Come Try Out Slashdot's New Design (In Beta)

Slashdot's biggest redesign effort ever is now in beta and you're invited to help guide it. This redesign has been shaped by feedback from community members over the past few months (a big thanks to those of you who participated in our alpha testing phase!), and we'd like your thoughts on it, too. This new design is meant to be richer but also simpler to use, while maintaining the spirit of what Slashdot is all about: News for Nerds. Stuff that matters. Read on for the details of what's included, or read this blog post. Update: 10/02 19:16 GMT by T : Since this post went live, we've been reading through the comments below as well as your (hundreds!) of emails. These are all valuable, as we continue to implement our current features into the Beta. Keep 'em coming; we love the feedback. Please keep in mind that this is called Beta for a reason; we've still folding in lots of improvements. One important thing to bear in mind is that the images are optional: check out the Classic mode by clicking on the view selection widget (just above the stories) on the Beta page. What's in the Beta?

• Cleaner, simpler homepage design with option to view stories in three different layouts (Standard, Classic and Headline View)
• More community-promoted content in the All Stories view
• Improved profile pages to give you a snapshot of other community members
• Better, more prominent filters to view stories in different dimensions
• Easier browsing of popular topics straight from the main page.

Please keep in mind that this is a beta and some features are not yet available or fully baked. For features not yet available, you'll see a "Coming Soon" bubble if you hover your mouse over those areas of the site. Here are a few key areas we are still working on:

• Sign up
• moderation
• story submission
• replying to comments

Update: 10/01 20:54 GMT by S : For those of you who would rather browse Slashdot without pictures, click the icon at the top right of the story column, and switch to Classic View.

Comments

Link broken?

[Samantha Wright]

For some bizarre reason, https: on the link redirects to the current home page.

Who wants to start making tongue-in-cheek remarks about the current layout instead of the new one?

Re:Link broken?

[djupedal]

If you loved the old design, you'll love the new design...

Re:Link broken?

[gl4ss]

it's fixed now.

but. the new design wastes 50% of my screen.

just make it like it was 10 years ago.

Re:Link broken?

[intermodal]

Going back to a design from 10 years ago would give them less opportunity to hide adverts and trackers in the code. It's much easier when the site code is needlessly complex and hard to analize.

Re:Link broken?

[i kan reed]

Going back to a design from 10 years ago would give them less opportunity to hide adverts and trackers in the code. It's much easier when the site code is needlessly complex and hard to analize.

That is absolutely part of it, and part of it seems to be the %of screen that is ads. More real estate=more eyes=more mind control=less reason to ever visit the site.

Re:Link broken?

[Ksevio]

Not only are there giant white bars down the sides, but all the useless stuff no one reads (and the poll) are always on the side.

It makes the comment section - which is a large part of the slashdot experience - seem like something tacked onto the end of a news article where people post one line responses.

Re:Link broken?

[CanHasDIY]

It makes the comment section - which is a large part of the slashdot experience - seem like something tacked onto the end of a news article where people post one line responses.

This.

Slashdot's biggest selling point, as it's always been, is the conversation the stories generate. If I wanted day-old news with a barely-considered comment section, I'd go to Yahoo or visit the local Gannett affiliate's website.

Re:Link broken?

[i kan reed]

There aren't any slashdot devs anymore, remember the CmdrTaco designed much of the original himself. This is clearly a styling to match dice.com, which means that it's likely their own devs were moved over to a project to perform this particular stylesheet murder.

Re:Link broken?

[TWX]

I opened it. Unlike the current design, it did not scale to fit my 1400x1050 screen, leaving large whitespace borders on both edges. If that's what it does on a 4:3 screen with a narrower horizontal resolution than many modern widescreen "high definition" displays, then this is a bad thing.

Additionally there was less content on the initial screen than there is on the current design. Much of the time I skim the headlines, if I find one I find relevant I immediately read the blurb. If the blurb appeals then I follow the link(s) or read the comments. This new layout doesn't offer as much content on a given screen, and one thing I learned in design in general, if you don't grab your audience with little more than a glimpse, then you've lost your audience.

I did design for some ads for some fandom events, and within the form factor of the ad I had to answer who/what why, and when, and to a lesser extent, where. I had to name the event, give the viewer a reason to go to the event, give the date for the event, and for events that weren't in the normal venues or where the venue itself was an advantage, name the venue. All of this information needed to be conveyed in little-more than a snapshot.

While Slashdot or any bulletin board system is not the same as an ad, it is important to present the frame of the discussion in a format that allows the casual browser to see the important stuff pop out instantly. The current layout, with different presentations, reverse colors for somethings, etc, works to do that. The new format didn't give me the impression of being well organized in that regard. One needs the headline to convey the important "grabber' in a way that actually commands attention. The new system didn't do that for me.

Re:Link broken?

[Spazmania]

giant white bars down the sides

I hate this and I hate every web site that does this. Get it through your thick skulls: my web browser width is different than your preferred width.

Re:Link broken?

[dgatwood]

Speaking of text, in Safari, I have to increase the font size twice before the "Most Discussed" heading on the main page appears in the same row as the rest of the buttons.

Also, when they chose their color scheme, did they actually test it on even one Mac laptop with the standard Mac gamut? Because all those near-white colors are completely indistinguishable until I tilt the screen by about ten or fifteen degrees. They're way, way too subtle. I can't even tell where one story ends and the next one begins. The site borders on unusably hard to read as a result.

Re:Link broken?

[nmb3000]

It makes the comment section - which is a large part of the slashdot experience - seem like something tacked onto the end of a news article where people post one line responses.

I hope to hell someone with a say in the matter reads this and understands what it really means. I'll give you a hint:

If you make this change, you will kill Slashdot.

I'm not exaggerating even slightly. Many people spend time here to read and participate in the commentary. By shoehorning the comments into that tiny space beneath the article you're saying "comments aren't important", something which will in all likelihood be soon followed by "comments are a liability" and then "comments now require moderation before being posted". People tolerate the Slash-Bi(sexual) crap now because it takes a second seat to the real meat of the articles and commentary. By reversing those roles you're telling 85% of the active userbase that they're no longer welcome.

Whatever site is left after this change takes effect -- maybe it will make enough advertisement and tracking money to satisfy Dice, but it won't be Slashdot and it won't last a year. Remember what happened to Digg? Yeah, I didn't think so.

By the way, if anyone hasn't gone and looked at the comments section on an article, go look now and then tell me I'm wrong.

Re:Link broken?

[steelfood]

I was going to say, it looks like every other blog out there. That and it doesn't work on Firefox 3.6, which is what I primarily use. It also works poorly on IE, though the layout IE is showing is probably better than the layout Firefox 23 is showing.

My opinion? Kill the fancy graphics and the fancy Javascript/CSS/HTML BS. Just make something that's simple and will work irrespective of browser. Typography issues are more important than adding useless pictures.

tl;dr: Go back to the serif font from 10 years ago, keep the current layout.

Re:Link broken?

[CanHasDIY]

Yeah. Conversation.

Shut your festering gob, you tit! Your type really makes me puke, you vacuous, coffee-nosed, maloderous, pervert!!!

Look, I CAME HERE FOR AN ARGUMENT, I'm not going to just stand...!!

OH, oh I'm sorry, but this is abuse; you want room 12A, Just along the corridor.

Oh, Thank you very much. Sorry.

Not at all... stupid git...

Re:Link broken?

[qubezz]

Not necessarily kill the fancy graphics, destroy the useless big pictures. I get very irritated at the wordpress blog sites that have to Google for some barely-related huge picture to stick at the top of a story; do that and you've started down the path of making Slashdot just another blog with comments. On Slashdot, the comments are the content.

There should be something for a 2540px wide browser to do, maybe like another site, use multiple columns to display stories, or at least show "most commented/hottest stories of the day stories" or replies to a user's posts in the sidebar instead of a poll.

Re:Link broken?

[peragrin]

I run slashdot on the "very" old classic mode. not even the web2.0 mode that is now slashdot default but an even older version. Iknow when I am not logged in as I see the useless web 2.0 interface.

Not only is there huge amounts of wasted space on the sides, but even in the comment boxes. It is like the new mobile slashdot. You scroll and scroll and scroll just to go down 5 comments out of hundreds or thousands.

When you fix something try to figure out what is and isn't broken.

The voting system is broken you can now vote multiple times on the same poll.

For fun goto slashBI. talk about ugly, hard to read, confusing with no delineation between topics.

I really wish slashdot would fire the idiots who think up the new web layouts. none of them are worth my two cents let alone the tens of thousands of dollars they are being paid.

Re:Link broken?

[Walzmyn]

A-Freakin'-Men.
When I saw it my first thought was, "this is every other new site on the planet." One of the reasons I come to /. is to not have my time wasted (too much) with useless fluff. The new design = all useless fluff.

Re:Link broken?

[Anonymous Coward]

While Slashdot or any bulletin board system is not the same as an ad. . .

Herein lies the point for me. For ~15 years, I have been reading Slashdot as a bulletin board system. Not a "news" site. Not a blog.

Ideally, the front page would only be headlines with expandable summaries. Unfortunately, manipulative, click-whoring headlines have become the norm, so it is more useful to see summaries even though most end up being wasted screen space.

But I digress. . . .I don't know what Slashdot wants to be in the future, but they haven't made a compelling move away from their original intent, and as such, these layout changes only add confusion and reduce efficiency.

Re:Link broken?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Slashdot is one of the last bastions of proper threaded conversation (I'm glad the "giant list" style of comments is finally evolving a sort of pseudo-threading, but it's not really enough).

If you change the list order, you'll make a return to conversation impossible -- this goes for both designs. With this design, you make First Post critical and basically the subject of every subsequent post. Like every blog on the planet.

So I'll go to some other blog, because there will be no other reason to return to slashdot.

Re:Link broken?

[mdsharpe]

Seconded. The comments and discussion are the main reason I visit Slashdot several times a day. The new design is an absolute nightmare for reading comments, as they are squashed into an extremely narrow column.
Simply put, if the new design becomes the norm and there's no way to fall back to the current (non-beta) design, I will be visiting a lot less, and will consider it a great loss.

Re:Link broken?

[nmb3000]

Slashdot's biggest selling point, as it's always been, is the conversation the stories generate.

Exactly. And how does the new design reflect this?

On the new design it looks like you cannot link to a specific comment or thread. Check out your user page and look at your comment history. No links to comments, no comment scores.

I suppose comments are simply an unsightly appendage in their new "modern" design (they must clash with all the bullshit social media icons everywhere). Just think of all the "old cruft" they could get rid of if there were no comments: threaded layout, moderation, meta-moderation, karma, all users with a UID less than 7 digits, etc. Replace all that with a flat "top 20" comments listing and a little "Like this on Facebook!" button and it'll be nirvana.

Re:Link broken?

[Beardo the Bearded]

This, plus get rid of the pictures. They add nothing but a waste of bandwidth. /. looks like it's work related. Don't make it obvious that we're fucking around.

Re:Link broken?

[Luthair]

All the limitations of mobile, now on your desktop!

Re:Link broken?

[ultranova]

I run slashdot on the "very" old classic mode. not even the web2.0 mode that is now slashdot default but an even older version.

Ditto. But do you know what would be really awesome? NNTP interface. Slashdot already allows disabling advertisements (at least it offered the option to me), and the discussions are thread-structured, so why not offer them up via Usenet server? Every section would be its own newsgroup, articles would be top-level posts, and filtering could be handled by having multiple newsgroups with different tresholds for various topics.

That way, you could have Web n+1.infinity for the ooh shiny -crowd, a program of their choice for hardcore users, and a good API for mobile access.

Re:Link broken?

[Nerdfest]

I would actually prefer if the information density of the existing site could be increased. There's still a bit more vertical whitespace than is required t make it readable.

Re:Link broken?

[Soulskill]

I hope to hell someone with a say in the matter reads this and understands what it really means.

We're reading, and we understand, believe me.

Thanks for the feedback.

Re:Link broken?

[RussR42]

I would love that! I have yet to see a web based interface that is a good as newsreaders were in 1998.

Re:Link broken?

[ConceptJunkie]

Additionally there was less content on the initial screen than there is on the current design. Much of the time I skim the headlines, if I find one I find relevant I immediately read the blurb. If the blurb appeals then I follow the link(s) or read the comments. This new layout doesn't offer as much content on a given screen, and one thing I learned in design in general, if you don't grab your audience with little more than a glimpse, then you've lost your audience.

This. It took me about 5 seconds to conclude the new design for the front page sucks so much I didn't even bother to look at the comments. If it fails in the most fundamental criteria for being useful, as you so well described, then I can't imagine any real thought went into this design other than "we need pointless pictures" and that for some reason it needs to follow along with the stupid new fad of having an absurd amount of white space.

Re:Link broken?

[Grishnakh]

I really wish slashdot would fire the idiots who think up the new web layouts. none of them are worth my two cents let alone the tens of thousands of dollars they are being paid.

Unfortunately, the design seen in this new Slashdot Beta is extremely similar to the design used in all new web-based stuff; just look at Google's stuff for instance. All the web designers have drunk the kool-aid.

Re:Link broken?

[Anubis IV]

Bingo. And I actually fear that the danger may be more insidious, since a narrower comments section not only makes it harder to read, but also implicitly encourages commenters to leave shorter, more trite comments. I'd expect that a load of users who would have others left a +5 Insightful/Informative/Interesting comment will instead just leave a quick quip. And while I love the +5 Funny comments we have, I'd hate it if we had a design that essentially encouraged them to the detriment of the others.

The current design(s) do a good job of supporting long-form responses, while at the same time encouraging the user to make their point clear from the get-go by having only the first line displayed when the comment is initially collapsed. The comments need to use the full width of the page, or darn close to it. As it is, the beta comments section looks like a standard Disqus-style thing, and I don't exactly associate sites that use Disqus with places where quality conversations can be had and reasonable people can be reasoned with. In contrast, I do expect that of Slashdot, and I too see that as its biggest selling point.

If they neuter the conversations, they'll strip away the most defining aspect of Slashdot, since I'm entirely with you: I can find my news elsewhere and faster with better signal-to-noise ratios.

Re:Link broken?

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Yeah the only reason anyone comes here is for the comments. If I have to work harder to read them, I have less reason to come here. Seriously, widen the comments section and make sure I don't have to click TWICE to get to something I previously had to click ONCE to get to. Especially if its the only reason I visit. This design will kill slashdot.

Re:Link broken?

[Chelloveck]

All the limitations of mobile, now on your desktop!

That was my first thought, too. It looks like the mobile version. At least the comments don't show a huge number of worthless entries that read "Filtered due to preferences." like the mobile site does. (Here's an idea, guys: If a comment is filtered, don't show it at all! I understand that when I have the reading threshold higher than -1 I won't see some things. That's kind of the point. You don't have to tell me about each of the things you're not telling me about.)

That said, I'd actually come here to defend the new layout. I chalked up most of the actual problems to things not yet implemented, and most of the visual mess to just being unfamiliar. But since the reply link is one of those things not yet implemented I had to go back to the old layout to post this.

Wow.

The difference in readability is huge. Compared side-by-side, the old format is much, much more readable than the new format. The new summary does not include the text from the main page, just the "read more" text. Bullets are missing from the list of changes. (list-style-type: none; Really? You went out of your way to achieve this?) I thought maybe the text was printed in a lower-contrast color, but that's not the case -- it's that the font-weight has been reduced to less than normal via CSS, presumably to emulate the skinny unreadable text in iOS7. (At least Apple provided a way to change the default font to bold in the accessibility preferences.)

In short, it's not just that it's new and unfamiliar. It's objectively less readable, by design. Knock it off, Slashdot! Maybe (maybe!) choose a non-default font, but once you do don't try to tweak it to make it look hip. It looks like ass.

Back out the last upgrade

[GodfatherofSoul]

I liked the last design more.

Re:Back out the last upgrade

[raftpeople]

I like the new design more...than AOL...but just barely

Digg version 2.0

[zitsky]

If you want the site to look like Digg, maybe you should just buy it.

Re:Digg version 2.0

[i kan reed]

I have to agree, looking like every other "news" site that provides no news is not a good place to go. It deigns to promote everything except what we come to the site to see above the actual stories, and pushes the stories themselves into a narrow column that limits how many you can fit on a screen at time(presumably to boost ad-to-content ratios on screen). Were it not for the fact that I can adblock the header and the whole right column, I'd leave and never come back.

Re:Digg version 2.0

[Samantha Wright]

The deeper you look, the more obnoxious this gets: try checking the "topics" menu at the top. Off to the right in a corner are the topics people actually care about, but front-and-centre we have the horrible Business Intelligence, Cloud, TV, and Data Center categories that no one cares about. (Okay, so TV turns out a bit of content that's worthwhile sometimes, but it's more usually just nigh-shameless promotional content. Despite all the other pointless and petty blogifications, this off-to-the-side ghettoization of the site's actual content really feels like the biggest subversion of the site's community spirit.

Re:Digg version 2.0

[frinsore]

Try out the comments section before making a judgement.

Slashdot does comments better then 99.99% of the sites out there and while this upgrade may have the same back end the graphical representation of the parent/child/sibling/etc is horrible. It seems that whitespace is the only indication of a parent/child relationship and I can't quickly determine who is responding to what. Following a thread of conversation is gone.

Re:Digg version 2.0

[i kan reed]

Well, they do look utterly unbearable. And that made me go look at the user control panel to see how the comment summary is. It's really wonderful to not be able to see what replies you've gotten on your posts, or get a summary table by story of your posts. That just reeks of feature improvement. This is not a good design, and I can't see myself continuing to use slashdot if they changed over now.

Re:Digg version 2.0

[AmiMoJo]

Ever since Taco left and Dice took over Slashdot has been trying to increase its readership by modernizing. It's misguided and fails to understand the fundamental appeal of Slashdot that keeps bringing us back to it: the comments.

Adding more pictures, jazzing up the UI with Web 2.0 features, Javascript frameworks and the like is all just making it harder to get to the valuable content. Everything of value is text, and some basic layout to show the relation of comments to each other. It may look old fashioned, but there are a million other sites with crappy "blog" style comments and stock photos to break up the content into one or two paragraph blocks.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with the current layout, other than a few minor issues like a lack of unicode support (or even European characters). If you want more people to come to the site just do your jobs better: edit the stories. Cut the obviously biased bullshit and present the facts, then let the debate run.

That's probably not what you want to hear, I know. It would be lovely (for you) if Slashdot could become the new hot tech blog, but that isn't what it is and if you try to make it that even more people will just leave.

PS. Buy the PlusFive app and fix the few remaining bugs. Maybe fix the mobile site up a bit too. I'd comment a lot at weekends more if the mobile experience was better.

Re:Digg version 2.0

[linebackn]

And just watch this new design go through mostly as-is just because some really high higher up thinks it looks cool. That's the problem with something owned by a company, can't leave well enough alone and got to screw it up to make it look "new".

Taco had it right back in 1997 when it was his personal blog.

Re:Digg version 2.0

[i kan reed]

Oh, yes, this is absolutely a "beta, so you'll get used to it" not a "beta so we can get feedback". Otherwise you'd see at least a little editor participation in the comments.

Re:Digg version 2.0

[techno-vampire]

Ever since Taco left and Dice took over Slashdot has been trying to increase its readership by modernizing.

That might be what they think they're doing, but all they're accomplishing is making Slashdot's corpse look like every other website out there that has comments. The new version is ugly, utterly unusable unless you turn all of those pointless images off and there's no threading of comments. Hell, even the Disqus widget that some comic strip sites use to manage comments handles threading correctly. I don't know what Dice thinks it's going to accomplish with this New! Shiny! Improved! layout, but if Slashdot survives this, I'll be very surprised, and if it's still worth reading, it will be a miracle.

How about the old design?

[h4rr4r]

Anyway we can go back to 2001 or so with the design?
It just keeps getting worse with every redesign.

Re:How about the old design?

[jerpyro]

I agree. The current iteration on the homepage is bad enough, but at least it lets you expand the page to full width, and doesn't have somewhat related stock photos taking up space on the page. I used to read Fark before they switched to a fixed-width, graphical intensive layout -- and now it's useless. When I go to slashdot, I want it to load fast, be free of BS and give me the latest without having to skip stupid stuff. If I wanted to see pictures and horiscopes and shit I'd set my browser to MSN.com.

Please, less with the attempted eye candy and more with the news for nerds. You shouldn't be trying to appeal to mass-market web designs, half of us still subscribe to USENET for God's sake.
 

One request

[Sigvatr]

Just let me use the old design if I want to, then I will be happy.

Re:One request

[Spillman]

I agree. As someone who doesnt have the best vision and generally uses Ctrl-+ a few times in web browsers , I can assure, all those layers start to break and it looks terrible. I've been a happy slashdot reader for 12 years, please don't make me somewhere else. Thanks!

Re:One request

[oodaloop]

Bingo

Under settings, I should be able to pick from a list of design options:
1. New
2. Old
3. Older
4. Pink with ponies
5. Cowboy Neal
6. ...
7. Profit!

Blog

[Silpher]

It looks like a cheap ass blog...

Re:Blog

[camperdave]

It looks like a cheap ass blog...

It looks like a cheap what now?

Re:Blog

[Your.Master]

Problem is it still works if you hyphenate to the right.

Oh yea, it's fantastic

[NoImNotNineVolt]

It looks great on my 14" SVGA CRT.

On my 1920x1080 LCD, it looks retarded. There's as much whitespace running down the sides as there is content running down the middle.

Apparently "Web 2.0" involves designing sites for 9:16 devices. I think someone got that aspect ratio inverted somewhere along the line.

Re:Oh yea, it's fantastic

[aardvarkjoe]

On my 1920x1080 LCD, it looks retarded. There's as much whitespace running down the sides as there is content running down the middle.

It's even worse if you try to read the comments on a story. You know, the only reason why people actually come to slashdot rather than other websites with editors that actually make some effort. At 1920x1080, the comments take up a maximum of about 575 pixels -- less if they're nested. That means that more than 70% of the screen is wasted whitespace.

I have a large screen for a reason. If I want to read text in a narrow column, I'll resize the browser window.

Re:Oh yea, it's fantastic

[NoImNotNineVolt]

Thank you for that helpful tip. Now I can clearly see my desktop wallpaper on half my screen, awesome!

I knew there was a reason I bought a monitor with this many pixels. Being able to see my desktop wallpaper while I browse slashdot was well worth the extra cash.

Re:Oh yea, it's fantastic

[NoImNotNineVolt]

I didn't think so.

In my years here, UTF-8 / Unicode support seems to have been the most requested site feature, by far. Maybe even the only requested feature. Though I myself have no need for anything beyond 7 bit ASCII, I can't help but have noticed that people want their crazy characters.

So finally, the good folks at slashdot have engaged in a massive site redesign. God only knows how much work went into this effort. The end result?

A giant middle finger. "You want UTF-8? Here's some whitespace instead. You're welcome!"

Re:Oh yea, it's fantastic

[chromas]

The whitespace is where the giant middle finger was supposed to go, except it's a Unicode character.

*PUKE*

[MetalliQaZ]

So Slashdot goes the way of Ars Technica. Simple readability gives way to stylish nonsense. Oh well, at least both have a way to tone it down and simulate the old format.

Sigh

[koreanbabykilla]

Please! leave a way for people to use the old look forever. stayoffmylawn.slashdot.org or some such.

Re:Sigh

[koreanbabykilla]

I have a 4 digit UID as well, I have been coming here every day for as long as I can remember. Without the ability to keep slashdot the way I like I really may stop coming. Hopefully someone that matters reads these and at least leaves me a way to do so. More power to em to redesign all they want for the young whipersnappers, but better leave us old folks some way to use the old way or we will be gone.

Re:Sigh

[oodaloop]

I have a 4 digit UID as well, I have been coming here every day for as long as I can remember.

Which would be, what, Monday?

/ducks

Wasted Space

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we please stop making columnar layouts that auto-margin? I am on an 11" screen and you're intentionally placing almost 3" of that into whitespace. Also, the photo headers are horrible.

Re:Wasted space

[MobyDisk]

The images will prevent me from reading Slashdot at work. The plain text layout one of the reasons I can read it here without setting off alarms.

Of the images on the page:

Some guy's head adds no meaning or context to the story.

A video game guy with a gun means I better block images or I'll be unable to read Slashdot at work. Which means probably never given my lack of time at home. That sucks because Slashdot is very relevant to what I do. Just today I sent the Microsoft Azure story to our director. I would hate to have to create a separate work account that filters out stories about games.

Use the Space, Cowboy Neil

[Lemmeoutada Collecti]

As a user of wide screens and larger fonts, I find the fixed width of the layout harder to read - I can only see a small list of one-two story summaries in the classic or new layout. Please do not follow the trend of making narrow center columns just to make space for pretty or advertisements on the sides.

The look

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've ever wondered what it would look like if Scientific American got drunk and fucked Pinterest, today is your lucky day.

Can we please make it narrower?

[ClayJar]

I'm *so* tired of having slashdot use the entire width of my browser. I've been pining for expansive areas of whitespace for years!

Re:collapsable comments

[strength_of_10_men]

Agreed

And the redesigned nesting layout makes it harder to follow threads. I'm not exactly sure what others are seeing but my current layout preference has comments nested with clear boxes/lines delineating each, which makes telling what nesting level they belong to.

pluses and minuses

[Strange Ranger]

Well it certainly looks more modern and pretty.
But the part where 70% of my monitor is blank white space sure isn't a step forward.
And not being able to see any comment info on the home page is another step backwards.
 
But it doesn't look antiquated. That's sure a plus. It looks like the default wordpress theme.
 
Hey it's like a hot sorority chick! Sexy as hell for an hour. Then frustrating and mostly empty. But hey it shows real well at homecoming.

Re:pluses and minuses

[afidel]

Luckily the layout can be fixed with a few lines of greasemonkey script, just turn off max width on the split-right container, turn off the background images and turn off the max width on the col-river pull-left div and things look MUCH better. I commented on the first day of the beta that the whitespace was horrendous but apparently they don't care, luckily HTML and CSS are client side so we can decide how to render the page =)

Re:pluses and minuses

[afidel]

Oh yeah and if you want to get rid of the right column crap in comments just write a rule to remove the width parameter from col-river pull-left for *.slashdot.org/story/, it makes the content 100% width and hides the right column.

Re:pluses and minuses

[radicalpi]

I threw together a GM Script to fix the width issue. I plan on expanding it and tweaking it a bit, assuming they ignore the feedback and don't address it on the Beta site. http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/179020

Awful

[i_ate_god]

Why on earth did we spend all this money on beautiful 1920x1080 screens, AND spend so much time developing so called "responsive design" stylesheets and javascript, that we are still suck with extremely thin websites?

How on earth is this even remotely an improvement?

Wasted space

[Flentil]

I have a widescreen monitor and roughly half is blank white space. Also, the images load slow, like they wait for me to scroll and see they're not loaded and only then do they begin to load. I guess this is a feature, but it works like a bug. I'm with the others who say give us the option to see the old format, but the cynic in me says that will expire and we'll be stuck with the new view anyway in a few months.
Also, Slashdot, please remember what happened to Digg when they redesigned everything.

Bah?

[denmarkw00t]

The threading isn't nearly as easy to spot so far, and I agree with others - why all the empty space?? It feels like it's a waste to at least not be able to choose a layout that really takes advantage of screen real-estate. Also, I don't see indicators for friends/foes...HOW DO I KNOW WHO I AGREE WITH!?!?

Use 100% width please

[Tepar]

This layout does not auto-adjust to the width of the browser. It is responsive for smaller screens, but for large ones, it wastes space. I hope you're also working on the comment filtering, because I don't see those controls anywhere.

Re:Use 100% width please

[dwpro]

Absolutely agreed on the comment filtering. I instantly left as soon as I realized I was reading every inane comment by an AC and couldn't find a way to filter. That's a dealbreaker.

OH GOD IT BURNS

[TangoMargarine]

If you loved the old design, you'll hate the new design...

FTFY.

Pastels, rounded edges, and large whitespace stripes on the sides of websites make me gag.

Re:OH GOD IT BURNS

[TangoMargarine]

Or are the blank stripes at the sides ads? I've forgotten how the non-AdBlocked live...

Re:OH GOD IT BURNS

[JMJimmy]

If you loved the old design, you'll hate the new design...

FTFY.

Agreed. I left Digg because of a crappy redesign, I came here. Now they want to make it yet another crappy 2 column blog style instead of thinking about how their readers use their site. This goes live I go elsewhere (or just give up on this style of site).

Re:OH GOD IT BURNS

[ninlilizi]

Very much this.

Even compact mode is horribly verbose and wasteful of available space.
Way too much white space. The insanity inducingly narrow content design is made twice as bad by a massive 2nd column eating into much of the sparse space given for content.
The old design was already irritating for only featuring 4 or 5 articles per scroll. The new brings this down too 2. Turning browsing into a terrible scrolling finger chore.

Ugh

[sexconker]

I am so fucking sick of the "image with rectangle overlay so we can put text on top of it" theme.

If your image isn't indicative of your content, it doesn't belong there. Get rid of the image and just use text for your headline.
If it is indicative of your content, don't cover up half of it with a semi-transparent rectangle with text and icons in it. Put the text above the image.

Furthermore, shoving multiple images together so that they actually adjoin when they represent separate content is retarded. Even if you want to adopt the "flat, sharp, "modern"" style (really, the Windows 8 "formerly-known-as-Metro" style), you should use the space you have.

I've got a 1280x1024 window for you to work with (minus scroll bars). This has been bog standard for a decade. There's no reason I should be looking at a filmstrip of content that's 600px wide and off center, with 3 adjoining images in a 560px wide square, each 50% covered by a white rectangle with text.

Furthermore, the bottom left image links to Story B but the bottom left semi-transparent rectangle links to nothing (it only the text links), and the bottom right image ALSO links to Story B, when it should link to Story C (the text for Image C does link to Story C).

Re:Ugh

[ColdWetDog]

Goddamnit yes.

IF THE IMAGE ISN'T INDICATIVE OF YOUR COMMENT IT DOESN'T BELONG THERE.

Cut the cutsey, generic picture crap. We all know what an airplane looks like. Hire a graphics artist like Aurich on Ars (or make it a game here or something) but if all you can do is find some random picture on Flickr, cut it out. If I want to look at random stupid pictures, I know where to look.

Look, whoever you hired is not smoking the same thing the rest of us are. Can you maybe take a spin through a local nursing home and see what the smart people are doing?

all that shit on the right?

[X0563511]

Get rid of it. After a bit of scrolling it's wasted space (and it's still wasted space for lame content before you scroll)

Re:It looks alright

[woodworx]

that was the first thing that jumped out at me. 'looks like a couple other news sites I've seen...' I actually like /. the way it is currently. It took me quite a while to get over the most recent change. but I'm used to the way the stories are presented and I don't need pics with the stories on the font page, if I want pics, I'll click thru to the story! I really like the distinctive look Slashdot.org owns in this current iteration. please keep it the way it is. thanks!

Complete waste of space

[damnbunni]

The actual content only fills about a third of my browser's width.

Worthless.

eeeeew

[DOK2]

I just don't get this "hero" thing. I don't go to websites to see a gorgeous but meaningless photo. Slashdot is a conversation, not a photo scrapbook.

Comments are hard to read

[Alternate Interior]

They're not indented very far and that makes working out a comment's descendants take some work. Most of the value of slashdot compard to any other aggregation site is the discussion so I'm leary of any change which would lessen this sites commenting.

Now, just about any OTHER site in the world taking comments is a different story!

Why so narrow?

[Max_W]

Why did I buy a large wide display? 20 centimeters from the left and from the right are empty. A narrow long column of the text, like a pillar, is on the screen.

Terrible

[Charliemopps]

It's awful.
The right 1/3 of my screen is filled with polls and ads I don't care about
Scroll down past all those polls and adds and now that 1/3rd of my screen is just blank. wtf?
The headlines are in 30pt font and take up huge amounts of space like I had set windows to "I'm f#$@# blind!" mode.
Lots of white space (have you ever taken a webdesign course?)
Pop-up notifications that cover up the content until you are forced to make a choice? Really? Am I on yahoo or something here?
Under my account... again with 1/3rd of my screen taken up my nonsense. Now I have tokens? What?

Let us use the old layout

[Saethan]

Wasted space, images I don't need plastered all over my screen when I have this up on my third monitor at work... Yeah, thanks slashdot. Had to check my calendar to make sure it wasn't April.

Some feedback

[jones_supa]

The main page looks refreshing and nice. Bringing more attention to submissions is also a good idea. Tree structure of comments is now harder to follow though. The classic version with clear borders around comments and ample usage of horizontal page was much more comfortable. I hope the main page autorefresh has been removed (or an option to turn it off), I always find it annoying in the current version. Now would also be excellent moment to roll in the long-awaited Unicode support.

EVERY redesign has haters...

[Slartibartfast]

But I really do think the pictures are too big. They get in the way of the page's continuity. I kinda like the small icons we have now. If you want other icons, or even images, that's cool -- but these are as big as the stories, themselves. Overkill, IMHO.

Fixed-width text areas are brain-dead.

[jcr]

When I make the window wider, I don't want to just get more blank space.

Seriously guys, this is pretty simple stuff. Get it right.

-jcr

Content Width

[AlreadyStarted]

Please let the content scale horizontally with the window size. It's so skinny as-is it's painful. And the always there top bar is incredibly annoying imo, just more javascript to lag.

Yuck

[whyde]

My first impression was that I accidentally clicked through to news.yahoo.com, which I abhor.

I think you're missing the point of your legacy readership wanting information-dense content, with a minimalistic "user experience".

Re:Gonna miss Slashdot

[afidel]

Dude, it's a freaking mailto: link, if your system is setup to use Outlook to handle mailto: it's nobodies fault but your own!

100% WIDTH PLZKTHX

[TheSpoom]

The sidebar on the story listing is OK. Please, for the love of God, remove it for the comments. If I scroll down beyond a certain point, it's just going to be blank anyway, which means more wasted space.

Also, on the subject of wasted space: Please make it 100% width and not a center column. Everyone has widescreen monitors now. You're wasting our space. Keeping the center column design discourages people from spending significant amounts of time on the website.

That all said, I'm 99% certain that all feedback in this thread will be completely ignored because your designers say we're all dumb. When Slashdot tragically fades away as a brand in a couple of years, we'll say we told you so.

Wasted space

[jbmartin6]

The side bar is too big. And the images with the stories serve no purpose other than to clutter up the screen.

fixed column width sucks

[bored]

See subject

Another cramped canyon

[istartedi]

Current Slashdot flows to my display and still looks good. New Slashdot is yet another "cramped canyon".

It'll be sad if Slashdot succumbs to the "looks good on our iPad so it's done" mentality. If nothing else, sniff the screen size and give us the option of flowing to the screen like it does now.

It's probably too much to ask for you to just... you know... fire everybody except the maintainers. If you want to task a bunch of web developers, how about tasking them with something that would be truly innovative--such as a UI that has reasonable defaults (wide on my wide screen, narrow on somebody else's phone) and that lets us hackers out in the peanut gallery configure it a bit ourselves.

That should be your real, new, innovative design principle: Let the user configure it as much as possible.

In fact, that's what HTML and browsers were supposed to do in the first place. HTML was never intended to be a layout language. The view was supposed to be configurable by the end user in a lot of ways. The web strayed from that, so now we get designers fucking over users, forcing them into a one size fits $foo design, where $foo is usually the set of users that are thought to be the most easily monetized.

Too little room for comments.

[mwvdlee]

Seriously, designers; have you ever seen the sheer epic scale of some of the slashdot comments. Not to mention the vast amount of them?
With the small column design, it's going to take minutes just to scroll halfway down.

Also, the boxes around the comments in the old design make it easy to see where it is located in a thread.
Whitespace is great for purely visual design and VERY, VERY, F**KING BAD for actual usability.

One of the things I like about slashdot is that it doesn't try to look flashy, popular and hip but is all about the content. The old design does not waste my precious screenspace nor my time. It doesn't require me to scroll huge distances while half the screen is empty. It doesn't require me to show more comments and it lets me hide threads I've read or don't care about.

Old Slashdot looks like shit, but works great.
New Slashdot looks great, but works like shit.

OMG! Ponies!

[msauve]

Can we just get support for Unicode, instead?

Re:OMG! Ponies!

[jones_supa]

Would unicorn support be a good enough compromise between the two?

Cut the images

[Webs 101]

Pointless stock photography detracts from the information. It's wasted space and outshines the story-genre icons that are a tad useful.

Re:Nice!

[NatasRevol]

Here are a few key areas we are still working on:

ALL OF THEM!

Re:This reminds me of...

[i kan reed]

that "flat", pastel, square look. Like, Windows 8. Or new iOS.

There needs to be a word for this: eliminating functionality in the name of creating a "new" way of doing things.

One giant step forward to trendiness . . .

[Jimbo God of Unix]

One giant leap backwards for readability.

Come on, really? It's not a "media" site, it's a readers/posters site.

DO NOT WANT!

[LoRdTAW]

Please let us keep the old design if we wish. The new design is annoyingly narrow and looks ridiculous on large desktop monitors (the kind used by most /.'ers when we post from work, you know that time of day dedicated to /. and sometimes work.) The new design is passable as a mobile site for phones and tablets though when I browse on my tablet, I request the desktop site and read in landscape mode like god intended. I still use the old comment system layout as well. It works and is easy to read.

*Warning* Cranky, veteran /.'er rant:
To be frank: it looks like a shitty blog. This is what your masters at Dice think is hip and cool? They can go fuck themselves along with everyone on the design team circle jerking each other in meetings while patting themselves on the back for doing such a "good job". ./ is one of the few sites that I care to read as its uncluttered, organized and lacking in flashy bullshit that bring nothing to the table but cheap glitter. We don't need giant pictures the width of the emaciated layout to go with each article either. This isn't kindergarten where we need a picture book, we are adults looking for information. Take for example this pile of shit: http://tech-beta.slashdot.org/story/13/10/01/1521222/the-next-big-fiber-showdown-austin What the fuck is the point that picture? Please someone tell me what the FUCK this picture of someone jumping into a pool has to do with google fiber? It does NOTHING besides waste screen real estate and bandwidth. It doesn't catch my eye, it irritates it. Even the ads on the beta site appear larger and more intrusive even though they aren't simply because everything is smashed together. In summation: Fuck the new design up its ass with a creosote soaked telephone pole wrapped in barbed wire and covered in rusty nails - SIDEWAYS.

Whew! Sorry bout that but I am tired of ohhh lets make it shiny! yay! web 2.0 bullshit.

Oh F*CK That!

[vinn]

Seriously. That fucking sucks. I've been on this site a while ("Look Mom, he has a 4 digit user id"), and that is by far the crappiest design I've seen.

I want lots of news stories all accessible with a short blurb of text. I don't need videos, I don't need animated thingies swirling around, I just want news. News for nerds.

In contrast, most of the other redesigns and tweaks over the years I've enjoyed. This one sucks. It'll probably be the nail in the coffin that sends me over to Ars Technica, who's doing a much better job these days.

I LIKE my wall of text!

[Anonymous Coward]

oh wow, flipping between here and there is disconcerting.

The current format is more text-dense. The latter sparse and space-wasting. The beta looks just like every other lame web 2.0 crapapalooza wordpress blog. And it's an inefficient waste of space.

Images

[Soulskill]

For those of you who would prefer to read the site without images, click the icon at the top right of the story column. You'll be able to switch to a classic view, or to a headlines-only view.

Re:Nice!

[omnichad]

Your signature perfectly sums up the issue. Threads aren't enclosed. You can't tell where one ends and the next begins. Visually hugging the left margin is not enough to demarcate a new thread.

Cross-posting from my comment in the Journal Entry

[Specter]

Original comments are here.

tl;dr:

"There are at least four glaring problems with how you've redesigned the comments:

1) You're wasting at least 33% of the usable screen space for comments. ...
2) You've dropped the visual cues as to how far down in the thread you are. ...
3) You moved 'load more/all comments' to the end of the comments! WTF! ...
4) You've removed the ability to filter on moderation rating in the story. ...

Also be careful with moderation changes and
You broke my ability to track my own comments and responses to them.

Overall this is much much worse."

Constructive criticism...

[mutube]

It's not too bad. Slashdot does look dated these days, though that's up to individual taste whether it's a 'bad thing'.

Anyway, two things jump out:

1. It needs to be adaptive (i.e. fit the window) rather than be fixed width. Slashdot is about the comments and the comments are nested. Nesting means you need width.
2. Drop the sidebar on the story pages - or use an abbreviated one and stack the comments full-width underneath the story and 'sidebar'. Sort of like, well, it is now.
3. I don't really get what is going on at the top of the front page. Are the stories with the images the 'most popular' or just a random selection with images? I typically scan read the stories looking for something that is interesting - hiding the summary behind an image will make me less likely to read not more.

In short I guess: change the design if you like, but keep the layout. It works.

I'm also surprised that you've appear to have opted not to use one of the layout frameworks (e.g. Foundation). Sure you can code it all up yourself but even the bare bones of Foundation would give you a layout the fundamentally 'just works' on different platforms.

Low Res

[gd2shoe]

Unlike the current design, it did not scale to fit my 1400x1050 screen, leaving large whitespace borders on both edges. If that's what it does on a 4:3 screen with a narrower horizontal resolution than many modern widescreen "high definition" displays, then this is a bad thing.

It also doesn't work well on my laptop 1024x768 screen. (Yeah, I know that's low, but It's a laptop. People are still using this resolution, making it a good minimum gauge.)

The font is larger, but the real problem is the right-hand panel that takes up too much room. This compresses the comments, forcing them to take more vertical space and making the conversation harder to follow. The font size and extra whitespace give a more open feel, but they exacerbate the conversation problem.

Remember, Slashdot comments aren't loved because we can read what others have written. They're loved because we can hold conversations. Anything that detracts from being able to hold or follow conversations will make Slashdot less popular.

Re:Low Res

[skegg]

* Same here: excessive white-space down the left & right-hand side of the page.
* As others have said, the presentation of comments is off-putting.
* Images at the top of each article are a waste of space; dump them and display the full bloody summary instead !

Let me put it this way:
I used to visit Engadget a couple of times a day (I currently visit Slashdot more often). However after Engadget adopted their current design, I'd say I now visit them about once every 1 or 2 weeks. I love the content, I just detest how it's being presented to me. And now you guys are going down the same path ?!

You've been told. The rest is up to you.

Re:Low Res

[elashish14]

Images at the top of each article are a waste of space; dump them and display the full bloody summary instead !

Seconded. Summaries are infinitely more informative than images. Images don't tell the story - words do. Do people really need to see a picture of Edward Snowden or a Kindle to better understand the article? No, they do not by any means.

Just generally speaking, are you guys even asking why you need to make these changes before you do them? How do you think they possibly help the site? In /.'s 15+ years of operation, have you not figured out the formula yet? Your audience is unique, and your website is too. Don't just turn /. into a generic site - there's plenty of other ones just like that. Keep it like it is guys, it's not broken, don't try to fix it.

Re:Low Res

[houstonbofh]

I do web development for a living. The 1024 x 768 market share is small enough these days that I use 1280 x 768 as my current minimum target.

You are also tossing out all the people that do not brows full screen. Like me. You choice, but what exactly do you get for eliminating all those people?

Hurr.

[bmo]

Slashdot's biggest redesign effort ever is now in beta and you're invited to help guide it.

Yeah, whatever.

This is so visually insulting that the only criticism I can give it is "start over." That's not even getting into the page navigation. I can't navigate to the message number from my ~bmo page to catch up on replies? That really leads to intelligent conversation about topics, doesn't it? Wow, what a POS.

I am reminded of the Yahoo redesign of the Y! Finance fora in 2006. People left in droves, and it's only gone downhill since then, to utter unusability. Because someone somewhere had to "make a name for himself."

I will continue to come here only if certain people come here, but I doubt they will.

--
BMO

Re:What's the problem that the redesign fixes?

[narcc]

Some people have complained about the lack of a moderation breakdown, the addition of even more unnecessary javascript, and lack of unicode support. It doesn't seem to offer users anything new.

Also, it completely sucks.

ABSO-FSCKING-LUTELY NOT!

[ewhac]

You are forbidden from deploying this design. Dear $(GOD), what the hell is the matter with you? Who told you this was a good idea? Which three-pleat consultant said that this highly technical readership wanted this site to look like a fluffy blog with fscktons of whitespace? How much money did s/he take from you? Have you caught them yet?

For those of you who would rather browse Slashdot without pictures, click the icon at the top right of the story column, and switch to Classic View.

Does. Not. Work.

This is real, pathetically simple, Mr. S:

• Install Firefox.
• Install NoScript plugin. Leave at default settings.
• Surf to your site.

If your site does not operate correctly using this browser setup, --== YOUR SITE IS BROKEN!!==-- Please do not assume that the users on this of all sites are fscking morons who leave their browsers in an insecure state and happily execute just Any Damned Script. You're lucky I'm willing to whitelist fsdn.com, but just who the fsck is rpxnow.com, or ooyala.com?

Scrap the whole damned thing and start over. Better still: Don't start over. It's fine the way it is.

Just what is so difficult..

[WebCowboy]

...about layout that is fluid/elastic? What makes it on par with aerospace engineering? IT ISN'T THAT HARD! It is not that much to ask for really! Using browser's full width has been done successfully on /. for many years now--what is with this throwback to fixed width that leaves 50% of my maximised browser window blank? I to NOT want to party like it's 1999!

Leave the shiney-chromey left and right columns fixed for all I care, but PLEASE--push them to the EDGES and use the flexible space for the main content.

I do like the updated style/presentation, I am not looking for the site to do ALL the thinking for me--the ONLY thing I am really wanting is a website that uses the width of my browser! The existing/old site does this already so it CANT BE THAT HARD. In my opinion that ONE thing would transform the beta site from one I'd spend minimal time on to one that would be my home page. HONESTLY.

Don't fix what ain't broke.

[TapeCutter]

Glad you posted directly. We're a hard crowd to please, after a very brief look my main objections are...
1. Use the whole width of the screen. The narrow width gives the individual comments a ridiculously tall aspect ratio which destroys the flow of the thread. The threads need to stick out like dogs balls for an old fart like me to follow them.
2. Get rid of the pictures on the front page or give the option of a list format that reflects the style of the current front page, thumbnails perhaps?.

Like many other loyal fans, the reason I have posted well over 5K comments, a few stories, and the occasional small donation in the past 10+yrs, is the comment system! There are a billion sites where I can post comments at strangers, but other than chat rooms full of sexually frustrated people, this is the only site where I can hold a conversation with them.

Slashdot will never be the "cool kid", but this "new look" is like Sheldon picking out his own suit, even the geeks are shaking their heads in bewilderment.

Debate club

[TapeCutter]

"Debate club" is an excellent description! We have something unique here that is so far ahead of the game it looks old fashioned. Slashdot is not a "news" site and never has been, if I want to read a good a news site then I will go to the BBC. The slashdot "story" is just a summary of the (alleged) topic up for debate, it points to one or more articles that are already fine examples of traditional news publishing such as the BBC and invites the reader to express and defend their opinion on it.

The new style is like every other mainstream site because it's coming from a long publishing tradition. Things are set into columns, the columns surround by pictures in a way that's both easy to READ and eye-catching. The newspaper tradition does not expect the reader to insert their own comments within their carefully layed out columns.. Slashdot's format begs the reader to WRITE something. At Slashdot the comments are the content, take the focus away from them and it will rapidly devolve into just another link farm..

Put another way, if the active Slashdot commentators liked the traditional feedback formats of newspaper publishers then there would be no reason for Slashdot to exists. Sites like the BBC would keep the eyeballs on their own site. The comment system is Slashdot's "value add", without it, it's toast. Make it look like a traditional comment system that's normally provided by the real news sites and people will just comment directly on the real news site.

There's a reason people like me came here in the late 90's and are still actively commenting, it's not support for Slashdot in the way one supports a football club, it's support for a genuine alternative to the traditional publishing meme. One that has the ability to turn a story into a conversation, which is something I think is desperately needed to counter the undue influence of the incontestable propaganda statements known as "opinion columns" that dominate the MSM, particularly in the US.

To narrow and to small on my 1920x1080 screen.

[Ice Station Zebra]

Old site is better. You should fire you designer because there last job was obviously doing wordpress themes.