Now that the holidays are upon us (happy holidays!) and the year is about to end, we at OSAlert thought it time to finally lift the veil a little bit on the next version of OSAlert – OSAlert 5. I’ve hinted at this next version of OSAlert here and there in the comments, but we think it’s time to make it all a little bit more official by taking in some initial feedback.
Introduction
OSAlert is actually quite old, especially in web and technology terms. OSAlert was founded by David Adams, still the current owner, way back in prehistoric 1997. You could call this OSAlert 1, and you can still browse part of the content from that time period through our 1997 archive – you can read all about the latest and greatest in technology, like Motorola claiming the PowerPC architecture would one day hit 1Ghz (with exclamation mark!), the release of Rhapsody, or the US antritrust case against Microsoft.
OSAlert eventually lingered, until Eugenia picked it up somewhere around 2001, after leaving BeNews behind. Eugenia made OSAlert big, and the version she designed and built – OSAlert 2 – is probably the most iconic we’ve had. After Eugenia decided to take a step back after many years of working on the site day and night, I took over editorially, while Adam set out to redesign the site once more. After doing major work on the backend of the site – which would become OSAlert 3 – he then focussed on the frontend of the site, work that would eventually lead to OSAlert 4 (what you’re looking at now). From the top of my head, this was probably about 4 years ago.
Why a redesign?
Even though OSAlert 4 has served us well, the site sorely needs a redesign from top to bottom. We don’t do redesigns just for the fun of it, and it’s a matter we take very seriously (as evidenced by only being at version 4 even though we’re 15 years old). There are several reasons why a redesign is necessary.
- Our site is entirely custom. This makes it hard to pass the torch onto somebody new.
- Our backend is old. As Adam put it, “the core parts of the database are mostly the same as when Eugenia wrote them”, and from what I gather (but my knowledge about these matters is limited), the current site is still made up of code both from Eugenia and Adam, parts of it most likely quite obscure and hard to maintain by someone else.
- There’s a lot of cruft in the site as a whole. Old pages that have long ceased to be updated and should be removed – it’s time we have a spring cleaning.
- The tools we use to publish articles are quite Spartan and not particularly user-friendly, and a more modern article editor, image upload/resize capabilities, and even something as simple as double-return-equals-paragraph would be a very welcome addition.
- OSAlert’ frontend has always been made to fit the kind of content that gets posted. Over the past one to two years, the kind of content has changed – but the site has remained the same. It hasn’t adapted to a changing publication pattern.
- There are several user-facing features that sorely need usability updates
What will change?
OSAlert 5 will tackle most – if not all – of these issues. First and foremost, we’re making a pretty big switch. We’re leaving our ageing custom backend behind, and making a switch to Drupal. This past year, Tess has been working very hard, in her free time no less, to import the entire OSAlert database into Drupal. Right now, if I understand things correctly, she has a preliminary version of OSAlert running locally (not accessible to the web, that is) on Drupal. Again, I’m not particularly knowledgable on these matters, but from what she’s told me, it’s a hell of a lot of work, especially since it’s all done in her free time.
Switching to a well-known, open source CMS makes OSAlert more future-proof, and takes some of the burden of maintenance off our shoulders. In addition, Drupal is quite extensible, which makes it easier to add or remove functionality in the future. Its open nature means changing site admins will be less of an issue than it is now. Tess might write some articles in the future about this import process and the headaches she’s run into along the way, but no promises on that one.
As far as frontend goes – the stuff you guys see – we’re going for a radical redesign. Like the backend switch, the frontend work will result in a completely new OSAlert. Since I’m the one designing the frontend (not coding it though), it’s lot easier for me to talk about this aspect than the backend stuff.
The goals are simple. OSAlert is about two things: news items and comments (in fact, I’m pretty sure most of you find the latter more important than the former), so for OSAlert 5, it was my goal to bring items+comments front and centre. Everything else is fluff, and needs to get out of the way so you can quickly read the news items and the comments.
Another important goal was to make the site more user friendly. If you comment on OSAlert, you’re probably aware that it’s a pretty disjointed experience right now. If you click on ‘reply’ or ‘post comment’, you’re taken to a dedicated page, completely out of context. Once you click ‘submit comment’, the page reloads once more, and your posted comment is shown. For OSAlert 5, we’ll finally have in-line commenting, without reloads. You write your comment amidst all the other comments, so you have the entire context of the both the news item and the other comments right there.
A particularly crucial change is that we’ll merge the front page and page 2 columns back into one. This divide was originally made to force me to write 2-3 front page items (‘long items’, in official parlance), since if I didn’t, a large part of the site would appear to be outdated. This plan actually worked very well, since for several years I was able to actually do so.
Sadly, that has changed. Back then I attended university, and had loads of free time to dedicate to OSAlert. Writing 2-3 long items every day took about 4-5 hours every day, and that’s something I can no longer do, as you’ve undoubtedly noticed. I run my own business now, and my time is much more limited now. I want to focus on shorter items now; less verbose, more direct. So, OSAlert’ design has to adapt to that new publication flow, and this means ‘short items’ (the stuff in the right-side ‘page 2’ column) have to be integrated back into the main column.
The added benefit here is that this will make the site less complex. If there’s one thing that has been a red thread throughout the design process, it’s been to make it all less complex. In fact, when I first started work on designing OSAlert 5, I called it ‘OSAlert Simple’. In case you’re interested – the current code name I’m using is ‘Nina’, after Nina Persson, since The Cardigans’ stark, minimalist, and icy cold album Gran Turismo served as inspiration (example). Gran Turismo is one of my favourite albums of all time.
Previews!
I’ve gone through several iterations, aggressively trying to make Nina less complex, to remove things we don’t need, and to make sure items+comments are the very stars of the show. A short while ago, I finally hit what I believe to be the jackpot. Here’s a preview of what OSAlert 5 is going to look like – but please bear in mind that as far as design goes, things can and quite likely will change.
As you can see, it’s very text-oriented. Since both items and comments are 100% text, this only seems fitting. You may notice several casualties straight-up – like category icons. They won’t come back, since maintaining them is hell (none of us are artists), leading to a hodgepodge of icon styles, some newer, some hopelessly outdated. They had to go.
The big one: comments. Threading has been made more clear, and since we’ll try to employ responsive design where it makes sense, deep threads will flow better on wider displays. The comment form is in-line, and pressing ‘reply’ (or ‘post new’ in the top-right) will shift other comments downwards to make way for your new comment.
The buttons are quite colourful, but there’s a reason for that. The only way to dismiss the comment form is through pressing ‘submit’ or ‘cancel’; in other words, clicking anywhere else will not dismiss the form (unless you click an outgoing link, of course). This is a deliberate choice to prevent accidentally closing the form as you’re scrolling around, which would make you lose what you’ve already written. As such, I want them to stand out, but among the few people who’ve seen these mockups, the buttons were clearly the most controversial element, so I might have to backpedal on this one. Also, we don’t want to employ more complex solutions for this issue, all to keep things simple.
Some of you may wonder why things like ‘vote up’ and ‘vote down’ are textual instead of more commonly used things like arrows or triangles. A lesser goal was to make OSAlert touch-friendly without turning the site into something comical. ‘Vote up’ is wider than an arrow, and thus, easier to tap. We could, of course, use a huge arrow – but that would look ridiculous.
I also have another treat in stock for you – after polling on Twitter, I realised that a dark version of OSAlert might be a good idea, so here you go – Night Nina. It’s unlikely Night Nina will be ready from day one (it’s a secondary goal), but it looks quite nice, and reminds me of an old terminal display.
Scary
It’s actually a little bit scary to put OSAlert 5 in the spotlight like this for the first time. Tess is currently hard at work on the lower-level code, and OSAlert as a whole will benefit greatly from all the time she’s putting into it. The frontend – Nina – is only a relatively small part of it, but it will be the most visible, and thus the most criticised, part of OSAlert 5. That’s why I decided it might be a good idea to lift the veil a little bit, and get some early feedback as we proceed to turn Nina into actual code.
I’ve always been quite vocal about other people’s GUI design, and this is the first time I actually get to put my money where my mouth is. The shoe’s on the other foot now, Thom.
If you make Night Nina optional, I would be happy, or at least give users the option to choose Day Nina. Otherwise: looking forward to using this!
Question: No longer categories for up/down-voting??
Years ago, I mirrored the OSAlert color scheme on GMail.
As long as there is an option to keep the current color scheme, I’m fine with the redesign.
I’d like to see them go (they’re pointless), but we haven’t really talked about it.
My mistake I thought you meant getting rid of moderation. Ignore that inaccurate mod then. It was meant to be ironic.
Edited 2012-12-26 15:25 UTC
I think that would be a mistake as the up-vote and down-vote allow’s people who don’t comment to feel involved.
They’re not talking about the actual voting, just the list of words that you get when you click the button. This would make it a simple Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down
Nina at Night is looking very good. This will fit perfectly on my mobile devices.
I had always hoped that voting down would eventually go, but I haven’t read anything like that (sorry if I missed it).
We at InsanelyMac have always only allowed “Like This”.
This has taken care that there is absolute freedom of speech (of course within the rules) and absolutely no petty wars or zealotry.
Please, don’t bring this up again. Great that “like this” works on your site, but that doesn’t mean it works everywhere. We have debated this at length several times over, to the point where I pulled out the cold and hard statistics to prove to you that you, despite your claims, barely received downvotes at all.
The voting system will remain as it is. It works. Perfect, no – but perfect enough. The redesign is challenging enough as it is with so little manpower and manhours.
Edited 2012-12-26 01:07 UTC
Believe me, I am aware of that.
This is a typical example of voting down being misused.
What did I say? I meant that as the administrator of a large site I am aware of the challenges of keeping it up to date, always with new features and to the liking of users.
So you received a downvote. So what?
As I’ve explained to you a billion times – it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t affect anything. It doesn’t have any influence over anything. The moderation system and the algorithms it uses aren’t impressed with a few comments getting a few downvotes. Your standing within the system is excellent, and not affected by this in any way, shape, or form. The system is smarter than that.
In fact, the system even alerts us of abuse, when a particular uses is oddly downvoted – say, by the same user, or in rapid fashion, and so on.
I honestly don’t know how many times I have to point this out to you. Stop worrying so much over something that means nothing. Heck, this whining is why I originally wanted to hide comment scores altogether in favour of showing user standing.
We still may.
LOL, shall we laugh together now?
I have a few enemies, it cannot be avoided, especially among tonymacx86 staff and possibly their users.
Could it be that, unable to attack me at InsanelyMac, they vote me down here?
Little more than a joke
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl41VkyXUmk
They’re not enemies. They’re people who take themselves too seriously. A better idea is to suck it up and not take voting too seriously – or maybe consider the alternative that those comments deserved to be downvoted. People these days don’t have enemies, or foes*, as the Slashdot system allows for…
* I’ve had two people on Slashdot foe me. All for comments I made that didn’t buy into their extreme libertarianism. Says something about them I think
I don’t think I have any foes here as usually my comments go un-voted, but I’ve noticed that whenever I make a comment critical of anything to do with Linux or somehow positive towards Microsoft or Windows the comment is instantly down-voted — there are no counter-arguments to anything I say or anything, these comments are just uniformly being down-voted by whomever the people are who do it. On the other hand, praising Linux or bashing Microsoft and/or Windows generally yields positive votes regardless of whether the comment actually adds anything to the discussion or even has a point to it. I chalk such behaviour to childishness and insecurity and just shrug it off.
The above in mind, however, I still personally view the voting system as a positive thing in general; the well-behaved people seemingly far outweigh these “voter-lurkers” and usually does give a semblance of balance as to what comments are worth paying more attention to than the others. It could be better, yes, and there’s multiple ways of going about it, but even the current implementation works for me. Alas, YMMV.
ahh but Windows does suck :p (joke)
Humans have a pack mentality, which means like minded people tend to group. This is why some communities are full of zealots, some full of trolls and some full of open minded adults who enjoy a more engaging discussion.
Sadly OSAlert isn’t without its bias, and that bias (bar a few examples) tends to be anti-Apple and anti-MS. In fact just anti-corporations in general. But at least -in my opinion at least- this site is more open minded than most (or maybe that’s just my bias showing through?)
Laurence,
“Sadly OSAlert isn’t without its bias, and that bias (bar a few examples) tends to be anti-Apple and anti-MS. In fact just anti-corporations in general.”
Yes, there’s a share of fanboys as well. Sometimes it’s difficult to legitimately criticise certain companies without being labelled anti-company. It’s difficult to enjoy a pragmatic discussion when one side is so religious over technology companies.
But like you said, there’s no reason to believe osnews is different in these regards to other places on the internet.
Edited 2012-12-27 15:43 UTC
Sometimes it feels like some of the criticisms against said corporations border on the fanatical as well. After all, it’s all very good and well being open minded to the numerous ‘alternative’ options available but if you’re also close minded about the good products on offer from the larger commercial outfits then you’re really little better than the fanboys.
This is why I struggle to take people like RMS seriously. I admire his vision and contributions to the open source community, but his world view is so polarised that I think he misses the practical implications in the real world.
To put it another way, I might choose to write me CV in LibreOffice and distribute it as a PDF, but if a potential employer asked for a copy in OOXML, then I wouldn’t think twice about converting it into an MS Office document; regardless of my personal opinion of Microsoft.
I think having an open mind is having the ability to concede that the less idealogical solution is sometimes the better solution.
Laurence,
Yea, I wish more people were well balanced instead of always being one-sided. But alas, people are what they are. We often focus too much on disagreements.
“I think having an open mind is having the ability to concede that the less ideological solution is sometimes the better solution.”
I agree entirely, it makes very little sense to argue over ideologies since everyone has their own personal preferences, experience & requirements. It’s a problem when anyone insists on imposing their ideological views on others. If all discussions could remain pragmatic, there’d be much less infighting, and that’d be much more enjoyable.
Why do you think RMS would be against that? I’m pretty sure he’s said on a few occasions that it is necessary to deal with proprietary formats.
Quite the opposite. He’s said on a number of occasions that he refuses to deal with proprietary formats.
Edited 2012-12-28 09:43 UTC
And he has not said everyone else should do the same. He certainly hasn’t threatened anyone.
You are mistaking his personal preference for some sort of decree for followers.
I’m certain there are valid criticisms of RMS, but everything I’ve come across so far are smoldering strawmen of things he didn’t say, or things taken completely beyond the scope of the intent.
For f–ks sake, you’re exactly the kind of small minded argumentative bastard I was talking about when I exampled RMS. I mean seriously, why is everything such a f–king argument with you?
I swear to god, you must have been dropped on your head as a baby given the number of pathetic arguments you start and often about topics you know jack shit about.
(and before you kick off about my overreaction, I’m tired, ill and don’t have the patience for morons like yourself)
Edited 2012-12-28 09:58 UTC
Here’s what you said:
And to back this up, you claim:
To which I said he has not said that people must adopt his personal preference, and that he has actually said that it’s okay to use proprietary formats when necessary. That is factually true and logically consistent.
I notice there is a pattern to people like you. You tend to conflate multiple unrelated things together and then argue on that basis.
So f–k you and the horse you rode in on, you hypocritical c*nt.
Edited 2012-12-28 10:33 UTC
Nothing I said was hypocritical, you’re just looking to argue for arguments sake.
And for the record, if you had even the slightest clue about RMS you’d realise he’s one of the most preachy people out there, so even your pathetic nitpicking is wrong.
Oh, and while I’m pointing out your frequent bouts of wrongness, that other debate we had about passphrases, there’s been other reports since that have backed up exactly what I’ve been saying (eg http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/12/25-gpu-cluster-cracks-every… )
But I don’t expect you to read that that article either – much like how you didn’t read any of the other articles I’ve referenced in the past. Idiots like yourself prefer to say ignorant and opinionated than admit when wrong.
But then who needs security experts and system administrators, and who cares about the advice given from seasoned professionals, when teenagers like yourself are given a keyboard and internet access <_<
Good day to you sir, and try not to get yourself killed while harping on about how seatbelts and airbags are redundant safety features.
I’d say “grow up”. If people vote you down, it is because they disagree with you. They vote you up because they agree. Simple as that really.
Personally, I appreciate everyone not writing a comment when voting. It would make for an insane amount of comments, probably all having the same argument/opinion that we’ve heard a thousand times before, making it an even bigger pain to read through everything just to actually find anything insightful.
/Uni
Nah, if you say something completely moronic you should be downvoted.
In one podcast Kroc was talking about his new OSAlert site, is there anything left of that?
And if you guys introduce captchas I will want the old site back really hard.
I worked on a very complex redesign of OSAlert that tried to present almost everything that already existed in the most logical and structured way; the categorisation and navigation were unified through a pretty innovative system called the power bar. Ultimately it was too complex for me to do in spare time and it had to be dropped, so applaud Thom for driving this new design and cutting it down to absolute basics, it’s really what it needs. I liked v3 the most, and I hope we get back to that level of straight-forwardness
Maybe the work I did helped to influence Thom’s design a little, if there’s anything they take away I hope it’s the “hyper-threading” comment CSS I invented, there’s no other website out there that uses something like it; nesting is a habitual problem.
If David allows it I might one day be able to show the prototype designs I did for OSAlert.
As I understand it, it was being handwritten:
http://www.osnews.com/thread?400309
With the decision now to use Drupal, I think that speaks volumes against the practicality of pure text-based editors for managing a large site. While it can be done, it simply does not scale. Drupal, Dreamweaver, WordPress, Notepad, TextMate, etc. are all tools that are a means to an end. It’s when you get too attached to your means that you forget the end goal.
In this case, producing a website that is of maintainable complexity and actually getting it done. It’s the difference between walking the walk and talking the talk.
Edited 2012-12-28 02:49 UTC
And time. I have a job and now a wife and kid on the way. It was wrong of me to brag, but I already have a website and forum system I wrote myself to prove I can walk the walk. There’s LESS and many other tools for managing a large scale website with a text editor as your main development tool. All computing is just advanced forms of processing “text”.
Except for processing states of blinkenlights! ;p (and a modern LCD or OLED screen can be seen as a dense array of them)
I liked them. They leant the site a certain charm. It will be sad to see them go.
Looks good, but the Night Nina scheme is a bit too dark for me. I’d much prefer a BG in the #111111 range (or ideally, #333333 to match my terminal BG), but I suppose most people prefer pure black, especially if they use LED type screens (or amoled or whatever). Not quite feeling the fonts either. A bit too “weighty” for my tastes. Purely personal opinions though, and won’t stop me from visiting this site/blog.
Merry Xmas and a Happy Gnu Year, btw.
The designs are made on a Mac – you’re just looking at the Mac’s font rendering
.
Ah, figured as much. Didn’t initially notice as I only use OS X for work (mostly just Phase One Capture and Corel Painter).
If you’re searching for fonts, you could try Adobe’s Source Sans Pro. They’re open source, and (from what I can tell) look pretty good on various rendering engines and pixel densities.
Edited 2012-12-26 02:11 UTC
I’ll put my 2 cent in. I think it should be pure black. As i understand it, the goal is to be reading in darkness, which means as little light from the screen as possible.
/Uni
Just wanted to add a note that I think the new stuff looks great (both day and night. Not sure which I would use.)
Keep up the good work!
Wil W
I’m looking forward to Night Nina
Same here, it’s much easier on my eyes. Whenever I’m working in Xfce or other X WMs I always choose a theme with white or light grey text on a dark background.
Me too. I always liked dark themes, too bad most sites use a migraine-inducing white or similar background. It would make sense in a magazine or some other printed material, but on computer monitors it makes little sense why bright background colors are so common.
I’ve been going dark for a while, lately I have been going dark and monochrome, so the OS just fades into the background. Works pretty good for most things, but surfing the web is painful, as white webpages will sear my brain.
I find that’s usually because of ridiculously high display brightness levels :p
That only helps somewhat, and can make everything else not look right.
Sure, properly setting up display is hard – but it doesn’t help how over-the-top the default settings usually are (to look stand out in the shop). They aren’t even named properly… (brightness is really “brightness of black”, contrast – “brightness of white”; hardly anybody even remembers gamma)
Edited 2012-12-31 00:20 UTC
It’s always nice working on the stuff we love. On my part you won’t hear many complaints: I come here for the community, not the design.
Drupal is a good choice, but please try to make it as easy as possible to upgrade (for your sake) and do it as soon as possible because exploits come and go and Drupal is a nice target for them, just like WordPress and other common content management systems.
Regarding the theme, I confess that I quite like the current one. Since this is the age of CSS, maybe we can come up with a theme for the new site that somewhat mimics the old site. That should keep everyone happy.
Thom, you’ve mentioned that category icons are going away. Do you plan to introduce text-based categories or labels of some sort?
One thing that I don’t expect to remain, but that I do currently quite like, is that comments are not visible unless I click something to make them visible.
It helps me resist the temptation to get pulled into the bullshit on what I would expect to be very contentious topics.
also, I like the day scheme, but expect that night nina would be my preference on mobile.
For most sites on the web I would heartily agree with you. Comments, especially on general news sites, mostly seem to be magnets for the reactionary right, sanctimonious socialists, rabid racists and the dangerously deranged.
However I find that on OSAlert, even when people are busying themselves proving the bike-shed principle, the comments do still add value. A lot of facts seem to come out and the original authors (not always Thom) often feels the need elaborate on their articles and defend them, which I like a lot.
In other words I think Thom is right to emphasise comments.
I like the technical benefits of the new look but, given how many sites I developed when I was younger and how little I consider myself to be a graphic designer, I’m rather sick of pages which use color so sparingly and look so flat.
(And it also reminds me of the UI formerly known as Metro… and not in a good way)
Oh well, no big deal. I can always whip up a Stylish userstyle to fix that for myself so I guess the only part that’s not a matter of personal taste is “lookin’ good.”
Edited 2012-12-26 03:37 UTC
I can’t get behind the new design. First, I’m really, *really* not a fan of the Metro style flat designs. I’m a very firm believer that we need bevels/shadows/etc to give a little depth. I feel that makes a being difference in drawing your attention to things.
Second, I’m not a fan of the gray background. A quick flood fill of it with pure white in an image editor makes it look a lot nicer me. The text also feels easier to read that way. I’m guessing that may be a side effect of Mac font rendering. I like the black version better than the gray, but not as much as pure white.
I’m also a little concerned about the comments section. You didn’t show enough to go off there, but I’m guessing there’s going to be a lot less distinction between individual comments than there is now, which might make it harder to follow.
Overall, it just feels so bare. I totally understand why the icons are going, but add that in with the new design choices and I think it’s just going to end up being a big boring wall of text. I feel like the site is going to be really unappealing to look at, and I don’t think elements will be distinct enough. My gut feeling is that I’d read the site a lot less with the new look.
I second some of edwdig’s concerns. The first thing that jumped out at me (and I do remember Thom stating that the site might not ship looking like this) is that there is a complete lack of OSAlert branding. To me, there is no “feeling” of OSAlert in the site design, sans green. Even OSAlert at the top of the page is simply text. The other thing is, as edwdig pointed out, the flat design. I too feel like there is this huge pendulum swing toward flat design and it is being overdone. Sure, the design does not have to jump out at you like a webpage from 1995, but using shadows, rounded corners and bevels can be very simple and pleasing.
Take a look at the main site as is though. Flat, rectangular buttons and the only exceptions are the “search” and “RSS” buttons with just a bare hint of a bevel. Apart from that, we have the comment box buttons which are themed by the OS/browser. Everything else is flat and fairly simple, and very text-oriented.
The new design just seems to be an evolution of that.
Maybe their opinion might be more to do with the monochromatic look, not the actual flatness? Similar to how people mistake contrast for sharpness in photographs, to some extent. It might not be the actual flatness that’s bothering them, but the nondescript nature of the layout. Personally don’t see it as a bad thing, but I assume some people would like more “pop” in their web pages. Just an assumption, though.
Strange that I prefer the light grey backdrop to the black, considering I often work with dark terminals and GTKs. The light theme’s got a nice smoothness about it, without the jarring contrast ratio of the dark theme. Heck, I think I’ll go make a new Xdefaults colorscheme around that light grey and green, just for kicks.
It’s a little of both. I’m probably using “depth” a little loosely. Even adding some colored boxes makes things feel like it “pops out” a little, even if there isn’t a 3d effect. Also, even the small bevels on the current site design help a ton.
A lot of my feelings here are based on working heavily with Visual Studio 2012. I found that the flat, monochrome UI design made it easy to miss UI elements if you didn’t know where to look for them. Working with TFS was a little rough (at least from my SVN background), as the UI elements tended to blend in, making them hard to find if you didn’t know where to look for them.
Great that you picked up on this – this is a feature, not a bug
. I’ve often noticed that some people tend to focus on who posted a comment, instead of the actual content of a comment. As such, I wanted to make it less clear WHO posted a comment, so that the CONTENT of a comment gains prominence.
People have differing tastes. I personally would call this a mis-feature as I find the availability of graphical avatars making it much quicker for the eye to latch on and discern where one comment starts and another ends and whose comments I’d like to view first. It’s one of the things I hate about e.g. Slashdot: I know several people who tend to make insightful, read-worthy comments, but without such a quick way of finding those aforementioned comments I have to trudge through them all in the hopes of finding those gems. It totally discourages me from participating and results in me skipping 99% of all the comments.
The comments are heavily based on HackerNews – a site with zero content, entirely focussed on the insightfulness of its comments. You can go try it out to get a feel for it – and they are even more stark.
Still, it’s definitely a concern, so it’s on the radar.
There’s plenty of such sites and yes, I have gotten a feel for it multiple times. I still view it as a mis-feature. It makes me feel less productive instead of more productive and it works as a disincentive to commenting. Alas, I guess that’s just me.
I love the fact that people’s names and identities are tied to their comments. It makes it feel like a conversation with real people, rather than an anonymous horde. I second the thought that this is a “mis”-feature.
Distinction between individual comments is preferable, and the origin of the comment should be easily identifiable. I mean, lets face it: Not all comments are equal. While I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say that there are those who always post garbage comments I’d want to skip, there are those that frequently post insightful, well-informed comments, and it would be nice if it were easier to pick their comments out. Heck, being able to color-code the people you pick as one of your favorites would be useful.
This is already possible using the “friends and fans” feature. If someone is a “fan” of yours, their comment header shows up in yellow. If you become a “fan” of the same person, your relationship changes to “friends” and their header is now a light green.
It would be great if this particular feature survives the change.
On the other hand, I use the name as a filter to decide if a comment is worth my time or not. When I read two annoying comments from some hyperactive fanboy who’s arguing for the sake of arguing despite overwhelming evidence, then his next posts in that discussion are likely to be annoying as well – and usually they start dominating the whole comment section which ruins other discussions.
It might be an interesting experiment to fold all of someone’s posts in a topic when that person has two down-voted posts in that same topic (or perhaps even for x posts with score 1 where x > 10, which means he’s spamming the place with non-upvoted comments). Other topics would be unaffected.
Edited 2012-12-27 01:40 UTC
This was the first thing that jumped out at me too. White is nice, gray off-white is blech, reduces contrast and makes me feel like I’m reading Daring Fireball — which IMHO is *not* a great association.
I regrettably have to agree. If it wasn’t for the acid green I would have guessed it was a generic wordpress theme.
In recent years it has been plain I am not on the same page as Thom (and others) for design.
Oh well I wish you well.
The whole content is king look works if you have visual content. A wall of text tends to make it look as inviting as a EULA screen.
Man I hate being the hater, but its just how I feel.
I agree wholeheartedly.
This seems like a step back, but that’s how I feel about all other metro-ish interfaces out there. It just feels like we cannot display any images because it’s ’99 and people are using 56K modems.
If you must keep “text oriented” – wall of text design, at least drop the gray background. Please, pretty please!
FTR, I dislike skeuomorphism more, but there is a world in between a paper rendered hanging on a fake wood door, and ASCII art. BTW, ASCII art would be way more cool.
Edited 2012-12-27 23:25 UTC
Hi,
Long time reader but seldom post here. I think the new design is great – I like how you focus on text (I’m one of those who love Metro). And also, Night Nina rocks
A little feedback for Day Nina though, the green – it’s just too bright. Maybe a little darker green? As I see it now, the light green hurts my eyes, and it takes focus away from the text when it’s visible. The dark green from the current OSAlert’ story title (or even Night Nina’s green) might be better IMO.
Hope this helps.
Agreed, I can’t quite get behind the new green either. The current, gentle yellow-green is just perfect and has represented the OSAlert “brand” for ages — why change a good thing?
The green is eye-searing, especially on the day theme. Also, it just doesn’t make sense to attempt to replicate the metro look for a site that is supposed to be about operating systems in general. It looks like a Windows Phone/Windows 8 fan site more than a general OS website.
Very nice looking.
The only request I have for a new site is to please, Please, PLEASE make ‘seen status’ for comments an attribute that is saved in the server database.
There’s nothing worse than following a deep comment thread on your phone,only to have to start all over when you read on your PC. Or when switching from home to work. Or whatever.
Should be good, I believe this is a standard Drupal feature.
An old fart here who has followed OSAlert for quite some time. And one who took time to register just to be able to comment.
I understand that OSAlert 5 is about presentation and not content. That said, I’m increasingly unaware what OSAlert is about.
I don’t know how many here remember names like Byte Magazine (not the new version), MicroCornipcopia, Turbo Pascal… Not to dwell in the past, but my reason for following OSAlert has been an interest in “grassroots” news. I’m not involved anymore in extending my ZX80 computer. But I’m still very interested in how non-corporate people/groups can bring new energy to computer technology.
Don’t see why that should vanish.
frank
Drupal is an _excellent_ choice. It’s my CMS of choice for all my sites.
The biggest downside of Drupal is that most of the coolest functionality comes from third party modules that are often not available for the newer releases. For that reason. I’m still stuck on Drupal 6 for several sites.
What editor are you using for the inline commenting? Looks pretty good. Have you considered using a markup language like Textile ( http://textile.thresholdstate.com/ ) or Markdown ( http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax ) instead of bbcode or plain HTML? Textile and Markdown are simple and intuitive and powerful at the same time.
The cool thing about Drupal is that you can let users pick the theme they want. You could probably offer a light and a dark theme as a user choice.
Drupal offers an incredible amount of functionality, which means that it also can get pretty heavy, especially in terms of SQL queries. Fortunately, it has a staggering number of cache system plugins that can drastically decrease load on the SQL server.
I’ve written several articles about the pros and cons of Drupal, together with some configuration tips that I have personally used on my own site. (Shameless plug: The URL is in my profile here on OSAlert.)
Edited 2012-12-26 06:28 UTC
Fantastic. What a great idea. Won’t someone go and tell those responsinle for the horrid monochromatic/low contrast stuff coming out of Microsoft!
And a Twitter/Facebook free zone!
What more can someone want in a news website.
Keep up the good work Thom and all those in the OSAlert team.
I have a friend who is a big shot drupal guy. If I had a dollar for every time he mentioned how drupal is the cats tits (it probably doesn’t hurt that he gets paid a ridiculous amount of money for drupal work), I would be typing this from the Bahamas. As previously mentioned, a lot of the awesomeness comes via third party but that the stuff exists and is active is more important imo.
As far as a redesign.. I’m not scared of change so as long as it enhances or improves the experience, go for it! I look forward to giving the new iteration a test drive. Hopefully it won’t disappoint — I doubt it will.
I’ve never enjoyed the threaded view and therefore I’ve been using flat view ever since I first joined OSAlert. As such I must ask: does the new layout support flat view or will threaded view be forced upon us?
As for the looks: it’s too plain. There’s not enough distinction between the different UI-elements and -sections, making it really dull to look at. Thankfully I can always rectify that problem with the Stylish – addon for Firefox, so it’s not the end of the world.
I’m with you there. I find flat view much easier to use, especially when I want to pick up a comment session later. I can just go to the last page I was on, scroll down, and pick it up. No scrolling through a lot of stuff I’ve already read just to see one new comment in that thread. I cast a “please keep flat view” vote if votes are being counted.
I have four comments, two of which are possibly useful.
1. I like the flat design. It is nice and clean.
2. Threaded comments are cool, but I sort of like it the way some sites do it, with a top-level comment, and all comments below at a single level.
3. Your ipsum is old and tired. Might I recommend something more… tastey? – baconipsum.com
4. I wasn’t aware that the Cardigans made any albums besides “First Band on the Moon”. “Lovefool” was their best song, much in the same way that basal-cell skin cancer is the best form of skin cancer
But seriously, I love where the design is headed.
Is the downright stupid “you have already commented so you can’t vote up/down” rule going to stay?
Cuz that thing annoys me more than anything.
I sure hope so. It’s already bad enough, with people voting down any comment they don’t agree with, not just offtopic or downright inaccurate comments. I can imagine what’s going to happen if you allow rabid commenting *and* voting by the same user. I doubt you, yourself, would abuse it this way, but can you imagine what would happen with less honest users who have a vested interest in making sure only their side gets seen? There are already times when this comes close to happening, and I suspect the only thing that keeps it in check is that very restriction.
Let’s be honest here… Voting, or giving a post a thumbs up or thumbs down rather, has no real value beyond entertainment. As you’ve already pointed out, people vote down points of view they disagree with or people they don’t like. Favoritism and bias always prevails in forum & message voting. Thats not to say there aren’t users who take it at least half-serious and try viewing it as something more but it would be a lie to say “you” have never seen a good post voted down or a bad post voted up based solely on some form of popularity. The votes are simply not a good gauge to determine the quality of the posts.
As far as restricting voting after a user has commented.. That’s completely stupid. Why would you make it impossible to show support or dislike for something simply because the user has already commented? Additionally, it robs the people who get discussions going in the first place of their voting voice. The restriction serves no purpose other than to annoy those who like using the voting (entertainment system).
Edited 2012-12-26 17:29 UTC
I think it is also meant as a filter for obvious trolls and troublemakers. Once a comment reaches a “0” score it is collapsed and must be clicked on to be read. It’s meta-moderation Slashdot style, and it mostly works. That said, I always read a collapsed comment in case it was downvoted simply because it’s an unpopular opinion or was written by someone unpopular. It may still be a valid comment despite the group opinion, and I wouldn’t want to miss out on it.
This, combined with the restriction on voting more than once for the same person in a given time period, prevents an unscrupulous user from monopolizing on a discussion. Let’s say Joe posts something insightful as a response to Bob’s original post, but Bob hates Joe and will do anything to discredit him. With no restrictions in place, Bob can vote Joe’s original comment down as well as any comment that supports Joe, while at the same time commenting away with his own opinions. This is unfair to Joe as well as the rest of us.
Of course, despite all these restrictions and rules the system is not perfect. I actually agree with you: I wish we didn’t have comment voting at all. But since we do, the current system is tolerable and seems to do its job (meta-moderation) fairly well. If I were to suggest any improvements, it would be that members would have to earn votes instead of starting of with a given amount. Something like, for each time a comment hits the +5 threshold, they gain a comment vote point, and each time they are modded down to 0 or below, they lose a vote point. That keeps voting power out of the hands of the overt trolls. Unfortunately, it also gives too much power to the really popular people, so it’s still far from perfect.
So the “design”…
Face..palm
Will it finally be possible to filter out anything about legal and mobile news?
“http://www.osnews.com/?not=x,y,…” where x, y, … are keywords to hide
Hope this feature stays
I like the light one more. It’s clean, it’s simple, it’s flat. Awesome!
Computer user interfaces ought to be flat from the start anyway. Making them “3D” is like trying to make a physical object flat. That just doesn’t work and looks kinda stupid.
Paintings ought to be flat from the start anyway (egyptian drawings style, no perspective). Making them “3D” is like trying to make a physical object flat. That just doesn’t work and looks kinda stupid.
Don’t try to judge other’s stupidity.
“Iooks kinda stupid” doesn’t equal to “somebody is stupid”. It’s painfully obvious.
I think that paintings differ from computer interfaces big time. Don’t you think there is a conceivable and observable difference there? [and yes – some people decided that they should resemble 3D object, but I’m trying to explain that it was not a necessary and needed step.]
Paintings aim to reflect reality. Interfaces shouldn’t. Do you make letters in book 3D-like? in most cases not, because it doesn’t make sense.
You do NOT waste time with HTML 5 asshattery, do NOT have a major case of divitus and classitus, and actually have semantic markup with separation of presentation from content.
Colors look ok, though a bit washed out. Here’s hoping you do NOT make it a crappy fixed width, do NOT declare all the fonts in PX so I have to shove custom user.css at it to even make the page usable, and here’s hoping that you might just leverage responsive layout via media queries so instead of screwing around wasting time making custom versions for each and every stupid handheld, you just send the same markup to everybody and adjust it via CSS to each device.
Though I really do cringe whenever people mention off the shelf CMS systems — I’ve yet to see one that didn’t shove half assed crappy markup down your throat that you either cannot change using the skinning system, or fixing somehow neuters the upgrade path… It’s like the people writing CMS and forum softwares don’t know enough HTML/CSS to be opening their mouths on the topic.
Though it could be worse, you could have said you were using Turdpress. King of the “What do you mean I don’t need ten separate classes on every LI?!?” and “WCAG, what’s that?!?”
Edited 2012-12-26 11:26 UTC
The big problem with Drupal is that 95% (conservative estimate) of the people working with it have no experience with any other CMS, so they assume it’s the best solution for every site. You can spot them immediately, they’re the folks recommending Drupal for 3-5 page sites that barely warrant a CMS in the first place (much less one as heavyweight as Drupal).
Hey now, WordPress is awesome… if you don’t mind having your site compromised every other week, usually because of vulnerabilities in incompetently-written 3rd party plugins, which are necessary if you need anything other than the most basic functionality, at least until the next WordPress upgrade breaks compatibility with them, leaving you high and dry because the plugin’s developer abandoned it 2 or 3 years ago, etc.
But at least WordPress isn’t Joomla… or Zope/Plone.
If you don’t mind the idiotic wasteful use of the TITLE attribute and ten classes on every LI wasting all your bandwidth, and other garbage like that hardcoded into the system with ZERO control over it from the theme — to the point the only way to fix it neuters the upgrade path.
… and it’s easy to blame third party plugins, but that’s like blaming a locked screen door for a completely open inner door — you can peel it wide open with a knife in under a second. The underlying code wasn’t built with even the slightest knowledge of security — see the absolutely mind-numbingly stupid practice of putting the SQL Username, passwords and hostnames in global scope as DEFINE — meaning even the simplest code elevation has 100% access to EVERYTHING. One ring protection is no protection at all.
… and of course the use of the steaming pile of manure known as HTML 5 has only made all these CMS even MORE of a mess — what with the HTML 3.2 that used to masquerade as 4 Tranny, now having 5’s lip-service wrapped around it; bad coding practices suddenly being advocated by the pointlessly redundant new allegedly “semantic” tags… resulting in even fatter bloated skins with code to content ranges that make sites from a decade ago sleazed out in Frontpage look good…
…and that’s before we even get into idiotic BS like jquery or mootools that dev’s now seem to have raging boners for, pissing all over the functionality, usability and speed of sites.
I don’t normally post/comment anywhere and this will probably be my only post here…but just had to take my hat off to you and BallmerKnowsBest…I agree 100% with your comments. Drupal is not simplicity and definitely not built with security in mind. Here’s a little morsel you may appreciate or not:
http://clearfusioncms.com/
It is very new CMS if you are looking for something different/better…and no I’m not the developer
~Aoeber GREAT!
I like this “new” light-design: I would finally browse http://www.osnews.com from my 20-years-old Atari in full speed and all it’s glory!
The inline commenting will clearly require JavaScript, will it support, if your browser doesn’t support JavaScript (or has it disabled), clicking on the Comment link/button/whatever, and it going to a dedicated page like before?
Or, you could pass the baton to some one else, who has the time and insight to investigate, report and write interesting stuff about Operating systems and computer technology, not just an “anti daringfireball” kind of site.
No offense to your work Thom, but if that description is what OSAlert is going to be, then i’m not sure what kind of added value could this site provide anymore? There’s few stuff i’ve found here lately that i didn’t already saw on the other techsites i read frequently
I actually enjoyed the articles posted on the weeks under Howard Fosdick and thought it was more what i wanted to see. I like reading the verge and others for the mainstream, somewhat “light” news. I would really liked if OS News focused on technical, geeky, strange stuff out there. *BSD technologies, ZFS on a Mac, the new MINIX, databases, etc. more insight, more interviews, a bit less quick links and stuff about patents & apple/samsung.
You do realise people willing to spend several hours per day unpaid aren’t exactly dime a dozen, right? Especially since, you know, they have to deal with thankless comments insulting their efforts.
We tried to find people for years, and no dice.
Thom keeps the place alive, which is as much as you can ask of someone unpaid and largely unthanked. The fact that he comes up with interesting articles too (in my opinion) is a bonus. A Christmas thanks to you Thom!
I agree, I’ll take wacky ol thom over nobody!
The new design is pretty awesome. You’re never going to please everyone, as the content over chrome, flat look is polarizing.
I find it attractive, I love how much of the noise you’ve cut down on. The site is a lot less busy, no bullshit.
Up/Downvoting:
I think the current system works well, restriction and all, I don’t really have an issue with it. It isn’t perfect but these things are notoriously difficult to get right.
I think the categories can go, but in addition to that, I think the “score” should only be visible once you’ve voted “Up/Down” or once you’ve posted already.
This will discourage “flock style” voting where people up-vote a sky high comment because it’s been upvoted, or bury a low comment because it’s already at 0 or something.
Comment Style:
I’m a fan of the inline style, however a fast way to switch between the flat layout for comments would be helpful. Sometimes comments go into these deep nested chains, and using the flat layout helps me quickly see who replied to my comment.
Color choice:
The green could use some toning down, but not too much. I like the green we have on the current site.
Overall UI:
I think you’re on the right track with the fierce reduction in UI elements. Especially around the Comment UI. That’s likey what I think is the biggest improvement of all. I’m glad you’ve made this change.
I’d like to see more sample shots though, including one with a long article and a lot of inline images.
The new design looks great, and clearly a lot of effort has gone into it. I’ve always enjoyed the relatively uncluttered OSAlert design, and will be pleased if this continues.
However, I’m curious to know about the advertising on the site. I suspect it’s really easy to destroy a great design with overly prominent advertising.
Will there still be the option to pay to have the adverts removed?
I say keep the logo.
I find myself unable to agree or disagree with what’s done to the design. It’s very hard to do so when you spend all of, a few minutes, browsing a few stories.
That’s the whole point right, quick news, in and out?.
I use to come here for all the independent type news and the like; but it feels like you guys have no direction now.
There are things on here, I sometimes think ‘Huh?’. And with the onset of extreme Fanboys and Trolls now days, posting ANY comment is just asking for trouble.
I think ALL sites should find ways to quell the extremists rather than worrying about site design. The whole point of a Troll and Fanboy is to drive users away. I may be mistaken, but I think some new laws are about to take hold starting next year, welcoming news indeed.
As far as site design, all these sites trying to copy Windows 2.0…uhm…’Modern’, should please just stop. It’s ugly.
What strikes me the most about the new design is that it’s background is dark grey. Please use white colour instead since it’s known that black text on white background is best suited for reading.
The other design with black background and grey text isn’t much better. It lacks distinction, and reminds me just little bit too much of a Hack a Day website.
Otherwise it’s a good start for a new design.
Edited 2012-12-26 14:36 UTC
You may need to check your monitor’s settings. There’s no dark grey.
This is the background colour: http://www.colorcodehex.com/f0f0f0/
Edited 2012-12-26 15:19 UTC
After adjusting, it’s still grey, and grey text on top of it is difficult to read and stress eyes.
I hope the new web site will work without javascript (just like the current one).
Happy holidays!
What is driving peoples hate of Javascript, it’s a good way of adding functionality to a website without having to resort to underhanded measures. I have heard about how some sites use it to track you but I haven’t encountered any of this in my years of being on the web and especially not on sites such as this one, where the main article writer is so clearly FOR internet freedom.
As a secondary note though, if you have javascript blocked you can always add a blocker exception for this site.
I think most of it comes from the way most websites use it when it’s not necessary and, on top of that, a lot of js coding these days seems to be done by twelve-year-old script kiddies who have no understanding of code optimization rather than professional web developers. The over-use, misuse, and widely varying performance and implementation of Javascript across various browsers and platforms (particularly slightly older mobile platforms) has resulted in a great deal of wide-spread resentment of the technology. Javascript itself isn’t the problem, it’s the people who misuse it for in-your-face flashy looks or who accidentally degrade your machine’s performance without realizing it. Remember that not everyone’s running the latest and greatest, although I’d bet most people who visit OSAlert are.
Are you saying you have never used Google, or any other modern search provider? If you have, then you’d better believe you’ve encountered it. Any webpages that have been infested with Facebook or Twitter? How about any web page that uwses Google Ads? You’ve never seen those, in years of being on the web? If you’ve seen any of these things at all, then you’ve seen use of both Javascript and cookies to track you.
Javascript is the #1 way of being hacked through the browser. Usually in combination with Flash, PDF or Java plugins.
I use NoScript for security reasons. It has the nice benefit of scrambling most advertisements and tracking methods as well.
Most sites work fine without script. For those that try to insist via overlay layers and other tricks, there’s various methods to override their CSS or edit the DOM via script. I find these Javascript-demanding sites to be so annoying that I enjoy defeating their silly tricks.
I’d like to have two voting systems:
One if you agree with the content of the text (+/-) and one for the quality (like we had it till now).
I think many people use the current voting system both ways, what makes the score less meaningful. I’m really interested what the majority of the readers thinks and this would be an easy way to make it visible.
Edit: I’ve forgot to say that I really like the new design. Less fancy and focus on the content is great.
Edited 2012-12-26 14:52 UTC
Too complicated, and entirely needless. The current system is actually designed to handle both types of votes. There’s loads of algorithms underpinning it all which handle these matters. Few people realise – luckily – just what our mod system entails. Beneath those plus and minus links there’s a lot of magic going on, continuously developed over a long period of time.
We already have voting systems for both agreement and quality. Adam was just smart enough to roll them into the one single system
.
Intriguing. Adam has god mode enabled
Truth is most people aren’t qualified to judge those two factors, and the result of supporting both would just be a mess. You could promote a certain class of users to rate value however
Here’s my feedback on the redesign mockups, in no particular order:
(Disclaimer: not that it necessarily gives me extra authority, but I am an interaction designer in real life.)
1) Color scheme: The green is a tad too edgy for my taste. I actually like the current green (though I just noticed it doesn’t *quite* match between the “Search OSAlert” color and the “News” box headline — I’d go with the current “Search OSAlert” color in order to keep things mild and maintain the brand while not veering too far into chartreuse territory…) As for the background, I also prefer white to gray in the name of contrast and overall “friendliness”. On the other hand, I’m glad you got rid of all the dark gray elements from the top of the site — they were just needlessly darkening things IMHO.
2) The logo — where did it go??? What I would really love to see is the current (and much-beloved) logo, but all-green (the same green as mentioned above, of course). That would be a nice brand identity!
3) The menu bar at the top left — the most important actions should be more clearly given precedence. For instance, probably less than 1% of readers are interested in the menu item “Advertise” — so why should it be given such importance, as opposed to a small link e.g. at the bottom of the page or underneath another banner ad? And “Support” — really how often do we readers need support? It’s not like it’s a home electronics company here. Wouldn’t it be enough to offer a link to a support e-mail on the “Contact” page?
Also, I’m not convinced that the “Topics” and “Originals” really need their own menu points–after all, both of them are “windows” on the Archive, so they could just as well be implemented as filters within the Archive page.
4) The user account controls on the right-hand side: The fact that this tiny box takes up all the space on the right-hand side strikes me as wasteful. The current UI of having other news items listed along the right-hand side is much more useful, if a bit distracting/cluttered. However, this is IMHO due to the current way it’s implemented. The current clutter could potentially be reduced by showing only the first few lines of text per article followed by ellipses (…), and by responsively docking the news column to the right edge of the browser / hiding it when the browser window is too narrow.
As for the points within the user menu: Where are the links to comments, settings, and submissions? IMHO the current “My Account” menu is near perfect (aside from the fact that it requires mouse hovering as opposed to a more usable and touch-friendly click-to-expand). Baby/bathwater and all that…
On the plus side, I recognize the benefit of the fact that this user controls menu is (I’m guessing) designed to float and be available regardless of scrolling on the page. I applaud that. However, it could just as well be integrated in the top bar and the entire bar floated, as on some other sites such as Ars Technica.
5) The search field … It needs some kind of “Search” button for touchscreen users, and IMHO it would make more sense at the top since that’s the current established convention on web pages. Again see Ars Technica for a good example of this.
6) The comments:
a) In just about all modern OSes aside from Windows, as well as most web apps, the “Submit”/”Continue”/”OK” button is on the right, and the “Cancel”/”Back” button is on the left. This makes a lot more sense from a web conventions perspective as well, since the right side is associated
with moving forward and the left side with moving backwards. So I would advise to switch the button order.
b) As I mentioned in another comment, the distinction between comments and the ability to identify the speaker is important for the “conversational” feeling of the comments section. I believe it is possible to maintain a minimalist aesthetic while still clearly demarcating comments and commenters from each other. And this is important. Historically OSAlert has been a kind of “community” because its membership is somehow small enough to easily recognize many of its members and get a feeling for their personality. When you recognize a funny user ID or a cat picture or what have you as an avatar, it gives you a warm friendly feeling inside to see someone you “know” and it makes you feel like part of the community to involve yourself in conversation with them and have yourself be recognized as well. This is one of OSAlert’ strengths and should be supported, not repressed. IMHO.
Anyway, I like the minimalism and the general aesthetic, I love the fact that comments are going to be in-line, and I am *especially* relieved to hear that the news submission process will be improved. That’s my feedback for now. Keep up the good work.
P.S. I’m generally available to contribute a critical eye or a creative hand to the design process, with or without pay.
So feel free to hit me up for this as you feel might be beneficial, if you ever just want a quick round of feedback without taking it to the general readership…
Edited 2012-12-26 15:36 UTC
I chose it specifically because of its neon-radioactive hue. It’s incredibly distinctive, and yes, a bit sharp, but that does give the whole a unique identity that would be lost (in my view) with a softer green. Still, this is one of the easier aspects to play with, and of course, actual wider testing on different displays may easily reveal it’s simply *too sharp*.
I dislike plain white as a background colour – I find it unpleasant on my eyes. On my displays, there’s more than enough contrast in the current mockups, but again, this may be different for other displays or people with eye issues.
Luckily, the text is actually a dark grey, so I could make it black instead, like so:
http://postimage.org/image/ds7xv1ahv/
Does that improve things? I really want to avoid going all-white for the background :/.
I just can’t get the current logo to look right on the smaller size I require it – so I went with all text instead. I’m indifferent about it, though – if an actual designer can get the logo to look right at the same size as the text ‘logo’ is now in the mockups, it could easily work.
(you mean top-right)
Don’t worry too much about the items currently in there – I specifically designed it to be able to hold more items than it actually will, all for future-proofing. The ‘advertise’-thing is a vestigial aspect of an earlier idea in which I want OSAlert to play a more active role in advertising, and rent out advertisement space directly to people/companies interested. However, this is probably too much work, and likely wouldn’t work anyway (we’re too small).
The ‘support’ one should actually read ‘support OSAlert’ – it’s a page where you can become a member (pay a little bit and remove ads), donate (perhaps), stuff like that. I just can’t find a good single word for it though, so for the time being, I just stuck to ‘support’ – even though it’s clearly suboptimal
.
Won’t happen
. Getting rid of the second column is a core aspect of the redesign, and I don’t want it back in.
Same as with the top-right menubar – I just threw a few placeholders in there. It can easily hold more stuff like you just summed up.
I just think it needs to be above the fold, and not necessarily at the top. Putting it at the top would introduce a non-standard item to the top-right menubar (they’re all text links, not input fields), which I don’t want (it would look hideous). I can play with moving it above the user menu, though. Made a note to try this out.
It’s actually a throwback to Eugenia’s OSAlert – it was at the bottom of the left-side menubar in OSAlert 2.
I prefer cancel to be on the right, but I have no hard feelings about it. I wondered when someone would bring this up
. This is easily addressed.
Heard this one loud and clear. I really, really, really don’t want to go back to individual thumbnails (god those things are ugly and ridiculous, esp. since many people don’t change it and you just get loads of default icons), so I’m going to look for a different solution. I’m currently drawing blanks, but hey, I’m tired.
Once we hit the stage where we’re going to ask users to test, you’re more than welcome
.
Edited 2012-12-26 16:29 UTC
Just don’t go all Josh Timonen and you’ll be fine.
I don’t think you really tried that hard. The logo doesn’t actually have to be pixel data, it could be an SVG-file that allows it to scale to any screen resolution you might need, or it could simply be text with a few lines of CSS to sprite it up.
I just whipped you an example of what I mean: http://pastebin.com/Huq52qpF — just save the contents to a .html – file, open it up in any browser of your liking, and POOF! Instant logo. Hell, it even scales well on all of my mobile devices, too, and looks good even if I overlay it on top of your own screenshot: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11811685/nina_story.png . Also, yes, the red dot is there on purpose.
Something like Gravatar maybe? I believe it generates a ‘random’ thumbnail for people, but they are also able to customize it.
I was thinking about randomized avatars myself, too, earlier today. One would really only need a randomized bunch of greyscale images, then randomize the colour the image should be shifted to, and then assign that to any new account. Since even the basic 32bit colouring scheme yields ~4 billion different possibilities and each new greyscale template would add another ~4 billion different possibilities the system would basically never run out of avatars. Quick, dirty, and yet surprisingly efficient.
There’s a whole lot of various avatars and templates available under Creative Commons – licenses, so it doesn’t really seem that big of a problem to me.
I do suggest you listen to that guy and provide accurate designs rather than useless stuff that wastes time with useless replies. He provided a lot of correct answers and your replies were a lot of ehhhhhh meh
Wut?
Each of his points were properly addressed. I really don’t undrstand your comment at all.
Maybe a bit. But actually, what I forgot to write in my previous feedback is the question: Why don’t you just allow users to tweak the color scheme for themselves? If you’re already offering a “night” mode, I imagine it shouldn’t be too much trouble to offer a few more alternative color schemes or even to allow more detailed per-user/per-HTML-element customization.
Agreed on the idea of taking on an actual graphic designer. Unfortunately I am not one. Anyone else reading this want to volunteer their talents?
Anyway, at the very least I would suggest you could try filling the current logo with all-green and with the font size of the word “news” increased. I think that could look quite decent even at smaller sizes.
Fine and good, but seeing as you are playing the role of UI designer as well as graphic designer these things are important to define as best as you can *now*. Otherwise some technical “features” will in all likelihood fill in the blanks for you, in a manner that in all likelihood will be sub-optimally usable.
Think about what the actual needs of your users are, not about some abstract concept of “future proofing”. Learn a lesson from KDE 4 and don’t ignore current usability concerns in the name of an abstract ideal of future flexibility.
Why not space the menu items out more so you can fit more than one-word item names, and call it “Support OSAlert”? Seems simple and unambiguous enough to me.
OK if you’re that set against it. But please at least take a cursory look at e.g. Ars Technica and the Verge, both of which make good use of this extra space.
Above the menu sounds good. Or again, check out Ars Technica — they make putting it in-line with the menu work visually even though it is indeed another kind of element.
Glad you are responsive to this. It would be more consistent with the rest of the web.
Why not only show avatar icons if they’re available, otherwise don’t show anything? That’s how The Verge does it and it seems to work fine there.
One more thing: The “Submit News” link doesn’t have anything to do with the user profile and so shouldn’t be buried inside the user menu. In fact this is an incredibly important function that you want to encourage the use of, no? I should think it’s at least as important as the “Support OSAlert” function, seeing as content is the number one priority of a user-content-based news aggregation and editorial site. So why not put it in a highly visible position, for instance in the top-right menu, perhaps in a brighter color to emphasizes it (like the “Subscribe now” item on Ars Technica)?
Cheers for listening, looking forward to the next update.
Edited 2012-12-27 18:08 UTC
It would be a bit sad if the only notable gfx on OSAlert were those in ads… (which stay, I suppose)
Also, do links to comments stay the same? (as in, will old links to old comments still work?)
This is very exciting that a new design of OSAlert is coming again – and all the hard work that goes into it!
I disagree with those calling for a white background. I’m quite fond of the of white you’re using in the screen shot.
The white would be too blinding in my opinion, a more muted look is easier on the eyes.
I believe the design looks too generic. A site with the proposed theme might be about anything: zoos, philosophy, movies, my sister’s blog. The screenshots show content, beautifully lay-ed out by the way, but nothing that puts the content in context, nothing that makes the content shout aloud that this side is about operating systems and technology.
Graphics and images are great ways to communicate that OSAlert is about precisely those subjects. You won’t need a lot of images, but some ^aEUR“^A an image next to the name of the site ^aEUR“^A and one or two teasers would really improve things.
You have quite a lot of readers, is there no-one who can help you with graphics?
From what I’ve seen and read I’m looking forward to the redesign very much.
I like Night Nina. I’ve always preferred dark/black backgrounds over light backgrounds. Usually because I’m reading these in circumstances where light screens are like flashlights pointing into my eyes. Not nice.
I’m also looking forward to the short and long articles being combined into one section. I fully understand why they were separated and for the time it was definitely the better way to go.
In-line comments are something I’m probably going to enjoy the most. It has been very frustrating over the years (I think over ten with different user-ids a couple times) has been to open a comments window and not seeing the article and other comments in-line so we could not copy and paste short bits into our new comments.
I think its possible to worry too much about flat UI design on the web. Most sites, including this one, function perfectly well as a collection of documents rather than fully realised web portals. Documents don’t need bevels and shadows, alive, alive oh. So long as links look like links (underlined and/or different colour), its all good.
I’ve been coming to OSAlert for a few years now. I rarely comment, but I wanted to say that I am pleased with the overall redesign. For what it’s worth, here are some of my thoughts…
Pros:
* Simplified text-based interfaces means those of us with sub-par connections can view pages quicker.
* Content is more important to me than bevels and shadows, so the focus on content is very welcomed.
* Because of the focus on content, main site options being capitalized helps find them. Still, it’s not used everywhere (which would make it quite annoying, albeit with seemingly more consistency).
* (Based on other comments) I’m glad “dislike” is staying in. I dislike how Facebook doesn’t have one of those buttons. It works, and I like it. (Is there a place to like the dislike button?)
Concerns (not necessarily cons):
* The blueish-gray background is bothersome. It made me feel like I was looking through an old CRT monitor with some color mis-calibration. Perhaps using a pure white (#ffffff) background, or a VS11 light-theme (#efeff2) background would be better.
* Why not allow users to make their own color schemes? It’s not a considerably complicated thing to do, and would be a catch-all solution to those who have slightly different preferences.
* Is there some indicator for “featured” or “front-page” items as opposed to just links (“page two” items)? I like both, but prefer reading the “front-page” items as I don’t have to leave this site then.
* The “Search” box feels a bit misplaced… It looks like the comment box appears before user comments (content), but the search box appears after the meta-data (also “content”). That is, the “dynamic” (input) elements are misplaced relative to the “static” (comments/content/links) elements. (Hopefully that made sense, lol.)
* Will I be able to (opt-in?) enter in plain-text into the text boxes still? That works better for me on many of my devices and, just in general.
* Avatars are helpful. Opt-in?
I’m looking forward to the new system.
I’ll be quick. I think everything looks great. I have two suggestions.
I think it is important to have a logo, even if it gets a redesign.
Second, maybe the comment system could store your comment-in-progress locally in case you accidentally navigate away. That way, when you return, your comment is still there. These things are possible now with html5
/Uni
Any info on the mobile version look and feel? Also, will the new osnews have an API for third party clients?
Ugly as fuck! it looks like my first template or something, i love simple designs but this have no soul, looks unbranded… i hope see improvements in final version :/
“Another important goal was to make the site more user friendly. If you comment on OSAlert, you’re probably aware that it’s a pretty disjointed experience right now. If you click on ‘reply’ or ‘post comment’, you’re taken to a dedicated page, completely out of context. Once you click ‘submit comment’, the page reloads once more, and your posted comment is shown. For OSAlert 5, we’ll finally have in-line commenting, without reloads. You write your comment amidst all the other comments, so you have the entire context of the both the news item and the other comments right there.”
I love you guys.
Oh, the best of OSAlert is the compatibility and perfect rendering for text based browsers.
http://s9.postimage.org/o604rh70f/osnews_elinks.png
The new theme is similar for text based browsers? I’m think no.
That’s our mobile site. Has no relation to this.
If the mobile site will be intact, all perfect here
Sorry for my mistake (i was thinking about in a complete redesign for all sites)
This feels a bit nostalgic for me. Reminds me of the earlier design for absolutely no reason, and I love it.
Can’t wait!
Where will the ads go? Can’t see any on the mock ups.
I’m really, really fond of the current — v4 — design of OSAlert. I thought it was a great update over the V2/V3 design that kept a lot of the same elements but modernized the look. I love how lines line up and that the site is clean looking.
That all said, I understand that it needs to change a bit and I look forward to the final version of V5. If I may make a request or a suggestion, though: Don’t follow the trend of “infinite scrolling”. (See: tumblr, Polygon, others.) It’s very useful while you’re scrolling, but if you click an article title, you’re often taken to a new page in the same tab, and if you then hit ‘back’, your scroll location isn’t remembered. Tumblr’s actually pretty good about this, but is the exception. I find that if I sroll a long ways, it’s very annoying when I hit ‘back’ and have to re-scroll a vast distance. In part I’ve gotten around this by using “open in new tab” more than just clicking an article title, but it’s slightly more annoying.
Anyway, it’s a minor gripe and I probably didn’t explain it very well, but the takeaway is: “Avoid infinite scrolling”, in my own, personal opinion.
I like the new design, and kudos to OS News for putting in the effort to upgrade!
Where OS News can improve is in its content. Thom Holwerda does an outstanding job. But regular posts from a couple more contributors could expand the range of perspectives and thereby strengthen the content. Even if there are no funds available for paid contributors one can often find volunteers who will commit to placing a couple items per month.
This is not meant to detract from Thom’s excellent work, but would strengthen the site through diverse perspectives.
Why not only allow a down vote if the voter gives a motivation?
It’s not uncommon for comments that are correct and/or just someone’s opinion to get down voted just because someone doesn’t like an opinion.
If one can’t explain why one casts a down vote one should not do it.
Votes are just that: opinions. People need to only read into them as such and not take them too seriously. Still, I think it should be fixed by making it much more transparent and ditching the you-are-prohibited-from-voting rules, which are an anti-feature IMHO.
Can this be put to a vote?
Votes are indeed opinions, but currently when you down vote you have to choose between ‘inaccurate’, ‘troll’ and ‘off-topic’. It doesn’t include ‘I don’t agree’ or ‘I don’t like you’.
To keep things simple I don’t think there shouldn’t be any categories, because for one nobody ever sees the results. If these were dropped I wouldn’t object to people down voting without giving a written motivation.
I do agree that it’s rather difficult to cast any vote sometimes, because there seems to be an extensive set of rules of engagement which I have never encountered before.
There are currently several different reasons given as choices to vote someone up or down. What I’d like to see are the reasons people chose for voting my hypothetical comment up or down. Did the comment readers thin I was wrong, or was I trolling? Was I insightful, or funny? And it would be interesting to see how many voters chose + or – to come up with the final score.
Then again, maybe I don’t want to know.
Considering that the vote score is now hidden, the website could just silently ignore what it considers as abusive downvotes without this dictatorial “you are prohibited from doing that” warning
I think the comment-XOR-vote system is a good thing. Either vote, or write a comment to influence voting. Most people won’t say anything that hasn’t already been said, so they can just choose to vote. Commenting influences votes much more than an anonymous vote, so it’s a matter of balance that commenters shouldn’t be able to use both comments and voting to abuse their power of influence.
kwan_e,
“Either vote, or write a comment to influence voting. Most people won’t say anything that hasn’t already been said, so they can just choose to vote. Commenting influences votes much more than an anonymous vote, so it’s a matter of balance that commenters shouldn’t be able to use both comments and voting to abuse their power of influence.”
Kind of like how the bigwigs are prohibited from voting in real life.. err, oh wait.
I can understand having vote quotas in place, but a voting system that tells us where we can/cannot vote is bad. Voting should be simple, straitforward, and open to all members. I suspect today’s voting restrictions are motivating some users to register extra accounts for voting (write comments on desktop, but vote on tablet, etc) to get around the vote prohibitions.
Anyways it’s looking like Thom’s quite adamant about implementing the current voting system under drupal, and even though I complain about it, I still respect that it’s his choice to make.
I personally think that should be the case. The bigwigs either lobby or they vote. They shouldn’t get to both lobby and vote. I think we can all see the damage the whole “corporations are people” has done.
If they’re willing to go that far, then good for them. They’re losers who take themselves too seriously.
Just a couple of comments on the mock-up web page:
First thing I noticed, a wall of text. Boring. Hopefully the articles themselves will have enough charts, graphs, and images to make up for the website’s cold layout.
The green is a bit neon-ish for my taste.
I find the text difficult to read. Perhaps it’s simply that the mock-up is displayed as a low-resolution image that can’t be enlarged without making the text blurry, but it also appears to lack contrast. The light gray “Score 32…” text against a lighter gray background is especially straining and tiring.
But the worst is that all of the text is written in some foreign language, perhaps Martian. Can’t read a word of it.
The operational issue that really needs addressing is the time limit ‘rules’ regarding commenting and voting. Here is the error message when attempting to comment on one of the headline stories on OS News right now: Sorry, this item has been archived. You can only attach a comment to a story for 5 days. Seriously? So the entire page is full of articles that I’m not allowed to comment or vote on? The most valuable feature of OS News is the comments by community members, so why not allow comments at least until the story falls off the front page.
Since I’m better at rants than praise, let’s mention right away a few possible flaws that stood out to me, from top to bottom:
1/This OSAlert logo is, as others pointed out, a bit weak. Even if you only work with text, there are ways to put more contrast between the “OS” and the “news” so as to make things more interesting, as is done with the current logo.
2/Do we need an “Archive” button? If it works the way the current one does, we should probably just put a “next page” button at the end of the article column and be done with that.
If, however, you are thinking of introducing some kind of more advanced archive search that requires a webpage in its own right, then do we need that, and what exactly do people need to search?
2/Do we need an “Originals” button? Couldn’t it just be a content filter that is accessible on the archive search page, on the main page, or both? Same question holds for the “Topics” button. I ask this because this row of buttons is still a bit cluttered, and a bit of extra fresh air in this region of the page would do no harm.
Content filtering controls on the main page could be put on the right column, under the search bar. Filter status should probably also be transparently saved in user preferences when a user is logged in, but this proposal is arguably more controversial.
3/Congratulations for making the “submit news” button more visible! However, it is still somwhat oddly placed. Unless you want to make the functionality exclusive to users who are logged in, you should probably put user controls and that “submit news” button in two separate paragraphs.
4/Writing stuff in a search box is a bad idea, because it makes it easy to miss. You should probably do it like other websites do instead, by leaving the box blank and just putting a small gray looking glass icon on the far right.
Let’s also point out that you could add article filtering controls under the search box, so that they perform two functions at once: act as search filters AND directly eliminate articles from the main view. That would be some efficient use of screen estate.
5/Please tone done that green used for links a bit so as to make it match the green used elsewhere on the page. Right now, it hurts eyeballs.
6/Those colored buttons are impressively ugly. You should probably look into other ways to make them stand out, such as directly integrating them in the box in which comments are typed (possible design: at the bottom of said box, with a thin colored line to visually separate them from the typing area), or putting a larger space below them to strengthen the visual association between them and said box.
That’s all I can think of right now. Otherwise, good luck to everyone working on OSAlert v5 !
This point was raised a few times – namely, that in the comments, it’s difficult to pick out who posted a certain comment. I did this on purpose (focus on content, not who posted it, which in my view is irrelevant), but it’s pretty obvious people don’t agree with me.
Late last night I came up with a possible solution, and I mocked it up just now.
http://postimage.org/image/imger3oz7/
I’m calling it Hearts for now. First, usernames have been given the accent colour to make them stand out (ignore the fact that some of you don’t like the neon green – that’s a separate issue).
Second, every user has an empty heart next to his name. Click it, and you favourite said user. The accent colour of each of his comments turns red (or whatever else looks best, I just chose red to make a point). If he favourites you back, the heart fills up.
A few issues remain. One, using colour like this is dangerous re:colour blindness. Two, the heart isn’t exactly touch-friendly. Three, I don’t know how much work this would add to Tess’ workload.
I kinda like it. You’re not obliged to use it and if you don’t use it you won’t be bothered by it either (i.e., even if someone favourites you, nothing happens on your end), and it looks kinda nice. Looking further ahead, we could even add custom colour selection – e.g., favourite a user, pick a colour. However, this is quite a bit of complexity that would certainly only come AFTER the more important work is done.
This would allow you to manage which users you want to follow more closely, and make their stuff stand out – without resorting to stupid avatars and more of that nonsense that’s virtually impossible to make pretty (not a single site with avatars looks good. They fcuk everything up).
Edited 2012-12-27 11:59 UTC
Clever, but is this not entering the realm of cruft and over-engineering you’re trying to strip out?
If even this needs to be done at all, how about having an up-vote threashold for users that defines them as a friend. If you up-vote a person, say, 5 or more times, they become friended and get highlighted in threads. People you down vote 5 or more times get automatically dimmed.
Nice idea. That way you don’t have to do anything at all, the system will kinda adjust to your preference. Although, it might be difficult to automate something for lots of different people with different use-patterns.
Personally, when there are two many comments on a news item, i just quickly scroll down through the list and see if i recognize any icon which usually has insightful comments, and don’t even bother with the rest.
/Uni
Oh, i have one more request for the new system.
Allow people to have two letter names. I find it ridiculous that i cannot even use my real name because the system thinks people should have at least 4 letter names.
Sad part is i even know two people with 2 letter names. These guys (including myself) are simply F…shunned on the internet these days.
/Uni
I feel for you (although personally my problem is the opposite, with a name too long for some systems).
The following might be an interesting read, although it’s a shame (as pointed out in the comments) it doesn’t offer any solutions:
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-…
Allowing users to change their names whenever they have the need for it and using UTF-8 or UTF-16 generally covers most different characters, and those two solve almost all the issues mentioned. Then just define the maximum length of the name as something more reasonable, like e.g. 1024 characters, and minimum length as 1.
having been reading osnews since 2000 or so I think this redesign is great!
Good job everyone
I like it overall and can imagine myself comfortably using it. Here are some comments:
* white on black – definitely do that. I love it on Ars Technica and incidentally, as the black guys like to say, once you go black you never go back.
* css – although I love white on black, I sometimes find the white too bright, e.g. on my Nexus 7 display, and prefer bright grey on black. So mark up the elements sanely with css classes so that it’s easy to change the color just by overriding a single css class in a user stylesheet (or even make it configurable for logged in users).
* I like textual vote up/down
* With a heavily text-based site you should consider carefully selecting your fonts. There should be an interesting and readable one by default and possibly one other. Less is more. And remember that now w3c finally standardized WOFF 1.0.
* merging features and news – I have mixed feelings about this one. There must be a way to easily tell them apart and make the features stand out.
* I go to OSAlert for features and news, so when I looked at the menu I wondered what the other items are and had to check the current menu
* where’s “Submit news”?
* icons can be dropped, but display tags/categories prominently instead
PS: +1 to Gran Tourismo, I just listened to it again yesterday and thought this is one of the best albums ever.