You might notice that 9to5Mac has changed. Indeed so has the whole network. Long before the page size/speed and advertising controversies, we knew that we needed to rethink how we presented ourselves.
While we were one of the lightest and fastest sites in our field, our feature creep and advertisers were adding complexity and page load times, which is especially crucial on mobile – an ever expanding percentage of our growing audience.
We decided to start over…
You are VIPs (so we are VIP)
One thing we’ve loved for years is our hosting provider: We’re hosted on WordPress’s own top-tier VIP. That means we have tons of global redundancy and speed, the latest WordPress code free from hacks and exploits, and the smartest backend help around. VIP is the same platform and servers that Bloomberg, NFL, NBC, Time, NYPost, CNN, Quartz, Fortune and many of the world’s top websites use.
VIP obviously costs a lot of money, which is why we’re the only Apple site that puts this much of our resources into our hosting. What this buys us (and you) is:
- The fastest page loads around the world
- Outages/slowdowns almost unheard of even during huge events
- Unparalleled safety and security
VIP is worth it. You are worth it.
We’re also proud to work with 10up, who executed strategy, design, development, and ad integration for our latest iteration. We’ve been one of 10up’s earliest clients, since Jake Goldman started the agency on his own in 2011. 10up has grown to over a hundred employees, and it services the same top-tier class of clients. The fact that we’ve grown alongside 10up says a lot about both of our organizations.
What’s new? Everything (else).
We started with a clean slate and questioned everything on the site. If it wasn’t integral to the experience, it’s gone. If it’s important, we cleaned it up and made it better.
We’ve killed the tag lines on our logos. We’ve killed the right sidebar because it prevented us from doing full width imagery, media, and writing, and it wasn’t great for mobile. We’ve cleaned up search, social, tags, and category placement. Our new fonts are fresh and more readable across a wide variety of devices. The front page scrolls ‘infinitely’ with date and stock price line dividers while article pages load up relevant stories to continue to read. “Asides”, our coverage of niche stories with a one line title, now have images and will open up in-line.
The focus is on beauty and usability across all platforms. From iPhone to iMac and everything in between. We love it and hope you do too.
Ads (ugh)
Ads are a particularly painful part of my life, and I could and probably will write a book on the what/whys/hows etc. The bottom line is that banner ads currently are a very necessary evil, but we use DoubleClick for Publishers and Ad Exchange, which are industry standards for speed, reliability, and quality.
The good news is that with the sidebar gone, there are fewer ads, and ads only appear between every two posts on the front page. Ads will only load up as you scroll. That makes the page itself quicker and uses much less data than loading up the front page full of ads right away.
More importantly, we are also experimenting with sponsored posts/native ads that clear the house ads for the day (Get in Touch!). In a perfect world, we’d do one of these a day, every day, all year.
New Site! (Electrek.co)
The news that Apple and Google are working on electric cars and building huge solar farms is recent, but we’ve been covering the “post fossil fuel” transportation industry for two years on Electrek.co (a hobby!). With new writers Fred Lambert and Jon Jivan, we’re now going full time. Subscribe on RSS, Twitter, Facebook or Google Plus
[tweet https://twitter.com/llsethj/status/402446541031755776 align=’center’]
I believe we’re in the early stages of a huge transition away from fossil fuel. Coal and natural gas are being replaced by wind and solar power. We’re at a tipping point with electric cars where they are starting to cost less to use than gas (even at reduced prices). That’s before climate change action by people and governments kick in.
We’ll be documenting it all.
Expect full coverage every day of:
- Electric cars from Tesla and other automakers
- Autonomous driving
- Electric boats, planes, trains, bikes, skateboards, and any other means of transportation out there
- Wind and hydro power
- Hobby to large scale solar and sustainable living
Enjoy! (and what’s next)
As always, we very much appreciate your comments and feedback. We know there will be some “cheese moved” and missing, damaged, or broken stuff. We’re currently hard at work making everything perfect. Please, play around and help us find issues.
While this is a huge step for us, we’re already working on some new video and podcast ideas, building out the community sites for general use, improving comments and even finishing a few apps by our own Benjamin Mayo. We’re now over 20 international writers network-wide as well as a whole back office full of folks dedicated to bringing you the latest news, information, and entertainment about the technology you love.
Thanks so much.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Wow , looks beautiful!
Congratz!!
NOOO take it back!! This new layout is very cumbersome.. Please dont mess up 9to5 google and 9to5 toys the same way. Is there a way to choose the previous layout on the client side?
Give it a few days. The cheese was moved. You’ll wonder how you ever tolerated the old version
I left TUAW and started reading 9to5 when they destroyed their layout. Where is that site now? I won’t be staying with 9to5 much longer if something isn’t done to fix this layout. I’m not asking for it to go back to the way it was, but the current design is horribly broken and ill-conceived for anything but a narrow (and tall) mobile phone display.
You changed this on electrek WEEKS ago! And it still feels just as cumbersome and hard to use as before. :( Have you looked at this website on a 27″ display? And on mobile you take up a 3rd of the screen PERMANENTLY with information that we don’t need to see at all times.
You still have soo many bugs on these pages :( And whoever designed this was drunk. Visually it is really bad (so much blue, so little white space, so much visual clutter). From a UX point of view, it gets worse… lines of text that are longer than ~75 get very hard to read for users. You have so many repeating elements (displaying at once) on the page. And you have things in places no user will ever expect (or be able to find them when they look for them).
10p are a very average design agency (and this is not one of their best works at all). :(
– a UX & UI designer with half a brain
I gave it a few seconds. Awesome!
This new layout is beautiful. You guys did great work. 9to5Mac is continuing to be the best Apple new site around, not only in content, but in looks as well.
Guys. At first glance, the new website looks cool.
But another thing I noticed at first glance is the Apple Stocks percentage on the top right corner of my iPhone display. It’s sotting there all the time as if it were as important as a sick person’s heart rate.
Guys, I love Apple and their products but I do not need to be kept up2date with Apple Stock 24/7.
Please remove that number, it’s spam.
Don’t look at the top right corner then. Heed your eyes from the terrible “spam”.
Look great.
However, there’s still no edit function on comments. What a shame. You just changed a theme.
These are still native WordPress comments, we never changed that. They don’t have that function. https://en.support.wordpress.com/comments/
well then use a different comment system that doesn’t suck ass.
We’ve tried the others. We used non-native for a long time. We had problems with them and we went back to native with our last redesign.
Mike, use Disquss as I advised. I could not even reply to your reply. Plus, there’s a glitch with this theme. When I click to expand the full post, it doesn’t open. It changes the url in the address bar but it doesn’t open, I need to refresh it manually. Very frustrating. Also, I don’t like website that take so much pace with static header and websites that take up your whole screen with just one picture. This needs so much tuning guys. Good luck.
Excellent!
Thanks. ITt should settle down and be usable shortly :D
wait, what?? i checked this this AM and am seeing this now…some folks saw it 14 hours ago??
It takes some time during update for the timestamps to sync
Time difference isn’t taken into account. I’ve just posted from the UK and it’s showing I posted 14 hrs ago.
I’m not crazy about it.
You killed the internal wordpress feedback (it made you look anemic I guess as most of your readers don’t have wordpress accounts).
You really ought to use DISQUS for comments, the current comment template isn’t great.
I agree with another commenter here, stock price on the header is a distraction.
Getting to comments via a button at the top seems awkward, I liked it better when one could scroll to the bottom of an article and have the comments there. Now there is no single article view at all, scroll and you’re in a new article.
Great content, the design still needs work.
There is a single article view. If you click any external links or otherwise directly navigate to an article (which is the vast majority) you will land on the single article. If you do this, as well, you will be able to simply scroll down to add a comment. No clicking needed.
Right Stephen and I generally get to articles via Reeder so this works for me, but if I click on an article title I’m not getting that and in my experience that’s the assumed navigation in wordpress and other CMSs when clicking on an article title.
It’s same for me rwanderman. And the comment system is the worst.
+1 (https://disqus.com/admin/wordpress/)
Its definitely do-able, I’ve sent to many messages to Seth and Mike over last month, its just bad they don’t appreciate user feedback :-(
I like the re-design, i just HATE the commenting system on wordpress.
We certainly appreciate the feedback. There are a lot of difference things involved with the comments and we obviously can’t accommodate every user request.
Many users send them this request and they probably just ignore it and now made the website even worse. I like to read here but now you made it more difficult.
Hi,
The new site looks great and kudos to the team! Just few suggestions.
1.The comment section has a turquoise shade which almost matches the font color on the names making it very difficult to read.
2. The 9to5 logo and the entire top bar stays frozen while scrolling down, using up a good chunk of vertical space obstructing the content. Either reduce its height or don’t keep it frozen.
Thanks!
I agree, the shaded comment section lowers contrast and makes it tough to read.
I also agree on pinning the logo/header. It should be unpinned, especially for those reading the site on smaller (new MacBook) screens.
I agree, comments are hard to read.
First feel is that the font is also slightly to small on my computer, however on my iPod the font was perfect.
Formatting is all off here on Firefox. Lots of pictures on top of text and just weird ill placement of stuff where you can’t read what is underneath.
Could be caching issues, but things are also still being switched on behind the scenes, so it might be a bit wonky until all of that gets done. If you’re still seeing problems in a few hours even after clearing your cache, let us know and we’ll see what’s up!
I was just on here 10 minutes ago (or so) come back to read something and you moved my cheese?!?!?!?!
It’s a nice but too wide or big or something. I dunno.
I had the same feeling at first, but I have been using it for a few weeks now (Electrek had the beta since a few weeks) and I can tell you – you get use to the aesthetic fast. Now I much prefer this design.
If you think this is wide you should see the first iteration we tested haha.
But I can only see one article at a time! I see a HUGE image and the title and thats it. I HATE that. I am on a cinema display in full screen if that helps.
I agree…if I have my browser fullscreen the images are way too big. They should have a maximum width.
Agree, the images are way too big.
They cover the entire screen in full screen mode and I can only see the image and maybe a little of the heading.
My personal taste is to get overview of what is there and if I want to see only a image on my screen I open an image.
Most websites with news and articles are completely different with lots of small images which I like. I read 9to5mac and love it for the articles not the layout.
There is potential in this layout I think, but please don’t go to cool on the layout and focus also on the ergonomics of it.
Agreed to you guys.
It looks amazing!
Did you guys test the site on a 27″ monitor??? Your top images take over the entire screen. Your actual content not viewable. Bad UX!
Agree. Not good for large screens :(
You need to read:
http://baymard.com/blog/line-length-readability
Looks great, runs even better.
It’s awful I can’t see anything here
So amazing…love the layout! Gratz!
You guys need to set some max-width’s to your content. Responsive websites are great, but you need to set limits so certain pictures and divs don’t get ridiculously large on some screens.
Sorry, I don’t like it. I think it looks messy… especially the huge adverts everywhere :(
Not sure what platform your viewing it from? Possibly a BlackBerry? Couldn’t see any other way you’d feel that way???????
Talk about jumping to conclusions… I’m viewing the site from Safari on my MacBook Pro. It’s the same from Chrome on my work PC.
Not a fan.
1. Looks weird in a large browser window.
2. I don’t view websites on my tiny little phone screen.
3. Looks like every other new website design.
4. My personal preference is for something similar to http://www.theinquirer.net/type/news with lots of info in a small space.
“I don’t view websites on my tiny little phone screen.”
For better or worse, you’re statistically the minority – and increasingly so. That said, we’re certainly going to continue iterating on the larger version.
The only thing constant is change…..so while it will take a few visits to get used to I welcome the new
Am I missing the RSS link? I have the main 9to5Mac in my Feedbin account, but I wanted to add Electrk.co and can’t find a link or button for that.
Don’t know if there’s a button for it somewhere (don’t personally use RSS myself) but all wordpress sites have the feed located at the same URL. Try adding 9to5mac.com/feed and that should do the trick.
The site looks awesome! Better reading experience. :)
Not too crazy about the new layout. I used to be able to see 1.5 to 2 articles on the initial load, without touching my mouse. Now I can’t even see the full photo on a 24 inch monitor, let alone read anything but the title. The long line length takes some getting used to, I find myself having to turn my head as I read from left to right. Also noting a bug in the comment field; the placeholder text doesn’t go away as you type the email and name fields.
Good job Seth and team! Moving things forward, congrats
Sorry but not a fan, the font isn’t very readable and the page looks like a mobile website that’s loaded on my desktop – things are too big for it all to fit comfortably on one page. The font is too thin and the hyperlinks are too light. I am all for an upgrade, but this wasn’t a total win for me :/
Also, the font is a hair too small in size, not only thickness.
Agree
You hit the nail on the head. The site displays like it’s tailored exclusively for mobile – it requires a tall and narrow screen. Shrinking the browser window to a sliver on my 27″ display makes the site look half decent. But expanding it to even half the width of the display looks terrible. The wider it goes, the worse it looks.
Agree with this.
Have tried the site on several devices and browsers.
The typography (font, line length, colour, etc) makes
the site incredibly hard to read (without using Reader).
http://practicaltypography.com/line-length.html
Articles refuse to load as single articles on one page:
infinite scroll just loads the next article.
The link colour, especially on the pale-blue background,
almost disappears.
Perhaps the site looks different to other users.
So I’ll be yet another party pooper here. Yes, the look is updated and fresh. But the HHHHHHUUUUUUGGGGGGEEEEEE images are horrible for usability and readability. If you want to have one as a feature image on your home page, that’s fine. But EVERY post? That’s a usability killer.
People like to scan pages. The images are visual deserts that force more scrolling and add a bit more cognitive load. The prior layout was easier to scan and required less scrolling. A LOT less. I encourage you to watch your metrics and compare to the previous site. Your mileage may vary and the results actually improve — it can happen.
I don’t fault you for wanting to make a change. I’m curious to know how extensively this was tested (and not just ‘looked at’) by actual users. But while there’s a lot to like here, the ultra wide images do not enable your readers to easily find and follow the happy path you intend for them to follow.
Why is it that I can only see one friggin article at a time! Its very pretty. But its also very non-functional. You guys are going to wear out my scroll wheel/touch-pad.
Try the “Comments” button – that links out to a single view. We’ll take your feedback into consideration as we iterate and improve upon the new baseline in the coming months!
Good job! Loving the mobile site + iPad web view.
You think *this* looks nice? http://i.imgur.com/GGNMUEj.png
Some older posts that weren’t published with this design in mind obviously won’t conform perfectly to it. We’re going back to adjust some manually as we find issues.
A few suggestions:
1. The sticky header is way too large. You should shrink it when it starts to scroll.
2. The cover image for the articles is also way too large. They cover the entire vertical space on my 15 inch MBP. One typically wants to be able to read both the header and at least the first line of the article’s body or preamble.
3. Inconsistent alignment. The inline cross-site feeds are aligned to the far left of the page, while the articles are using a centered 960 grid.
1. It does shrink as you scroll – we’ll look at how it makes sense to tune it further.
2. Maximizing your browser to your full screen on a high res 15″ screen makes for a suboptimal reading experience, in general, IMHO. We have to strive a balance between wide and tall viewports and optimal image sizes; I think we found the right balance, but we’ll experiment and tune further.
3. Grids are guidelines, not hard and fast rules. Breaking the grid judiciously for things like news tickers can make sense, so long as they’re individually readable.
Thanks for the feedback!
No Jake :( you did not find the right balance. You don’t even have to find the balance… that’s why you have media queries! Adjust the layout as the viewport requires it!
So basically you’re saying that you shouldn’t be reading a site in that way so we’re not going to design a site that works well in that way?
I first viewed this last night on my 13″ rMBP and the line-length was hideous, on my Cinema Display this morning it’s even worse. I don’t comment on sites like this, and as a designer I try not to be harsh on others who have worked hard at something, but the site is so unusable now I feel compelled to feedback. There is no sense of rhythm to the home page it’s overwhelming and is just a barrage of images with a lack of white space to guide the eye. The line length is so long it’s hard to read the content, something which has been brought up in the comments but that no one seems willing to acknowledge. The most important content on the site is the words of the articles, yet it seems like the images are more important and making the site readable is low priority.
So, I scrolled to the bottom of the page expecting to be able to click through to older stories. But there is no link.
How do I navigate beyond the stories that load on the front page?
Not a fan of the wide format on a 27″ iMac. Better to set a max width.
In the log in fields below, the prompt for what goes in the field doesn’t go away when I start to type my name or email.
I don’t want t to log in using twitter, Facebook or WordPress. How do I simply register as a user and log in with the good ol’ registered account? All those methods use my full name!! But I guess I have to in order to register the dislike here.
All of the stories load on the front page. As you scroll, it loads more stories. If you want to jump directly to a specific page you can go to 9to5mac.com/page/2 or whatever page number you want, but if you’re just getting here to see what’s new in the morning, continuing to scroll past the bottom of the page will load up a new batch of stories.
The width issue is something we’re taking into consideration, we’ve gotten a lot of feedback on that and we appreciate it.
The login window thing appears to be a bug, we’ll see about getting that fixed. Thanks for the report.
As for logging in, we use the native WordPress comments system and have been for a long time now. I’m not sure how else you’d be able to login, or what you mean by “registered account,” other than the existing registered WordPress accounts. Only Facebook requires you to use your real name, so you can login with Twitter or WordPress to use whatever name you want.
The front page does not keep scrolling to new stories. It stops. No way to access older stories.
When I comment on the Mac Rumors site, I have registered as a user on their site. I picked my user name (I really don’t like having to use my full name) and I picked a password specific to my account there. That’s what I mean by “registered account.” Check out your competitor’s more user friendly login methodology. As well their site is so easy navigated and readable.
Since my user name on WordPress and on Twitter is my name, then logging in using those methods again posts using my real name.
I don’t mean to be harsh, but really, this site is going downhill and rather than wonder what I mean by “registered account” you could perhaps use some imagination.
The front page is supposed to scroll, if it’s not, that’s a bug. As for the username thing, you can sign up a fake Twitter or WordPress account to use whatever name you’d like. The fact of the matter is WordPress accounts are considered “registered accounts” on WordPress sites. When you create a WordPress account, that’s basically the same thing you’re talking about.
I’m liking it kinda. I agree that we don’t need the apple ticker. Please remove that b/c the constant stock ticker is annoying and in the way. Also, there should be a comment collapse section. To explain, once I expand the comment section, I cant go back. It’s like it’s stuck on that page and I can only go forward. Hope that makes sense.
Overall, I like it, but there’s some cleanup issues. I’m sure you’ll be addressing them.
Thanks for the feedback.
Comments is on our radar for further improvement.
I’m not sure how the stock ticker is in the way, since the “date bar” is going to be take up that real estate anyways. You might find it more “neat” once a few more days go by – it will be tracking it day over day (starting at launch), so you can see the trend as you scroll through the news.
@bpmajesty – Regarding your comments question, clicking “comments” takes you to an individual post page rather than expanding them in place. Just hit the back button in your browser to get back to the home page.
Keep a close eye on your visitors and bounce rates over the next few weeks. I’ll give you guys another week to fix the layout, then 9to5 has to be removed from my favorites and it’s doubtful I’ll be back with any frequency. The site just isn’t usable on my 17″ MBP’s internal screen nor my 27″ display at as little as half the screen width, let alone 3/4.
If you don’t believe a redesign can kill a site, then you may learn something new.
Seems as if the stock ticker and comments concern have both been cleaned up. I’ve been using the site a lot lately. Also, the iOS 9 beta News app is almost a contact go to for me. Just an FYI.
So your mobile page has a few bugs that need to be worked out. The apple stock price is white and so are the rest of the pages. its a waste to have it follow while scrolling. Get rid of it. The today tab that follows when scrolling covers up items. Get rid of that too. And whats up with the size of the ads? They cover half of the page, literally. The comments were better off at the bottom of the story, not right under the heading/picture. Sorry to say, I don’t like the new format. It seems like you rushed it, didn’t put much thought into it and didn’t test it out at all.
I think you’re seeing a whole bunch of problems that aren’t actually supposed to be like that. The “Today” tab is the timestamp for the post, so I’m not sure why you’d want to that removed, and the stock price doesn’t take up any extra space. The ads shouldn’t be taking up that much room. Some large ones are loading for me as well, but that’s not supposed to happen. The regular size is smaller. It’s been added to our list of bugs.
Comments are at the bottom of the story for me, which is where they’re supposed to be. If you’re seeing them elsewhere, it’s a bug. Might just be due to the rollout today causing issues, but if you’re still seeing it like that in a few hours or tomorrow morning, shoot us an email with your browser info and we’ll see what’s up.
A lot of testing did go into the design, but it was in a separate staging version of the website that didn’t have all the same content as the public version (which would be difficult/impossible to reproduce in staging) but obviously there are going to be bugs with any first version of a new design. Rest assured that we’re keeping track of these issues and hope to get them worked out quickly.
Mike, if you have to explain or make excuses for a design, it’s already failed.
I’m not “explaining or making excuses” for the design, Bruno. I’m letting Lee know that what he’s seeing are bugs that will obviously be ironed out.
Seeing a lot of improvements today. Looking good now.
After spending some time on the front page, I hate it.
I agree with others, the HUGE images are a real distraction. I want to get to the news. I want to be able to se at least 2 stories at a time in one window. I have to scroll down past the headline to the image (wait, what was the headline again?) scroll back up. Read headline, scroll down to image. Scroll down again past HUGE image to get to first part of article, only get a very small intro to the article. Then completely skip the text in the colored bars (they must be after thoughts and not really important and the font sucks) None of the text is compelling and I have to read it 2 times over to get the gist of what the link may lead to. Again, skip past the jumble and on to the next headline and HUGE obnoxious picture………
Yes, I really don’t like the new page layout. Compared to one of your competitors, I was using you both 50/50. If this layout continues, I will rarely visit here as it is just too much work to get the news I want.
Additional issues, this time with the Mac version. I’m running a 27 inch mac and the pictures are very distorted. As I scroll down to the bottom, it stops with today. How do we see previous posts?
Wow; nicely done folks…great improvements!!!
Very cool! Everything is so BIG!!!
Looks nice does not function well. Very glitchy and lots of ads. More like between every article. Love coming here. Been reading for years now.
Did someone forget to write a template for desktops? Going mobile first is fine, but going mobile only spreads it out too much for the desktop experience.
Looks great so far! Although I’m finding the main body text a bit thin/light on my Galaxy Note 4. Wouldn’t mind seeing them a bit bolder
And you didn’t switch to Disqus comments? Very sad you guys are so stubborn on this as WP comments sucks.
We used to use Disqus and that also sucked. All comment systems suck :(
Oh please. WordPress comments is slow, clunky, buggy. and seems to randomly at least once a month log one out for no reason (I comment daily). For a user Discus is far better than WordPress comments: it’s editable, very fast, virtually bug free and it’s everywhere. It’s an order of magnitude better than WordPress comments. After that everything about MacRumors design and comments system is the next best thing. I’m sure you guys worked hard on the new layout but honestly I think I’m going to take a break from the site. The new layout is one of those things I know I won’t get used to.
Mike, not true. Disqus system is far the best commenting system out there. You can comment on multiple websites with one profile, you can go to your profile on their websites and see all of your comments across the Internet and replies to them, you can reply to reply to reply …. and most importantly, you can edit your comment in case you make a typo or so.
I’m not a fan, sorry guys! Obviously I’m just gone guy though and I hope your stats improve, I’d hate for all of this great content to disappear!
My main problem is the huge images with small amounts of content underneath.
Some other feedback FWIW:
– Stocks don’t need to be front and center all of the time
– Switch to fixed header feels clunky
– The red and green sections for site links feel really out of place and for me, are entirely unnecessary
– Theadding above images feels off
– On mobile the line-height of the titles forces the text to overlap
– I much preferred the ads how they were, they feel incredibly intrusive and too frequent now – especially on mobile
– Comments threads now feel harder to follow
To fix most of my gripes I’ve created a quick user stylesheet:
https://userstyles.org/styles/117136/9to5mac-jul-2015 which I apply with the “Stylish” plugin.
I’ll be working on it for different resolutions throughout the day.
Just added a few updates. Relief!
http://imgur.com/eGWZ4bV
I don’t know if it is intentional but the desktop version I’m seeing looks more like a mobile version. Yuck!
The layout is fine, but the huge images are horrible. Having to keep scrolling to get past them and then stop to read the next story rather than just slowly scrolling down through the stories is a real hinder, and don’t think I’d be able to stick doing it for long.
The layout of the main site (non-expended stories) is horrible. Honestly. This from someone with a few decades of design experience. The way the photos expand to full width and the text narrowed on center causes one’s vision to try and expand and contract as the page scrolls – it’s tiring on the eyes to put it mildly.
If you want to make things BIGGER, be a little more subtle. Take a look at what Engadget has recently done. Tasteful and it works. Whatever you do, don’t look to The Verge for inspiration, that site is basically a screen covered in vomit, totally disorganized – they took a coupon/flyer as their inspiration.
Overall it looks amazing! But, if I may nitpick, the font is really too thin to be readable, at least in Chrome on Windows.
Check it: http://i.imgur.com/iXim9cG.png
That definitely looks different from my Mac running Safari. I believe there are some font improvements being investigated now that should hopefully solve this.
The type is very small now, but small to the point of unreadable on the iPhone 6. I think I will have to stop using this site, sadly.
Font size is way too small, very hard for me to read on an iPhone 6. Your default link color, the light blue on white? The low contrast on the links makes them harder to read than the body text.
Seriously, you should have done some usability testing on the site before you spent all this time and money on development.
I read this site 95% of the time on my phone. I just checked out the site on my desktop. It’s 10x worse. Almost all the complaints on here are true.
The massive image between the title and the body copy totally disconnect them from each other. Users will forget the article title by the time they get past the huge picture. I’m not kidding. You can’t see the title and the body copy at the same time. How is this helpful or usable in anyway??
I couldn’t even post from the desktop site. After I signed in with my account the site said it was logged in but as soon as I tried to post a comment that said I wasn’t logged in. I had to go back to my iPhone to get this to post.
I came here as a news source… this is crap. You have lost me as viewer with this non sense
I expect they’ll be losing a lot of readers. TUAW destroyed itself with its redesign, now it’s barely a memory.
Honestly, I miss the sidebar. Call me an old-fashioned web developer, but the ability for me to look to the side to see specific material (such as the partner sites that are now buried up above the header, hidden once you start scrolling down) is sacrosanct. Users like those sidebars.
Suggestion: bring it back as a right-side dropdown from the Today bar.
Great work, as beautiful as it is functional.
One suggestion: put the stock info in the date indicator/separator bar, so it doesn’t cover the content on small displays.
The stock info is inside the date bar for me, are you seeing something different?
Yeah the stock header isn’t right: http://imgur.com/kF2Qthr
That’s a bug.
Yessir, that is not how that’s supposed to be. Will likely resovle itself over the next day or so, hopefully. Seems to just be a weird cached bit of something.
Love it. It looks fantastic and the iPad, iPhone XP is hundreds of times better! Also love the way you did expanded stories it’ll keep me from having to open every article in a new tab.
Way better generally, but Infinite Scroll? Turn that shit off. It’s a garbage idea that serves no benefit to anyone.
Agreed. http://xkcd.com/1309/
Great redesign, but
on a 5K 27″ iMac the only way to make the new site readable, without having pixelated images covering half the screen is to add these 2 lines into the css for body: max-width: 1000px; margin: 0 auto;
I’m clapping along.
I’ve only checked the site out on my iPhone. I’m so glad that you can now directly expand articles without loading an entirely new page. It’s quick and easy and doesn’t is go to shave a heap of time reading everything.
I’m not sure about the light blue contrasting against the comments. That being said, I’m not pleased with WordPress anyways.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with the static stock bar, it’s probably the fact that it’s a solid black colour that’s distracting.
Good work guys :)
Sorry, I know you must have put a lot of work into it but it feels like the mobile version of your site is loading on the desktop. I don’t like it.
If it’s not impossible to make one layout work well on both mobile and the desktop, certainly no one has yet been able to do it, not even Apple. This is exactly as you’ve mentioned, a rather plain mobile site that’s being served to desktop browsers. Ridiculous.
I think your team lost it on this one.
This clearly did not go through a few rounds of beta testing to make sure things are actually readable and render properly across everyday devices.
Your site has absolutely no identity. It just looks like some generic tablet template, that just happens to say 9to5 on it.
Absolutely HUGE images to the point there is no content visible on desktop and mobile. Seriously, FULL SCREEN images?! So much for data savings and loading faster.
You want to be a new site. Visit your own site. Where’s the news? Below the fold?! You have got to be kidding me.
On mobile, stuck with stupid generic menu button.
Sidebar gone. So much for additional navigation and information.
Static top bar taking up a chunk of screen space.
Two ads within articles … even though you said there’d only be one ad between articles.
Font is way too thin.
Comments are edge to edge?!
…
So incredibly sad to see another tech site go the ultra minimal, ultra thin, bland & generic and actually stupid route, because you don’t even have content up front any more.
Two thumbs down. Sorry.
Lovin the new design! Enjoy reading these posts daily!
New layout looks great! Another benefit is that your site is tracker free.
Lol looks so bad, mobile version is even worse. Massive fan of the 9to5mac stories. Horrible Layout, there’s a reason why other companies dont use a layout like that on the homepage.
Mobile version is incredibly bloated, compared to the desktop version which I browsed using my mobile which was perfect.
Wow great Job! Love it!
I love your site so much that I wouldn’t ever leave, but, I agree the layout is a bit crazy. You can only see title and image. you can’t see multiple articles, expand to viet and then click to comment and all the scrolling it takes to get to an article just means more work to get the info. Not a lot of work, just more. What that means to me is: A site that I typically pull up when I am waiting on a call, doctors office, sitting in a un Uber, in a boring meeting, etc, isn’t as quick to glance through, or browse. It requires too much interaction for getting informed. Don’t be discouraged, just be open to changing the changes you want us to view as positive changes, so that the change has been a changed for the better and not just changed for the sake of a change.
I’m all for change [ Tick ] and the new design is sweeet [ Tick ] and I am an avid Apple fan [ Tick ] BUT I am forced to view the site at work on a PC using Chrome and the font looks very faint. Do I need to download the font? Or will it just never look good on a PC?
The font on Chrome+Windows looks very different from the Mac+Safari version. I’m guessing Windows doesn’t have exactly the right font so it’s substituting something else. We’re looking into the feedback on the font now to figure out any potential improvements. I’m adding a note about the Windows thing as well.
It’s really beautiful, but it would be nice to have a “top” button floating on the corner, as you scroll down
It looks clean, sleek, up to date. People are afraid the changes. Don’t fight it just embrace it.
It looks clean, sleek, up to date. People are afraid of changes. Don’t fight it just embrace it.
Sorry guys, don’t like this new layout. It’s a scrolling nightmare. I’m on a 15″ MBP Retina. When I’m looking at a headline, I can only see 1/2 the photo. Then I scroll down and when I get to the article, I can’t see the headline. It’s very disorienting, and makes it very hard to scan your site. The photos are so large I can hardly see what they are because I can only see 50-60% of an image at one time. Headlines are also a similar size to ads as well, so when you are moving down the “forever” blog listing, you can easily inadvertently pass a headline of the next article, then you have to scroll back up. I think I’ll stick to viewing your content on a news browser like Pulse on my iPad, because this new site design is very difficult to read.
This layout is fine for iPhones but it sure wastes tons of space on a laptop screen.
Having to scroll so much more than before makes the site much harder to navigate.
So many blog and news site designers seem to have forgotten that the most important thing is to make it as quick and easy as possible for people to get to the articles that they want to read.
Actually the new design takes a long time to load on the iPhone, although visually it’s not as awful as it is in a desktop browser.
Sorry guys … I am not a website designer or claim to have any working knowledge on how websites work etc. I am only speaking as a constant reader of the website.
I loaded your new page this morning & BAM! Instantly hit with what I thought was an internal error. The page looked to me like a huge, overblown mobile version of the website. I am using a 27″ monitor. In a word, the new design looks “horrible” atleast on my 27″ monitor.
overblown, hard to read, looks like a mobile version. Yes, I know that users / people in general hate change .. but the old website, design & layout looked great IMO. Worked fine too.
Just some honest user feedback.
Still didn’t change the awful disqus comments section. ugh. . . is there anyone working on 9to5Mac that can make their own comment system?
“sorry. I meant ‘WordPress Comments’.” << See. That's one of the reasons why it sucks :P
Take a look at the Mac Rumors site. The comments are easy to post and to edit. I agree, not being able to edit a post is pretty lame.
Looks great, so much better! (I’m glad the weird mosaic view on an iPad is gone, that sucked.)
Ugh. I don’t like it a bit. Tiny unreadable font on iOS and no reader view. Big spaces between lines and words. Sentences that run from side to side forever. Looks like it was a C graded high school project.
The new design looks absolutely awesome on mobile. A lot quicker page loading as well, really great work!
New site looks nice but the light blue text is very hard to read, at least on iPhone (6+). Think about it.
Agreed. It’s really bad and even worse when trying to read some articles before your first cup of coffee.
We’re continually making improvements based on user feedback. We updated the font weight this morning. What do you think?
It’s going to take some times to get used to the new format. What is still shocking though, is the
promotion of scamware such as MacKeeper and its derivatives, they are even more prominent than before.
A real shame to have those on the site. I guess if they pay 9to5mac will take they money no matter what they are scamming.
You are right, we made the blue darker and will continue to make updates.
I don’t mind large images, but these are way too big. While the mobile experience is good, this PC/Desktop/Laptop experience is horrible. The problem also with those large images is that if the image isn’t of high enough resolution, they get all pixelated and it looks terrible. Please bring the image width and height down some.
sorry Seth… this STINKS!!!
1. blue text on light blue background… so easy to read… NOT
2. cluttered interface… its like a damn collage!
3. have you actually loaded your site on a mobile? How close do you hold your phone to read the “Trending in AAPL” banner text
4. never registered before even though I read your site daily… was so disappointed that I tried to register on my iphone to comment and its IMPOSSIBLE!! from comments section, click register and it offers me to create a wordpress site… is this some new affiliate marketing never ending loop?
Hate to say it… but I’d rather read delayed/copied articles on AppleInsider than here…
The login screen is controlled by our comment platform, which in this case is WordPress. Whatever they’re showing you is outside our control. Sorry about that.
I subscribe to many sites hosted by WordPress and they universally stink. I guess WordPress is the least expensive.
The new layout is great! The background color, not so much. Needs more contrast. Either make it all white and sterile looking like Apple’s websites, or make it a dark/black background and white font.
Expect to see some changes there too.
Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Awful. Please provide a link to access the old layout. You’ve just made the changes to incorporate full width adverts. Advert City now.
As a developer, i know how it is to put a ton of time/eforrt into something and then have people hate it. That being said, please please please go back. The images are freaking massive. Most of the images aren’t relevant to the story (never have been/don’t need to be) – but on my 24″ screen, i don’t need to see the entire thing be an apple TV background for a story on the Apple TV. I’m seeing a ton of ads that I never even noticed before on the old version. PLEASE GO BACK!!!!
Does it look good – yes!
Is it “beautiful” – yes!
Does it work for a news/info site – Absolutely not!
I’m only hating so bad because I love coming to the site everyday. I don’t know if it’ll be doing it as much. I can see this being very difficult if I miss a few days and then try to catch up.
Once again, please go back!
I just tried scrolling some more and I can’t even. The photos are freaking huge. I love the site, but not enough to look at these huge photos and a little story. Sorry.
My solution was to tear off the site into a separate window and squish it from the sides so it’s just a long, narrow window. Works much better.
I have a 27″ iMac and I agree, the pictures are a bit unwieldy on big screens. I’ve always been a fan of the images but in this new design they do gobble up a lot of screen real estate. The site probably looks great on a 13″ MacBook but not on really big screens.
Still, I like the endless scrolling idea, the comments section is pretty snazzy, the typography is sharp, and the site looks great on mobile, which I suspect is the platform they were targeting. Maybe all of their usage stats point to more mobile users than desktop users.
New design is terrible.
Tested the website on my iPod Touch (5th gen) and did not run very smoothly (in Safari).
It was supposed to be lighter to load but so far the old layout was superior to this.
It was lagging up, not possible to scroll easily, the stock value is not displayed on the black bar
– Lagging / freeze
– Hard to scroll (uneven flow, especially if I want to scroll quickly and tend to since articles take up a lot of space)
– Stock value displayed below the black bar
– Safari gave me a page error and had to reload (dont see that very often and now twice in 5 minutes).
– Ads take up the whole screen
Design looks great, but is not great to use.
Please remember the ergonomics when designing.
Personally I am not to keen on this latest website design that is going around, but I guess it is a fashion thing.
And as some has stated, it looks very much like bunch of other websites that exist.
When we were designing websites back in the 90’s one of the rule of thumbs were not to have text for 100% of the width of the screen. That makes it unreadable. Fixed paragraphs is the shit for a reason.
The layout and look of the website is good. The layout and look of the comments section is abysmal. Even worse than before and it was terrible then too. Why does my font size look like it’s 6pt on my iPhone 6? I can barely see what I’m typing. Why use a blue colored type style on a blue background for each username? I want some of what whoever was involved in the entire process of that decision was smoking. Just awful.
Really? New design?
I can’t believe you guys worked on this new layout. It looks like a unfinished site deign layout with some CSS issues.
The typography is so sick. Can’t even read a paragraph. What happened to your design team? Could they justifying the new 9to5 sites design?
We don’t need to tell you guys a word that being an Apple site what else could be as awesome as simplicity in every way.
Its none other than a infinite scroll wordpress theme with lots of clutter.
Atleast the old design was good. Please revert back or kindly ask them to re-work.
Love,
9to5mac Reader!
Unless you have a radical rethink the new design is a game changer for me. At the moment the site is Ad City. I tend to trust my subconscious and my subconscious is immediately overwhelmed by the busyness of the layout and the overwhelmingly vast sizes of the ads.I know that people often resent change, but this is not nice. As people have mentioned: your line length is too long – well certainly on this 12″ MacBook Air – so that the eyes become tired very quickly. And I have no plans to resize my browser window every time I visit your site. On my iPhone the design i.e. even worse. Ads, ads, ads.
This is a shame because 9to5mac has become my go to site for Mac news. But there are alternatives out there.
Initially there was an ad script that was running twice. This has been fixed. Ads shouldn’t show up but every 3 posts.
I wasn’t a fan of the previous design, but this is far worse. For one, having a fixed header makes the page feel cramped; I don’t want it to feel like the top of my browser has doubled in height.
Another gripe I have is not being taken to the full article upon clicking a headline. Sure, I can middle click to open it in a new tab, but it’s a bit counter intuitive to click it and not navigate to the story’s dedicated page. Speaking of the article page, it’s a bit much to add infinite scrolling articles following the comment section.
As for the promoted stories for 9to5Google (at least at the time of writing), they are irrelevant to my interests. If I wanted to read something from 9to5Google, I would go to 9to5Google. I would be able to look past this feature if it weren’t placed after every other article and instead appeared only once.
iMore seems to have a relatively decent design, minus the very large. It’s more pleasant to see a simple list of articles with a very limited brief & an appropriately sized image that isn’t too much larger on the more “important” articles.
This new layout is horrendous on a Mac. On the front page I can only see 1 way too big picture, that’s so big that I can’t even see title and lead at once. It’s very cluttered and inconvenient, whereas 9to5mac WAS the most clear and orderly Apple website I knew. In the story view, the font is too light and the columns are too wide. This is exactly the kind of website I use the Safari Reader for, but hey … that’s broken …
Hi! I would like to point out a few alignment/usability issues from an UI/UX designer point of view, if you don’t mind:)
https://cloudup.com/c2xh1hAsPlo
1. Notice that Yesterday is a little off to the left.
2. The social icons and the search icon is a bit off also
3. The GENERAL category link on the right is kinda out of place. I might consider moving it to the left where the date is, since when you browse the articles on the homepage, thats where it usually is in the black bar.
https://cloudup.com/cP7d2Rz44xG
You should create a pixel-perfect logo, because right now it looks a bit blurry. The top part of the O is really sharp for example, but the tick inside is blurry. And almost every character has these small issues. It will look a lot better once everything is aligned properly.
https://cloudup.com/cosHV1e2JdJ
Once a story is expanded, the social icons link color is off, and the X is not aligned properly. (Same goes for + when its closed)
https://cloudup.com/ckaQD8MIvV2
The reply links in the comment section randomly off by a couple of pixels.
https://cloudup.com/crgOH9xxVeK
The AAPL dropdown is off on larger screens
Sorry about nit-picking, but these are the small details that most of the users won’t notice, but would help to make the overall look better. And good luck with the new site:)
And also set max-width for comment images, sorry about that one above:)
Looking at the new design is like having a candy bar in my mouth horizontally. The photos are too big, the texts are too broad, mix in the differently designed ads for total confusion. No. Just no.
Way too many ads now when browsing on an iPhone. Very disappointed and will probably now look for another site for my apple news.
This is not the intended number of ads. There are more loading than there should be. It’s being investigated.
That isn’t the only thing that needs to be investigated.
Mike you and Seth keep responding to the ads portion, we get it, you’ll fix it. However, that’s not the biggest issue. The new site is horribly designed, I think the consensus of the reader’s comments here have made that clear. The images are far too big, they are too intrusive and make reading the the site a pain. Unless your header image tells the story by itself, it doesn’t need to be that big. Look at the Verge if you want a site that is well designed. We understand you all want to be updated and contemporary, but this design is awful. While your partnership with your designer has been a nice long one, you may want to look elsewhere. If you can spend thousands on VIP hosting, spend the rest on a better designer. Hell, even Kellen over at Droid Life has a better designed site and he’s just one site, one guy. He has large images over his posts, but they are a perfect large size and not damn near full width on every single post.
We say this out of love, we wouldn’t be this harsh if we didn’t love 9to5Mac, so please take this as constructive and not hating.
Thanks.
The new look of ur beloved 9to5mac is just awesome !!! I simply love it. Font is slim and look very appealing to the eye. Its so much more cleaner than before. I love the way the pictures are showcased for each article. It big, clear and high-res. Love this experience !!! Kudos to the whole team. You guys rock !!!
Yes and scroll scroll scroll scroll. Not the way to make a website…
Very good job, lads!
A very clean and beautiful “theme” (as an ex graphics designer / typographer). This site just became (even more of) a pleasure to read
I’m watching this on a 2560×1440 monitor and it is simply awful
I like that you are trying to change things, but I really dislike how you’ve designed it for the desktop. The desktop site feels like a mobile site. I hope you refine the design and don’t leave it as is. I’m very tempted to stop visiting and use an RSS reader. Looks terrible on large screens. A simple remedy is fix the width. Make it much smaller than the limit is now. For both photos, and articles. It’s difficult to read and the home page is a mess on larger displays, photos take up the entire window sometimes.
The new layout is simply awful. You didn’t manage to get a real designer and let him/her redesign nicely your website — and this is your outcome.
omg this website is horrible now, i think ill be switching to another site for news. Why did you ruin such a good website! poor design. I seriously thought the website was broken and i kept pressing Refresh to sort it lol
The site is a good step forward and understandable for the direction taken as the site is now better suited for responsive, but the add engine or the adds in general really bring down the look of the site they don’t integrate well at all, so I am not saying get rid of them as that would not be possible in this day and age, but you need to look at the deliver engine, or the CSS styling to help them integrate, or use a colour matching script that can match the colour of the add.
but well done overall guys.
I do not like not having a quick list of topics that I can jump to. I don’t like the comments section layout. I may be alone, but it’s definitely going to affect how often I check the page, which used to be regularly during the day.
Quick list of topics is across the top of the page in the blue header, same as it’s always been.
Just tried it on my mobile and I can safely say I won’t be using 9to5 on my phone anymore. Ads and layout are horrible. For me, this is a bad change.
Hi,
I love the new look and the fact that you’re two jumps ahead by moving us into the future of what web sites should look like.
Great job.
Shalom,
Pat
Trust me, this is not the way websites should look like. To see very little at once is the worst.
I love the light blue text on a slightly lighter blue background, Jony Ive must have designed that. I wonder if I’ll be able to edit my post once I click the “Post Comment” button.
Nope.
This is still native WordPress comments. They don’t allow editing by design, we don’t have control over that. https://en.support.wordpress.com/comments/
Well perhaps you should look into getting that control or moving somewhere, that gives you that control. Tired of hear this some sorry excuse.
Sorry. Sometimes people try and it just doesn’t work out. My suspicion is that your designers used their large monitors to both work and look at the design. If they had looked at it on an MBA (especially the 11″), they would’ve nuked the permanent headers. Why do you want us to have “YESTERDAY” (or I’m guessing the post date) taking up so much real estate? We know it’s 9to5Mac, we can see that it out browser title and URL field. We don’t need it taking up permanent space on the window as we scroll the few viewable lines of the articles.
Seriously, you might want to think about rolling back to your old design.
No, this is impossible because it looks horrible on big screens too. Its like someone decided to design the site ONLY for mobile and said eff-off desktop users. The reason I browse the site on my desktop is I want to see more than one story or even headline at a time. One layout for all and its going to drive us away.
Yep, you’re exactly right. It looks bad on any desktop, not just my 11″.
It really looks nice on a small screen and the change is much welcomed. But it is horrible in big screens as everybody else is saying. I get that you want to focus on the experience for the mobile users but I think almost all desktop users also visits your site from mobile. Spoiling the experience on desktop might prevent your users from using it on mobile too. I think it would be fun to have one of your polls to see how people generally feels about it.
Sometimes we visit links on Desktop shared from friends which used their phones which tends to be the mobile versions. This new redesign looks just like that – a mobile design on a desktop. If you love to maximize your browser on your 27/32 inch screen it looks very bad. Reminds me of Windows 8 Metro calculator which needed to cover my whole display in fullscreen in order to do some basic stuff. This is not how the desktop version of a site should look like. Not ever redesign is a good redesign, this is one of the examples. And let me tell you I am not a self-proclaimed web designer, I am working full time from 2012, creating and making sites for myself that are making my business money. I do not work for clients, I know what is to build something that should give you revenue back. The redesign is horrible.
The typography is nice, but there are some layout issues, at least when on a Mac:
1. The images above each article are far too wide and tend to overwhelm everything, especially on a large monitor (30″ in my case). The main content of an article is the text, not the image above it. My eyes should be drawn to that text. As it is, I have to hunt around for it.
2. The elements between the articles are distracting, especially as they have a different background colour – the light red one for 9to5toys, the light green one for the 9to5google site and the light blue ones that are actually Apple-related but don’t merit a “proper” article for some reason.
There seems to be an annoying trend on “modern” web sites to make everything huge and to require lots and lots of vertical scrolling. This is disruptive to the browsing experience and makes me think about leaving the website and finding another one that doesn’t irritate me quite so much.
I ended up spending some time in Safari’s developer tools examining the CSS. Ten minutes later, I had a much better site to look at. I shouldn’t really have to be doing that, just to visit a website. The fact that I do makes me wonder whether any real-world testing of this new site layout actually took place.
The header hurts my eyes how many horizontal lines you put up there and some of the header has 100% width while other horizontals have 80% width? No bueno.
This platform is only comfortable to read and use on a tablet, notebook or small laptop. Pain in the butt on a desktop.
I’ve always been a fan of this site, but I really don’t like the look of the new desktop site. Everything looks so big. I keep wanting to push my screen back so I can get a better overall view. It looks like a mobile site. I would rather see a list of story headlines than have to scroll through every story. It’s very cumbersome.
New layout is horrible… Bring back the old one of give us the option to choose.
You say that there are less ads but your new layout actually makes it look like there are more ads. Also I don’t need to be reminded of 9to5Google after what seems to be like every story. Not a fan of the new layout.
Yeah, I believe there’s actually more loading than are intended at the moment. It’s being looked into, no worries.
The text looks cleaner but the pictures are way to big making it harder to read content in the first place.
The home page add banner is so big that by the time you get to content, I am over half way down the screen. I’d get rid of stock market banner, make add banner slightly smaller and get rid of trending banner too.
Im sorry I really am not a fan of the change at all. I appreciate the work you do but this just is way too messy in my opinion. Also why is an entire bar on my screen dedicated to apple stock? Because if I invested in apple I already would monitor it and would not come here to check the ticker.
That’s the timestamp for the article. As you scroll through posts, that date changes to show when the post you’re reading was published.
New web site (layout) is worse than the previous one. On my iPad2 the site constantly crashes and it is now useless to browse it. UX is worse. I do not understand why a decision “mobile first view” because on desktop version you can now see very little content on one screen (just one post /article).
I’m quite disappointed, cause 9to5mac was my primary site for Apple news, and now I’m starting searching for others news providers (pocketnow, phonearena, etc.) Hope you will soon make some big changes (back to previous version or make some serious upgrades/improvements).
F-i-n-a-l-l-y
Overall, I like the fresh look.
I have low vision, (AKA blind) and was quite hopeful that the new change would utilize Reader View on mobile. Alas, no. It is just too much trouble to read for me, so it is off to another site. And that is before coming to the invisible (blue) words.
Reader View, please!
Truly awful. The images are far too big (what is that about, really?!) and the links are hardly visable.
Can you please remember, you’re a blog and nothing more and that’s why we love you. Mac Rumors seems to have it right. Bye.
I was using this site as my Mac/iOS news site, now I have to find a new one. The new layout is an eye sore to me, links are not responsive, the type is harder to read, really it is not any better. I enjoyed seeing the curated deals from 9to5toys on the sidebar, now I will just skip those all together, maybe I will load a slickdeals app on my phone instead. Generally I avoided 9to5google other than glancing at the headlines as the writing was never as in depth or as well written as Android Police, but it was nice to see at a glance news. With the new layout that is impossible.
The new design looks really bad to me…
It seems something I usually find on scam sites… which isn’t a good thing at all.
Just horrible! I hope you didn’t pay for it!
I have no problem reading. I really like the new layout. Thumbs up.
I am using an LG 27ea93 Screen – one of those 16:10 – when I open the page I see the Headline and 4/5th of the rest is a big Picture.
Reducing the Zoom with Command MINUS, only makes the Font smaller BUT NOT the Picture.
Your Website should identify what Browser is in use – Desktop or Mobile – and what Screen Resolution, in order to render the Pages tidily!
The aformentioned BLUE Text on BLUE Background – is a NO GO –
you learn that at Uni & during Website Building 1-on-1 Tutorials,
how could you make this Error fatal Error – shoot your Consultants to the Moon!
Light blue text on a slighter
Lighter blue background and an Appl ticker that sits over the top of text where I naturally read it when scrolling.
Did anyone on the design team take a human factors course?
Just amateurish!
Wow, so much negativity, so many haters. Seriously, the site is 1000 times better than previously and differentiates itself from so many other ‘similar’ sites. It may be a pixel or two off here and there, but for the average user, they will never notice. I think it looks great and I applaud you for the changes you’ve made. I love the design and I’m now more inclined to read your site first.
This new skin makes the website much more pleasant to the reader. Nevertheless, this new configuration made me spend a few more seconds than usual to find the “comment” button. Nevertheless, cudos for the making this the best “Apple” website ! :)
Ugh, not a fan. HUGE pics in comparison to what actually matters – the article. WAY too many ads. And the ads are all different sizes which makes the layout look awful.
You guys seem to offer the best content first so I’ll continue to visit but it’ll ultimately lead to me spending less time here.
This is really painful to read. It’s too much work to scroll through. One of the worst website designs I’ve seen in a very long time. Please offer an option to use the “classic ” look.
To be more specific:
1) The top header remains on screen when you scroll down. Almost 20% of my screen is taken up by something I’m already done with. Have it dynamically reappear every time you scroll back, sure, but don’t have it stay on screen at all times.
2) The enormous images take up almost the rest of the entire screen, and you have to scroll just to see all of that image. This is ridiculous. They need to be less than half of the size they are now, if not smaller. Let people click on them if they want a closer look, but headlines need thumbnails, not wallpaper.
3) The long lines of text severely hamper readability. One of the immutable laws of publication design is breaking up text with maximum columns. If the medium is narrow enough, you can get away with one column (see phones and pocket books), but larger areas need to be broken up. Fixed widths and sidebars exist on websites for a reason — to make the main body copy readable.
4) It’s really inefficient at showing your readers what the site has to offer. Right now, the main screen of this site only has less than half of one story visible to read without scrolling. That kind of design is fine for a single person’s blog where the new articles might come once a week or less, but it doesn’t work for anything that works as a news aggregator, or has multiple new entries a day. Most sites that do a good job of this will show somewhere between 5 and 8 stories right on the first page without scrolling (if not more). The weird part about this redesign is that the “old” 9to5Mac was actually one of the better sites out there in this regard.
Wow, I cannot tell you how badly you have jacked up this site. Don’t delude yourself into thinking this comment is just about people upset “their cheese is moved”. I am all about monetizing a website, improving performance and keeping readers engaged. I will list in the best and least emotional way how badly you have jacked this up.
– Ads are even more predominant and intrusive. They are now found on the header, in between EVERY article, they are embedding within the article. They take up more real estate than the few lines of text that you include for the article.
– The font used across the website is too light. It is also very difficult to see the hyperlinks. Overall the text you provide doesn’t give enough content and lines for the stories. You spend WAY more real estate on pictures and especially ads.
– The pictures are far too big and obtrusive to the flow of the website. I’m on a PC and I had to scroll two revolutions to get past that monster Apple Watch graphic only to find 4 sentences about the article.
– The website has many bugs. Trying to leave a comment took me no less than 4 full mins trying to get it to load and set it up to begin.
You were a daily stop for me. You have been every single day for years (literally). I can without a doubt tell you that I will not remain a consumer of material from you on this website if much of what I mentioned above remains. I come here for content and good stories; not huge pictures, ads everywhere, and font that is nearly impossible to read. I will wish you the best and hope that you get that worked out. Otherwise, there are just too many other good resources these days to be burdened by a terrible UI, ad centric sites and more.
Please revisit how you have done this. It would be worth it for many of your readers for you to rethink this.
There are currently more ads loading than intended. It should be between every *two* articles, but there’s a bug. It’s being looked into. The ads in the middle of posts are not like the rest. Those are the ads specific to a post’s author, and it’s how authors get paid for their writing. They’re extremely necessary to make sure people get paid for their writing.
Font weight has been increased in the past few minutes, so hopefully that’s fixed for you now. Links have been darkened and images have been capped at a maximum width to prevent them from going full screen on large monitors.
Hope these changes help! We’re still in the process of making other fixes and changes as well. Thanks for your feedback!
You should really consider narrowing the main column on desktops. It’s just too damn wide to read comfortably.
It works great for mobile, but it gets too wide on desktops.
A max-width of 800px or even 700px would be easier for reading. It’s now 990px.
-mpm
Literally one of the worst redesigns I’ve ever seen. I will be visiting this site less frequently now in favor of MacRumors. Their site is not exactly gorgeous, but it’s much better than this mess.
Wow, this is one bad design coming from 2015! I’m on a 13″ retina display and it looks like a total mess. Sorry, this was my de facto favorite Apple blog but I’m looking elsewhere now. Good luck.
Have a look, can you tell what’s going on here?
Example: http://s29.postimg.org/4qrv2uv9z/Screen_Shot_2015_07_31_at_11_46_14_AM.png
Keep working on it. The latest changes still don’t solve the problems. The titles and body copy still drastically different width than the photos, looks messy. Bad DIV positioning and other layout issues looks like there are countless CSS issues. The whole thing still looks like someone messed up a CSS directive and installed the wrong stylesheet on the desktop browser.
Seriously, go look at Engadget. They’re one of the only tech blogs to have finally gotten a well balanced and well functioning layout.
Guys.. I appreciate the change, but you have to be careful with somethings. One of them being this: I use a 27′ iMac and the width of the text blocks are too long (960px).. it’s really hard to read like that. You guys should just make a maximum width for the text blocks smaller than you have now.. something like the text blocks on The Verge articles (660px). There are also too many things on the header and between posts.
I really like it!!! I’m sure it must have been a long time being developed – Good job :) There are a few issues though… as said below the photos are far too HUGE!! We’re having to do too much scrolling. Secondly, 10 minutes of reading and my normally pretty trusty eyes are really straining – not sure what it is exactly but something (font, background colour maybe) is not quite right.
i am a regular visitor to your site and i must say i visit the site on my mobile and less on PC.
1)mobile is indeed loading fast on 3g and 2g(yes i tried it on 2g and it indeed loads fast as compared to previous site ).
2)but the new look has completely backfired and its really awful to see it on mobile and on PC(i had to see whether its was looking so bad on pc version,, huh …its disappointing)
3) Ads- they are completely occupying the whole screen making the whole experience more terrible.
4)very imp – new look has made site really confusing in identifying whats 9to5mac’s article and what are ads. (yes i can distinguish but its lot of clutter .)
5) i would say all the points marked by @Viszt Péter are indeed worth noting as detailing is very important for catching users attention.
6) Since 9to5mac being apple news reporting website make all the improvements thinking that Sir Jony Ive is viewing your site and what all changes would he recommend ;)
The old site design was vastly superior for quickly finding and reading articles.
Until 9to5mac fixes this awful monstrosity, I recommend checking out appleinsider and macrumors – they still have their original, readable layouts.
Hi 9to5Mac Team! Love the new website. Clean and modern. Way to stay with the latest trends!
As a designer and web developer, I’ll put my two cents in for some feedback that might help improve your website! :)
Things that could improve
1. Separation between the articles. It is hard to tell when an article ends and begins. Some sort of line or space that allows gaps between the articles (more white space). Just having the ads between with little space doesn’t help.
2. Titles need to pop more I think. Titles are black and body copy is black, maybe introduce a color for the title? Dark blue, maybe? or just go larger with the text size? I have attached image links for a reference :)
3. Trending section throws me off for some reason (when your at the top). I like when you scroll how simple the navigation is. Maybe remove the trending section and make it a drop down option? This will help reduce space since the top ad is already taking a lot of real-estate.
4. Move the share icons to the left of the body copy of the article. For some reason I feel like they intrude on the image, the image might look better if the share buttons aren’t overlapping. Plus when you expand they are at the bottom, which makes it redundant having it on the top. Know what I mean? :)
Just a few things, since I view this website everyday, I thought it was important I chime in. Hope any information I provide helps your team! :)
Thanks,
West
Creative Specialist
http://www.westleyferguson.com
http://electrek.co/ is just a website for Elon Musk? There is many other Solar companies doing great things besides Solar City. SPWR for one, great independant dealers, non specific vendor stories about solar conversion and costs, etc other electric vehicles even. HEvk – Even the ads are Solar City through out the page. It was so one note after scrolling and finding 90% of the articles are Tesla and Solar City I disconnected from it. Sorry. BLAH
I don’t like the changes.
1. I lost an entire comment because I wasn’t logged in, after logging in to WordPress.
2. The endless flow of stories at the bottom of the page makes it more difficult to switch between the various 9to5 websites. Yes, I have a Mac and an iPhone, but I still dig some android phones and I like deals. It’s a pain to switch between sites now.
3. If a story takes a few seconds to load, you’ve lost me. Granted, this has only happened once. But this is probably the most important annoyance.
This screenshot (http://pasteboard.co/2nyEiWaw.png) sums up my issues with the changes. Instead of reading a story, I am looking at a hairy arm and 3/4 of an Apple Watch. I love having to scroll down a page to start reading things. And as pointed by others, the Today is out of alignment.
The blue background of the comments section should just go away. The white and light grey backgrounds of the previous version caused less eyestrain.
What have you done! It’s very hard to read when it’s so wide across the page. The top picture is HUGE. I’m not liking this at all. I’m sure this is a work in progress and I’ll wait it out.
In Chrome on a 13″ non retina model it feels like about 1/2 the display is showing content thanks to the very large header (wordpress header, then your own, then a rather pointless stock ticker). Besides that it’s ok, but can we please reduce that header or possible have it disappear when scrolling downwards.
I love the site on mobile, but not on desktop. Please update/revert to a more desktop friendly format.
Wait, you’re paying $5,000 a month for hosting and this is the design that you came up with?
The new fresh look is definitely welcome change and well done. Like the bigger images but not a fan of that big. I have to agree with some other comments here on the size of the photos, some are unnecessarily big as in the photos of the watch and someones hairy arms. Love how one can expand a story without having to leave the page, great idea. Definitely like the cleaner look over all. Not a fan of the larger and prominent share buttons. It was great to see Reader in Safari working on some articles before this update but now seems to be gone completely unfortunately. Some of the stories when expanded to full story seem to have overlaying issues where the next story below gets overlayed the just expanded previous story. Only other thing that seems disrupting is when one story ends and another begins, that area seems very busy sometimes with black lines, blue lines, ads and headings. Would be nice to see some clearer separation between stories. Thanks and great update.
It’s from an UI / UX perspective really not that great to say the least, I just can’t understand the decisions you as a design team have made. I imagine that the main user goal is that the user wants all the new content in a overview. At the moment it’s only one article on screen, even cut-off a little bit when you want to click on the ‘expand full story’ button to read the full article. than there are these annoying full width 9to5toys and 9to5google content etc. clutter.
Lots to improve, luckily there is the Agile method.
Really really a bad redesign. Everything is way to bigger. The pictures are so big that i can’t see them entirely on my screen ! And you have to scroll down a lot to see the text… Content should be the most important. You have to change this, we really can’t navigate on this website.
On a smartphone (with a screen used vertically) the design is great, nothing fantastic but there is no specific problem, it’s simple and efficient. But on a desktop (with a screen used horizontally) the size of the photos is really a huge huge problem. It’s not a big change to do, juste making the photos 2 ou 3 times smaller and everything will be ok. But right now the user experience is horrendous.
appl ticker is still below the black line when the website is viewed in portrait on an iPhone 5s
How about another analogy to succinctly sum this up… Whether I’m sitting in a room that’s 6 feet wide, 10 feet wide or 20 feet wide, when I’m reading a book, I don’t expect it to take up the width of the entire room. A comfortable size for text and page width does not change, there is an ideal irrespective of the medium and compromises have to be made when real-estate is limited. When real-estate is unlimited, the reigns need to be tightened. This design layout has gone balls to the wall and shows that the people behind it don’t have much experience nor any attention to detail.
I have enough CSS experience that I can override the styles on the site on this end and probably fix most of the issues, but I shouldn’t have to do that.
We’re 3 days in now. 5 more days in that week I said I’d give it, then the site is removed from favorites and daily visits.
9to5mac staff,
I rarely (maybe even once) write in the comments sections. I just had to say that this layout is too much. One picture covers the whole page so I can’t even get a written preview of what the article is even about, the width of sentences (words per line) is too long and cumbersome for reading, and the previews of other deals, previous Apple AND 9to5Google articles are completely hidden–I actually have to squint to see what the small banners are previewing and showcasing.
9to5mac is in the top two of my go-to Apple information (with Mac Rumors). I appreciate the writing, sharing of information and knowledge, and the passion the staff has for Apple. But this design is way over its head. I have some ideas for a redesign, but I’m sure your staff is a lot more experienced than I am on this. I am just here to give you feedback as a long time user of this website. Keep up the great work.
I just can’t stand the pictures taking up the whole screen! I care more about the content the staff produces (which is great by the way) than enlarged pictures!
A news site should make its focus the NEWS, not images, especially when they add little or nothing to the story.
On the desktop, everything just feels cluttered to me. I can’t simply scroll through for new articles because I can’t quickly figure out where the last one ends. And when I do find the cut off for each article, I can’t determine whether its an ad at the end, or whether its a link to an article on some other 9to5 site. I don’t like the idea of expanding a story to read the rest. It should link to another page. I miss the old layout. I appreciate the effort and direction, but this has been a misfire.
the new website design – Simply AWESOME! Lesser Ads though!
I love 9to5mac but I truly do not like this design. The focus is now the gigantic pictures instead of the text (info). The text now looks like an afterthought when it should be the focal point. I also hate sites that make me “expand” text to see all the content.
Great improvement love it love it love it tell the haters to shove off!!
Beautiful new look! I love it!!
On mobile it’s pretty darn good. On PCits… Not.
The amount of negative feedback without any fundamental proposals on how to change a certain design, or ‘the whole site’ for that matter, is quite staggering, especially coming from users who seem to take pride in using products from a company they admire because of their attention to detail.
“Oh the virtual horror!” Shelden C.
This is what I think about “The new 9to5”.
Everything is WAAAAAY too big on a 22″ desktop monitor.
If I resize the window so it’s iPad size, the site seems about right.
Not sure that’s progress.
Never felt the need to comment, but I think you should rebrand for your new website, I’d go with 1995Mac, in honour of how old your new site looks. Shocker.
Sorry guys,
This new site design is a complete mess on a desktop browser. Completely unreadable for all the reasons given by many commenters already. Please try again.
So frustrating to see stuff like this happen. I visited your site multiple times a day. But the user-experience for the desktop is really bad. I mean REALLY bad. Mobile is much better.
You guys need to stop with the little font changes and revisit the desktop site layout entirely. I love your articles, but this new layout is pushing me to visit the other sites more frequently.
Mwhat specifically don’t you like? I didn’t like it initially but much prefer it now
What specifically don’t you like?
I have made a redesign for 9to5, it’s inspiration came from Blendle.com
https://www.behance.net/gallery/28539687/9to5mac-redesign-with-Blendecom-inspiration
The photos on the new site are too much. They don’t add to the content and take up way too much screen real estate. More and more, I find myself going elsewhere for Mac news.