Thoughts on the redesign? I’m not sure how I feel about it yet but I didn’t particularly like the old design so I don’t mind something new. It looks a lot more conventional now, similar to major news outlets like The New York Times, Reuters, Associated Press, etc.
It is interesting, as SMH is headed down the same path as news.com.au (at least for A Sydney centric news site) focussing on sport, celebrity goss and locking news behind paywalls and cookies… I am guessing this hasn’t worked out too well for them
MHLoppy@fedia.io 4 months ago
Hm. It's obviously a more modern design, and I guess the increased focus on categories makes it easier to read news relevant to said category. The redundancy of some sections (e.g. 2x Sport sections with basically the same content) is a bit frustrating since it feels like wasted space - as though the content was forced into the layout, rather than the layout properly supporting the content (though sometimes compromise is inevitable, so eh).
I do miss a couple of things in the old design, which I doubt will be making a comeback:
As a contrast, comparing this to SBS' news page (on desktop) and they have a 2x2 for the big stories at the top, but then multiple single-columns for each category, with a clear visual anchor using the heading + image combo keeping each category visually distinct. I find that much easier to quickly skim through to find news that interests me. In this new design I feel like I'm spending a lot more time just moving between things I want to look at, rather than actually looking at them. I'd guess partly this is a side effect of the probably-more-mobile-friendly design, which is a bummer for me because I read on a PC far more often than on a phone ):