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Techdirt Look And Feel... Set Your Own Preferences
from the have-fun-with-it dept
It's been a few weeks since we launched the big redesign of Techdirt... which elicited a ton of great feedback, both positive and negative. The majority of folks we heard from all really thought it was an improvement. Certainly some people were less thrilled with it, but we've been working on understanding what problems people had with the new site. Some of you may have noticed that we've been rolling out a variety of small changes since we first launched to respond to some of the suggestions or issues people found. We've adjusted a number of things subtly to make the page work better and look better. We also now have the page set to load a mobile version if you visit from most mobile devices. However, by far, the biggest complaint from people was the fact that we made the new design "fixed width," despite studies that have shown reading a site with fixed width tends to be faster, as it's more readable. It appears there are plenty of readers here who would disagree with that sentiment -- and they let us know it (even to the point of a few people insisting they would never read us again, due solely to the fixed-width issue). The second major complaint was that the old design had "threaded" comments, that let you follow when someone replied to a different comment. Both of these features had been in the pipeline anyway, but we sped up the development time, and are now letting you set your preferences (also available in the upper right corner of the site), that lets you set defaults (by cookie) on fixed/variable width and threaded/flattened comments. We've tested everything on a variety of platforms, but we're quite sure that the readers out there will come up with some problems. Please feel free to let us know, and we'll do our best to fix whatever problems you come across. We'll also keep rolling out additional new features over time, so we hope to get those anti-fixed width readers who abandoned us back over time. Thanks for any and all feedback.
32 Comments | Leave a Comment..
Reader Comments (rss)
(Flattened / Threaded)
THANK YOU
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Now I'm not sure what I can complain about. Nice to feel heard.
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Options are good
That said, more people can have it how they like it, and that's always good.
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Options = Success
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Re: Options = Success
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Nice...
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Yay!
Threaded comments is nice too...I hated how you'd get, like, a comment, and then 30 lines down there'd be a response to it....
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Found a bug
Although the cookies do work for the commenting system.
I like finding bugs ;)
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Set Your Own Preferences
To get to the next subject after reading all the comments, I have to scroll to the top of the page. I'd like to see lots of links to the "top of page" along with the comments - maybe after each one or at least one at the bottom.
Thanks again.
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Re: Found a bug
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Variable Width gives a much cleaner look
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Re:
What do you mean you can't switch back? You should be able to switch back on the preferences page.
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Icons still HUGE
Thx.
Chris.
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Re: Icons still HUGE
Chris.
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Re: Icons still HUGE
Chris,
We did tone down the icons... and actually, the response to them has been quite favorable as well... What do you dislike about them?
Mike
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Re: Re: Icons still HUGE
it's your opinion.
not everyone thinks like you, so you can't say "the site looks much better for it"
I like the icons.
I swear. You're too damn picky. I like Techdirt for the content. The way it LOOKS, doesnt', and shouldn't, matter that much.
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links at bottom
I agree with the above poster (Stu) who said that it would be nice to have links to previous/next articles at the bottom as well. I usually read to the end of the comments and then have to scroll all the way up...kind of a pain.
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Hmm Odd
And regarding the poster who said it would be great if links at the top were replicated at the bottom .... Great idea! I get to Techdirt through Google's news pages, so my process, visually, is always to skip down past the headline and to read the story. And since there's nothing at the bottom, I'd completely missed that the links mentioned were even an option! LMAO. So yeah, um, putting them down there at the bottom would not only be an added convenience, but it would also let people who are not familiar with your site know that such options even exist. :-)
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Re: links at bottom
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Why Min Width?
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Liking it
Hmm. I'm not sure whether I prefer Fixed or Variable width. Gah!
Overall, though, great job guys.
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Re: Re: Icons still HUGE
But, as a poster upthread said, it's probably just me, and adblock works just fine. Looks great without the icons and you still get the category from the bar above the story.
Chris.
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Nicely Done
My personal "issue" with every website that uses it is black text on a white background...it's so 19th century paper & ink yet legitimate sites continue to believe it somehow validates their presentation.
Just as studies have shown that fixed width pages are easier to read, studies have shown that black text on a white background causes greater eye-strain than light text on a dark background.
I guess all these studies are a waste of money, huh?
Black & white and eye-strain aside, overall I like the new look and the options you've added. Nicely done.
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Link color DIY fix
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Let me be the next one to say Thanks!
This is *much better*. I liked the new design, graphics and *most* of the layout, but I couldn't stand the two large bars of wasted real-estate on the edges of my browser. It just felt *wrong* to leave so much space so white!
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