A few words about the new look…

I understand that one of the reasons for the new format is that it can hold more info on the front page for longer, (so that articles don’t get lost after 3 days), but like the Engadget site (which updates as regularly as Twitch does and is in a blog format), if you’re keen on the subject of the site you’ll go back and back and back to find new info, regardless. 
(Incidentally, Engadget solves the 3-day “lost in time” dilemma by putting a dandy little slide show on the top of the site displaying a collection of it’s more important news). 
But, Twitch, your solution to this causes many more problems and I want to talk about this in a serious way… 

By having all of your latest info now crammed onto the front page and all the corresponding pictures much smaller is going backwards, design-wise. 

I will now challenge you on this with an example…  When Twitch had its information in a blog format it required nothing more of me than to scroll down in for me to get all my information- one subject at a time, with nice big images.  But now…

With Twitch’s new format that information takes up three columns, so our eyes are looking left to right and up and down, as I scroll.  Meanwhile all the images are reduced to the equivalent of large icons just to compensate for the imposed space restrictions.  And I go further… 

Let’s say I see something that I think interests me, but I can’t quite tell because the image is reduced so much.  I have to then click on that image (which takes me out of my browsing experience) to see a larger image of something that, once enlarged, might not interest me anymore because now I can see what it is clearly.  I then have to hit the back button and re-navigate.  This isn’t flowing.  It’s disruptive and confusing in order to get basic visual information I easily accessed (and smoothly) before. 

For simple navigation of information (the core purpose of the site) you have made the experience worse, not better.

So I urge you to change the format back, but with smarter solutions to your problems that don’t sacrifice the enjoyment of browsing your information.  At least take a measured assessment of reader’s feedback in a month from now.  Think of it as a design probationary period.

And finally, on a purely aesthetic level, I think the black background was easier on the eye (and complemented the images), but also… and hear me out on this… more “appropriate”.  I’ll explain:

When I’m in a movie theatre, I’m in darkness with a bright image in front of me.  If I see the end credits of a movie they’re usually white letters on a black background.  Your site (as it was before) perfectly matched this as far as suitability to its subject.  Now, with the white background and the three columns of info, it looks like the Guardian online- not a dedicated movie site.

Like I said, give it a while, not for the sake of letting us get used to it (re: tolerate all its new problems), but instead, so you can allow the real possibility of changing back if that’s what the viewers want.

Cheers, and thanks for listening.

Thanks for your reaction, Matbrady, your opinion is noted and will definitely be discussed internally.
 
However, concerning what you said about navigation on the “old” site: if you now hit the “news” tag you get something that looks very similar to what we had previously, only with different colors and, ironically, often BIGGER images than before.
 
As for the new white look, for every one who comments he/she preferred the white-on-black background (including me, by the way…) we get two reactions of people who are happy we switched to black-on-white (grrr…). Therefore we are currently not treating it as a “mistake we made”.
The “black-is-more-beautiful” camp is by no means small though, so we might include some functionality in the future which allows you to choose which of the two you prefer, same as we had back in 2006. But for now we have to focus on a few outstanding technical issues first which is par-for-the-course if you’re doing a change this big.
 
In the meantime, let’s all rejoice that we have the best search engine now that we’ve ever had.
And even though the editorial staff (again, including me…) is currently getting to grips with the new editor, we find so many things that are improved behind the scenes, that I think you’ll see this reflected in our articles soon. There’s some very cool stuff we’re now able to do, and I can’t wait to do some showing-off in the near future…

Ah!  That’s cool!  I get it now. 
 

I also like your suggestion to make it white text on black or vice versa as a preference on the site.  That would be completely awesome. 

Ok.  You win.  Twitch is awesome again. 

Thanks for setting me straight. 

And keep up the great work. 

I have a couple questions about navigation at this period in time.

When clicking on the “All News” submenu (or column header) does that include ALL news EXCEPT reviews? It seems like it does but I just wanted to know that this is the intention—which I think is good—so that I can basically assume I’ll see everything by doing that. (I love the look there, btw)

While browsing the lovely All News page, if I click on one of the regions, Asia in this example, it takes me to what looks like a development version of the site and I’m all of a sudden not signed in and can’t seem to sign in, and then can’t seem to get back to the REAL version of the site. Is this something that just isn’t up to speed yet?

With regards to ‘signing in’, it seems a little random to me. Sometimes after clicking around, or on a return visit, I’m prompted to sign in if I try to comment or something. Maybe it’s me and cookies (which I accept for Twitchfilm.net), or maybe it’s that I’m jumping around amongst development versions of the site. I don’t know, just thought I’d mention it. I do like, when I am prompted to sign in again, that it doesn’t jump me out to some log-in page. I really like the way this is implemented, just wish I didn’t have to use it so much.

btw - I’ll just mention that I do think the Home Page is a bit crowded and over/underwhelming but I’ve already figured out that I don’t need to use it. I think most regulars will figure that out as well, pretty quickly. So the Home Page is more important to new visitors, I think. If I were a new visitor to the site I don’t think I’d ever discover the sections at the bottom (Festivals & Videos), as I seldom scroll to the bottom of a new website just to see if there are goodies down there. As a regular, I like the way it is. A lot.

Finally, and perhaps strangely, I like the way the recent comments are stored in my edit profile page. Maybe it’s just that I can read them now—black text on white background fan, here. And clicking on someone’s handle lets me see their recent comments displayed all nicely. (I wish the Forums had more importance/interest here and look forward to a day when they might finally be integrated into the site as a whole, but maybe you guys don’t really want that.)

I think a lot of users will be linking directly to the “News” or “reviews” ‘sub-sites’ on a regular basis.

The ‘cluttered/dense’ mainsite is attempting to serve as a PORTAL more than anything else. 

The new site is a lot more customizable experience in that each user will likely be using it differently, compared to the old blog format which was at its limit in terms of resources etc.

(at least that is how I see it- I’ll admit, I’m still not used to it yet!!)

Yeah i solved my initial grumble with the new design by bookmarking the “news” page.
I’d prefer white text on dark background though, but that’s a small grumble.

sitenoise - September 7, 2009, 11:59am

When clicking on the “All News” submenu (or column header) does that include ALL news EXCEPT reviews?

Yep, that is all the news sorted by date posted - no reviews appear there.

While browsing the lovely All News page, if I click on one of the regions, Asia in this example, it takes me to what looks like a development version of the site and I’m all of a sudden not signed in and can’t seem to sign in, and then can’t seem to get back to the REAL version of the site. Is this something that just isn’t up to speed yet?

Great catch! Thank you!  Fixing this tomorrow.

Funny thing sitenoise ... with your bit on the recent comments being on the profile page, I think you’ve actually pointed out a feature that we didn’t know we were getting!  It’s always fascinating for me to hear how people are using the site and it really helps us find new capabilities and give new ideas for things we can do.  There’s a LOT more coming in the next wave!  Expect to see that Community menu expand dramatically!

And, yeah, still lots of little hiccups being ironed out.  We didn’t have the luxury of a beta period with this version because we were switching content systems, so any little problems encountered, PLEASE let us know!

And let me repeat what Ard said:  thank god for a decent search engine!  It’s the first time Twitch has EVER had one that actually worked as it should!

Came in here to make pretty similar comments to matbrady

I don’t like the new format because:

before, all you had to do was
- load a single page
- scroll
- read (mostly) full posts

now, you have to
- load the front page
- scan horizontal
- (scroll down, scan horizontal) n times
- click on anything that looks of interest to open it in a new tab
- open the news section if the updates since you’ve last visited go past the front page
- then click again on anything that looks of interest to read it in full

I don’t buy that the news section is essentially the same as the old format, because
- as has been pointed out, it doesn’t include reviews (and I’m thinking it won’t include twitch-o-meter and interviews, which makes scanning the front page necessary)
- you have to click to open any post in full, meaning I might have to click 5 times and have 6 tabs open instead of a single page
- minor, but there are less posts on one page of the news section than there were on the old site, meaning even more clicking if you want to catch up on a few days’ posts

my 2c

The one thing that bothers me the most right now is the ad on top of the site. The masthead is already quite big so the ad only pushes the content further downward. The whole top half of the screen is without content. I don’t mind the masthead pic as this is a movie site and it does add something to the experience (often bearing good tips based on interesting looking screens), but the ad just doesn’t fit. Currently it’s obscuring the second title of the news/review section, which are essential elements to make people scroll faster.

Another small functional problem lies with the flyout menu. When I want to go to the forum directly I have to wait for the whole page to load before the flyout starts working. Since Twitch pages are rather heavy this is somewhat of a bother.

I love Twitch.
I don’t like the new format.
At all.

And can someone please remove Justin Timberlake’s face from the main page already? (or whoever that is)

I’d like to see the NEWS page with equal sized entries, that is, even if the image is small, gimme some white space, white space is good.

I’m not sure about this (not having seen it that way) but something about the different sized entries based on image size seems sloppy ... or something.

I also wish you’d give a few more words, end the tease at a proper jump point rather than elipses-izing it after a random word count.

Just thinking out loud. I like the page, but not completely.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

Its so nice to see that their are others out there who also miss the OLD Twitch.

I hardly come to this site anymore but occasionally I pop back hoping to see a black screen with the easiest browsing interface of any site I’ve ever been to; but sadly no, that’s not the case.

And to be honest I don’t care how many times I hear it, I don’t give a poo about a search engine. I went to Twitch as least 3-4 times a day, I didn’t need to “search” for anything, I memorized everything I needed because this site use to be a big deal for me. Just because I can search easy doesn’t make my issues go away, the search option was the last thing I ever used anyways. When I need to “search” for something I go to Google. Ha to be honest I don’t think there’s any site that I ever use their search engine for.

:[

In my eyes poor Twitch is gone.

And it hurt me enough that I had to setup an account for these forums to let my thoughts be heard/read.

Goodbye ol’ Twitch. Hello generic run of the mill website with a good search engine.