Slashdot Mirror
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.
If you want the site to look like Digg, maybe you should just buy it.
If you loved the old design, you'll love the new design...
it's fixed now.
but. the new design wastes 50% of my screen.
just make it like it was 10 years ago.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Just let me use the old design if I want to, then I will be happy.
It looks like a cheap ass blog...
Please! leave a way for people to use the old look forever. stayoffmylawn.slashdot.org or some such.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
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.
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?
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
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.
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.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
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).
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!
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.
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.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
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!
Implicit Evaluation with PHP
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
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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!
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
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.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
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.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
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.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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 giant leap backwards for readability.
Come on, really? It's not a "media" site, it's a readers/posters site.
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: ./ 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.
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".
Whew! Sorry bout that but I am tired of ohhh lets make it shiny! yay! web 2.0 bullshit.
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!"
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
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.
----- obSig
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.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
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.
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.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
I like the new design more...than AOL...but just barely
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...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
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.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
A-Freakin'-Men. /. is to not have my time wasted (too much) with useless fluff. The new design = all useless fluff.
When I saw it my first thought was, "this is every other new site on the planet." One of the reasons I come to
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."
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.
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.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
The whitespace is where the giant middle finger was supposed to go, except it's a Unicode character.
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
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.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
Does. Not. Work.
This is real, pathetically simple, Mr. S:
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.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
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.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Old site is better. You should fire you designer because there last job was obviously doing wordpress themes.