[mkbhatia]

We considering a new evolution of the MacNN Home/News Page. If you have any ideas or mockups, please post them here. Even ideas for a slightly modified logo would be considered. Remember that we're looking for designs that will accommodate a lot of text and two sidebars (three columns total). If you're interested in working with the small design team (and helping with graphics and/or layout), email me directly. Otherwise, i look forward to your suggestions and/comments.

[starman]

Just don't overdo it. Less is more.

Mike

[Mark Tungston]

just so you know...maccentral looks like ass but i still choose it for my news over macnn

[Adam Betts]

I'd love something similar to VersionTracker.com. Their choice of color and layout is perfect IMHO.

I could make some drafts but I'm too busy at this time

[OwlBoy]

versiontracker? hehe.

Hmmm... Appleinsider just had a sweet overhaul though thats just forums...

Ooooh, I think MacNN needs a new logo, one to go with Apple's new font .

-Owl

[Dex13]

Originally posted by OwlBoy:
versiontracker? hehe.

Hmmm... Appleinsider just had a sweet overhaul though thats just forums...

Ooooh, I think MacNN needs a new logo, one to go with Apple's new font .

-Owl

Whats the new font?

[ARENA]

Originally posted by Dex13:
Whats the new font?

Apple moved from Apple Garamond to Myriad.

[OwlBoy]

Yeah, sorry, the name escaped me at the time of Posting, I always remember it starts with an 'm' but not what it is!

-Owl

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Macnn Slim is a good first step.

[daimoni]

.

[putamare]

To all armchair designers: put up or shut up.

[gorgonzola]

Originally posted by Mark Tungston:
just so you know...maccentral looks like ass but i still choose it for my news over macnn

Some reasons for why that's the case or suggestions to improve MacNN news would be useful. We don't really know what to do with your comment as it stands.

Thanks.

[daimoni]

.

[ckohler]

Originally posted by daimoni:
You need to define the goal of the design before you start pushing pixels and arbitrarily deciding how many columns are needed on a page, or what a logo or other graphics should look like.

Amen. A design must have a purpose. None the less, here are some obvious rules I suggest in any website design:

* Content comes first, design second.
* Never sacrifice compatibilty for function.
* Whitespace is your friend.
* Don't overdue it on the tables. Three leves deep at most.

[daimoni]

.

[Mediaman_12]

Originally posted by ckohler:
* Don't overdue it on the tables. Three leves deep at most.

As you are re-doing the design and thet some people have asked about mobile device access, how about redoing it using CSS layout insted of using loads of tables , a 'liquid' page design such as MacNN's front page can in-fact be simpler using CSS than the traditional 'hack' using tables. It's also easyer to do borders, rules under areas of content etc. with CSS.
example of 3 column site (like MacNN) using CSS
good CSS resorce

I would offer (A nice high traffic site with loads of ever-changing content would look good in any portfolio of work) but I am real busy at the moment.

P.s. is it me or are some of the images appearing in the wrong places on the forum at the moment?

[Synotic]

My idea made about a year ago:




My idea was to connect everything together and make things flow more and update the fonts and whatnot. If anyone likes it/wants any revision I may be able to do it.

[Mark Tungston]

Originally posted by gorgonzola:
Some reasons for why that's the case or suggestions to improve MacNN news would be useful. We don't really know what to do with your comment as it stands.

Thanks.

the 1 liners maccentral has are easy to scan versus the healine and summary at macnn are tedious to look at

i dont care about 75% of what they write but i can easily pick out that one program or that one bit of news that interests me

also, it leaves plenty of room in the design for me to scan yesterday's news too

Al Gore joins Apple board

Apple today announced the latest addition to its Board of Directors -- former Vice President of the United States, Al Gore. The company noted that Gore was elected in a meeting of the board today. Apple CEO Steve Jobs called his company "excited and honored" to have been chosen by Gore; Apple's Board of Directors is the first private sector board Gore has chosen to serve on. What's more, Gore is a an active Mac user, according to Jobs. Read the full story...


Wednesday, March 19, 2003

05:05 pm _Former US Vice President Al Gore joins Apple's board

03:15 pm _XtremeMac overhauls Deluxe iPod case

02:15 pm _Spam, iPhoto, and women featured on YML

01:25 pm _Girl 2.0 updated; loop mixer

01:20 pm _Macworld Review: Universe 5.0

12:40 pm _17 inch PowerBooks arrive

12:25 pm _Aladdin reports year-end profit of $618K

11:55 am _Digital Performer 4 ships April 2nd

11:45 am _Teachers fight back against going Dell

11:20 am _IceMate goes frosty

11:15 am _MS 'Switcher' snafu makes '101 Dumbest' list

10:40 am _Yellow Dog Linux 3.0, YDL.net Enhanced debut

10:20 am _OWC offers FasterMac.net -- 56K Mac-only dialup service

10:00 am _Piglet's Big Game CD-ROM released

09:40 am _MacResQ offers PowerMac/iMac repair service

09:20 am _Frazetta documentary made on Mac

08:40 am _CreativePage updated with Camino support, more

08:30 am _e.p.i.c. to bring Divine Divinity to Mac

07:45 am _Real World Adobe GoLive 6 book now in PDF, for free

07:30 am _WiebeTech drops DesktopGB drive prices

07:00 am _Impression 1.0 backs up data to optical media

07:00 am _Studycard Studio released for educators, students

07:00 am _Apple recognized for 802.11g leadership

BOOM - maccentral is just easy to read

[MindFad]

Now, you two....

[Adam Betts]

Originally posted by putamare:
talk: 100 / walk: 0

With that attitude, no one will hire you

I completely agree with what daimoni said. We need to brainstorm on something first before start doing the designs. You think army would build a tank without having a blueprint first?

[reader50]

Originally posted by Mark Tungston:
the 1 liners maccentral has are easy to scan versus the healine and summary at macnn are tedious to look at

i dont care about 75% of what they write but i can easily pick out that one program or that one bit of news that interests me

also, it leaves plenty of room in the design for me to scan yesterday's news too


BOOM - maccentral is just easy to read

macnn.com?headlines=true

[Mark Tungston]

Originally posted by reader50:
macnn.com?headlines=true

you mean http://www.macnn.com/index.php?headlines=true



i think that already is an improvement but your homepage is just missing that sense of urgency that maccentral seems to have that makes you feel they are more up to date


and i apologize if it sounds like i am bashing your news dept but seriously...maccentral makes me want to go their for hourly updates - macnn only makes me want to go to the forums to discuss maccentral's headlines

[OwlBoy]

I like InsideMacGames style as far as News item title listing. and Big story being somewhat full text.

http://www.insidemacgames.com/

-Owl

[scaught]

Originally posted by putamare:
talk: 100 / walk: 0

wow. somehow even funnier than the first time?

[Demonhood]

Originally posted by Mark Tungston:
i think that already is an improvement but your homepage is just missing that sense of urgency that maccentral seems to have that makes you feel they are more up to date


and i apologize if it sounds like i am bashing your news dept but seriously...maccentral makes me want to go their for hourly updates - macnn only makes me want to go to the forums to discuss maccentral's headlines

do you feel that urgency because they tell you they posted the news item at 4:55pm and you can track the timeline?
i prefer the news in blocks such as macnn currently has, not as one liners that i have to click on to get more information.

[tikki]

Originally posted by Demonhood:
do you feel that urgency because they tell you they posted the news item at 4:55pm and you can track the timeline?
i prefer the news in blocks such as macnn currently has, not as one liners that i have to click on to get more information.

I like the block updates of MacNN.

Honestly, a mac news site isn't like CNN where new important things are so urgent that it requires constant updating.

[Mark Tungston]

Originally posted by Demonhood:
do you feel that urgency because they tell you they posted the news item at 4:55pm and you can track the timeline?
i prefer the news in blocks such as macnn currently has, not as one liners that i have to click on to get more information.

part of it yes

but also the importance what is on the screen on load (no scroll)

for macnn, if i visit at 2:55 PM...i have to scroll down pretty far if the Apple released Powermacs at 9:00 AM (or you could have bumped up the most important article but the same thing could be said if i was interested in a obscure product and not powermacs)

and to tell you the truth...when i switched and was looking for info - i though macNN was more of a technical website because of some obscure math program that was the first or second story on the homepage. i registered to troubleshoot because i though macNNers would be really technical and smart

[daimoni]

.

[Mark Tungston]

actually to be quite honest...

leave it whatever way you feel like, i have a bunch of mac news sites to choose from

i think the forums here are better than any others (except tecnology–wise which it is one of the worst i have ever seen)

[tikki]

Originally posted by Mark Tungston:

i think the forums here are better than any others (except tecnology?wise which it is one of the worst i have ever seen)

What is left? The bickering of the lounge?

[Commodus]

I don't mind the MacNN news format as it is now, though something that would be particularly cool is if it had "collapsible" articles, where you saw just the headers of the news items until you clicked the header you were interested in - then that article's information would suddenly appear just below it. My employer's intranet has that going on, and it's a pretty neat way of keeping the links close together without sacrificing the ability to get all your information.

If we had to see a stylistic redesign, I'd actually like it if the visual aspects resembled those of the navigation bar on Apple's new student section, minus the Flash. It's very modern, easy to read, and relatively easy to accomplish in terms of creating the art resources (just create rectangles with rounded edges, and clip off one of the corners on each shape). I wouldn't mind at all if this was done while keeping the overall page layout intact.

[tikki]

Originally posted by daimoni:
What do you want me to do... post all of my source code and pdf's of flow charts, information architecture maps, use cases, etc. for the past 6 years? STFU.

Why does every discussion turn into a flamewar around here. christ...

[gorgonzola]

Originally posted by Mark Tungston:
part of it yes

but also the importance what is on the screen on load (no scroll)

for macnn, if i visit at 2:55 PM...i have to scroll down pretty far if the Apple released Powermacs at 9:00 AM (or you could have bumped up the most important article but the same thing could be said if i was interested in a obscure product and not powermacs)

and to tell you the truth...when i switched and was looking for info - i though macNN was more of a technical website because of some obscure math program that was the first or second story on the homepage. i registered to troubleshoot because i though macNNers would be really technical and smart

I'm still a little confused. Thanks for your feedback and clarification so far.

The headlines (one-liners) on our headlines view start higher up than MacCentral's headlines (compare them side-by-side in two windows if you like), so you would actually have to scroll less to see more headlines on our page than MacCentral's as far as I can see.

Also, having to go a bit further down may just be because we cover more news. We started consolidating smaller application updates into single larger blurbs a while ago, which reduces the number of headlines that would appear on the headlines page.

Comparing MacNN Headlines (which you can directly bookmark instead of the default homepage) to MacCentral, I'm still not entirely sure what you think they're doing better than we are.

Also, daimoni and Skywalker, PLEASE stop. This stupid pissing match is totally unnecessary. You don't have to be a professional web designer to give valuable feedback anyway. I'm going to delete all those posts later, in any case.

And yes, one of our goals for the design is to make it cleaner and faster while still retaining a MacNN feel. Also, one thing people may not know about is the slim headlines option, which combines MacNN slim and the headline view.

[Mark Tungston]

gorgonzola,

slim headlines is pretty nice and i think it may be exactly what i was talking about

but it still doesn't feel custom to MacNN (which it is not supposed to be - it is a "slim" version and not a true homepage)



Also, i'm wondering if you're designing the site to be better for first time viewers, your loyal news readers or what? For your loyal users — it looks like you already provide the news in a million different views. If they know about it, they can utilize those features. But for a newbie and especially a mac newbie - i think the maccentral way is more easy to digest than any other.

i'm not backing off my sentiment that a headline view is better than the current default macnn homepage either

[daimoni]

.

[tikki]

Originally posted by daimoni:
Moving right along...

You rule for incorporating muppets in your post

[MacGorilla]

What??? I I've gotten this guy in three threas in the last two days and I get NO credit


Serious, I like OSNews's design. Works with wireless, too:
http://www.osnews.com

[sambeau]

Doesn't look enough like a newspaper for me. I like the MacNN style. Don't stray too far..

A little more whitespace wouldn't go amiss, but don't go all computery/internetty/Linuxy-php-we-got-this-site-off-a-shelf style - it tends to make the content look less authoratative.

For some reason, a more newspapery look always works for me. I like news.bbc.co.uk for this reason, and he lilnks to other similar stories. Plus The Register has a no nonsense - we just deal with news - look about it that you kinda share at the moment.

By all means add a few bells-and-whistles - but be careful not to dumb yourself down in the process..

[sambeau]

How about something like:

[tikki]

That's too busy for my tastes. Just the facts, ma'am.

[OwlBoy]

I love the colors of sambeau's mockup!

Removing the yellow would give MacNN a "new" feel.

Double colum mid-secion is an interesting idea too...

-Owl

[daimoni]

.

[sambeau]

Yeah. i know what you mean about text on a white background - but I was just trying to giove a new feel to an old favourite. It can work.

as for how dual columns would scan - this is a web page and as such the most recent stories are expected to be near the top. So.. Top left, top right, next left, next right and so on. I beleive that has become a kinda web standard. And with modern database driven sites it's not too hard to achieve..

It was late last night when i mocked that up (and I must confess to having drunk a bottle of wine before hand) but I still really like it. Not sure why, but there's something fresh about it..

It's a starter for 10 anyhow - and a little better than my drunken t-shirt design..

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by sambeau:
How about something like:

Wow, looks great! Clean, cool, you can find stuff much faster ... I really like it.

[Demonhood]

so no one else thinks it looks like macnn is trapped in an igloo?

[Brien]

No, we don't. I like it, it's nice.

[tikki]

Originally posted by Demonhood:
so no one else thinks it looks like macnn is trapped in an igloo?

I don't like it at all. I just want straight news in the center to read without having to move my eyes all around to get to the next story, or have to scroll back up to the top, etc.

[Brien]

then why dont you make a mock up?

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by Demonhood:
so no one else thinks it looks like macnn is trapped in an igloo?

No, because I directly jump to the forums. I can't find anything on the main page that I couldn't find faster elsewhere.
No offense, but I don't like the current design.

[The Placid Casual]

Originally posted by daimoni:

Speaking of which, please make it usable by mobile devices.

If you could make a wap/mobile phone version I would be stoked...

Peace,

Marc