I'm wondering what everyone thinks of the recent changes to boston.com. Do you think it looks more or less cluttered? What do you think of the header?
I'm a frequent reader of boston.com, and I was initially a little strangely upset by the changes, but I think they actually make the site more user-friendly, easier to navigate, and just simpler overall.
Thoughts?
-Erin
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I adore the makeover. It feels like a dark, crowded room where the chairs were all cluttered around in no particular order has just expanded and been given a better lighting scheme, and all of the chairs are now arranged neatly in rows. I even e-mailed the editor to tell him how much I loved it. Kudos, Boston.com!
When I first looked at the navigational bar, I saw that the "Cars" tab contained a drop box, open to expose a very small advertisement as well as the section's content navigation. Slick! Of course, not all of the tabs have this feature, just the last few. One has to click on the more content-driven categories. The navigational bar itself tells us we're about to see less clutter. The ordering of things there represents the actual placement of content on the homepage. I'm glad that they found a system that works for them.
I like it a lot better too; it feels much more spacious and relaxing than before. I do think they could've done more with the top space, though. Because the Boston.com logo is surrounded by ads, I skipped right over it to the tabbed navigation.
I noticed the redesigned layout in their print version first and hated it, it was very metro/usa today looking.
But I am very much a creature of habit and am always irritated when something I am familiar with changes its design (yes hotmail, I'm looking at you).
On an emotional level I do not like the redesigned website but as I get used to it that feeling fades.
One note on online newspaper design, I end up reading many more stories in the print edition because even if the headline doesn't draw me in I also scan the text and end up being hooked by something in it that will get me to read the story whereas with the online version the headline and tease alone will not catch me and I just never bother to click and read.
However, pdf's of a newspaper which should solve this problem by giving me the print layout never work for me because they tend not to fit on the screen and I find all the dragging around trying to see stuff extremely irritatng.
Actually, has the site been down for anyone else? The past few times I've tried to go to Boston.com, it's either loaded very slowly without the CSS or not loaded at all. I wonder if the server problems are related to the redesign (change in setup, unoptimized pages, increased traffic) or just bad timing.
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