Welcome to our latest design update, Ars 9.0!
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Grid and list on mobile are way too big and spacious for me. Turned on small font in preferences, but that didn't seem to change the main page. I now need to scroll way more compared to the old design. Neutron without images - well... less scrolling but the images also provide cues to rapidly sort the wheat from the chaff.
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Please make the "List" format in mobile similar to the "List" Desktop. Mobile List has the same low density problem as Grid mobile. They are too similar. The desktop List format would work for me on mobile. Proper images for orientation and several headlines per screen.
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You couldn't have hidden it much better being in the Help & Feedback section of the forums.
No reason you couldn't have posted an article stating "hey we're doing a site redesign. go here to see a preview and fill out the bug report/opinion sheet", that alone would shut up most of the people complaining they didnt know this was going to happen.
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First impression is I VASTLY preferred the old layout. I’ll still use the site but the new design is considerably worse.
Consider having a subscriber option to have the old layout as an option? I’ve never paid for the site but I’d consider paying a small amount (never looked into what you charge) for that option.
Consider having a subscriber option to have the old layout as an option? I’ve never paid for the site but I’d consider paying a small amount (never looked into what you charge) for that option.
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Best of luck to you ARS staff this type of change is never easy. Will reserve my comments until I spend a few days with the new design.
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Ok maybe I’m the only one who’s happy, but this is the first article I’ve been able to read, on my phone, without apple reader mode, since I don’t know when.
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I think the number one thing I'm hearing as far as consistent feedback we should take action on is there isn't enough density on mobile.
I'm gonna bump that up to a priority once any more "show stopper" bugs are fixed.
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It sure is different, I'll give you that. Did you ever think to make it better?
How do sites keep doing this crap? DIGGing their own graves. And I pay for this...
How do sites keep doing this crap? DIGGing their own graves. And I pay for this...
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First impressions:
This definitely needs some big tweaks.
- "List" is the only usable view, but I still preferred the old layout.
- "Grid" is simply a bunch of black rectangles (with some text on them, but... it's just black rectangles)
- "Classic"? Classic what? It's not the classic Ars we've known for the last several years.
- "Light" mode weirdly has both too much and too little contrast at the same time
. The dark backgrounds ("Most read" boxes etc.) are too dark, but the sea of light gray somehow reduces the felt contrast with the text. - "Bigger fonts"?? I'm not seeing them in articles and comments. My account preferences say "Medium (recommended)"
This definitely needs some big tweaks.
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Thanks! I had totally forgotten that my subscription had lapsed. Now that I've resubscribed and turned off my ad-blocker, I see the same thing.
And while full-screen width would be silly, the incredibly narrow width (I'm still seeing) is also silly.
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Wow, unreal amount of scrolling needed now. I'll have to play with the settings, else only be able to read Ars on the PC without being as frustrated as I was while trying on the phone.
On the plus side,, it looks like privacy badger is finally seeing less trackers to block on Ars then on CNN.
On the plus side,, it looks like privacy badger is finally seeing less trackers to block on Ars then on CNN.
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Overall the old site had some obvious jank and I know you guys wanted to fix that. I remember previous discussions about certain things being an artifact of the technology used.
I know it's not possible, but you could probably throw me straight back to the 2000-era site that I first started visiting and I'd be quite happy with it - well, if I was on a CRT monitor from that era. I do agree that the complaining seems to come with each redesign. It astonishes me that people just come out of the woodwork to be... just straight up assholes though.
So here's my feedback and I hope it's constructive enough to add to the consideration pile:
Question though - I'm sure there is a reason but I'm very surprised that Ars doesn't do any kind of closed beta or such, or even some kind of preview of changes. (Sub only perk?) I know release day will still be full of "OMG I HATE IT" types, but I've found (for my stuff which to be fair are quite different than a tech journal site) that I can get more of the "useful" feedback from the people that care to look at a preview, vs dropping a change and then trying to sort the wheat from the chaff after.
And, yes, I intend to stick around regardless of the changes to format. I might drop into other tech websites, via links from 3rd parties, but Ars is still the only site I drop in every morning directly. That said, I hope the new site allows you to experiment with more options and tweaks and makes maintaining easier. Cheers!
I know it's not possible, but you could probably throw me straight back to the 2000-era site that I first started visiting and I'd be quite happy with it - well, if I was on a CRT monitor from that era. I do agree that the complaining seems to come with each redesign. It astonishes me that people just come out of the woodwork to be... just straight up assholes though.
So here's my feedback and I hope it's constructive enough to add to the consideration pile:
- List mode used to highlight "featured" articles right? I recall when that was implemented that generated complaints. Neutron actually looks like how I remember old list mode?
- Grid looks fine, but some of the smaller or more niche articles might work better in a small rectangles or share a small list? I don't know, I rarely use grid unless I'm checking the site from an unlogged in PC.
- Headers do seem overdone, and condensing them would be nice. I know "pics get clicks" but it might be nice to have the image header condensed somewhat. For feature articles, go wild, but the short/sweet articles it's not really helping the article is it? (Especially when it's a straight up stock image that hasn't had the Aurich treatment...)
- Font size/density, I'm kind of in agreement with others - I find the comments to be okay but something is definitely off. I think the text and images having different margins is part of the problem and bumping the text out to the same width would help? And I don't see a toggle for font size, but maybe it's just me?
- On the note about images, the examples I've seen today all seem to have the images full body width - on mobile this is okay, but on desktop with the added real-estate it's a bit much. For example in this article the "screenshots" could easily be shrunk down and have text wrap around them and it'd look better for it. As it is, they're so zoomed in as to look silly and it doesn't help with the reading density complaint folks have.
Question though - I'm sure there is a reason but I'm very surprised that Ars doesn't do any kind of closed beta or such, or even some kind of preview of changes. (Sub only perk?) I know release day will still be full of "OMG I HATE IT" types, but I've found (for my stuff which to be fair are quite different than a tech journal site) that I can get more of the "useful" feedback from the people that care to look at a preview, vs dropping a change and then trying to sort the wheat from the chaff after.
And, yes, I intend to stick around regardless of the changes to format. I might drop into other tech websites, via links from 3rd parties, but Ars is still the only site I drop in every morning directly. That said, I hope the new site allows you to experiment with more options and tweaks and makes maintaining easier. Cheers!
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"We have nothing to justify our promotion so we'll update the UI" -- Google software engineers working on Android
If it works for your users why force them to change? Maybe we need Google reader back so we can lay out text content however we want.
If it works for your users why force them to change? Maybe we need Google reader back so we can lay out text content however we want.
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Just had a weird glitch (on page 10 of comments on this article) (on Safari on mobile) where the page kept returning to the first of the comments every ten seconds. Went to another website for design sanity and when I came back (to page 11) and did Prev, it seemed to have cleared up.
Also going to comments doesn’t hide the article any more which makes the mobile Safari scroll to too much less useful, especially when the comments just jump to the bottom of the next page instead of the top (which has happened a couple of times already).
And hiding whether there are unread comments for an article (and the comments button) in Neutron view really sucks. More clicks for what used to be easier.
Also going to comments doesn’t hide the article any more which makes the mobile Safari scroll to too much less useful, especially when the comments just jump to the bottom of the next page instead of the top (which has happened a couple of times already).
And hiding whether there are unread comments for an article (and the comments button) in Neutron view really sucks. More clicks for what used to be easier.
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Another bug
On mobile iOS, using Neutron Star, and on the home page, when I swipe down to reload the page I get an iOS dialog box asking me "Are you sure you want to submit this form again?"
On mobile iOS, using Neutron Star, and on the home page, when I swipe down to reload the page I get an iOS dialog box asking me "Are you sure you want to submit this form again?"
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Some thoughts, that I have seen many echo, but posting here to add my voice:
I know that rolling out a redesign isn't without its challenges, and I appreciate the staggering amount of work that went into this. I don't have subscriber numbers or any idea of the bloody ROI, but some kind of customization options for everyone (or some for everyone and more for subscribers), would go a long way towards making this feel like a site that appreciated its longtime community of techies. This isn't The Verge; information dense screens are a way of life for many of us.
- the information density in List View on mobile is really low, and very frustrating. I use a large screen iPhone Max, and it went from 6-7 articles with a picture to maybe 2.5. much more scrolling. Neutron doesn't have pictures, and opening articles inline just isn't how I read.
- seeing "subscribe" on the top of every page as a ++ subscriber is a little odd. Maybe that can be turned off for subscribers?
- general lack of information density everywhere, regardless of the mode, regardless of subscribed or not. Additionally the (very very buried!) font settings don't seem to do much to change the density. Is this a bug, or the new design?
- dark background on light mode is jarring. Is an "actually-all-light-mode" possible?
- as someone who is getting older myself, I do appreciate the larger font/sparser info density options, but it would be great to have those be optional; I'm not into reading glasses yet.
- many old articles are broken. (as someone mentioned, the ZFS101 article is a great test case). Will those be cleaned up manually or left to rot?
I know that rolling out a redesign isn't without its challenges, and I appreciate the staggering amount of work that went into this. I don't have subscriber numbers or any idea of the bloody ROI, but some kind of customization options for everyone (or some for everyone and more for subscribers), would go a long way towards making this feel like a site that appreciated its longtime community of techies. This isn't The Verge; information dense screens are a way of life for many of us.
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definitely not as bad as the atrocious first release of the last Verge redesign.
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Bug: Pressing Load More on the Front Page don't Load More in place, instead it goes to /page/2/ /page/3/ ....
If the intent is to keep that behavior then call it "Next Page".
Load More should load more in place, keeping the current scroll position.
Also, Grid View magically behaves as List View on /page/2/ and beyond.
If the intent is to keep that behavior then call it "Next Page".
Load More should load more in place, keeping the current scroll position.
Also, Grid View magically behaves as List View on /page/2/ and beyond.
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First off, thank you for not only supporting us but putting up with my ad block frustration and responding the way you did, I truly appreciate it.
I try to not get too frustrated by it, but when people post screenshots to point out bugs on our site that show them ad blocking it's a real kick in the balls. Especially when it turns out the 'bug' they found was caused by their ad blocker (you have no idea how common this is).
So now that we've gotten that out of the way, the short answer is that we lock the column width to get an idea character count per line for reading. If you look around the web you'll find most sites do it very similarly, for the same reasons.
But, that said, we do have a slightly wider view for features that don't have the same ad layout. I'd be open to seeing if we could make that more available to subscribers who don't see ads.
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I quite liked Neutron Star in a Zen sidebar but I've only just checked the site out on mobile (Android, Opera) and everything is far, far too big.
Any chance that decreasing the font size and having the option for scaling will be introduced?
Any chance that decreasing the font size and having the option for scaling will be introduced?
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Classic != Most RecentFirst impressions:
- "List" is the only usable view, but I still preferred the old layout.
- "Grid" is simply a bunch of black rectangles (with some text on them, but... it's just black rectangles)
- "Classic"? Classic what? It's not the classic Ars we've known for the last several years.
- "Light" mode weirdly has both too much and too little contrast at the same time
- "Bigger fonts"?? I'm not seeing them in articles and comments. My account preferences say "Medium (recommended)"
This definitely needs some big tweaks.
It's Classicer than that (and I think existed in roughly its current form in the previous iteration of the layout)
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I like the article page, the readability is great. Density seems fine. The jump to comments button at the top of the article is a tad small but I found it after a few seconds (it’s a button I use often)
However for the homepage I do agree density is a problem in mobile. Neutron is slightly too dense for me but list view is just way too spacious. A more dense list view would be perfect I think.
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That thread looks like many a focus group test. The switch from 'looks awesome' to 'THANKS I HATE IT' is brutal and comes out of nowhere.
Dunno how to turn that into something actionable though. Maybe it is an actual article-slash-crit though, given how attached the community are to the site?
Would certainly be easier to shape feedback if we had a 'we need to do this (single front end?) so we did this (redesign)' type of context.
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Wonder if anyone tested the article pages on Windows with screen scaling set to 150? (I have the article title filling up the entire screen.)
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That redesign (amongst a few other things) has kept me from visiting The Verge for the last few years.definitely not as bad as the atrocious first release of the last Verge redesign.
That isn’t what I want for Ars.
Any recommendations for a tech oriented news site that appreciates its visitors?
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They made a really unfortunate call to decide to go hard on embedding Twitter into their front page right as Elon Musk bought it. Oof.definitely not as bad as the atrocious first release of the last Verge redesign.
But they've imo really improved it since then, and taken feedback into account. I love reading comments on other site launches, because it makes me feel better to see that EVERYONE gets hated on when things change.
But to be fair, they did listen to some of it. And we will 100% be listening too.
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I'm paying for the ad-free subscription, but it feels like I'm still getting the ad-blocker one you describe. I don't need the entire monitor filled, but this seems much more narrow than before.
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Oh that's a good one, added to our bug tracking.
So this is one thing that testing live really helps with. Because on our staging site the content was static, we had to do a whole process to update things, so it just never would have occurred to me to even do what you did. I wasn't looking for new content.
But it's a totally reasonable action by a 'normal' user. Our best efforts at testing will always miss something like this.
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I like it well enough. List view is my favorite. (I don't think I'm very picky, but I was not happy with the last update, but don't remember if it was just the black on white thing)
Very minor, but I think the title can be shrunk by a lot on the article page. If I've clicked on the article, I've already read the title and don't need it to take most of the screen. But I can deal with it, it's not egregious.
Very minor, but I think the title can be shrunk by a lot on the article page. If I've clicked on the article, I've already read the title and don't need it to take most of the screen. But I can deal with it, it's not egregious.
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I suspect subscriptors have a wider variety of monitors than the generic Analytics, too.
In fact, with a percentage of subscriptors, Ars might theoretically see heavier mobile use during commute hours and lighter non-mobile use during working hours, as one example, but still a wider variety of screen sizes by power users (a core audience that probably is more likely to pay for Ars)
For example, I have a 45" ultrawide on one of the systems I read Ars on.
So I have a variety of display sizes from 6" thru 45" too, and I like multiple density options including classic 1990s-density options too. I use GMAIL's "Compact" mode, even desktop, as one example.
Even though change is a bit disruptive to get used to an extent, I'm OK with the choices and can get used to it, although I wouldn't mind some tweaking/improvements, and especially a per-device memorization of preferred layout.
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