Its amazing how many web sites are ruined by new and improved designs. This seems like the whole MacWorld or Macledge fiasco all over again. Hopefully, the people in charge at MacNN are reading these posts... Does anyone still read MacWorld since they went fully soft-copied and came up with a new web design? I don't.
The new MacNN has so many things wrong with it that analyzing any particular one wouldn't be too fruitful. I would suggest scrapping the new look and starting from scratch. I hate to denigrate anyone else's work, but MacNN used to be my favorite Mac news outlet. Please hire someone else! With so many flaws, its obvious that they are inexperienced, unskilled, or lazy.
Not being one to just drop flame bait, here's an itemized list off the top of my head. I'm serious about this! I want to keep visiting MacNN for my daily Mac news.
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- The page is _way_ too long for a top level news page which people mostly peruse for items of interest. Can this designer pronounce modem?
- There should be a maximum width. Empirical studies have shown that people have more difficulty scanning to the beginning of the next line as the words per line ratio increases. With no maximum width, I have to resize my window solely for MacNN (or visit another site)
- Multiple horizontal menu bars at the top of the page eat up the prime (top most) real-estate. I immediately have to scroll after loading the main page. Studies also show that most people don't bother scrolling if they don't see what they want right away.
- The text is smaller than standard, pissing off anyone who tries to always display text at a preferred size.
- Headlines don't link to a stories!
- Since headlines aren't links, I must now hover above links in the short blurbs to discover if they are actual stories or links to a product-hawking-web-page. Is this just a link to apple's advertisement or a story telling me about what they advertise.
- What's with the red text "Top Stories for Monday"... ? Why is the date the only red text on this page? Thought should be given to a consistent color scheme. Also, people at least subconsciously associate colors with feelings or categories... Guess what red means.
- Why use two lines for this instead of one? "Last Updated 4:50 PM" and " Top Stories for Monday, May 21" should be combined into one line of larger text: "Top Stories for Monday, May 21st (4:50pm update)
- Is this local time? Why not time stamp each story instead of providing people with a last updated figure?
- The Inside MacNN gray, horizontal menu bar uses a very low contrast between the light gray foreground text and background white... Say goodbye to readers with poor vision of washed out monitors.
- Those 3 dots at the end of some blurbs; what do they mean? If they don't do anything other than clutter the page, get rid of them. Why are three dots placed before the gray date in the right most column?
- The page is visually clumsy or unbalanced. The content I'm reading is on the left half while the scroll bar is on the right side of the window. It seems to me like someone goofed and the Today,Search,Market Watch, and MacNN News headline column should be on the left side of the text with the advertisements to the right. Right now its like trying to read a book where the text is only on the left side of each page!
- On a similar note: Margins! give us margins! MacOS X doesn't have window borders and the text seems like its about to fall off the left side of the window.
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Most of my comments are at least partially subjective. However, I didn't make them to convince people on a piecemeal basis. The shear number of problems should be an indication that a new web designer/developer is sorely needed. Not everyone can be accommodated by a single site design. Yet, this design makes so many fundamental mistakes that it makes me think that the web site was developed by amateurs with little experience and no formal education.
Please return to the old look or hire someone else!
darrin
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