[MW Forums]

Welcome to the new MacCentral Web site. For years MacCentral has strived to bring readers the most up to date news and information from the Macintosh realm, and with this new site design, it's easier than ever to find what you're looking for. Tighter integration with Macworld.com means better access to in-depth reviews and feature articles from the Mac Product Experts. A new News menu gives you instant access to today's headlines, a summary of today's news, the week's top stories, Apple-specific news, Editor's Notes, and a new feature we call Hot Topics -- a collection of news links, feature articles and other content related to the topic at hand. more

[Jason Snell]

Let me add something to what Jim wrote:
We know this change is going to take some getting used to. We also know how much some of you have invested in MacCentral.
This new design is the start of a new process, which begins with us making the site go live and continues with you giving us feedback about what you like and dislike about this new site. We are listening carefully. We may not agree on everything, but we will listen to your complaints and your requests and make changes based on that in the weeks and months to come.

[kms007]

Jason and the rest of the MacWorld crew:
The new site looks GREAT! The design is clean, sleek and uncluttered and I really like the fact that MacCentral is now directly tied to MacWorld. Kudos!
-Krishna

[Foo_Fighter]

Good work. I like the new blog-like publishing format, but I think the old design was a bit more news friendly. Also, I'm not too keen on the fact that MacWorld has essentially consumed MacCentral into one site, but perhaps that just takes some getting used to.

[desktopia]

I could not disagree more.
The layout is more distracting than anything MacCentral has done before. From a UI standpoint, nothing should be on the plane of the news item list if it wants to be read correctly. Moreover, if there is other information on said plane, the most important items (on a news website, this is the news) should be in the rightmost column. This is why people put their buddy lists on the right, and why Apple puts its desktop icons there. Long story short (too late!), it's a chore to browse your news list.
On a higher level of analysis, this latest change represents the most recent step in Macworld's slow digestion of MacCentral. As a small independent website, MacCentral was very much an entity of the Mac fans. Nowadays, it's become just another appendage of a print medium institution which long ago lost its edge and its democratic flavor. The last reincarnation of MacCentral indicated that it was going corporate. This reincarnation has removed all doubt.

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5 down. 95 to go.

[Shooshie]

there really is no excuse for jerking the rug out from under the MacCentral forums. It is inexcusable to eliminate all visible links to it, requiring people to dig through these individual forums to find your one link, buried in the Feedback forum.
If anyone needs the link, here it is:
MacCentral Lounge

From there you can jump to the rest.

MacCentral forums go back nearly a decade. There are old acquaintances there, and many of those people drop in only a few times a year. By eliminating their link, you have taken it upon yourself to break those acquaintances without warning. I'm sure you have the right to do that; you needn't patronize me with an explanation. But isn't it a bit vindictive? We're talking about one of the oldest forums in the Mac Community, if you trace its roots. It has been through many changes, but there has always been a link to guide people to their "place." We have a history--sometimes explosive and not always pleasant--which includes many community projects. We're probably the only Mac forum to exhibit at MacWorld in New York, showing our mosaic which we created for charitable purposes, and which still has a link on the forums page. There are other Mac forums, but there is only one MacCentral Forum.

The least you could do is to put a visible link out here on the index page that says "Link to Old MacCentral Forums Index."
Is that asking too much?

Shooshie

[brossow]

In brief: I hate it. I don't hate it because it changed, but because it changed for the worse. I find it harder to read and navigate. It's more difficult to separate the articles from the ads and other fluff. Worst, there is no longer a posting time for each article, which I used to rely on heavily throughout the day in keeping abreast of Mac news. Change for an obvious an important reason is fine. Change for the sake of change, especially when it decreases the value of a site, is just plain stupid.
Honestly, guys, it had been your site's readability and simplicity that kept me coming back for years. This new site looks like so many other canned -- and equally unappealing -- blog-style sites, from the font choices to the layout. MacCentral used to be the premiere site for Mac news, for its simplicity if nothing else. It has been part of my first-thing-in-the-morning routine for years. Now, I'm strongly considering deleting it from my bookmarks if things don't improve rapidly. Seriously. Your news and "news" are no longer the compelling reason to visit the site, given the proliferation of other Mac news sites with virtually the same articles (and press releases) in a more user-friendly format -- MacMinute, MacNN, etc. You owe it to your advertisers, if not your readers, to rethink this change. :-(

[DanTanna]

Granted, change is almost always disruptive and uncomfortable for awhile. But I agree, the site is a step backwards in useability, apparently for the sake of sleek design. First of all, it doesn't render properly in Mozilla. The main news page is cut off 1" on the left side. On the news archive page text overflows its columns. These things, of course, can't all be predicted.
But some of the design changes are just poor choices.
-Since you have chosen to not adhere to normal html usage of link-highlighting, how am I supposed to be able to scan a list of news stories and know which ones I've read?
-The grey and tan colors are not bad--easy enough on the eyes--but when everything is grey, there's not much contrast between headings and subheadings on the page, making pages difficult to scan and read. For example, the news archive page where the Date headings are almost the same color/contrast as the story headlines.
just my 6c

[kennethfcooper]

I don't hate it. I will give myself a week or two to get use to it.
The article titles are no longer highlighted after visited. I use the highlighting to track which articles I have read. If I am ignorant of how to turn this feature on in Safari, someone please enlighten me.

[brossow]

It's not something you can turn on unless you want to start building your own Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and enabling them, something I'm not willing to do for this or any other site. It's something that's set in the HTML in the <BODY> tag and you can't control (again, without setting up your own CSS for Safari.) Just one mroe thing to dislike....

[Tom_Neile]

Thank you for randomly assigning me a new username and password and eliminating all evidence of my existence prior to this, my first and final posting, on your sleek, new information-laden web experience. I'm not sure who this site appeals to, but I hope I don't find myself sitting next to them at the movies or on an airplane. I thought the Bush administration had a stylishly abrupt way of making me feel lousy and disoriented, but this is a close second. You took something that was SOOO simple and handy and jazzed it up (I'm using the 1930's connotation of the word "jazz"). Just as you took MacWorld, a publication I used to await and devour and archive for reference and enjoy, and turned it into the USA Today of Mac publications. I zip through it in the time it takes to eat three waffles and never look at it again. It hits the trash bin quicker than an e-mail from Bill Gates.
You had a real useful site before this. I could quickly zip over to it (which I did four or five times a day), see what was up and what I needed and get the lowdown (along with some interesting comments from longtime users). I could see at a glance which stories I'd already read. I didn't have to wade through...oh what the hell's the point.

[jmincey]

I must say this new design will take a lot of getting used to. I'm generally very open to change and indeed often embrace change, but change DOES have to add value -- in content, usability, aesthetics, etc. And while this new design has a number of things to recommend it, I'm not sure whether it represents a net step forward. Time will tell. For the moment, I'm not prepared to weigh in with a "review" of this new design yet because I want to take some time with it.
I will say this much: For now I fail to understand why it was (apparently) necessary for all (or many) legacy user accounts to be deleted (mine among them), and why we must all start back at square one. Many participants in your forums predate me, but I still have SOME history here, (having created over 1200 posts under your previous format). And yet now now your site reports that I'm unable to so much as start a new topic and that I can only reply to existing ones.
Also, do you have any idea how many passwords I tried (to log in) and searches I performed on my computer before it occurred to me that you summarily deleted all old user accounts? Also, was there any word of warning about this? I'm sure some people had private messages which they may have wished to archive -- if only they had known.
In any event, I'm reserving judgment for the time being. The site DOES seem harder to navigate and more confusing and perhaps even cluttered, (even as in SOME respects it's a cleaner design as well). But I will have to take some time before I can determine whether this is just a reflexive reaction on my part to something new or whether there is an intrinsic design flaw involved. (I do see some additional capabilities and I look forward to giving the new design a fair chance; for after all, any major new design invariably requires some fine tuning after the fact.)
Jeff Mincey

[MacGizmo]

You haven't lost anything, and you can still check those PMs. The old MacCentral forums (where us old-timers can actually create new threads) is located right where it always was... at least for now anyway.

[Jason Snell]

MacCentral Forums links were always meant to remain on MC pages -- it just fell through the cracks. The links will be back and the MC forums aren't going anywhere.