I cannot really help this inescapable feeling that the new design is somewhat obnoxious. It's just... there's something about the design that I just cannot get past. This will only serve to further decrease my already declining viewership.
Perhaps it is the sticky "menu" bar on top. Is it just me or do other people really despise these sticky bars that people like to stick on the top/bottom of their sites.
I desire to buy larger and larger monitors, am forced to buy HD aspect ratio monitors, and then find all these webmasters spooging all over my monitor with their various toolbars and spambars and crapbars and wastebars and iebars until I eventually get back to a 320x240 pixel screen.
When I see these toolbars, I just want to reach out through the intertubes to find the developer and cut off his damned fingers to prevent him ever writing any more code...
I despise the valueless menu bars that people stick to the top/bottom of the frame... e.g. those dumb social bars...
But the idea that a menu bar moves up/down with the page content is a holdover from print media. A tasteful and useful menu bar that sticks to the top of the frame is a very useful piece of UI; why is the world should I have to scroll to the `top of the page to find the menu? GMail does it nicely. I think the Techcrunch bar is actually pretty useful (even if I think the rest of the design is straight 1996).
Yes it has loud obnoxious green look, techcrunch used green before, but I never payed much attention to it until now. And the headlines font size is loud with a Huffington Post attention whoring feel.
That said, I agree with others, the nav bar is cool as well
as hiding / restyling the share widgets. Still too much green and loud type.
I ain't gonna lie. I vomited a little when I first saw the new logo. The pixelated green is seizure inducing. Congrats TechCrunch, you've just topped the Gawker redesign. Keep up the good work.
I wouldn't have a problem with the logo if it didn't seem so far out of place with the rest of the design. It's a shame because the navigation bar looks really good once you scroll down the page.
The feedback on this redesign should serve as a reminder for startups: Ignore all feedback after a redesign and look at your metrics. Your metrics will tell you the real story whereas feedback will almost always be negative.
Ok so the new design is much faster. Great, that's awesome. But I feel completely disgusted by this. Default html colours with arial font-face would be better than this.
That's a cache version with ad block on (use it for testing sites). Maybe if they turned off the linkedin and facebook integration, the site would load faster. I guess they get a lot of traffic from that though. :-/
The actual article display isn't that bad, I can read it quite well, but the overall layout is (as others have said) very obnoxious. The most important part is the articles and they haven't butchered the content finding like gawker did. It'll take some getting used to I assume but I guess we can wait and see.
My first thought is that social sharing should go down dramatically. A lot fewer social CTAs on each post, and the left buttons, although aesthetically pleasing, don't really incite the user to share.
Mashable is an example of the in-your-face sharing buttons allows social sharing to go through the roof, and also allows for immediate social proof that hey - other people thought this article was cool, too.
1) Two clicks for search needs to go. Why can't they just get rid of the white space from the logo and display the search at all times? Make search easy, not hard.
2) I don't like being asked to share an article before I even see the title of the article.
3) Images under "popular posts" get maimed and look bad (low resolution/pulled horizontally)
4)Im not a huge fan of the pixelated logo, but to each his own
5) The headlines on the articles seem quite... Big.
They got some things right, but it still seems like a first draft rather than a final copy.
EDIT: They already fixed the images under popular posts, so they are already working on it. Maybe there is hope yet!
I don't even have an opinion on the redesign because their site performance is still terrible. Techcrunch is probably the most sluggish website I regularly visit on my Macbook air. Bringing up Firebug/Web Inspector is horrifying.
Two immediate impression:
- the logo. oh my gosh, it's hurting my eyes!
- there's empty space next to Share button, why not expand it so users dont need 2 extra click (open the share list) to share?
Over 300 HTTP requests required to load the new techcrunch. While this is much better than the previous ~800 HTTP requests on the techcrunch homepage, it's still pretty ridiculous.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] threadWhen I see these toolbars, I just want to reach out through the intertubes to find the developer and cut off his damned fingers to prevent him ever writing any more code...
Yes, it's just you. :)
But the idea that a menu bar moves up/down with the page content is a holdover from print media. A tasteful and useful menu bar that sticks to the top of the frame is a very useful piece of UI; why is the world should I have to scroll to the `top of the page to find the menu? GMail does it nicely. I think the Techcrunch bar is actually pretty useful (even if I think the rest of the design is straight 1996).
That said, I agree with others, the nav bar is cool as well as hiding / restyling the share widgets. Still too much green and loud type.
Cons: The logo just doesn't seem right. Not a fan of the new header.
That's a cache version with ad block on (use it for testing sites). Maybe if they turned off the linkedin and facebook integration, the site would load faster. I guess they get a lot of traffic from that though. :-/
I'll still stick to reading articles in Reeder.
Mashable is an example of the in-your-face sharing buttons allows social sharing to go through the roof, and also allows for immediate social proof that hey - other people thought this article was cool, too.
1) Two clicks for search needs to go. Why can't they just get rid of the white space from the logo and display the search at all times? Make search easy, not hard.
2) I don't like being asked to share an article before I even see the title of the article.
3) Images under "popular posts" get maimed and look bad (low resolution/pulled horizontally)
4)Im not a huge fan of the pixelated logo, but to each his own
5) The headlines on the articles seem quite... Big.
They got some things right, but it still seems like a first draft rather than a final copy.
EDIT: They already fixed the images under popular posts, so they are already working on it. Maybe there is hope yet!
I suppose attractive != effectiveness.