Today have been announced the winners of the slashdot redesign contest, and the winning design which will replace the current slashdot design ! Certainly slashdot have been for years one of the most busy websites for geeks, but it’s also an excellent source of tech and science info …
Congratulation for the winner Alex Bendiken, and congratulation for slashdot their new design too !
The new design is certainly very nice and well done, but reading comments sounds like everybody isn’t happy with this change ! First the kind of users that slashdot attracts, most people from IT world, geeks, scientists, politics, open source … and you can imagine when you have this kind of users it’s not the easy task to satisfy everybody !
Secondly, and we experienced this in phpmagazine.net, usually readers don’t like to change from a design to another especially that slashdot feeds are exerpt only and most readers perfer using the website to read and comment. Personaly most of the time I find in comments more interesting things than the news itself.
Thirdly, but not finally, I find in redesigning of the website not only giving a new fresh look but also new ideas and more comfort for readers. Slashdot was a successful website with its current design but the success is in the community around it, that’s why you should not scared to try a new look. But it’s interesting to choose the good timing to do it, and I think slashdot did it almost in good time.
The new design is awful, mainly because the choice of font is very poor. The new font is too thin, looks crap when reversed and makes blocks of text hard on the eyes to read. I am not just annoyed because there has been change – I am annoyed because the new design has actually made me visit the site less.
The new design is awful, mainly because the choice of font is very poor. The new font is too thin, looks crap when reversed and makes blocks of text hard on the eyes to read. I am not just annoyed because there has been change – I am annoyed because the new design has actually made me visit the site less.