[JHromadka]

Ipodnn.com has changed. If you go there you'll find a link to the new macnn, http://grape.macnn.com/

FYI, you spelled Forums wrong (Forumnn) on the drop down box. If that was intentional, it's stupid.

[Tesseract]

Ooh, prettiful!

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by JHromadka

FYI, you spelled Forums wrong (Forumnn) on the drop down box. If that was intentional, it's stupid.

If anything, to be consistent with the rest of the new design, it should read:

nnforums jump:

[effgee]

Originally Posted by rickey939

If anything, to be consistent with the rest of the new design, it should read:

nnforums jump:

indeed, it should.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally Posted by rickey939

If anything, to be consistent with the rest of the new design, it should read:

nnforums jump:

gaynn

[KeriVit]

look at all the prettines...

[gururafiki]

YAY! It's live!!

[rickey939]

Buuuuurp.

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by effgee

indeed, it should.

effgee, can we get some updated favicons for the site now? The old ones don't look right with the new design...

[Peter]

Dp...

[Peter]

When you hover over the MacNN banner image it hi-lights it - intentional?

[rickey939]

Originally Posted by Peter

When you hover over the MacNN banner image it hi-lights it - intentional?

It's a link back to the main 'NN page...makes sense to me.

[ism]

It isn't too readable with images off. Mind you most mobile users will use macnn.com/mobile (which still works - good!)

[Lava Lamp Freak]

I think the new layout is much easier to browse, and the design looks great. My only complaint is the sideways links. I know everyone will see it differently, but it is confusing to me at first glance.

[OAW]

Originally Posted by rickey939

effgee, can we get some updated favicons for the site now? The old ones don't look right with the new design...

Indeed. I went out and deleted the current favicon with Safari Icon Manager in order to make Safari "see" the new one ... only to find out that there is no new one to "see". A new favicon is definitely in order.

OAW

[Mediaman_12]

Just to be picky.
Why have you set a XHTML Transitional Doctype when the page doesn't validate as XHTML
link
Go on hang your heads in shame, a quick glance through the (over 200) errors and it looks like most are simple oversights' though.

A great new look though. I have no problem with the vertical text, except it should really be the other way round. As people (who read right to left languages) find it easier to read in a clockwise direction, look at the spine of a book.

[iomatic]

216 errors! Ouchies! And canned Dreamweaver (not that there's anything necessarily wrong with that)? Good use of DIV!

And do any of these errors affect your abillity to read the page? I'll see what can be done, but the priority is to make the page render well in all browsers, not to appease the XHTML gods.

[::maroma::]

I like the new look, especially the header. I haven't spent much time with it yet, but at first glance it feels harder to read. There seems to be a ton more information on the page than before. That can be good or bad.

Are there now more banner ads than before? It seems that they are overwhelming the page. Maybe its just because some are so frickin annoying with their stupid animations.

[Amorya]

It doesn't work in Safari for me. Works fine in Firefox so it's not my connection. I'm on latest Safari in Tiger.

(By doesn't work, I mean the images do not load.)

Amorya

[MaxPower2k3]

am i the only one who doesn't see any images locally hosted on macnn.com? i haven't for months. banner ads work fine, and the forums work fine, but on the macnn news page, no images load, neither on the new or old design. here's a screenshot:



edit: didn't see Amorya's post before, and it is indeed the same problem. Just tried it in firefox and it works fine (and looks good!)

[BlueSky]

Originally Posted by Amorya

It doesn't work in Safari for me. Works fine in Firefox so it's not my connection. I'm on latest Safari in Tiger.

(By doesn't work, I mean the images do not load.)

Amorya

Me too. Clear your cache, quit Safari and relaunch.

[andreas_g4]

A W E S O M E*






*whining promised

[Judge_Fire]

Nice, congrats

A few things that bother me visually in the frontpage:

• The left column gets thrown off by the inline ad, which is just a bit wider. Couldn't the column just match the standard ad width to keep it flowing nicely?

• The arrows as bullets in the right column seem... unnecessary. They look mostly like a big bunch of arrows and I just find them distracting. Maybe it's just me, but they add noise IMHO.

So yeah, criticism right back at you

Honestly, I can't wait for the new forum look,



J

[BlueSky]

Might be nit-picky but it keeps getting my attention and it bugs me. The white area behind the navigation bar is shaded slightly grey, I guess to add depth. It doesn't add depth, it just looks dirty. It even seems to make the blue nav bar look dirty.

The shading is appropriate at the bottom of the white area, not the top.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v4...acnnsample.jpg

Otherwise, great job.

[TimmyDee51]

I definitely like the new design overall, but one thing I'm not wild about is the permanent horizontal banner ad across the top. IIRC, the old one had a horizontal ad occasionally (if you go to legacy.macnn.com it doesn't currently), and I honestly preferred to keep them on the sides. I realize this is probably an advertising/income issue, but it's something I've noticed.

Can't wait to see the new forums.

[effgee]

First - thanks for all the feedback guys! Much appreciated.

About the XHTML validation - I'm not the front-end lead in terms of development here (that monumental effort was undertaken by Jeff and he's done a great job) but I did of course take a quick peek at the validator results.

It is an unfortunate fact that the site can not ever be 100% standards compliant (more on that in a sec), but we absolutely do strive to adhere to current development standards wherever possible, and as such I'm confident that we'll be able to eliminate a large number of errors relatively soon.

As to why the site is unlikely to ever be 100% standards compliant:

• Many ad networks (on which macnn depends to serve ads for the site) simply won't provide standard-compliant code, most (if not all) deliver not just a GIF/Flash file but the surrounding tags as well. Sometimes it's only HTML tags/attributes in all caps instead of lowercase, sometimes they will serve source code that renders properly but is factually wrong (e.g., missing quotes, end tags, etc.). There is nothing macnn can do about this.
• Depending on one's POV, Flash ads are either the greatest thing since the invention of sliced bread or the primary reason for the accelerated decay of modern civilizations - no matter what you think of them however, they are a fact of life and won't be going away anytime soon (*). I for one am not aware of a real standard-compliant way to embed a Flash file in an (X)HTML page (and yes, I have studied the ALA "solution" - to me that's a better way of cheating, nothing else). Fact is that macnn is a business that depends on ad revenue and can not afford to refuse to serve Flash-based ads.

About the "Dreamweaver" thingie, I assure you: No Dreamweaver was used in the development of this site™ ...

I sometimes use Dreamweaver for rapid prototyping but never for the actual implementation - 100% good ole' BBEdit goodness. And AFAIK, neither does Jeff. What we did use are JavaScripts (img preloader, etc.) that come with Dreamweaver - we could of course have removed the "MM_" prefix (they work just as well without) but that would not only be unethical, it'd also be rather childish. There are so many JS solutions out there that it really doesn't matter as long as you choose one that creates the least amount of problems.





(* - Flash ads in combination with Safari's inability to overlay a Flash file with a <div> were actually the reason why we had to redesign the entire primary navigation - imagine the headaches that caused us! Btw, every other browser can do this - except for Safari, a real PITA)

[alphamatrix]

Originally Posted by ::maroma::

I like the new look, especially the header. I haven't spent much time with it yet, but at first glance it feels harder to read. There seems to be a ton more information on the page than before. That can be good or bad.

Are there now more banner ads than before? It seems that they are overwhelming the page. Maybe its just because some are so frickin annoying with their stupid animations.

I agree.

[Andy8]

Fluid width at least kept in the new Forums - please!

People's screens are getting more pixels and more space these days, so make them fluid i say!

[Kerrigan]

My 2p:

I've not visited the MacNN mainpage with any regularity since 2001. I may now have an incentive to go and check it out.

edit: Okay, I looked at it, and while I really liked the theme and the top of the page, the text was far too small to read comfortably, and it gave the page a cluttered look.

[gururafiki]

Yes, design is awesome.

So how long must we wait for the forum's to change, because the old look must go away!

[effgee]

A week - give or take a day or two

[gururafiki]

double post

[gururafiki]

[Randman]

Visually, it's pleasing.

Content-wise, a few bugs. Having the topic headlines in downstyle (real's glaser calls jobs 'pigheaded') looks funny. (Real's Glaser calls Jobs 'Pigheaded').

The linked stories on MacNN and iPodNN are often similar. While Apple products tend to overlap, it does look odd to see (iPod video sales up, et al) listed twice, both with links.

Also, the front MacNN pages is quite texty, even for a directional page. There's also no dominant visual element and also nothing that screams out Macintosh + Apple.

My 2¢.

[fritzair]

[FONT="Arial Black"]I think "[FONT="Arial Black"]the Emperor has new clothes[/FONT]"[/FONT]

It sucks. Go back to the old format.
[FONT="Impact"]Can't read this font.[/FONT]
It sucks. Go back to the old format.
Can't read this font.
It sucks. Go back to the old format.
[FONT="Arial Narrow"]Can't read this font.[/FONT]
It sucks. Go back to the old format.
[FONT="Arial Narrow"]Can't read this font.[/FONT]
It sucks. Go back to the old format.
[FONT="Times New Roman"]Can't read this font.[/FONT]
It sucks. [FONT="Century Gothic"]Go back to the old font.[/FONT]

[- - e r i k - -]

Overall a decent job on the redesign, but there are some glaring faults:

• Agree on the dirtiness of the top banner.
• The image that provide the white background for the bottom of the page is always slow to load for some reason, making a lot of the page unreadable.
• Make more of an effort to make the page validate
• Chunky bevel navbar with illogical (and ugly) mouseovers? Ick
• Centered fixed layout? Is this 1999 all over again? Please!
• do not write like this. you are not 13 years old. it is not cool.
• Again: Sideways text.
• On the portal page: The way the text is cut off before read more is very machine-like and not reader friendly. Concider longer excerpts. Please refrain from cutting off text in the middle of a sentence, and never ever ever in the middle of wor …

I will continue to use RSS feeds and the news page.

[frates]

Originally Posted by Mediaman_12

I have no problem with the vertical text, except it should really be the other way round. As people (who read right to left languages) find it easier to read in a clockwise direction, look at the spine of a book.

There's no universal rule.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spine_%...ne_Conventions

[Kevin]

Ok forums next.

Snap to it.

[paul w]

Is that logo image over compressed or is it me? Am I seeing artifacts or are my eyes going bad on me?

[TimmyDee51]

Originally Posted by rickey939

It's a link back to the main 'NN page...makes sense to me.

The highlight for a link part makes sense -- what doesn't is the fact that it is a recursive link. Even Apple does this with their tabs across the top. Flies in the face of UI guidelines, in my opinion.

[alphasubzero949]

Meh.

typinglikethisisso1998

[JoshuaZ]

The new site design is sooo....

I want to lick it. Over and over again.

[waxcrash]

You just need to add a few spinning skulls, some flames, and a guitar…and it's good to go.

[iomatic]

Yeah, who cares if it's standards-compliant; skulls!!!

No really, I wasn't harpin' on you guys about compliancy; I'm fully aware of your limitations and restrictions, as well as using DW. Heck, it's fine. (guilt also ) Please don't take it as a harsh criticism, just winkie-winkie-nod-nod. MMkay?

[Titanium Man]

Call me odd and hidebound, but I really don't like the new design. Waaaay too much going on all over the page. I can guarantee I won't be looking anywhere below the MacNN headlines. If I was interested in iPodNN, I would click on the iPodNN link. Those headlines don't need to be right there on the main page. It's just overwhelming. In terms of usability, there's now too much clicking involved just to read a few stories. Each story needs to be clicked to be read individually. That breaks up the flow. The old MacNN was much easier to scan for stories. Of course, I had similar complaints when Macworld News (MacCentral) made a similar change to strictly headlines a couple of years back. IMHO, distilling it to just headlines would be better for an RSS feed, not for a full web page. That way, visitors would have a choice between the uncluttered headlines of RSS or the full articles of the old MacNN site. Especially bad for visitors is that the ultra-narrow columns force the headlines to be truncated. I'm not going to click on a story just to find out the rest of "Moho 5.3 offers scripted, customizable..." No newspaper would chop off their headlines like that.

[effgee]

Nothing wrong with personal prefs. The information structure of the previous home page (for both sites macnn & ipodnn) however, is still there ... just one level "deeper" - on the portal page, simply click in "macnn home" or go directly to "www.macnn.com/news".




Off to catching a few Zs now ...

[Amorya]

Originally Posted by MaxPower2k3

am i the only one who doesn't see any images locally hosted on macnn.com? i haven't for months. banner ads work fine, and the forums work fine, but on the macnn news page, no images load, neither on the new or old design. here's a screenshot:



edit: didn't see Amorya's post before, and it is indeed the same problem. Just tried it in firefox and it works fine (and looks good!)

Yeah, same prob. If I choose to open one of the broken images (eg http://www4.macnn.com/images/hdbrandl2.jpg) in a new window, I get:

400 Bad Request

Your client has issued a malformed or illegal request.

The new look, with its reliance on background images, really suffers for this!


Amorya

[Big Mac]

The graphical design is very nice, effgee, but I do prefer the paragraph form news layout of the previous design, as opposed to the link-heavy display of the redesign. In any case, keep up the great work.

[euphras]

Meh..........it looks way too much XPish. The buttons in the upper right are too small and vertical text isn´t really a good user experience. The older design was much cleaner and easy on the eyes.