• (cs)

    Weird color thing with the articles lowers the contrast too much. At least, use more muted colors for the background or a complementary color for the text. (You can change these around onHover).

    Why aren't ads getting blocked?

    Social media buttons are the worst kind of ads. :(

  • (cs)

    FWIW, when the last redesign was announced, I seem to recall a lot of flak about all the changes.

    I too, don't care for all the white-space, and some of the newer layout features. Any chance of having a preference-screen and storing preferences (say in a cookie)? Perhaps if folks could turn off some of the flashier/space-consuming stuff... (dunno how hard that is to do tho)

    Just my $0.02...

  • Richard Culverhouse (unregistered)

    I like it!

  • Sean Ellis (unregistered)

    Initial thoughts:

    Main page

    • Article links seems to still work with Javascript turned off (my default state).
    • How do I get back to earlier articles?
    • Please could you make the highlight on the article summaries less overwhelming, and maybe add a small delay to the mouseover on the large, brightly-colored menus. At the moment, these two effects make moving the mouse over the homepage feel eerily reminiscent of a visit to a discotheque.

    Article pages

    • Easier to read
    • Please reinstate the "previous" and "next" article links. This made it very easy to read on the old site; just get the most recent article, read, hit the link to the previous story, repeat until stories become familiar. Now you have to return to the homepage or choose a link from the "recent articles" list at the bottom.
    • Can you distinguish between quotes and code snippets? The code snippets should be in monospaced type so that their formatting is preserved.
  • Valued Service (unregistered)

    All the Javascript haters are going to find a smaller and smaller internet.

    Again, the web is no longer document based, it's app based. That's the current trend. And you'll be hard pressed to find app that will do anything dynamic without client-side code.

    Now, maybe they could switch to LUA, but it won't stop being client-side. Server isn't going to push the results of a dropdown.

  • A horse (unregistered)

    insert picture of the horse from Ren & Stimpy here No sir, I don't like it.

  • DWalker (unregistered)

    Wow, the article title in the sample (Making off with your inheritance) is HUGE. There's nothing wrong with larger fonts, but what is that, 72 point?

    Would be nice to be able to make the article font slightly larger, as a +1 click thingy (a user preference, not a fixed change).

    I would post this to GitHub, but sheesh, yet another site that wants me to register with a password. (The fact that almost EVERY comment system and forum requires passwords is one reason that people reuse passwords, which is a horrible security practice. Comment and forum sites should probably not require passwords, to reduce password overload. What are we going to do, impersonate each other?)

  • Failed in IE. (unregistered)

    So great that we cannot get a page cannot be displayed in IE.

  • smilr (unregistered)

    OH. Great! Another god damn fixed floating menu on the top of the page. JUST what I always wanted!

    Seriously - I'm going to make another greasemonkey userscript to delete that thing if you leave it in. UTTERLY hate those.

    And the left sidebar is twice the width now. WTF? WHY? I never use any of it now, and I won't use any of it tomorrow. It's wasted space.

    And then you have the "similar articles" section next to the first set of comments? You do realize that many of us are here for two things: the article content, and the comments right?

    You've just squeezed the only things your readership care to actually look at into yet smaller boxes. Well done! You're going the way of BoingBoing and pissing off your userbase!

    Guess what - if this new design or discourse becomes permanent I'm gone.

  • (cs) in reply to Valued Service
    Valued Service:
    the web is no longer document based, it's app based. That's the current trend.
    Like hell it is. I kind of remember the same being said about browser plugins in general, Java, Flash and Shockwave in particular, since like 20 years ago. Meanwhile Google sees the web as a huge set of documents, and that's what people use.

    TL;DR: Welcome to the internet, you must be new.

  • A. Nonnymus (visitor since '06) (unregistered)

    Initial thoughts:

    • Content too "narrow": my laptops and displays are all widescreen, and I don't like the margins on either side. It seems to be optimized for a phone screen. I find this on both the front and article pages.

    • EVERYTHING IS HUGE - again, doubtless to make it mobile friendly but at the expense of making it look Fisher-Price on a proper screen. I could zoom out in my browser I guess, but why should I have to?

    • Please add the "view full articles" link on the homepage. Otherwise it's another mouse click to get to something that should just be there. If bandwidth is a concern, maybe just show the top N posts in full?

    • The look-and-feel is generally quite nice. The fonts and colors work well together. Just lose some of the whitespace!

    • Nag: "Recent WTF's" should of course be "Recent WTFs" (plural not possessive!)

    • Do we need/want the author mugshot (or lack thereof) to be so prominent in the post. I personally rather like the stock images that accompany the articles.

  • (cs)

    Since this is basically a blog, one might wonder why build something custom, and not go for something off the shelve such as Wordpress (or any other such blogging software)? It comes with everything you want and need out of the box, and then you can tweak it a little bit after the fact.

    Seems like the #1 (or maybe even #0) WTF of all developers is the NIH (not invented here) syndrome. Building stuff yourself instead of re-using already existing software and/or libraries.

  • Valued Service (unregistered) in reply to jarfil
    jarfil:
    Valued Service:
    the web is no longer document based, it's app based. That's the current trend.
    Like hell it is. I kind of remember the same being said about browser plugins in general, Java, Flash and Shockwave in particular, since like 20 years ago. Meanwhile Google sees the web as a huge set of documents, and that's what people use.

    TL;DR: Welcome to the internet, you must be new.

    1. Actually, there was a LOT of flash.
    2. Actually, Google is seeing more of the web as apps than documents. The search engine returns a lot of app results and they are relying on Google+ and Now more and more. I can log into the vast majority of the forums and comments that I use with facebook or google. Social media is app based, as well as internet services like banks and video streaming.

    About the only thing that is document based is articles, and even they are starting to rely heavily on streaming video or app based navigation of articles.

    Google may crawl web pages as documents, but that doesn't mean that is the way the internet is used.

    I'm not saying I like it, but it is reality. And the internet as a series of crawled documents is shrinking.

  • someone or another (unregistered)

    Holy crap the font size (and evreything else size)! My first action should not be setting zoom to 66%

  • Valued Service (unregistered) in reply to someone or another
    someone or another:
    Holy crap the font size (and evreything else size)! My first action should not be setting zoom to 66%

    It was designed on a notebook 7" screen.

  • trtrwtf (unregistered)

    It's a little late for April 1, isn't it?

    Or are you seriously suggesting this as a design?

  • anon (unregistered)

    Overuse of transparency, hover effects and shadows, gigantic fonts and ads, author photos (why?), wasted space and too many social media share buttons.

    I agree this site could use a little facelift, but this just looks like some over-designed, generic Web 2.0 site.

    Keep your audience in mind. You said yourself most of your audience is past their 20s so why are you designing it using colors and effects that would appeal to a younger audience?

    I kind of like the sidebar and card effect of the home page, though. I would personally ditch the top navigation bar entirely and develop the sidebar more.

  • n/a (unregistered) in reply to Valued Service

    The moment TDWTF begins to rely on streaming video… No, to hell with it. I'm not waiting for this moment. I'm finished with reading this site if the redesign matches the demo. I don't read the comments half of the time any more, anyway — and the comments are the best part.

  • veggen (unregistered) in reply to Herr Otto Flick

    Holy crap! That comment quoted in the article... that's mine!

  • a toddler (unregistered)

    No, it's not nearly obnoxious enough. Maybe add some animated fireworks or dancing animals? Couldn't hurt to include some sound effects; I'm thinking ahooga horn for hovering on articles.

  • AuMatar (unregistered)

    *Too much wasted space, especially left and right.
    *Fonts are too big, you can't get nearly as much text per screen. This is especially bad with the giant columns.
    *The coloring of articles on mouseover makes it hard to read and is extremely annoying.
    *I'm not against a mouseover on the submit button, but something a lot more subtle would be better. *The fadeout on the last line of the article is annoying. If text isn't going to be readable, print out 1 less line. We all know to click the read more button, we don't need the fadeout.

    The amount of whitespace is the worst part. get rid of the empty left and right columns and remove the mouseover coloring and its decent.

  • OldPeter (unregistered)

    Too much whitespace. I want to see as much information as possible on first view, without the need to scroll or (even nastier) having to click somewhere. So: too big fonts, too much unwanted garbage on screen.

  • Blue rolling Beaver (unregistered)
    • Text white on black - Ok, very much so
    • Dynamic 1st page w/ jumping colors - No no, please not.
    • Fixed Top Bar eating about 10% of my 16:9 screen - No way! What's wrong with side bars in this (rotten) age of wide screens? O Top para of Articles in 1st page - well, ok, if you must.

    Please remember to inform and not entertain that much.

  • real-modo (unregistered)

    Mouseover colours == angry fruit salad.

    Your designer lacks experience and knowledge: get another one.

    Too

    much

    white

    space.

  • Jguo Boris (unregistered)
    • Too many flashy effects
    • Too much whitespace
    • Doesn't work in IE6 (remember your audience, a lot of us are reading this from locked-down corporate systems)

    Don't change it. TDWTF is nice because it doesn't try to look like every other generic hipster site out there. Do not want!

  • Koltoroc (unregistered)

    this looks awfully generic. Seriously, that looks interchangeably with so many other pages on the web It looks awfully as designed by committee just following the usual checklist to be "cool by definition".

    the current design might be dated, but is functional and easily recognizable.

    And I despise the plague of fixed width websites

    oh and get rid of that goddamn horrible and irritating discourse. Whoever designed that deserves to be shot! That... thing is Windows 8 metro interface level of awful, possibly even worse.

  • Mark C (unregistered)

    Two things about the new design that made me immediately go "arrgh":

    1 - it's not full width scalable.

    2 - I can't seems to find the "full articles" button.

    I don't like having to click through to things. I'm a scroller. With a big wide screen.

  • DWalker (unregistered) in reply to DWalker
    DWalker:
    Comment and forum sites should probably not require passwords, to reduce password overload.
    I agree.
    DWalker:
    What are we going to do, impersonate each other?)
    No, of course not. We would never think of such silliness.
  • CogoTheBarbarian (unregistered)

    The big author avatar on the article site was a major head-desk for me. Content is primary, the authorship of the articles are secondary. (When articles go bad, it's primarily because the "authors" are imprinting too much of their own personality onto the articles, rather than letting the submitter's WTF shine through.) You'll loose nothing by getting rid of it.

    You're also taking up way to much space on the left and bottom of the page. On the main page the articles should be more-or-less in the center, as opposed to your current mockup, which has the gutter between the sidebar near the center. (The size of the sidebar is not as much of a problem as the centering, though for balance you probably want to shrink it.) The footer is obscenely large, but in the grand scheme of things it's not a show-stopper.

    I didn't notice at first, but once pointed out to me, I agree that the vivid colors and background highlighting with them are eye-searing.

    All in all, it's a decent redesign, and I hate it far less than I could. It's a little "same-y" though, and my guess is that in five years you're going to go "oh, wow, that's so 2014 - I mean, that was before we had FooHuboo, for goodness sakes. How dated is that?"

  • Russell (unregistered)

    Site looks great, just get rid of the background color change on mouseover. It burns.

  • an (unregistered)

    One bug: the TDWFT logo on the top left disappears when you over scroll on a Mac (Chrome)

  • evandentremont (unregistered) in reply to Alex Papadimoulis

    Port 1000: TRWTF is running a webserver on a standard port under port 1024. The whole root access thing and whatnot.

  • Wookie Trainer (unregistered)

    No, No, No.... On desktops we have a very wide screen with a high resolution. Now, please put desktop navigation on the side instead of the top, because:

    On desktops we have a very wide screen with a high resolution. My reading get so much easier when the lines are shorter than my very wide screen, so instead of taking valuable screen estate vertically, please take it horizontally.

    Did I mention that we normally have a very wide screen with high resolution on our desktops?

  • trtrwtf (unregistered) in reply to a toddler
    a toddler:
    No, it's not nearly obnoxious enough. Maybe add some animated fireworks or dancing animals? Couldn't hurt to include some sound effects; I'm thinking ahooga horn for hovering on articles.

    I like the pre-nostalgic effect. In a few months, we'll be coming to this to remember what the early 2010s were like in web design.

    To reflect the soon-to-be-dated styling, I suggest adding some blink tags and a bit of comic sans. And maybe a little bit of table layout, and maybe an applet or two. We can have all your nostalgia needs met in one go.

    If you can find one, maybe an "under construction" logo - that would be awesome. Total vintage.

    Now, for the real site, can we have a real design?

  • (cs)

    I like the existing setup. The proposed one is too white-spacey. The existing setup has worked for years.

    I am minded of this from my sig collection:

    legacy (adj) - A pejorative term used in the computer industry meaning "it works."

    Discourse was a horrid joke. I have not seen a Discourse page lately for what I am thankful. I might be thinking the same thing when the proposed setup gets reverted.

    Sincerely,

    Gene Wirchenko

  • Anonymoose (unregistered)

    If your workplace allows access to port 1000, you need to switch jobs immediately.

  • cyborg (unregistered)

    If you own an Apple device this is your fault and you should kill yourself now.

  • Smilr (unregistered)

    Just tried the new site's mobile version. You know how you explicitly mentioned in your summary that one thing the mobile version must have is a link that displays the desktop version instead? Yeah - you're missing that.

    Also - why is it that mobile sites for iOS never let you zoom in? The new mobile site has this problem, and on error'd articles the images are shrunk to fit the screen space. Normally I would pinch out to zoom in and read them, but here I can't.

  • (cs)

    New design: [image]

    because: where is the sidebar? i like the whole sidebar column, pages that try to look like... a sheet of paper, with no horizontal segmentation... are weird.

    edit (after trying out the new design for real): oh, okay... i could survive that. i like the current design much more, but i could survive the new one. I would maybe even get used to it after a few months...

  • Miriam (unregistered)

    I really don't like the large amount of visual effects. If it wasn't for them and the socialization, I'd consider the proposed design to be mostly ok. But I still think that the old one is good enough.

  • Claude (unregistered)

    OK, I said I didn't care about site redesign as I came for the content. You have shown me the error of my ways. There is soooo much to complain about. Suffice it to say that the old format far and away exceeds the usablility of the new format.

    Issues

    • Information Density too low
    • colors that poke you in the eye
    • colors that change for no real reason (mousing over is not a real reason)
    • forums -- please don't pollute your site with drivel and spam

    To miss quote :

    "It hurts, it hurts the precious"

  • T (unregistered)

    I like the design apart from:

    • hover effect on the article summaries. Don't, just don't.
    • I have a very modest 24 inch widescreen monitor, please use it! A width limited centered column is sooooo 2010.
    • please show me comments on the page instead of a toggle
    • please get some syntax highlighter!
    • stay nerdy, show date in ISO-8601

    Other than that it's pretty nice.

  • (cs) in reply to Mark
    Mark:
    The redesign looks nice. It's hard to sell graphic designs to most programmers.

    Crap graphic design is hard to sell to many people. And by crap design, I mean forgetting what your core audience is there for - in this case, the information (thus the comments about RSS feeds and keeping the comments).

    Personally, I'm OK with the new design, as long as the font sizes are reduced back to normal. For example, the heading text on each article is approximately 10% of my browser window - WHY?!?! I want to read the article, not the title I already clicked to get me into it.

  • Viking (unregistered)

    Hey long time reader, first time commenter. I usually don't take part in internet discussions but since this is one of the sites I read every day I'll make an exception.

    For my part how I read this site is I turn on the "display full articles" and scroll through the site. I really appreciate that I don't need to click on each one to read it.

    Then again perhaps that is why I don't read this site when I'm on my phone or a tablet. Like a previous commenter noted "an easy way to turn off mobile version and go to desktop version", that would hopefully use all of my screen and not require me to click on each article to read it.

  • Neil (unregistered) in reply to Malaki

    Needs Full Articles please.

    Malaki:
    on an 800x600 desktop screen (don't judge me please, I do what I can with what I have)
    My New Year's resolution for this year was 1024×768; I've eventually given up on 800×600. But even then the new site looks a little cramped, I guess it's optimised for 1280×something.

  • Albrecht from Germany (unregistered)

    If you really need these share buttons, please use something like http://panzi.github.io/SocialSharePrivacy/ .

  • yeahso (unregistered) in reply to AuMatar
    AuMatar:
    *Too much wasted space, especially left and right. *Fonts are too big, you can't get nearly as much text per screen. This is especially bad with the giant columns. *The coloring of articles on mouseover makes it hard to read and is extremely annoying. *I'm not against a mouseover on the submit button, but something a lot more subtle would be better. *The fadeout on the last line of the article is annoying. If text isn't going to be readable, print out 1 less line. We all know to click the read more button, we don't need the fadeout.

    The amount of whitespace is the worst part. get rid of the empty left and right columns and remove the mouseover coloring and its decent.

    All of this (from one of the the 3.6%)

  • (cs)

    I ACTUALLY LIKE IT!

    Addendum (2014-07-15 09:36): Time limit... God DAMN IT!

    Although...

    • Need back code formatting - without it it's just BLAH (whine due to overuse of editors with code coloring)
    AuMatar:
    *Too much wasted space, especially left and right.
    • Hm. Yes, allocating that space will give display more information on screen.
    AuMatar:
    *Fonts are too big, you can't get nearly as much text per screen. This is especially bad with the giant columns.

    • DO'H - depends on person, I for one need to use (on current layout) zoom of 150% to be able to READ articles (1680x1050 up) and i don't have eye problems! If i wanted to read a lot of small sized text i would buy Pocket Bible.

    • i don't like fancy CSS3 transitions on buttons (unless we are on CN site)

  • Ed (unregistered)

    Looks nice. But I read in RSS ( Feedly ) so the content is what brings and keeps me. Keep up the good work!!

    PS - survey is right on for me - male, 50, working in the industry for 25 years.

  • (cs)

    If "all good programmers die at 30", then I should be undead at this point. I was programming before you under-30 kids were born, and I'm only 38 thus far. Get off my lawn! :-P

    (edit: I too am happy for the "comments from students and newbies that TDWTF was their how-not-to guide"... maybe the art -- no, science -- no, burden of hell -- that is programming isn't dead yet.)

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