OSNews

You guys did a great job!

Well the logo is still ugly, but better, and the bubble things at the top (like KDE has) are ugly too, IMHO. It is nicer to look at though. I like the gray.

*Edit*

Bring back themes please. :-)

Edited 2008-01-30 00:33 UTC

/me hugs the new design. I love it!

One thing though... Why was it code-named brittny...?

But I don't like it.
How do I get the old design back? There's no option in the preferences...

Edited 2008-01-30 00:37 UTC

The new look is nice .. not that there was anything wrong with the old look though.

I miss the feature of looking at message and having all replies to it available.

Too much contrast between the large white background area and everything else. Kills the eyeballs.

Meanwhile the story blocks are undifferentiated from each other, and the x comments text contrasts too little with the white background.

Gray header, white background, puke green side headers, and orange user header at the top. Strange and incongruent color choices to say the least.

(Already fixed) Black text on dark gray comment headers in the comment section -> little contrast between the two. The black text on dark gray comment header is not consistent with the main site header where it is white / light gray text on dark gray background.

Self-comments have drastically different header text color than other comments, which weirds me out a bit.

No search button by the search dialog on the front page; it is a worthwhile convention and there is ample room for it.

The My Account button has mouseover dead space at the top and bottom of it. This is inconsistent with the menu it provides, in which all implied button area provides clickable action.

Edited 2008-01-30 00:51 UTC

I definitely prefer this to the original version 4 look. But I still prefer version 3 to this. I think that I *could* get to like this as well or better. But the main thing bothering me is that it still looks so *bright*. All that white background is harder on the eyes.

Well done. One thing I'm not particularly fond of is the Featured box. I see from the Conversations that I'm not alone. With the Recent Original Stories on the right, I don't think the big box is needed.

Also, the logo is fine, but it might be fun to have a contest to see what people can come up with.

The green background of the headlines on the right side looks a little off with the rest of the page using greyish colors...

That's my quick first impression.
Otherwise I like it.

With the old design, I used to be able to look at someone's comment and see if anyone has replied to it. Does this feature not exist in the new design, or am I just blind ?

EDIT: It's nice that you can click on the link title of a comment and read the replies, but is there no longer a way to tell at a glance whether there are any replies to a particular comment, as there used to be?

Edited 2008-01-30 00:51 UTC

Hey I applaud the effort, but there are some usability issues. The gray left-to-right gradients make text difficult to read. True it's most noticeable under the timestamp (not vital), but if you make that unreadable, why have that at all?

Whoa the timestamp went from black text to gray... that's fast service.

Edited 2008-01-30 00:52 UTC

Great job. FWIW, I like the logo

This is really ugly.

New stories in a 2/3 column, below a huge banner with ads.

To right in a column are boxes, Lots of them. Distracting.

I am not a huge fan of this design. Take something simple and utterly butcher it. Yuck.

Um...This top menu bar is wrapped on my WIDESCREEN monitor. Why do people design sites like this? I use FF; didn't anyone check this in FF before going to production? Sheesh.

Nope, I don't like it... but it's not my site anyway .

The contrast is too strong for me... maybe a light gray instead of white for the main background would help.

I don't come here for the design anyway, so whatever you guys like is fine. Even green on a magenta background wouldn't stop me from... Ok, maybe green on magenta would stop me .

...looks really stupid when you run an ad blocker.

I love the new look and what I especially like is that you didn't so drastically change the layout that I have to relearn everything. I hate when web sites do that!

On balance, this is a good design. I like the look of the site, and the modularity of it. I like that I can change things to suit my taste. I like the way the new mechanism to mod comments works (the + & - disappear once you've made your mod).

v4 made me kind of sick. It is too "web-2.0"-ish. I mainly only read OSNews through a feed reader now. It just seems too heavyweight and javascript filled.

This is a HUGE improvement over v4.0, but still isn't that great. Personal opinion only.

I like this theme. The only problem that I see is the tight spacing of the top menu items; you may want to find a way to space them out a bit more.

I'm using a 22" LCD, and the spacing of everything seems so tight in the middle of my screen it's ugly. And that white background is hard on the eyes.

Sorry to say, I liked more the old way.

Check out neowin.net or anandtech.com or some other site that are able to use all the space. The flow and presentation is just better.

Could you please bring back the 'Replies' link at the bottom of comments.

I liked being able to isolate a subset of comments away from the rest.

Also, please disable the 'post comment' link when a user is not logged on. I have now accidentally clicked this a couple of times when not logged on, typed a huge comment and then clicked submit. It informs you that you can't post anonymously, and wipes your comment. Very annoying.

Other than these gripes though, the site is definitely improved.

I had finally got used to version 4.0. I guess I will get used to this, but first impression is I like the 4.0 look much better.

My only concrete criticism is the white background is too bright and is hard on the eyes, makes reading difficult to read. As has been the case for many versions, the text size is too small.

I love the new look. It is more generic (read less distinct and unique) than v3, but oh well, it looks really good.

When the last changed happened the only thing that kept me sane was the fact that I could switch to the not quite horrible classic theme. Now... this.

Quality had gone down anyway, but now I can't even read the damn thing.

Goodbye, osnews.

To be honest I hated v4.0 (though it didn't stop me from browsing) so I'm greatly pleased to see this update.

God job guys.

better than that greenish theme

Congrats for the new theme. To be honest, I never liked the previous one and I kept using osnews classic until it was removed a few weeks ago.

Anyway, I have a single suggestion: would it be possible to disable the sidebar completely? If not, at least reduce its width.

Thanks!

1: The extreme-left justification makes me want to violate Godwin's law. Make an option to put the sidebar on the left like normal people, or at least tab the left area in a little.

2: WTF fixed width. I use 1024x [strikethrough]at work[/strikethrough] sometimes (there is a good reason for this), and always have to resize my browser window to fit the page. This new version is much wider than 1024, making it now impossible to get rid of the bottom scroll bar.

3: The last version looked better, and the version before that was actually aesthetically pleasing.

4: The 'latest comic' thing is well-implemented, but the page it links to could use a forward/back browser.

5: Something that's bothering me for a while is that some things don't work the way one expects them to.

The first example of this is low-rated comments - they start shaded, and you can unroll them by clicking the titles. So clicking again should re-shade them -- which isn't really useful functionality, but makes sense. Instead, it takes you to (I think) a permalink page.

The second is, on a reply post, clicking the name of the post to which is is replying. It takes you to that post's permalink page, when one would expect it to take me to that post in the normal comment view. This is much faster when the posts are on the same page and allows you to continue browsing normally.

EDIT: This has been changed recently so that it now links to a page containing the conversation thread. This is better, but I perfer my way -- it would still allow one to navigate backward through a conversation, using the reply to links, and forward again with the forward button.

Basicly these are unrequested context switches (there is a usability term to describe this, but I don't know what it is), and are to be avoided. Permalinks should be accessed via a link that includes the work 'permalink'.

EDIT: 6: Yeah, the gray-on-white comment text is literally painful.

Edited 2008-01-30 02:56 UTC

I mean, I used www4 for so long just because we were told it's how the site was going to be controlled; and now not even a month after being 'official', I have to go relearn positions for accessing all the controls?

And you're still using fixed-width columns? @_@ T_T

Over all, the new look is ok. However, I have the following objections:

1. There is a big grey empty box at the top. It is distracting and look odd.
2. I think this is a theme issue, but the text is crowding the left had side of the browser. It really should have some sort of left hand margin.

The margin issue really bugs me. I can deal with the empty grey box, but I really would like to see perhaps a 1m or a 2m margin on the left hand side. Otherwise it looks pretty good.

I can't for the life of me seem to find links to the various administration pages.

you can't see the comments link! white-on-light-green is not the easiest to read, but the reverse is nearly invisible. Otherwise, this new design is quite pleasing.

what was wrong with the original theme?

it was:
* clean
* very easy on the eye
* not confusing
* easy to navigate, logical structure
* sufficiently functional
* had no adverts in between posts and entries

I absolutely love the new theme. I didn't like the v4.0 version very much, but you're really turned that into something nice. I love everything about it... the matte colors... the color choices... It's really nice.

I would change only this: the stories that don't have a grey background, make them a different color from the page background. Otherwise the bar which is the separator (which I like, thanks for adding it) looks like it's just floating in space rather than acting as a bounds for the story.

Great design! Thanks for the hard work!

What the f**k is this? It's ugly.. and why was the option of using the classic theme removed?

You're pissing us off OSNews adminstrators... cease and decist.

(Or post your complete mailing addresses...)

I'm kind of torn, there are elements I like about this new look but it doesn't seem quite as clean as either the old look or the less-old look (v4). I can certainly live with it, and since I hit this site every day, I'm simply happy to have variety...

However, two gripes that are purely subjective and stylistic.

a) Layout: The menu bar should not be wrapping, and the "Submit News", RSS, and top of the right-side layout boxes are all at varying heights. It just looks very frontpage-ish. Though I'm using Konqueror as my browser, so it could be I'm not rendering properly, though I'd be surprised. OSNews is one of the sites that seems to be the most accomodating for browsers be they desktop or mobile.

b) The "banner" bar at the top. The site is centered in the browser, which is nice and clean, but the gray "header" bar (for lack of a better word) containing the logo, menu bar etc. stretches across the width of the browser. It should be one way or the other. If you're going to center the page, then don't extend the banner across, it just doesn't look right, though that could also be a result of the contrast between the gray and the white. I seem to recall v4 had less of a contrast.

Anyways, I'll tip my hat and applaud the effort that went into redesigning the site. I know it's not an easy thing and you're certainly not going to please everyone.

Just offering my two pennies...

Some good changes but some awful ones too. I hate having the bar on the right, is there any way to change it to the left side? The menubar (Home Originals, Conversations, etc.)at the top doesn't fit on one line in epiphany and using midori the login text boxes overlap with the element above. I do like the theme better than the last one though and the functional changes that have been made to the comment system since the switch from V3 have been excellent also.

Edited 2008-01-30 04:45 UTC

The new look is great. I like it much better than the themes of yore.

This comment about the right side wanting it back on the left is ergonomically retarded.

Having the right column be closest to the scrollbar makes sense.

Site is definitely much improved. You could work on a theme view where one can change the colors and perhaps the background colors between the two columns to offset them [make it easier for people contrast sensitive], but it's definitely an improved presentation.

I don't mind the overall theme, but have two suggestions:
1) The text in the main stories is hard to read. "Loyal OSNews readers, I'd like to thank you for your patience as we've made a bumpy transition to a new back-end and an even bumpier rollout..." I need glasses to read that on the main page. The problem is either the font color and the bright white background and/or the font size.

2) I liked the old logo better.

I really prefer the old style (3.0) the news were easier to read and, honestly the design was better for me. ;-P

This new design makes things floating around without some frame that help the eyes. It seems it's missing some CSS part.

As other guy asked:

"How do I get the old design back? There's no option in the preferences..."