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Yikes-- you think you know someone, and then all of a sudden, they show up looking totally different! Tipsters have been telling us to expect a huge redesign of the NYTimes.com site for awhile now, but it looks like today is the day-- the Front Page just went up (11:30pm) and most of the subpages are now in the new layout. There's also an editor's note explaining some of the reasoning behind the design.
Some of the new features we noticed:
- 1024px width! Mind-blowing wideness!
- New menu system at the top of the page
- New "My Times" page, still coming soon-- looks like a bookmark clipper / RSS feedreeder
- Links to Today's Paper, Video, Most Popular at the top of page (nod to Digg, YouTube?)
- New page: Times Topics-- lens pages for major issues (hat tip to Squidoo/Wikipedia/etc.)
- Whole new color scheme: blue and white is the new black and white!
- In addition to the old most e-emailed feature, now with most blogged and most searched.
- Crazy complexification of the middle of the page-- there's so much going on there (video, wire services, stuff from the real estate and auto sale sections, stuff from the inside sections)-- it's kind of making our brains bleed!
What do you think of the new design? Futuristic-cool or mucho mucho mas?
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The times website has been in need of a facelift for some time now. Unfortunately it still has the cluttered, lets-fit-in-as-many-small-ads-as-possible look. Not really an improvement, just more of the same.
Its always fun and cool to see new designs for web pages. Keeps thing fresh and interesting.
Teh suxx0rs.
their article page looks similar to the nymag...
If it ain't broke...
This is not better. Text is now harder to read (smaller? light blue color, etc). Page is too wide. Less pictures is not hot. Definitely not inspiring me to buy into Times Select.
I like it a lot. Very easy to use. I think you'll get used to the middle section. NYT.com is meant to be a portal for news. I think this is a great step in that direction.
The Times website was looking very old and sad but I am mixed on the redesign. The 1024 px width is a pretty bold step since 800 was pretty much the understood limit in web design. While it's true that screens are generally higher-res now, on some smaller laptops it will take up the entire screen, and it's no good for mobile users. They should also release a WAP version. I also think it is kind of cluttered, the ads are so irregular and spaced so oddly. They should have tried to simplify the content a bit more. But at least it looks fresh and as if the Times is a leading publication.
The old design recalled designs from the late 1990's, and I doubt anyone would argue it wasn't well out of date, clunky, and had a generally ugly UI. The new version looks good at first glance, and at my personal screen res, isn't too small. I mostly appreciate it resembles newsprint layout, maybe I'm crazy, but it seems to have a bit of gravity that the last iteration lacked.
The whole, "most popular / most emailed / most blogged / most searched" feature is nice.
The experience of flipping through the NY Times newspaper often results in me reading stories on subjects that I wouldn't normally read because of how that story was advertised on other parts of the paper, or because it is in front of a major section with an attractive graphic. Finding ways to translate that kind of experience to a web interface is challenging.
This is obviously not exactly the same thing, but it might result in people going beyond their one or two favorite sections of the paper to maybe explore other issues and news.
I'm actually digging the new design even as I wish for a larger screen on my computer. It "feels" very blog-like and newspaper-like at the same time. I don't know if blogs were initially intended to mimic newspapers in their layout, but this design, the NYT got right IMO.
Still slow response to clicks on Safari. I don't know what kind of strange tricks they use that cause the multi-second delay. At least the sections navbar gets rid of the awful pop-up menu that didn't work well with Opera. The new, smaller font size is a pain in the butt. I've got Opera set to default to 120% zoom, which brings it up to a decent size, but that also makes images fuzzy. I want to know what rocket scientist set the stylesheet to 83.5% Georgia for the body text. Why would anybody in their right mind want body text smaller than what the visitor usually sees in his browser? Besides, if you're going to go that small, at least use a sans serif font that has a nice, uniform thickness to the stroke and no serif clutter. If they don't come to their senses, I'll visit with Firefox, which would let me override their font selections.
The font there looks awful on my computer....way too bold.
I'm viewing on safari - it just doesn't resemble the NYT signature font right now. Am I mistaken? is it a match?
Looks horrendous on my browser, which has javascript turned off -- oh here's their warning "It appears that your Web browser has disabled JavaScript, or does not support JavaScript. You are welcome to use the page as is or, for the best experience, upgrade your browser to its latest version by visiting your browser's Web site or NYTimes.com's download page. You may also try our new Today's Paper feature, a listing of all the headlines in today's New York Times."
No thanks.
Very little visual hierarchy, looks quite awful on a laptop screen, the lower half of the page appears to have been completely ignored by the designers, and the decision of which dynamic HTML elements are applied and when/where seems to be completely arbitrary without any thought put into actual utility.
Bah.
I LIKE IT! Your new format, style is refreshing.
had to take a second look because i thought it was a prank nyt. but so far it's easier on my eyesight. i couldn't find the weather for the life of me. that's what brought me over to gothamist this morning!
It looks like they copied it from The Onion. Perhaps we can expect better quality news now.
ah yes! it does look a lot like the onion because the major designer on both projects is the same. thank khoi vinh (http://www.subtraction) and his team for bringing the nytimes up-to-date.
What font are they using?
ooops. i guess khoi didn't do the design :) he just implemented it. anyway...
This could be a great redesign, maybe, once they break it in a little.
it's awe ite - going to take some getting used to - had to find the obits as they weren't prominently displayed and don't say you never read them.....
I hate it. Nothin but love for blogs, but the Times has taken its love for them one step too far.
The real news continues to look more and more like The Onion!
i like the style. i think it's just hard to read.
Ugh.
I wish they'd redesign the print edition. It's one of the worst looking newspapers in the world.
it looks an awful lot like nymetro.com. i like it, but not enough to distinguish the two. also not as easy to read as before, but that might just be because i'm not used to it yet.
Everyone should check out the internet's "Way Back Machine" for a look at how nytimes.com looked over the last several years...
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://nytimes.com
Sorry -- it's still a single newspaper in content and in format. The frontpage of reddit is not only cleaner, but the content is broader and better.