The scroll-up animations at the bottom of the screen are really distracting, and to be honest, they encourage me not to linger on the site for very long.
Here's another vote against the article blocks "sliding" up as I scroll down the front page.
Also, the way the horizontal menu bar snaps together or splits apart when scrolling, making the page content jump up or down an inch or so, is really annoying. This has become common on websites, but what were they thinking? It's hard to read content when it jumps away from the spot where my eyes are looking, or jumps up behind the menu bar. In general, I'd rather just have the top menu scroll out of view when I scroll down, and I can return to the top of the page if needed. Keeping it visible at all times isn't worth the space it uses or the wonky content jumping effect it often creates.
And making everything larger just increases the need for scrolling, which in turn emphasizes these two problems.
Would you please, please remove that ridiculous ‘scroll on’ feature from the front page which keeps things moving after you have already scrolled down.
It makes AI‘s front page look like a Las Vegas slot machine - where you have to wait for the pictures to finally come to a stop. It’s so distracting that I just don’t want to look at the page anymore.
And what‘s with all that white space everywhere? What possible purpose does it serve other than to force us to scroll longer than we have to. Please remove it.
Look, I am sorry to say this, but the old version of your front page was much more user friendly and enjoyable to use than the new one. If you don’t fix these problems I fear you will lose a lot of readers.
i always come to ai first, but to be honest, it wasn't the most pleasurable visual experience. now, its modern and sleek and fun.
i have a suggestion: ai forums (users, content, posts) all lag behind a certain other site. forums are the way to retain and grow a following. i second any voices that are asking for a Sign In on the Home page itself. and then make it attractive, simple, and inviting to jump to a forum. make individual news stories have a better way to get to comment on that article's content.
lastly, sorry if i missed it, but i really would like a sign in (continue with) apple way for current and new users to sign in...
Given all the superlatives above, there are a couple of design behaviors that irritate me about the homepage layout, at least in Firefox:
Scrolling down from the top, the "snap" of the secondary menu into the top menu causes a jump in the scroll, farther down than expected, with the result that the first headline below is always partially obscured, unless you scroll back up and "unsnap" the menu... which reverses the jump. But it doesn't happen this way in Safari, so maybe the designers decided it was good enough for most web users.
(Applies to all browsers) When reading from my desktop, I prefer windows that are not fully maximized. As it happens, at a certain minimum width, the stock price is the first thing lost in the top menu re-scaling. But the stock price is always the first thing I check here. Grrr.
The more I use it, the more I notice certain things. Not trying to downplay the work done here, but I see areas to improve as a web designer/developer who is also a user.
I agree the slide-in behavior of the main stories is annoying. I also don't see the point of having a sidebar full of "other" articles AND sections interrupting the stories from today. Just keep all the related/top/whatever articles in the sidebar, or at the bottom of the page once you've passed all of today's articles. I can get past the header featured articles as that makes some sense at least. I just find the main headlines interruptions to be a mental speed bump.
Also, you have some responsive issues — check out these two screens from the same area of the home page, with only a few pixels difference in screen width, with different sections, comment link, giant whitespace area, all appearing/disappearing depending on the window being slightly wider or less so:
Please post any feedback and bug reports here so that we can keep things organized and easy to manage. If you have a bug report, please attach a screenshot of the issue along with the device you're using to better help us get a handle on it.
Thanks!
Hi, from a long-time Appleinsider reader, I have to say that the new design page scrolling behavior is appallingly bad. I use the PageUp and PageDn keys to scroll, and the visual effects are very disturbing. Even scrolling with the mouse in the elevator bad is no better.
There's no valid reason I could find for this change except that someone decided to look cute.
I wasn't unhappy with the scrolling as it only kicked in on my Android 9 device (Chrome) when I got through three complete page scrolls.
I just checked on the Mac (Firefox in this case) and the scrolling effect could be noticed immediately at the bottom of the screen as I started to scroll (MBP 13). The right side panel (which isn't there on mobile) was also scrolling in the same way but out of sync with the main panel.
I see why some people aren't fond of that.
So, for me:
Phone: no real issue with it as the effect kicks in later in scrolling.
iPad (Air 2): somewhat distracting as the effect kicks in at the very bottom of the page almost immediately.
Mac: more distracting as the effect kicks in quickly and runs out of sync with the same effect on the contents of the right side panel.
I suppose that if the scrolling effect doesn't really serve a purpose or could eventually be an irritating distraction, the global content 'presentation' of the main page will suffer as a result.
People who are upset about the scrolling -- are you mostly upset because of how it feels on desktop & ipad or do you also hate the behavior on phones?
I don't like it on the phone, either. The "slide up" doesn't feel as noticeable, but the "fade in" basically affects a whole screen full of content at once and creates a lag time before it can be read. So instead of scroll/read/scroll/read, the workflow is scroll/wait/read/scroll/wait/read.
One thing that's better about the phone interface, in portrait orientation, is that I can see 5-6 article headlines at once. On the desktop, in the window size I typically use (around 1100x800), I can only see 2-3 article headlines at once. It seems like the design was optimized for a portrait oriented phone screen and simply scaled up, so it doesn't use the space on a landscape oriented desktop window very well.
People who are upset about the scrolling -- are you mostly upset because of how it feels on desktop & ipad or do you also hate the behavior on phones?
It's needless eye candy no matter the platform.
Such behavior, and other flourishes like progressive infinite scrolling, isn't as distracting, or annoying, when a site does special feature stories and lets their designers loose for those occasions.
But for day-to-day use, where information is the priority, it's unnecessary, and frivolous.
Save it, and stuff like grey-on-white text for the short attention span crowd that favors appearance over content.
People who are upset about the scrolling -- are you mostly upset because of how it feels on desktop & ipad or do you also hate the behavior on phones?
I hate the scrolling behaviour on my iPhone. For me, it makes the AI site almost unusable - it is just so distracting and unnecessary. Can you explain why it was introduced?
It seems to cater to the 1% of people who prefer design gimmicks, rather than basic user friendliness and functionality.
I've TRIED to like the re-design I really have...but at the end of the day, the smooth scrolling and ALL l the Ads, I just can't take it any more. Unless there is a way to view the site in 'old mode', I guess I'll head over to Mac Rumors, my previously 2nd source for Mac news.
People who are upset about the scrolling -- are you mostly upset because of how it feels on desktop & ipad or do you also hate the behavior on phones?
It's not as bad on phones, but i still prefer without it. It's form over function. Make the function as smooth as possible and then make it as pretty as you can without affecting function. I only ever read AI on desktop, though.
There was a global pandemic, and everyone was in quarantine mode. Oh, and Appleinsider redesigned their website.
I was on my iMac, and I thought I'd hit the wrong bookmark. Boom! There were so many images, so much color, and all these bold headlines. I didn't know where to focus. There was a top story and featured stories. And a busy sidebar with rumors, comparisons, videos, reviews and tips. In addition to the latest news articles, there were featured topics of the week, a featured deal, and featured product review videos. Not to mention ads. Like a facemask ad, FOUR times on the page: at the top and bottom, and twice on the sidebar. I had a nightmare about the masks later.
Yes, I know it's a responsive site, and the organization of the desktop page is directly related to how it reconfigures when viewed on smaller screens. And on smaller screens, it works quite well. But the desktop page scared me. So I woke up. Except I didn't, and I can't.
Comments
Do you really need to have all those moving parts when scrolling?
Also, the way the horizontal menu bar snaps together or splits apart when scrolling, making the page content jump up or down an inch or so, is really annoying. This has become common on websites, but what were they thinking? It's hard to read content when it jumps away from the spot where my eyes are looking, or jumps up behind the menu bar. In general, I'd rather just have the top menu scroll out of view when I scroll down, and I can return to the top of the page if needed. Keeping it visible at all times isn't worth the space it uses or the wonky content jumping effect it often creates.
And making everything larger just increases the need for scrolling, which in turn emphasizes these two problems.
i always come to ai first, but to be honest, it wasn't the most pleasurable visual experience.
now, its modern and sleek and fun.
i have a suggestion:
ai forums (users, content, posts) all lag behind a certain other site.
forums are the way to retain and grow a following.
i second any voices that are asking for a Sign In on the Home page itself.
and then make it attractive, simple, and inviting to jump to a forum.
make individual news stories have a better way to get to comment on that article's content.
lastly, sorry if i missed it, but i really would like a sign in (continue with) apple way for current and new users to sign in...
thanks
I agree the slide-in behavior of the main stories is annoying. I also don't see the point of having a sidebar full of "other" articles AND sections interrupting the stories from today. Just keep all the related/top/whatever articles in the sidebar, or at the bottom of the page once you've passed all of today's articles. I can get past the header featured articles as that makes some sense at least. I just find the main headlines interruptions to be a mental speed bump.
Also, you have some responsive issues — check out these two screens from the same area of the home page, with only a few pixels difference in screen width, with different sections, comment link, giant whitespace area, all appearing/disappearing depending on the window being slightly wider or less so:
BUT, on my iPad Pro 11”, iOS 13.4.1, using Safari, Chrome and Brave browsers,…
There’s no APPL stock ticker in the upper right hand corner. It’s there in Mac OS X.
Please bring it back! (see image)
iOS 13.4.1 Safari
Mac OS X 10.14.6 Safari
There's no valid reason I could find for this change except that someone decided to look cute.
Please revert to "normal" scrolling behavior.
I just checked on the Mac (Firefox in this case) and the scrolling effect could be noticed immediately at the bottom of the screen as I started to scroll (MBP 13). The right side panel (which isn't there on mobile) was also scrolling in the same way but out of sync with the main panel.
I see why some people aren't fond of that.
So, for me:
Phone: no real issue with it as the effect kicks in later in scrolling.
iPad (Air 2): somewhat distracting as the effect kicks in at the very bottom of the page almost immediately.
Mac: more distracting as the effect kicks in quickly and runs out of sync with the same effect on the contents of the right side panel.
I suppose that if the scrolling effect doesn't really serve a purpose or could eventually be an irritating distraction, the global content 'presentation' of the main page will suffer as a result.
One thing that's better about the phone interface, in portrait orientation, is that I can see 5-6 article headlines at once. On the desktop, in the window size I typically use (around 1100x800), I can only see 2-3 article headlines at once. It seems like the design was optimized for a portrait oriented phone screen and simply scaled up, so it doesn't use the space on a landscape oriented desktop window very well.
I had a nightmare.
I was on my iMac, and I thought I'd hit the wrong bookmark. Boom! There were so many images, so much color, and all these bold headlines. I didn't know where to focus. There was a top story and featured stories. And a busy sidebar with rumors, comparisons, videos, reviews and tips. In addition to the latest news articles, there were featured topics of the week, a featured deal, and featured product review videos. Not to mention ads. Like a facemask ad, FOUR times on the page: at the top and bottom, and twice on the sidebar. I had a nightmare about the masks later.
Yes, I know it's a responsive site, and the organization of the desktop page is directly related to how it reconfigures when viewed on smaller screens. And on smaller screens, it works quite well. But the desktop page scared me. So I woke up. Except I didn't, and I can't.