new front page look

[ncbarrett]

I liked it, but wasn't able to vote since it was locked.

[sadowsk1]

I liked the new look also, very sharp.

[vynsane]

I saw it and the poll but didn't get a chance to come back and speak my mind before it was retracted and locked :| . I liked the ideas behind the new design, but the execution was lacking. I agreed with a lot of Huw's points - especially where the 'header' was concerned... it was WAY to tall, pushing all the 'meat and potatoes' of the site down a good 300-400 pixels. I don't use the "above the fold/below the fold" type of wording - there IS no fold in web design, or more accurately, no discernable fold. The fold is wherever each and every individual's browser window ends, be it because of screen size/resolution or the size of the browser window itself. There are nearly as many 'folds' as there are visitors to the site, what with browser themes, resizable buttons, add-on toolbars and the like. People know that a scrollbar means there's more to the page than what they can see at this moment, that's common knowledge on the web at this point... but this is not to say that you can waste as much space as the header area was - you should have a balance between the site branding and getting your viewers to the content you want to deliver as quickly as possible.

If the 'slideshow' style box had been in the header, it would've made more sense for it to be that tall AND gotten the important content in a prominent place AND also separated the slideshow from the standard content - as it stood, the slideshow was too similar to the rest of the content, so I was confused when it did it's slidey thing, I thought it was the first story.

No matter what design the rest of the site gets, I think the forum needs to be unified with it, but that can be handled in due time. I know what it's like to burn your candle at 6 ends, Ice - I don't know what you do for a living, but I'm sure it's not just this site ;)