Jalopnik redesign

forgive me for bringing up a competing site.

If you still read Jalopnik you probably have noticed the eye-gougingly terrible site redesign that went up a few weeks back.

I recently found that you can access the site in its old format by inserting a ca in front of the url like so: http://ca.jalopnik.com/

This apparently work with all the associated gawker sites.

There are a bunch of sites that have had terrible redesigns recently. I hope its not a trend...

I remember Geocities sites that looked better than the Jalopnik redesign.

I'm not a regular, but I don't see much difference.

If I try to go to Jalopnik, it automatically defaults to the ca. site.

Just the latest in their long string of idiot moves (compromising account info, losing the best writers, that farce of a competition, etc). Haven't read them nor missed anything for months.

Traffic is down some 30% on all Gawker sites since the redesign. Awesome. I certainly haven't been back.

I have not visited since the redesign...but the ca site might win me back once a week or so.

I was annoyed when Bill Caswell and Murilee left Jalopnik. The account compromise was the last straw. (Yes, I did delete my account.) I even wrote to Ray Wert - and cc'd the Gawker overlords - to complain. To Ray's credit, he actually wrote back and addressed each one of my points. It didn't change my mind, but I think he's a class act.

The new design sucks, but I blame the gawker overlords, not Ray. I spend about 1/10th the time there that I used to.....there's less car stuff and more celebrity stuff than in the past, and the comments are not as easily read.

That redesign is the new coke of the internet.

I cant stand it myself, i used to visit both jalopnik and gizmodo on a daily basis. They both went to this new format and i haven't been on either more than twice. Terrible design in my opinion.

i wouldn't mind it if it would just friggin work. the scroll list on the right won't scroll for me, and if i use the buttons it scrambles things all to hell and i end up leaving.

me leaving is the last thing they should want. with the old design, even though i had to wait 20 seconds every page change for the comments to load, i could still navigate through the pages and would usually end up on giz or lifehacker at some point.

The redesign sucks bad. I've almost totally stopped visiting the Gawker sites. Sucks for them. Once the ad revenue drops off they'll fix it.

I care less about the redesign than I do about their push for "unique hits" content is only meaningful to them if it gets hits. The content has gone downhill and as mentioned their best writers have left. I took it off my daily rotation long ago, just not anything good there anymore.

I cannot stand the new design and no longer go there (used to go every day). Absolutely atrocious usability issues.

I would have hoped that in the redesign, they would have made it so you could post from your smartphone on the mobile site, but nope, no change, so I have to actually go to my desktop to comment on anything. I do use my phone a lot and it would be nice to be able to comment like on autoblog's mobile site .

Oh and the redesign sucks.

Also, is it sad that I only care for Tom Joslin, the new weekend writer than the other writers?

JThw8 wrote: I care less about the redesign than I do about their push for "unique hits" content is only meaningful to them if it gets hits.

+1000 Murilee/Judge Johnny made it clear that this emphasis is the reason he chose to walk. I suspect the same for Bill Caswell[*] It is also why there's more TMZ-type content. (e.g. "Paris Hilton gets a lexus lfa for her birthday. Guess what color?) It's just funny that they have the guts to post that stuff after their Awesomeness Manifesto declared:

Instead of looking forward while remembering the past, I forced my overworked and undersupported team to stumble blindly across the post-Carpocalypse automotive desert. We chased the same carrot as Autoblog, Motor Trend, and the rest, pursuing what we were told was the "growth segment" of the automotive universe — general consumers and non-enthusiasts.

It looks to me like they're still pursuing the non-enthusiast. Of course, credit where credit is due. Their recent editorial about Ferrari's press cars being set up better than customer cars was an interesting read....especially the bit about bringing two cars to comparisons....one for a straight line and one for curves. Obviously Jalopnik can produce some interesting stuff, but their signal to noise ratio is dropping enough that they're no longer a "must read" site

[*] I think Bill Caswell's prose is brilliant....IMHO, he's the next Peter Egan.

I used to visit lifehacker daily, now it's almost too painful

The Gawker redesigns may go down in web designer history as the worst redesigns of all time. It's not that they're unattractive (though they are) it's that they have MASSIVE usability issues, accessibility issues, and break the web in very fundamental ways.

And because of those fundamental ways they've gone nuts, one simple javascript error (like maybe from an ad) takes the whole site down. As it did on day one of the launch.

One bad comma, no site. Insane.

I swore off Jalopnik a couple of months ago, and haven't been back. Sounds like I will have no regrets.

Tim Baxter wrote: The Gawker redesigns may go down in web designer history as the worst redesigns of all time.

That about sums it up!

Tim Baxter wrote: The Gawker redesigns may go down in web designer history as the worst redesigns of all time. It's not that they're unattractive (though they are) it's that they have MASSIVE usability issues, accessibility issues, and break the web in very fundamental ways

+100

The comments - the only thing that kept me on a story for more than a minute or so - are not as easily read in the new design. Thus, I'm there for a a few minutes a day AT MOST, when it used to be an hour or so.

Of course, that doesn't matter to Gawker anyway. They have this odd fetish for Unique Page Views.....it's the only way they rank the success of an article or author. As I understand it, someone who follows a link from dig to jalopnik because there was a headline about lindsey lohan - but who only spends 30 seconds on the site - is treated exactly the same as someone who comes back to jalopnik many times, reading it carefully, spending lots of time there, etc.......Of course, Ray Wert told me that I have it all wrong, and that I'm stating things backwards.

Tim, can you clarify this for me? Does their "unique page view" push actually not differentiate between loyal followers and casual visitors?

Tim Baxter wrote: One bad comma, no site. Insane.

Talk about writing brittle code....It's fine to do that on a hobby website where only one person will be making updates. It is crazy, however, to try to run a business that way.....if uptime is necessary to make a profit you need a robust platform.

The only thing that makes it halfway usable again is the "blog view"

Tim Baxter wrote: The Gawker redesigns may go down in web designer history as the worst redesigns of all time. It's not that they're unattractive (though they are) it's that they have MASSIVE usability issues, accessibility issues, and break the web in very fundamental ways. And because of those fundamental ways they've gone nuts, one simple javascript error (like maybe from an ad) takes the whole site down. As it did on day one of the launch. One bad comma, no site. Insane.

Anyone want to chip in and take out an ad in Jalopnik?

Ha!

If you want the content but not the site design, that's what RSS is for!