Loyal OSNews readers, I 'd like to thank you for your patience as we've made a bumpy transition to a new back-end and an even bumpier rollout of the OSNews' new design, aka OSNews 4.1. We hope you like it. We'll be making many minor interface changes over the next weeks, and we'll read the comments of this posting in case you have any bug reports or suggestions. One feature that we've eliminated from the v4 beta was themes. For now, we are focusing on perfecting one unified theme, and hope to revisit that feature in the future. I'd like to thank OSNews' intrepid code slinger Adam Scheinberg for all his hard work on this project and also thank the many readers who helped us troubleshoot the v4 backend.
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Actually, your comment just expresses a dislike for this design change. It doesn't compare or contrast what you liked or disliked about the prior design and whether you even liked the prior design.
In short, it wasn't a constructive criticism. It was just a short rant.
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That's nice of course, but I still miss being able to see at a glance whether any posts (particularly egregiously false ones) already have any replies. Then coming back later whether there are any more.
The current way has all the functionality of course, just that one has to click something now, then press back when done in order to check another post. Basically it would be nice to see the number of replies a post has before clicking on the title.
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Too much contrast between the large white background area and everything else. Kills the eyeballs.
Meanwhile the story blocks are undifferentiated from each other, and the x comments text contrasts too little with the white background.
Gray header, white background, puke green side headers, and orange user header at the top. Strange and incongruent color choices to say the least.
(Already fixed) Black text on dark gray comment headers in the comment section -> little contrast between the two. The black text on dark gray comment header is not consistent with the main site header where it is white / light gray text on dark gray background.
Self-comments have drastically different header text color than other comments, which weirds me out a bit.
No search button by the search dialog on the front page; it is a worthwhile convention and there is ample room for it.
The My Account button has mouseover dead space at the top and bottom of it. This is inconsistent with the menu it provides, in which all implied button area provides clickable action.
Edited 2008-01-30 00:51 UTC
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2005-07-24
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I definitely prefer this to the original version 4 look. But I still prefer version 3 to this. I think that I *could* get to like this as well or better. But the main thing bothering me is that it still looks so *bright*. All that white background is harder on the eyes.
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Well done. One thing I'm not particularly fond of is the Featured box. I see from the Conversations that I'm not alone. With the Recent Original Stories on the right, I don't think the big box is needed.
Also, the logo is fine, but it might be fun to have a contest to see what people can come up with.
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With the old design, I used to be able to look at someone's comment and see if anyone has replied to it. Does this feature not exist in the new design, or am I just blind ? 
EDIT: It's nice that you can click on the link title of a comment and read the replies, but is there no longer a way to tell at a glance whether there are any replies to a particular comment, as there used to be?
Edited 2008-01-30 00:51 UTC
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Yeah I know that
I just never bothered to comment on it until I saw this article about the new layout. I hope that feature comes back. As another poster said, it's just cool to be able to tell *at a glance* whether or not a particular comment has replies. BTW: I noticed that when I go to 'comments' under My Account, that feature is there, so obviously the infrastructure for this already exists.
Edited 2008-01-30 19:11 UTC
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Hey I applaud the effort, but there are some usability issues. The gray left-to-right gradients make text difficult to read. True it's most noticeable under the timestamp (not vital), but if you make that unreadable, why have that at all?
Whoa the timestamp went from black text to gray... that's fast service. 
Edited 2008-01-30 00:52 UTC
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Whoa the timestamp went from black text to gray... that's fast service.
Please decrease the gradients, and push the user box a few pixels down.
Other than that, the new look is very nice. Good work!
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Nope, I don't like it... but it's not my site anyway .
The contrast is too strong for me... maybe a light gray instead of white for the main background would help.
I don't come here for the design anyway, so whatever you guys like is fine. Even green on a magenta background wouldn't stop me from... Ok, maybe green on magenta would stop me .
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Meh. When we were on v3, I got email every week from people complaining that moderation required another page load and that the site wasn't valid and that the site used weird HTML. Now we move to valid XHTML and Javascript and people complain.
You can't make everyone happy. We really do hate to lose you, I know you participated quite a bit, but alas... no matter what we do, there's always a vocal group who hates it. That's what happens when you have a website with lots of readers.
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Well remember when I emailed David and asked if the big "advertisement" showing the featured article could be removed since I was a subscriber? Your compromise was to set a cookie that removed it for 4 days if memory serves. Since v4 went live, that is not possible. In the dropdown where we can choose things, why can't you add a "blank" option? That is what drives me NUTS.
Thanks Adam, I know you truly care.
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I'm using a 22" LCD, and the spacing of everything seems so tight in the middle of my screen it's ugly. And that white background is hard on the eyes.
Sorry to say, I liked more the old way.
Check out neowin.net or anandtech.com or some other site that are able to use all the space. The flow and presentation is just better.
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Could you please bring back the 'Replies' link at the bottom of comments.
I liked being able to isolate a subset of comments away from the rest.
Also, please disable the 'post comment' link when a user is not logged on. I have now accidentally clicked this a couple of times when not logged on, typed a huge comment and then clicked submit. It informs you that you can't post anonymously, and wipes your comment. Very annoying.
Other than these gripes though, the site is definitely improved.
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I had finally got used to version 4.0. I guess I will get used to this, but first impression is I like the 4.0 look much better.
My only concrete criticism is the white background is too bright and is hard on the eyes, makes reading difficult to read. As has been the case for many versions, the text size is too small.
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Congrats for the new theme. To be honest, I never liked the previous one and I kept using osnews classic until it was removed a few weeks ago.
Anyway, I have a single suggestion: would it be possible to disable the sidebar completely? If not, at least reduce its width.
Thanks!
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2007-08-29
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1: The extreme-left justification makes me want to violate Godwin's law. Make an option to put the sidebar on the left like normal people, or at least tab the left area in a little.
2: WTF fixed width. I use 1024x [strikethrough]at work[/strikethrough] sometimes (there is a good reason for this), and always have to resize my browser window to fit the page. This new version is much wider than 1024, making it now impossible to get rid of the bottom scroll bar.
3: The last version looked better, and the version before that was actually aesthetically pleasing.
4: The 'latest comic' thing is well-implemented, but the page it links to could use a forward/back browser.
5: Something that's bothering me for a while is that some things don't work the way one expects them to.
The first example of this is low-rated comments - they start shaded, and you can unroll them by clicking the titles. So clicking again should re-shade them -- which isn't really useful functionality, but makes sense. Instead, it takes you to (I think) a permalink page.
The second is, on a reply post, clicking the name of the post to which is is replying. It takes you to that post's permalink page, when one would expect it to take me to that post in the normal comment view. This is much faster when the posts are on the same page and allows you to continue browsing normally.
EDIT: This has been changed recently so that it now links to a page containing the conversation thread. This is better, but I perfer my way -- it would still allow one to navigate backward through a conversation, using the reply to links, and forward again with the forward button.
Basicly these are unrequested context switches (there is a usability term to describe this, but I don't know what it is), and are to be avoided. Permalinks should be accessed via a link that includes the work 'permalink'.
EDIT: 6: Yeah, the gray-on-white comment text is literally painful.
Edited 2008-01-30 02:56 UTC
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I mean, I used www4 for so long just because we were told it's how the site was going to be controlled; and now not even a month after being 'official', I have to go relearn positions for accessing all the controls?
And you're still using fixed-width columns? @_@ T_T
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Over all, the new look is ok. However, I have the following objections:
1. There is a big grey empty box at the top. It is distracting and look odd.
2. I think this is a theme issue, but the text is crowding the left had side of the browser. It really should have some sort of left hand margin.
The margin issue really bugs me. I can deal with the empty grey box, but I really would like to see perhaps a 1m or a 2m margin on the left hand side. Otherwise it looks pretty good.
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Big empty box? Are you using adblock? If so, that's your right, but we really shouldn't have to accommodate you in that case.
I try very hard to do non-intrusive and relevant advertising precisely so people won't be forced to adblock. I have adblock installed too, but I only enable it site by site to punish sites that attack me with aggressive ads.
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I use Adblock and and Filterset.G in Firefox and by default it blocks ads also on OSNews.
So when I for some reason reinstall Firefox from the ground up, like when I reinstalled my work-machine recently, Firefox will adblock ads also on OSNews. Then I turn it of, since the ads are not of the disturbing kind.
This morning I turned off adblock on OSNews as I used to, but I soon turned it on again. The OSNews staff have been quite clever in not showing ads that move around to much. I like that, since I hate those moving ads that draws attension from the things one wants to read.
Well, they don't anymore. Now there was an ad with a lightning and text that pop up, just to draw attension. Should not be there if you ask me.
I've been noticing the tendency for a while, but it's getting worse.
Ah, well, I've always got Adblock!
But it's a pitty really, isn't it?
Sorry for any bad spelling - I've just reinstalled and haven't had time to install English language pack for spell checking yet.
Nalle Berg
./nalle.
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Out of curiosity, do ads actually pay for views any more, or just clicks?
I don't mind ads as long as they're low-key - such as google ads - and/or well made, such as the MS SQL server ad I see in the right pane and an ad for a service called "Free Report" banner at top. Any sort of flash, animated GIF, etc. and I won't feel even slightly guilty about adblocking.
Of course, it helps a lot if you don't use flash and disable GIF animation - sites seem to detect your brower capabilities, and serve ads accordingly.
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