per article like it sued to be (more density) but I am guessing that ship has sailed.

 

[Spunjji]

Is that honestly how you think of this relationship? You're threatening us?

That is indeed where it's ended up, yeah! I'm a customer, and beyond offering my thoughts in comments (which I have done a good few times now, for better or worse), I only have one option to signal any displeasure in the direction the site is taking.

I hope that your dislike of that paradigm will give pause for thought on how someone might end up there, because I also don't like it. The overall state of written tech journalism is such that I really was loath to cancel my subscription to a site that had bucked the trend longer than any other; unfortunately for me the final straw was a couple of straws ago and this change just seems like validation.

 

[Juun]

I'm mostly a lurker and have been reeding the site daily for a long time. Mostly because of the original stories, the community (comments, not forum per se) but also because the website was a pleasure on both mobile and desktop. The site catered to 'computer-people' and didn't make the same stupid mistakes other sites made, the so called enshittification. Other sites such as 9to5mac, The Verge and others messed up their site and I just stopped visiting. Ars Technica unfortunately is next in line. After opening the redesigned site I thought Safari didn't load the site well. Refreshed several times until I saw the post about the redesign.

There is for me - except for some technical changes (comments loading speed?) - not a single enhancement to be found. I've read all the comments (it took some time!) and most are negative for obvious reasons. A recurring theme is the blank space everywhere. The provided reasons by Aurich are that this space is needed for showing ads. However, this problem wasn't there (or least this big) in the previous design so that is not a good excuse. And yes Ars Technica is whitelisted in my adblocker.

All the views are a terrible regression on mobile. On desktop it's just not better than the previous version. And as an insult to injury the 'Neutron star' view shows less articles than previous views while providing less information per article. Also I think, the site is just ugly in many ways. Stark, difficult to read, messy.

I'll probably remain a lurker. But I won't be surprised if I remove the site from my favourites after a while and forget about the websites' existence.

 

[Waco]

Is that honestly how you think of this relationship? You're threatening us?

I mean...I'm in the same boat. My auto-renewal is cancelled because it's blatantly clear that your design decisions matter more than the desires of those paying for membership.

I'm happy to change it back if things improve, but your responses to clear design flaws have been "we did that on purpose, we're not "fixing" it because it's not broken".

 

[shadedmagus]

@Aurich - I'm not sure what happened, but I am not getting the notifications for new activity on articles I've commented on. This is what I see instead:

I mean, I can't say it's a straight downgrade from how it was before, to wit: clicking on the updates would take me to forum view instead of front page view, since the forum update. But it does bring up a question: Which mode is the preferred one to use? I mostly stay in Front Page, or did until the forum update. But is it the goal of the site devs to be able to do that still, or are you trying to make forum view the "default," so to speak?

 

[JohnDeL]

@Aurich - I'm not sure what happened, but I am not getting the notifications for new activity on articles I've commented on. This is what I see instead:
View attachment 92820

I mean, I can't say it's a straight downgrade from how it was before, to wit: clicking on the updates would take me to forum view instead of front page view, since the forum update. But it does bring up a question: Which mode is the preferred one to use? I mostly stay in Front Page, or did until the forum update. But is it the goal of the site devs to be able to do that still, or are you trying to make forum view the "default," so to speak?

That's been happening to me off and on. If I wait a moment, the notifications show up.

So maybe the server is just being slowed down somehow?

 

[Aurich]

Hey folks, we're about to publish a front page update, and rolling out changes based on feedback.

I'm going to lock this thread because it will be much easier for me to bug track etc if comments are in the new story going up instead.

I'll try and reply to a few things too, so don't take my locking this as trying to stop conversation, just trying to keep sanity on feedback so I don't miss things.

 

[Aurich]

Changes are live btw, we're editing the story to reflect it now, be up soon.