[cpoff]

Thanks for all the great feedback. We are in iterative design mode now, which means that there is going to be constant changes and improvements to the site going forward.
Your feedback is critical in this process and while we may not always agree, we are listening and considering everything that is posted. We've got home page changes coming soon and text size on the article pages has already been increased.

Curt

[MCJ]

I've noticed that when I follow the view all members link no one is listed there.

[jdb8167]

Search doesn't seem to work since it picks up the old forums but the links from google don't redirect to the new forums. I can't find anything. Even the old fallback of going to a discussion and selecting "view all" and then doing a simple find with Safari is no longer available.

[fluffers]

Hi Curt,

The loss of easy access to news stories is a deal breaker for me. Are elegant stacks of news titles something you expect to resurrect, or should I move on?

Thanks,

-Fluffers

[Reboot]

Don't want to be a wet blanket, I know it' a big changeover, but it's been a week and I haven't seen many fixes yet. I think Font size fixes are not near as important as things actually working, for example the Search, Edit Views, a better email notification scheme, and Safari functioning to name a few. I can't believe no one noticed the lack of Safari compatibility before the site went live.

My .02?

[stevenoz]

Deleted by me...

-- Steven Oz

[cpoff]

There's an All Stories tab atop the main headline roll on the homepage. And you'll see there's a button that lets you set that as default.

-cp

[fluffers]

cpoff said:

There's an All Stories tab atop the main headline roll on the homepage. And you'll see there's a button that lets you set that as default.


-cp

Hi Curt,

Yes, that seems to be the party line!

Unfortunately, the ?All Stories? tab opens an abbreviated and jumbled list. It is not wide enough, forcing titles to wrap around, and not long enough, limiting the number of entries. Making it the default solves neither of these problems. It is a sorry substitute for ?Latest Stories? from the old site.

Clicking ?More? hops you to the News page where titles are gummed up with extraneous text that limits their number on the page and the ability to quickly scan them (particularly on a laptop). Another sorry substitute for ?Latest Stories? from the old site.

Honestly, I?m not resisting change. I?m frustrated that there is no clean list of news stories on your site anywhere. Your excellent writers produce reams of wonderful content, but the new system does not make it easy for me to access it.

True story ? this morning I surfed to macnn and mistook it for Macworld and thought ?gee! They?re listening! They?ve made news accessible again! Great!? Oops.

While I prefer your content over theirs, their interface to News is so much better, I would go there and elsewhere, instead of here. Macworld is the MacDaddy, but it's not worth it if I have to fight your website to find the latest news.

I understand that you have a number of visitors you need to cater to, and not just me and not just those interested in news. But for me (and visitors like me ? I?ve read numerous posts from them and always the same response from you about ?All Stories? which misses the point), as is, I?m gone. I?m not asking you to cater to me, I?m just letting you know my honest reaction.

I apologize if I misunderstood. But by your response, I take it that I should just move on and wish you luck.

-fluffers

[flybynight]

I would love it if I could get the view/layout of the "News" page, but see all the stories. I clicked on the home page by accident and realized that I was missing all of the Mac Gems, Mac OS X Hints, etc articles that don't fall under the "News" category. But the News page is really the way I want to view things - just a big list of headlines, the time they were posted and a 1- or 2-line intro to the article.

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE give me a way to do that!!!

[Spidereye]

Nowhere on your new web page does it give the date of the page. It is thus
impossible to find out if the page has been updated on the current date, or
is the page from the previous day.

And frankly, the new web site is too busy, compared to the old. It's as bad
as the Microsoft web page.

Finally, it is very hard to find the way in to post feedback. Make it simpler!

[cpoff]

Each article has a time stamp right under the headline, next to the byline. And since the index pages are dynamically generated, they will be only as fresh as the most-recent content.

-cp

[TGRuss]

I wanted to let you know that I am unhappy with the new design of your
site. While I am not against updating and revising the design, the new list
of news items is much less readable than the previous list. It used to be
very easy to scan through the title of the items and decide which ones to
read, which ones I had already read and which ones I wanted to skip. I like
the idea of giving a small teaser about the item to help me decide.
However, the way it has been done makes it much harder to quickly scan
through. It is also harder to differentiate today's stories from previous
days. The rest of the design is fine. Please try to find a way to improve
things. It isn't necessary to go back to what you previously had - just to
incorporate the ease of scanning news items.

[wgood]

I couldn't start a new discussion in the website feedback section, so I have posted here. There are two features that were in the older forum software that are no longer in this one. They are: signatures and the ability to change your display name from the user name. Will either of these features return in the near future?

[Bookman]

I have to echo several of fluffers' thoughts, particularly about access to news stories and about how easy it is now to confuse MacNN with Macworld.

I've been saving up several comments during the past week of use, and thought I'd pass them on
I'll grant you that I am a Macworld.com convert. I became a Macworld.com reader because I followed MacCentral when it was absorbed by Macworld. I stayed because the spirit of MacCentral remained and was built upon by the Macworld staff. So congratulations on keeping me as a reader for the last several years.
I'm not crazy about the new website. Yes, the content is still there, but I sense a departure from the spirit of MacCentral: Quick access to news, made efficient through clear website design that provides sufficient emphasis to the content for which I visit.
My specific comments:
# Elements like the Log In circle and the notations before headlines telling the source of the article (Gadgetbox, Mac 911, etc.) do not line up properly in Firefox. Compare front page rendering between FF and Safari.
# On the macworld.com homepage, the visual balance has now tipped from the old news and information website that includes advertising to the new website that appears to emphasize ad revenue over story content. To me, it's the difference between a respectable website paying the bills and a website more interested in maximizing revenue than providing content. You widened the website, but you gave it all to ads. How about using some of that extra space to save my time when visiting? Make more headlines visible on the front page without the need to scroll. First order of business: Get rid of the banner under your navigation header.
# What happened to the red text to emphasize popular story headlines? Also, the use of blue in general is taken too far. If I want to see blue blue blue, I can visit Macnn.com. Dark blue text on white is not as readable as black on white. It also makes the headline and article text blend into the site rather than stand out as content. Go back to black text, and use more red for emphasis and to help the reader's eye pick out important details.
# Give us back the date/time stamp on each article on the homepage. (If the site is wider, why isn't there room for such information? Answer: All new space given to ads.) If you want to make the News page the place to see all the old visual clues you used to provide with news on the homepage, tighten up the News page so more headlines appear in a longer list, reminiscent of the old MacCentral design. I'll gladly trade the extra story descriptions on the news page for a tighter list showing more headlines "above the fold."
# One thing to THANK you for: Bringing all user forums for Playlist, Macworld, (Macosxhints, too?) under one banner/one user registration. Finally!
OK, that's all I have saved up. Appreciate your reading this far.

2¢

Bookman