The Gawker mess

[evilmike]

As everyone knows by now, the Gawker family of sites has gone through a massive redesign. It appears to be about as popular as "New Coke" was back in the day.

Or, perhaps less:

What workarounds is everyone using to view the Gawker sites now? Or, failing that, what non-Gawker sites are suitable replacements (especially for Lifehacker)?

Right now, I've relegated the three that I was visiting the most often to Google Reader and I'm using external Google searches to find old content.

 

[Dave]

I had never been to Gawker until this kerfuffle so I guess I don't understand the hatred.

Gamers and computer people are fickle, fickle beasts who hate change.

 

[drifter]

Personally, I don't mind the change. However, the Canadian versions have yet to switch over to the new layout, so adding ca. before the address (e.g. ca.lifehacker.com) will appease your hatred to change.

 

[Bones]

its kind of glitchy for me, but hopefully sooner than later it will clear up.

 

[strawman]

The funny thing is that the sites started out simple, and things were added onto the interface as time progressed. Eventually they became a cluttered mass of links, widgets, and info. However, because it's what people grew up with, it was fine and hardcore users knew exactly where to find the things that interested them, and how to interact with the site in a way that fit their needs.

The new design simplifies things, and now all these users are feeling like a fish out of the water because they no longer know how to use the sites the way they used to.

But the new design isn't any worse than the old design. The problem is the change, not that the change is for the worse.

 

[evilmike]

It's not really a hatred of change. The new site format does not work at all well on my netbook. It loads relatively slowly and the new layout doesn't leave a lot of text on the screen at any one time.

I thought about using the ca. version, but I would imagine it is only a matter of time before those sites convert over.

 

[Dave]

It's not really a hatred of change. The new site format does not work at all well on my netbook. It loads relatively slowly and the new layout doesn't leave a lot of text on the screen at any one time.

I thought about using the ca. version, but I would imagine it is only a matter of time before those sites convert over.

If that's the case for a lot of people and it's a real technical thing I can see the hatred. But as I don't use a netbook I don't see this side of things. Good information, though.

 

[strawman]

It's not really a hatred of change. The new site format does not work at all well on my netbook. It loads relatively slowly and the new layout doesn't leave a lot of text on the screen at any one time.

That makes sense. I wonder how well the sites load on other common limited systems, such as the iPad and android devices.

 

[Espy]

The new gawker sites are horrible messes of design. I am not reading Kotaku as much as I used to and instead visiting other gaming sites like Joystiq. It has nothing to do with "hating change" and everything to do with gawker creating one of the worst website layouts I've ever had the displeasure to visit.

 

[drifter]

That makes sense. I wonder how well the sites load on other common limited systems, such as the iPad and android devices.

Weren't the design changes made with an eye towards tablet devices? It would be funny if tablets couldn't handle it.

The new gawker sites are horrible messes of design.

I've read this criticism levied several times before by various people. Aside from the empty side margins, I honestly have no real beef with the site design. What is it about the new layout that so annoys people?

 

[strawman]

What is it about the new layout that so annoys people?

That's what I'm wondering. I rarely visit those sites, so while I remember the old layout, and experienced the new layout today, I just don't see the annoyance.

I'm surprised that so many people profess hatred for it, yet don't give concrete reasons. I'm not hearing, "It's hard to read the articles, find the articles, participate in the community" instead all I'm hearing is, "The layout sucks! The design is terrible. I can't use it."

I could be wrong about hating change just because it's change, but other than slowness and occasional bugs, no one has given me reasonable explanations for why the design is "bad".

 

[@Li3n]

But the new design isn't any worse than the old design. The problem is the change, not that the change is for the worse.

I never visited those sites (kotaku very rarely when it was linked), and i went to see what was going on based on that comic... and that is awful...

Seriously, what the hell is that?! is it made for mobile phones or something?!It feels weird with a mouse.

 

[Disconnected]

I find the new design awkward to use because you no longer scroll the list of articles as easily.
There is one Main News Story that gets a lot of real estate (lifehacker seems to be better on this point by having numerous main stories to scroll though).
Then a tiny column beside it full of pictures that half the time don't relate to the article. Also the advertisement above this right hand column is always on the screen. Always.
The Gawker sites feel more vertical, as though designed for touch screen phones and tablets. When viewed on a widescreen monitor there is about 20-30% of unused space.
This is okay but since I don't view it on those devices I don't think the design is very good use of space, and function for PC web-surfing.

 

[drifter]

Oh yeah, the main page thing is annoying, although I understand why they do it.

 

[Espy]

Oh you want details rather than my opinion or else it's not valid eh? Fair enough.

The side-articles scroll is set at super speed, using my trackpad to scroll makes it unusable, but look! There are little grey buttons in a little grey bar at the bottom that are also useless unless you want to skip the whole set of articles on top!

If I want to actually browse the articles (something that I actually do and the old site was very well set up for) I have to use the RSS feed. They now have a main article that takes up 80% of the front page even though it generally only has 2 or 3 lines from the actual article , the ad on the top right is basically integrated into the article browser only it stays when you scroll and flashes at you. It's not functional on a computer *in my opinion*. Maybe it's great on an iPad. I don't know.

Also: Weird thing, the daily emails now have the same 5 "side" articles listed in every email. This happened when they switched layouts but I don't know if it's related.

I have no problem with folks thinking it's the cows teat, but the "oh you whiners don't like change" line doesn't cut it. It's actually possible for folks to not like a web design other folks like.

 

[figmentPez]

My big complaint is that if you switch to the classic/blog view, it doesn't show the dates for any of the articles. It makes it a pain to figure if I've read back to the point I left off.

Reading one story at a time takes me longer than quickly scrolling down the page. I don't want to wait for each one to load.

Also, on many of the sites when I click next, I end up in the middle of the next page. I have to pay attention and scroll back to the top before reading or I miss half the stories

On the first day of the update, a big ad opened up on top of content, with no way to close it. You had to wait for the ad to minimize itself to start reading the content. Bad form.

The "next post" button remains, even in blog view. It serves no purpose in blog view, it should go away if viewing that style, so should the sidebar which is just as superfluous. I don't need those taking up 1/3 of my screen space.

Anyone know how to disable the arrow keys moving to the next story? My arrow keys are for scrolling the screen. Don't take them over to navigate the website, please.

 

[Covar]

Is that an iframe?!?

FLP it doesn't scale for one. The comment system is even worse than before (Lifehacker has always had good commenters, Kotaku usually decent). Those are my two big issues.

Fortunately I use Google Reader so I don't ever browse their frontpages.

 

[drifter]

Oh you want details rather than my opinion or else it's not valid eh? Fair enough.

I wasn't questioning the validity of your opinion; as I said, I have no real beef as to the new layout, and so didn't really understand all the antipathy the change garnered. The 'hatred to change' in my post to evilmike was meant to be tongue-in-cheek, hence the smiley.

I will say that I haven't encountered the problems you have. For example, I have no scroll speed issues, and the ads for some reason don't show up in my browser (although I remember seeing them before; did they change that, or is it just me?). For most of the other stuff you and figmentPez cited; yeah, they're stuff that I don't use, which is why any changes or usability issues didn't even register to me.

@figmentPez: it's not the solution you asked for, but ever considered using Spacebar and Shift+Spacebar to move the page up and down?

 

[figmentPez]

@figmentPez: it's not the solution you asked for, but ever considered using Spacebar and Shift+Spacebar to move the page up and down?

Moving up and down isn't the problem (I used PgUp and PgDn for that). It's left and right when an image is wider than my netbook's screen, that cause me trouble.

Also, my mouse's scroll wheel has a tilt-scroll feature. I can move left and right with it, but the new Gawker sites take over that as well. So if I'm scrolling with the wheel and bump it wrong, I get shifted to the next article (even if I'm reading the blog view with pages full of articles)

 

[drifter]

Ah, my mistake. Try using Ctrl+arrow key.
-edit-
Oh, that only works for Chrome and IE6, not Firefox.
-edit again-
If the type doesn't get too tiny, maybe try zooming out?

 

[strawman]

Yeah, I'm a "specific complaints or it didn't happen" kinda guy, but sounds like there are plenty of usability problems that are valid.

 

[SpecialKO]

It depends on which site you're talking about. Both Gawker and Gizmodo are horrendous (front page story takes up 80% of the layout, forced clicking to next pages to see any other stories if you want to read more than just the headline, and needing to scroll to get to the "read more" link for the one article on the page), Kotaku's editors don't seem to know whether a picture will fit their layout or not, while Lifehacker seems pretty much fine.

Also, while I hope they fixed it, their AJAX-based dynamic URL generator was broken a couple weeks ago. Inbound links went to completely different articles.

 

[Espy]

Looks like they have finally addressed some of the problems. The scrolling sidebar now actually functions right (ie, it scrolls slowly instead of at super human speeds), the ad at the top, while still annoyingly part of the design (bad designers, BAD!) scrolls with it (which is odd, seems like the people buying the ad might not care for that). The main pages is still similar, ie, huge picture, 2 lines of the article HUGE ad that might or might not be another article or part of the above article or just plain "what the hell am I looking at" with a bunch of other articles with pictures listed below.
All in all it moved itself from a solid F in the design and functionality to a B- in functionality and a D in design (STOP integrating ads into your articles and websites. It looks cheap and like you are trying to trick people into clicking on them which IS cheap and makes your site look stupid).
I will say it's nice to see them listening to people.

 

[strawman]

If I ever do a site redesign, I'm going to make two versions. One that is my ideal design, and then one that takes that design far beyond what is useful, adds a few bugs, and is only barely functional.

Then I'll slowly "fix" the really bad design by replacing it with parts of my real design.

People will be so relieved that they will be happy with my ideal design.

 

[Espy]

lol, maybe thats what they did, I mean, they certainly got buzz.

 

[evilmike]

If I ever do a site redesign, I'm going to make two versions. One that is my ideal design, and then one that takes that design far beyond what is useful, adds a few bugs, and is only barely functional.

Then I'll slowly "fix" the really bad design by replacing it with parts of my real design.

People will be so relieved that they will be happy with my ideal design.

Ah, the "new coke" strategy.

 

[sixpackshaker]

Technology people don't seem to respond well to change.

 

[Covar]

Technology people don't seem to respond well to bad change.

FTFY.

The new Gawker sites have a horrible layout with some real technical issues.

 

[Fun Size]

Is it me, or is it getting worse? On Kotaku, I can load exactly one story. Every other one ignores the click. I end up opening them in tabs in order to read anything.

 

[figmentPez]

Is it me, or is it getting worse? On Kotaku, I can load exactly one story. Every other one ignores the click. I end up opening them in tabs in order to read anything.

Oh yeah, I've had more problems recently as well. I'll click on a link, the address will change, but the page will stay the same. A forced refresh works.

 

[evilmike]

It looks like they have officially announced Gawker 2.0.1.