As mentioned previously we’ve changed the site from a very old content management system to a new one. This has taken a long time to do, however earlier this week we were getting to the point where all news items had to be duplicated across both systems. This pushed us into switching the new design live.
I’ve read your comments. It’s a mixed reaction but I am taking on board your thoughts on this. Yes, there’s a lot of white space at the top of the site and it does mean some scrolling – we’re working on reducing this now. Yes, the slideshow on the main page isn’t to everyones’ taste and yes, the news items are divided into categories below that.
In the immediate term, we’ve added this page. It follows a similar theme and layout to the old site although we’ll still need to tweak the header a little – just click on the “All” link to get to it. We’re also working on the mobile version of the site and changing the category layout on the main page.
This had to be done because we were at breaking point with the old system. The 7-year-old interface had been stuck together with sticky-tape so many times it was completely unrecognisable, but do be aware that this is a two-stage process and – unlike most sites – we do take your comments on board and will be changing things over the next few days based on feedback received.
Can’t say fairer than that! Good work chaps.
Any chance you are working on a mobile version for those of us who can’t always get a 3G connection on our handsets?
Great to hear. Keep up the excellent work!
You are really hard for yourself which is a good thing 😀
Only thing I would like to suggest is a color difference between the title of the thread and the thread itself
Cause now it a bit well euhm white?
I would also place the date and leave a commment thing in the bottom corner somewhere cause the placement I kinda weird and it somehow splits the title from its context imo.
Don’t think I don’t like the new design it’s really nice just wanted to share my thoughts feel free to ignore them if you disagree
I hate it, to the extent that I might delete you from my favorites. Honestly, its too bland. Fonts are horrible
while trying not to be as sensational in suggesting i would stop visiting this site due to the new look i too would probably search elsewhere for my smartphone news.
my main problems are:
the slideshow (why is it so big? the images dont even fit it properly, look at neowin.net for an example of a slideshow done well)
the order of the news topics (android,apple,general,reviews then winmo? i understand this is alphabetical but why would a site with the tagline of ‘Everything Windows Phone, Android and iPhone’ put it at the bottom of the page???)
and finally, the colour scheme and font seem unprofessional to me, all the whitespace and adverts give the impression the site has no content
One user ain’t gonna change the world. Your loss. Bye then.
I could just look at the old site and see any new articles at a glance, now I have to wait or scroll, a backward step as far as I’m concerned. The layout is much easier to read but there’s too much wasted space.
Thanks for the feedback everyone, I’ve already implemented some design changes and I know gears is working on fixing some of the more technical issues with the site as we speak.
Keep it coming 🙂 I hope you all enjoy the new layout once we have it nailed.
The title font is terrible and puts me off.
The site is missing loads of advertising to clutter it up like other sites so it doesn’t feel so empty.
The scrolling menu bar is awful….the scrolling is slightly jumpy, you cant see which of the ten stories you are at and when you jump it jumps to the one before then scrolls to the story you wanted. Its just so big!
I’m liking the new look better and better. The changes today help. I mostly access via RSS and have chosen all operating systems, so to see the news in order of ‘most recent’ irrespective of platform makes perfect sense to me.
I have to say that the new look is terrible – it looks like one of those landing pages where some company has bought the domain name and then try and forward you on to some even worse site.
As above – I may have to remove this from my favourites tab layout because it is quite ugly.
None of the above is constructive however – I would lose the title style immediatly – it may as well be comic sans! The clean colours and lots of white make you feel like its the default setting of some freeware CMS system. The old site was busy – but it really worked.
Gears,
As of this morning I’m getting a request to choose the version of the website I want to view everytime I visit http://www.coolsmartphone.com
It tells me that I’m trying to view the desktop version using a mobile client. I’m using Google Chrome 8.0.552.224
Jamie
Seriously guys – if the content is good enough (which it usually is from here) why would you not visit the site due to ongoing changes – seems a little harsh to me.
I quite like it so far…
Can you make the title bar a bit small – along with that scrolling news thing – it’s massive! Also – can you add that “All” page next to the Android news along the top banner – I can’t see a way to access it without actually typing http://www.coolsmartphone.com/all into the address bar. Also – the news title font is way to big – can you kock that down a few pts as well? If you could do that – it would make the site a bit easier to navigate and use.
I can’t find a link to subscribe to the Android feed. I know it’s linked in the but the android widget asks for:
1) the feed URL
2) Search (no results for Coolsmartphone android)
3) Add google new feed
Unless I dig around the page source I’m stumped.
The next button at the bottom of the page doesn’t seem to be working… Linked correctly to http://www.coolsmartphone.com/page/2/ but still showed the first page? After clicking the ‘next button’ still linked to page 2.
Also the comments disappeared for a while this morning. Seem to be back now (obviously! 😉 )
Jamie
I also hate it. You’ve lost all your indentity with this bland WordPress template. And everything is way oversized (at least, it is in Firefox on a Mac).
Just thinking, would it be possible to show the number of comments against stories in the main page? I often return to a story just to see if there have been any further comments.
Also, the comment default of ordering by popularity means that they often don’t seem to flow in order – by date order works much better (at least to me!)
I really like the new look. Much cleaner and upto date. Its also classy so keep up the great work.