New Channels on The Escapist

[Barbas]

(Snip).

WAIT, there was a layout BEFORE the last one? What did it look like?

To be honest, I barely remember, it was so long ago.
I remember liking it but clearly not enough to remember it.

It looked like this[footnote]Courtesy of http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.escapistmagazine.com[/footnote]:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060110094345/http://www.escapistmagazine.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20060111035752/http://www.escapistmagazine.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20070813082545/http://www.escapistmagazine.com/

OT: Love it. Been lovin' it for a while now, so I can't add much here, I'm afraid. My favourite bit is the new and improved message icon, though it's difficult to make out the number next to it, due to the brightness of the yellow.

 

[lacktheknack]

Before I only needed one page for me to know everything I needed to. Now I need 5 pages.
That is what I call a downgrade.

You haven't even looked at the front page. -___-

When you go to the site's front page, nothing is sorted, and all the content is jumbled together as it was before. The filtering doesn't happen until you actually click a tab.

I know it requires effort, but before you declare something to be terrible, at least TRY to use it first...

EDIT: I accidentally a quote.

 

[Greg Tito]

So will ALL content show up under the "Latest" tab? I found it annoying how if I wanted to have every news, video and column update in one spot, I'd have to dig through the News tab, rather than having it on the front page.

The Latest underneath The Escapist logo - as well as clicking on the Escapist logo itself - will show you content from all the channels. No worries!

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Spoiler: A NEW LAYOUT?!?!?!

Oh wait, it doesn't break functionality. A few ongoing tweaks and a few weeks of settling in and nobody will even remember there was a change. This is a far easier change to get used to than the forum layout change.[footnote]I still sometimes go to quote someone at the bottom of their post... >.<[/footnote]

Personally, I like it. The main page also still has the weekly calendar widget so you can directly hit up the most recent Escapist shows that way if you feel lost in the new layout. And life goes on...

 

[Legion]

WAIT, there was a layout BEFORE the last one? What did it look like?

I am not sure what years all of these were exactly, but you can get a rough idea based upon the content of the page:

Spoiler: 2008

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

I remember most of these. If I recall correctly the new layout is the fourth one since I have been here.

It looked like this:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060110094345/http://www.escapistmagazine.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20060111035752/http://www.escapistmagazine.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20070813082545/http://www.escapistmagazine.com/

Holy Hell, even older ones.

 

[krazykidd]

I don't like it. I'll get used to but because i have to, not because i want to. Note that i couldn't do any better, so i'll just leave it at that.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

Copying this from a post in the tech team group, because I couldn't find this thread, and likely wouldn't have if it wasn't for a locked thread talking about the layout (note to whoever decided on this thread title: calling a thread "new channels" makes it sound like some sort of video thing, not a change to the whole layout of the site).

It's really cluttered because for some reason the whole site is still set up with a 4:3 area for content completely surrounded by ads on the sides. There's too many pull down menus for that to work now. The bar at the top should take full advantage of screen real estate if they're gonna try this. Also, the unread messages color is now a particularly undreadable yellow. It's pretty bad.

It's also loading more slowly than usual, although that could be on my end.

Basically, it's bad. Hopefully with feedback it'll get better, it sure as heck did after the last redesign (which was borderline unusable at first, but eventually got better), but right now it needs work.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

I really like the new design, good job! It just feels a lot nicer than the old design, and the tabs make a lot more sense than the old ones.

Quick question, though - are you planning any changes to the forums themselves? We still have one forum for gaming and one for everything else, which feels a little inconsistent with the new direction. Not sure if separating them out is actually a good idea, but it's probably worth considering.

I really hope not. The forums here are mid sized at best, we don't have the population to support 50 billion different sub forums. This isn't like Reddit or Gamefaqs where there's tens if not hundreds of thousands of people posting every day, this is more like, say, AVS Forum in size, which has that kind of highly specific subforum breakdown, and is a pain in the butt to read because of it -- if you're just looking for interesting discussions that fit with the overall theme of the website, it's a major pain in the butt to do it, because there's 20 odd subforums, and they all update slowly because there aren't enough users to support that kind of setup. It's good if you have a very specific subject you want to ask a question about (which is why they work on AVS forum), but that's not really what the forums on the Escapist are for.

 

[momijirabbit]

Before I only needed one page for me to know everything I needed to. Now I need 5 pages.
That is what I call a downgrade.

You haven't even looked at the front page. -___-

When you go to the site's front page, nothing is sorted, and all the content is jumbled together as it was before. The filtering doesn't happen until you actually click a tab.

I know it requires effort, but before you declare something to be terrible, at least TRY to use it first...

EDIT: I accidentally a quote.

The front page looks just as terrible as it did before but now the simple News tab has been cut into five different tabs.
And I don't like it.

 

[lacktheknack]

Before I only needed one page for me to know everything I needed to. Now I need 5 pages.
That is what I call a downgrade.

You haven't even looked at the front page. -___-

When you go to the site's front page, nothing is sorted, and all the content is jumbled together as it was before. The filtering doesn't happen until you actually click a tab.

I know it requires effort, but before you declare something to be terrible, at least TRY to use it first...

EDIT: I accidentally a quote.

The front page looks just as terrible as it did before but now the simple News tab has been cut into five different tabs.
And I don't like it.

Well, I do.

So now it's evened out.

 

[Wackymon]

Since suddenly, EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT (Or, at first glance, appears to be), so I'm asking what you guys think.

Personally, I don't enjoy it. The news is segregated into tiny chunks, but probably because I find change mildly annoying. Also, upper right corner: Mail logo is annoying because it's really large, and now the Forms thing isn't above my avatar icon, and suddenly there's less space up top, and...

I suppose I'm rambling now, aren't I? Anyway: I don't like it because much of the UI has been changed, but I'll deal with it in time. What annoys me most is...

Spoiler: this thing:

Is placed in such a way that I feel like it will NEVER be balanced. It's extremely petty, but all around I don't mind the change that much, though I will miss the slightly more compact UI we had before.

 

[Yabba]

I kind of like it more. However I think the site design when I first came here, ripple blues sidelines and much easier to access video galleries, was definitly better.

 

[Dragonlayer]

I knew something was different with the site today....

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Looks good. The envelope button looks weird though when you have unread messages. The white backdrop doesn't help.

EDIT: Well the Konami Code still works, fine by me.

 

[IceForce]

Have the fixed the oftentimes obnoxious advertising on this site?
No? Then there's not much more I can say about it.

Well, other than the colors look nice I suppose.

 

[Roxas1359]

Eh I've had this layout for about a month now, and personally I quite like it.
It's also a lot more friendly to users who are using something like an iPod or iPhone that's for sure.

 

[TheJesus89]

I, personally, hate it.
Let's be honest: if you're part of one sect of nerd culture, you're part of the other sects. The news in science and movies interested me just as much as the news in video games. Same with the features or videos.
Actually I haven't posted on the forums in a while, but I just can't deal with the changes. It makes things absolutely less streamlined.

 

[Avaholic03]

The only thing I really don't like is all the prominent social media integration right next to the logo. But I suppose that's just how the internet is trending right now, so I can't blame you guys for following suit. But seriously, I don't give two shits about twitter, facebook, pintrest, etc. All those buttons just start to be white noise clutter, and I much prefer a cleaner interface without all that crap.

 

[Colour Scientist]

One thing, I've always used the drop-down menu under the little avatar icon in the top-right corner to get to user groups. On my tablet, it pretty much jumps to my profile straight away so I don't have time to select a user group.
That's a little awkward, I don't know if that's specific to mobile users or if I'm just really slow at selecting things.

Other than that, I like it.
I love how the logo changes colour, nice touch.

 

[Strazdas]

my first thought when i visited the site today: have my monitors resolution got set to low or what?
the buttons are way too big imo.

and i see you still havent fixed the news. the best way to catch up with news is still to keep scrolling though that feed in the left winthout a normal comprehensive list of news on the actual /news/ page.

oh well, we will get used to it i guess. i just hope i dont have to go to seperate sections all the time to get multiple section info now. but its good i can just ignore cosplay now as i never was interested in that.