Welcome to the new philly.com. As you can see, we’ve made a lot of changes, and we’ve done it with one goal in mind: to provide you with the very best of anything & everything Philly.
Philly.com still has the 24-7 award-winning sports, politics and news reporting that you have come to expect from the newsrooms of The Inquirer and Daily News. But we’ve reorganized and improved the site’s presentation and added a number of new interactive features, as well as unique and original video embedded in each section of the site.
We know that your time is limited, so in addition to being your source for news and information, we now hope to be your best guide for things to do in Philadelphia and throughout the region. On nearly every page, you now have the opportunity to discover ways to spend your free time – from places to go and things to see to where to eat and even have a drink.
Throughout the website you now have opportunities to react and to interact with our content and each other. Wherever you see a yellow box, you’ll have discovered a place to share your opinion, read others’ thoughts, add your own photos or videos and see those posed by other readers. We’ve provided you with this service because we know that when it comes to life in and around Philadelphia, no one is a better expert then you are. Additionally, we wanted you to be able to communicate more easily with the newspapers’ reporters and columnists.
We've been working on these changes for about a year. The new philly.com is based on months of research into the interests and desires of the site's readers, and was designed by Avenue A/Razorfish, one of the nation's leading Web design firms.
We’d really like to hear what you think. If you have a reaction or suggestion that you would like to share, please email us at yophilly@philly.com.
On behalf of everyone at philly.com, thank you for allowing us to be your source for anything & everything Philly. We look forward to hearing from you.
Posted by Eric Grilly @ 12:28 AM
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149 comments
sniff sniff... checking... yes, this site still stinks.
The real problem is that your first reaction when looking at a site redesign should not be a visceral "UGGGH" the way it was the first time I laid eyes on this beast. Evolution or no, it represents nothing less than a complete failure of taste on the part of everyone involved, and "analyzing every click" should have happened WAY BEFORE the site was ever foisted upon the public. (Ever hear of IA or QA?) As a lifelong Philadelphian, I feel that we have a lot to be proud of as a city, but bush league garbage like this site and the company behind it bring nothing but shame to my heart. Rather than congratulating each other on their blogs, the big wigs who worked on this should be quaking in their boots for ticking off such a wide swath of their clientele.
Gee, looks like an awful lot of experts are responding to the site redesign. I respect their comments, however, they/me are not the "average bear". The whole idea is to make it as user friendly as possible. Navigation? I guarantee you that the "Grilly Gang" is analyzing every click. You'll see evolution. That's what the medium is all about. Grilly is one of the best with a track record to prove it and we're lucky to have him. All the site is missing is a phone directory.
The Washington Post website is so much better than the new format of Philly.com. Monumentally superior.
This is not representative of a serious news organization. Isn't that what you aspire to be? It's too "fun" looking. Please take inspiration from washingtonpost.com, the best news web site in my opinion. I have been trying to get this point across to you guys for some time now. Design and content is outstanding, (and they won 6 Pulitzer's this year) especially their live discussions. They have an entire schedule of live discussion each and every day, which are very popular and informative. Please, philly.com is an embarrassment compared to this and nytimes.com.
GET RID OF THE AUTOMATIC VIDEO PLAYER!!! i look at your website and open many articles in tabs and you can't believe how annoying it is to have the same message played twice, let alone twenty times. for the rest of it, it's fine, better colors and better layout, but not very professional looking.
I've been surfing the internet since it's inception, and i've been witness to many redesigns, but I must say: This is, hands down, by far, the BEST re-design I've EVER SEEN. Love the BROWN! The only thing that bothers me the up in your face advertising, but you gotta cash in on the # of hits as a result of the PA primary, so I don't blame you.
The Flyers background is very amateurish. It's very obviously a repeating panel. It looks like someone's attempt at a MySpace background! I'm sorry, but this new site is just bad. Please change it back, or at least try again. Your design team just didn't get anything right!
This color scheme is Pottery Barn gone wrong. Give us a simple, intuitive layout with uniform fonts and appropriate font sizes. You had one before, why change for the sake of changing.
veganobamphanatic--Thanks for your lovely response. My....but you sound intelligent. Enjoy your cheesesteak at Pat's....or Geno's. Oh...and your taste is just phenomenal. Lucky Philadelphia.
marybrad88--several things you said are wrong:
1. Philadelphians are largely unattractive. This was proven in our winning "ugliest city in America" recently. Take a walk through the lunch crowd at Pat's and Geno's on any day of the week.
2. Philadelphians aren't particularly intelligent. Again, take a walk through the lunch crowd at Pat's and Geno's on any day of the week.
3. The ellpsis (...) is not a replacement for a comma. It is supposed to be used to indicate missing text.
4. The design is neither "tacky," "unattractive," or "unintelligent". It is stylish, uses contemporary color choices, and is attractive. However, one has to realize that the daily readers of Philly.com are for the most part not going to "get" new, modern, stylish design ideas and UNUSUAL colors like BROWN.
Now my comment again: This new website is very unattractive and unintelligent. This does not reflect Philadelphians at all..who in my opinion are the exact opposite....quite attractive and very intelligent. Please reconsider. It is tacky and amateurish, and quite frankly, an embarrassment. Thank you, and I appreciate your efforts. Please...get rid of it.
I think you want to sell newspapers. That's fine, but at least don't make the website a piece of garbage that even the most ardent readers of THE ENQUIRER laugh at.
I hate it! Bring back the old site.
where is my comment?
People, it's apparent this is no longer a "news" site, but a "lifestyle" site, and not a good one, either.
Click on the "News" tab at the top of the page, and today the Top Story, "above the fold," is the concierge service at 2 Liberty Place! Not the earthquake, not Burma, not the tornadoes, not even the local storm.
Too much wasted space in the logo area (2+inches!), displayed login, headline font too large - all this wasted before the first scroll down. I prefer to scroll down looking for more headlines listed. Too much space dedicated at the top - for just one story. Disappointing redesign. You should have hired someone with serious UI skills - or examined other new sites like the nytimes.com - which grabs attention with more news items above the fold, or scroll.
I think the design is a big improvement, but the content is poor. The top story today is a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in China and it's not even mentioned on the Philly.com home page? Is this still a NEWS site? I did find mention of the earthquake on the bottom of the News page, but it said their were 107 deaths when the other news outlets are reporting 8,500 deaths so far. Maybe it is time to bring an editor on board to make the site relevant?
I think the design is a big improvement, but the content is poor. The top story today is a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in China and it's not even mentioned on the Philly.com home page? Is this still a NEWS site? I did find mention of the earthquake on the bottom of the News page, but it said their were 107 deaths when the other news outlets are reporting 8,500 deaths so far. Maybe it is time to bring an editor on board to make the site relevant?
Overall: big improvement. A few bugs still-- for example-- http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/entertainment/television/20080512_ap_productionofabcsuglybettymovingtonyc.html
Yo! No!
Hopefully someone on the web team will read this far down.. can you make it the default to "view all comments" on blog posts? It's really annoying that you basically have to click on each post twice (once to load the post, then again to see the comments).
This is terrible. Maybe this is a ploy to sell more newspapers, the colors are nausiating. The site is almost unusable. Knowing their work, I can not believe Avenue A/RazorFish let this go live. Fix this quickly.
Try posting a comment on Avenue A's website http://www.avenuea-razorfish.com/contactUs.asp. Try tabbing between the fields, your old inputs are erased. Their site sucks! How can you trust them with philly.com?
Hey Philly.com!
Nice redesign...my only complaint is that I'm unable to play the Daily Jumble word game. I'm prompted for a username and password...What's up with that? The Daily Jumble is just like my coffee fix...Anyway to make it available like the previous version of Philly.com? Thanks!!!
Are you kidding me? This is my homepage at work and it looks like a kid from the 6th grade made this. Put a Philly themed background on the whole page. Dumb stuff guys & gals. Get some help from Prof. Street up at Temple.
Are you kidding me? This is my homepage at work and it looks like a kid from the 6th grade made this. Put a Philly themed background on the whole page. Dumb stuff guys & gals. Get some help from Prof. Street up at Temple.
Overall, I think the site is a step in the right direction, but some improvements are needed. Although, I don't read the paper regularly, I always found that format the easiest to find a range of stories. The way the site is currently configured, only a few of the stories are available at a time. For instance, I liked seeing more of the sports news on the first page, rather than having to click down for further detail. Today on the national news I see 2/3 stories before getting to blogs and weird news. Better, but needs improvement.
It looks like a blog gone bad. This is a good look for a personal site, not a major cities newspaper. I think you trying to hard to be web 2.0.
i LOVE the new layout! navigation is easy, it looks awesome, there is much more info on the first page (A+) and its just better looking than the last version. i can only assume all of you knocking this are crotchety old folks. CONGRATS on the new site!
i LOVE the new layout! navigation is easy, it looks awesome, there is much more info on the first page (A+) and its just better looking than the last version. i can only assume all of you knocking this are crotchety old folks. CONGRATS on the new site!
this page looks worse than over the weekend. please, i used to look forward to the Philly.com homepage so i could get both the DN and Inquirer stories in one shot. the headlines for the Flyers "2-0" doesn't even fit on one line...seriously? the layout is awful. the colors are terrible. i thought someone had hacked into the site over the weekend as a joke.
this is terrible.
The good - Fonts are way better and readable
The bad - Organization. Needs to be crisper than this. Have you guys heard of two clicks to anywhere on the site? Favorites? Most recently viewed?
The ugly - Color combination. Please the background is completely unprofessional. This is not a college kids site for heavens sake. And whats up with the powder-blue, brown combination. Did you guys know that there is Usability and Design group in Philly?
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Wow. I just had my comment deleted! I'll just say that the new layout doesn't cut it. Again-the site looks like a myspace page for a surf shop. The color decision are poor. And, the old adage is if it's not broken, don't fix it. No reason at all why you changed it when the old design was perfectly fine.
The new layout looks like something from a myspace page for a surf shop. Not sure why they went with tan and light blue. I see like 9 out of 10 comments by users are negative. I'm willing to bet the majority of the positive comments are being posted by stooges who work for philly.com. You should cut your losses and go back to the old layout!
This is really bad. I echo what everyone else is saying. Why did it need to be changed? I hate the colors and the layout.
I like it!
Are your designers bipolar? I've got to dig three or four layers down to find the news. You've got three-day old headlines on the news pages. You have road closures in Cheltenham on the home page, while more important news is deeply buried. Are you trying to drive readers back to the print product? Won't happen. Just save yourselves a lot of consultants' fees and copy the NYT or Washington Post sites. They've figured it out.
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Can't access comics! OR anything else site-specific with out locking-up my machine. Come on guys fix it or junk it.
Didn't you just change a few months ago? Can we expect "change" every few months? No stability in the modern world.
You could have warned us. You need a password and the one you e-mailed me doesn't work.
I really like what everyone at the Inquirer and Daily News have done to make Philly.com inot a great new website it looks fabulous, and i like all of the great new features too. In a few years i see Philly.com being right up there with Cnn.com and USATODAY.com bringing us excellent breaking news,weather, and sports news like never before THANK YOU TO EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It is now harder to find content than it was using the previous version. Also, color scheme is ugly.
hard to navigate? you have to be in special ed not to get lost with this sites navigation. the nav is perfectly fine. in fact, i dont see much of a deviation of nav from the previous site. whats everyone complaining about??? also, i dont see how everything is jumbled. its in a nice grid and the heirachy of content is pretty standard.
however, i am in full agreement with everyone else about the poor choice in color scheme. its a terrible decision and the logo is pathetic and hokie looking.
overall this should be an embarrassing compared to nytimes.com and washingtonpost.com.
Like I said before, it's amazing how many negative comments are here...I use Firefox and the pages load fast, easy navigation, I don't have to re-enter my password anywhere that I can see...I actually like the colors... and you wonder why people call our city 'Negadelphia'...
Not really liking this on first impressions... The other design had a much more profesional feel. this is to cartoony -- not saying that change is not good, but certainly bad change is well... bad!
Horrible. Too busy, can't find anything. What are you people doing? 2nd change in 6 months is not a charm.
there needs to be a way to see an article in a single page, the old way had it as the default option but now you have to click through multiple pages to read an article. This will make me stop reading the inquirer.
Colors colors everywhere... Did you purposefully make this look like a MySpace page? Did you guys take cues from Bolt.com circa '98? Please bring back the day/night skyline header and theme. It was clean, classic, simple, and so so easy to find what you needed. This is difficult, tacky, and frustrating. Also, fix the password requests every other page!
WOW , good stuff !
Wow, what a bad job and to think you worked on this for months. Whoever makes decisions on this stuff should be sent back to whatever high school paper they were loaned from. Can't find anything without searching all over. You guys blew it.
This is terrible. It's not pleasing to the eye and it is hard to find headlines. Change it back!
This design is a significant step back in usability and functionality. The color scheme is also very poor. On the old site it was very easy to navigate and pull up articles. This new version is a jumbled mess. Sorry philly.com try again.
Lets face it. the people running this thing are amateurs. The layout is impossible to find stuff. So you made it pretty? You really think so. You will be broke in 2 weeks.
The new design is almost as successful as Milton Street's recent campaign for mayor...
Whomever designed this FIRE them!!!! I want the old one back....I hate looking for stuff and thats what U have to do here.
Change IS good! New format is great, and has a "cleaner" look and feel to it. Everything one needs is there. CONGRATS!
Great Site! I love the changes! The color pallet is much more "hip." It is clean and easy to read. Those who posted negative comments are just resistent to change. This layout is so much better than the prior layout. I will definately be logging onto the site more often to fnd out what is happening in and around Philly! Good work!
Looks like someone lifted the about.com dot 'logo' which can't be a good thing.
People want to see something that resembles a news site, not a portal site. That's where this redesign is bad. Philly.com is a portal in theory, but in actuality users access the site for the news sections. In that way the design was poorly thought out, but tripling of the ads is just nauseating.
this new layout is not very good at all, any way you could just go back to the old layout?
One of the worst "updates" I've ever seen. Content hard to browse, security permission errors and SQL errors abound. Did you pay for this? Get your money back.
The real problem(and insult)is this: stories which used to be one page are now three pages. The reason: to sell more advertising space. I'm handicapped, and every mouse click is a challenge for me. Who runs this paper, Norman Braman? You used to be my home page; unless I find out this advertising-heavy format has been changed, I won't be back to read this garbage.
Like the Love Park graphic and think its a fresh new site. Good job designers...
keep it change is good
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I think most people here realize that everything online must change to stay current and relevant, but the new color scheme is absolutely atrocious, and the layout/navigation is a step backwards.
For the record, the blue, brown and yellow of this site perfectly follow color theory. It just happens to be a totally unappealing combination, and more importantly, the yellow background causes eye strain. A sans-serif font might look "clean" but is notorious for causing eye strain. Which is why sans-serif fonts are title fonts and it is generally accepted protocol to use a serif font for body text. But surely you all know that, you are NEWSPAPER PUBLISHERS, after all. For those who want the old format back click on the Inquirer button in the top left hand corner - at least until they decide to pretty that up too. It is largely the old barely navigable format less the annoying advertising that blows up when you accidentally roll over it. Can't say the same for the Daily News site - that design is less appealing and usable than this. I, like the majority of the people responding here, am only really interested in local news stories. Burying them in a transparent attempt to cram advertising down our throats isn't going to drive traffic to your site, on the contrary, it'll dive people away in droves. I stopped frequenting comcast's site for the same reason. Shame really.
The worst. What have you done!!! The previous layout was so much easier to navigate.
I'm pleased with the new format...brighter, and easy to navigate. Also, it now loads properly all the time with Firefox. The previous layout had problems.
I like the format BUT having to put your password in every time is silly.
Sorry, I have to agree with a number of people who questioned the use of brown and the fake tiled background. It takes a professional news site and makes it look like a 1997 version of a kid's website. Honestly, I thought there would be a place where you put "Sign My Guest Book."
I'm getting used to the layout. But it just doesn't say "pro news site." It more says, "We got talked into goofing around." I would love to hear what the journalists, whose material is encased in brown and faux marble, think about the layout. At this point I'd seriously consider a redo. And thank goodness for RSS...then it's all content, no goofing.
I'm sorry, but it's awful. A plain white page would be a huge improvement.
This is a joke, right? No links on the sides, so you have to scroll all the way down? Aathetic cartoon for a banner? And what's with the brown all over the place? (Just imagine these color combinations in your house.)
A huge step backwards in every respect. I live abroad and check philly.com every day to keep up with all the sad news from home. This is even sadder.
Great New Look!!! Finally a change from the old & drap looks and feels of other news sites. This site is visually interesting, full of great news and has tons of deals and offers.
Congrats on a beautiful site!
For me the NYT site is the beanchmark, easy to read text plus quick navigation tabs.Also real meaningful news content.Lots of wasted real estate on Philly.com please revise this abortion
Like others said the NYT site is clean, text is about the right size for easy reading, and has more real NEWS!Other than that I guesss Philly is OK.
So Far it is absolutely terrible. At one point I had to shut down my computer to get rid of the password screen from the puzzle page!
I really like the new layout and think that you've come up with something much nicer than what you've had for the past few years and certainly a lot nicer than a lot of other newpaper and media outle websites that I see on a daily basis. Good work!
I like change, but this is completely horrible. I agree with everyone who has the impression this was created on the cheap. The design is poor in every category you could name. It's usable but not enjoyable. I personally hate the colors.
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Thanks for telling everyone it was coming. It is sort of like when Gino's introduced the Hero berger and told no one. It cost them there business. I vist Philly dot. com at least 10 times a day. I may go to the Washington Post.
This is terrible. I can't find articles except for the three or four you have chosen to make available. Larry Kane's blog seems to have disappeared. The colors are garish. Your placing of "Bonnie" in a bikini up front is a flagrant attempt to titillate your readers.
Brown? Ugh.
It is significantly worse than the last design. The organization of teh site is now so chopped up that it is hard to find things that were easily found on the old site. There also seems to be less content visible in the first area you see. The colors and patterns are done as if someone just discovered how to use them and then decided to throw a bunch in and see how it worked out. Hire a professional user experience expert and try again. Please.
This really sucks, i'm going to read the Times and Post
Where is the store for t shirts?
I love the new design. It is user friendly with no popups. It even looks look with Firefox
Beautiful!!! Faster load times, soft colors, neatly organized, a website that doesn't look like it's from the 90's, a job well done. It's amazing so many people have left negative comments. But, hang in there. People don't like change, even if it's for the better. It's like replacing an old couch with a new one. The old couch had their backside imprint in their favorite spot, a bunch of change buried under the cushions, a stain from the beer spilled during game 6 of the 80 World Series when Tug struck out Wilson... Relax. Lighten up. You'll get used to the new couch... lol!
Really awful. It's impossible to find anything! Bad colors, bad layout.
Looks MUCH better. What took you guys so long?
Difficult to navigate. Color pallet is very unappealing to the eye as well. If something isn't wrong why fix it?
Much improved (although the brown background is a strange choice). Great job overall!
Why do so many bitter people come to philly.com? I never see as many self-loathing, arrogant comments anywhere as I do on articles here. The design looks nice but could some tweaking. Keep it up.
Terrible. Glad to see your following the trend to busy, flashy, ugly, wacky layouts over substance. Trying to kill internet news the way your industry killed the printed news, I see.
This is a bad change, what color blind person Ok'd the backround color. The site has no flow. is this why you charge more for the Daily News
What they said !
Looks great...thrilled to see positive new direction on the site. One of the great things about it is that is doesn't look like every other newspaper website...I'm a huge fan of the new layout...thank you!
Hate it. Go back to the old site, or rish losing readership.
terrible. colors are terrible. layout stinks. cartoons? Yo!? good lord, you took a massive step backwards.
fire this designer.
Thumbs way down! I am on philly.com every day & this is sooo less user friendly. Too many click throughs to get where you want to go - if you can even find where you want to go. Its not that I don't embrace change, but not when its bad. Poorly designed. Colors are horrible. blah.
Thumbs down to the new layout. The old layout was easier to find articles.
Boo! This looks very amateur. Like philly_0468 said, take your cues from the NYT or Wash Post. This is bush league, Inky. You can do better.
I think this is a major improvement over the old site.
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I work with media companies to implement redesigns in the southeast and I am a loyal philly.com reader. The old design was pretty awful hold over from the previous newspaper company that owned Philly.com. I think this looks great and seems to reflect more of a Philadelphia local flavor. Most people don't like change. I'm sure there are still improvements to be made, but I think it represents a good step forward. Would be interesting to see what other users say in a few months when they adapt to the new nav/design. Great job.
To be clear, I mentioned "use of color is good" in my previous post. I meant as opposed to plain white. These colors do remind me of a UPS web site. They're too drab. I think of Philly as a vibrant place, the cradle of our nation. Maybe something with a red/white/blue color scheme would work. That's work with some of the local sports teams we identify with, too. OK, not Flyers or Eagles, but their pages could be done to be compatible with our, uh, sensibilities. Back to the drawing board - You have a long way to go based on the overwhelming percentage of negative comments!
Looks like the sites that pop up when you miss by a letter. Or a garden supply web site. Its really confusing. The last format, wasnt the easiest to navigate, but at least it didnt distract me from the news. THIS IS DISTRACTINGLY UGLY.
It's a good effort, but the colors are horrible.
Excellent layout, color is warm and peaceful...i can read now in piece!
Use of color is good (I tend to think plain white is BORING). However, color choices are strange at best. I guess I preferred the old layout, because it provided a more efficient (i.e., linear) layout to find/read stories. Now, this new layout forces me to browse the whole page - left, right, up, down - to ensure I don't miss any Flyers-related news article. With time at a premium, I don't want to waste effort looking to find newsworthy stuff. Best rule of thumb - keep it simple...news goes here, pictures go there and blogs/posts go somewhere close by. Now there is too much scrolling around. Some positives to be found, but overall could've lived with what you had.
Responding to commenter "geffbp" regarding the new business plan to make the oneline site repulsive so that readers will buy the newspaper instead: I'll just get my news online somewhere else. I'd like to do it on philly.com, however the decision-makers here apparently think I don't have plenty of other options online. Well so be it, let them cut off their nose to spite their face.
I knew this was coming months ago. New business plan: make the online site so repulsive and ugly to push readers into buying the actual paper. NYT, WaPo, ChiTrib all have newsworthy sites. This is a joke format. Same goes for clever advertising graphics previously used, Eg. moving and speaking figures, centered block graphics, initial full page graphic, expanding ad bar across top of page, etc, all of which block text or force moving text or otherwise make reading the page an extremely annoying and unpleasant experience.
In fact it seems designed to keep people from finding anything. Enough said.
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absolutely terrible. Lousy UI, bugs (asking for passwords every screen change). nice to see Brian T was able to get UPS to fund his site but the UPS Brown looks ridiculous
This is horrendous. Its too hard to find what you want. The old layout was much better because I saw everything I needed at once, not this scrolling all up and down the page BS.
Overall, everything is too hard to find. If you needed new colors you should have just changed the former layout to these colors, not completely alienate your readers with this poorly thought out design.
Yo, get rid of it.
I appreciate the effort to improve the site, however, it feels more like a promotional site for the city (GPTMC) as opposed to a top notch journalistic site. Your job isn't to market the city. Flipping back and forth from nytimes.com only confirms this thought.
a hot link to alycia lane stories? your joking right?
The colors are too drab and serene. Preferred prior colors. Website looks like UPS.
Can't get into puzzles without a password and then can't get cancel password request. Some testing please (or explain to users what they have to do to use new site!).
Clean, lively, energetic; a big improvement. It's no longer an inquirer or daily news site; you're establishing your own identity.
Philly.com is looking more like the National Enquirer with every new format! Where's the news??? When I log on, I want the news, not a bunch of advertising and features that belong in section C. I can only say that I spend less and less time on Philly.com as you continue to dumb it down.
Ugh!
Where's the Miller Chill ad?
Who do you people think you are complaining about this web site? Show me your web sites that are so perfect! Sounds like a board meeting for Negadelphia Inc. Pass me some of that cheddar you whiners! And since you hate the new format so much, I won't have to listen to your drivel! Bye!
Blue and Brown aren't they the colors of the Schuylkill?............
Ok the last design wasn't great, but it still had elements on usability that made it POSSIBLE though NOT ENJOYABLE to use the site. This is a huge step in the wrong direction. The layout is a jumble, your color palet is disgusting, and the NAVIGATION IS ABSENT. On that last point your designers or whoever approved this design apparent have never used the site...because with your NAV you can't actually get to all the sections that you used to with the hover sub nav over Daily News, etc. I mean we all know that the news paper business is suffering because of the web, but don't make us suffer if we try to support you by at least visiting your site. Get with the program.
Pretty thoroughly disgusting! Nice job throwing away 10+ years of brand equity by replacing the swirly P logo with the Super Happy Brick-Red Fun Ball. Information architecture is just as much of a mess as it used to be, now wrapped in a new, uglier skin. It is a true embarrassment that our city can't have a more competently designed and executed news website, and for the love of God, the next animated pop-over video Flash ad with blaring sound I see on this site will be my last, because I will never come back here again. It is no wonder the print news industry is headed right into the crapper when this is the best you can come up with.
Disappointing change. Poor color choices, hard to find what I am looking for.
This is one of the worst website layout/design I have seen in quite some time. The color scheme is horrible and the layout is atrocious. This website was one of my favorite websites to read because of its minimalistic look and ease of use, now I guess I am going to look somewhere else.
ANOTHER change to the website? What, you need to find things for your website designers to do? It's terrible - once again, hard to maneuver and hard to find stories - I guess stories are now the filler for ads, photos, games, etc. You should go back to the design of a couple of years ago - as soon as you got on the site, you had easy access to news - which I thought was the point of a news organization. I've already cut my print subscription down because of this nonsense, and soon I guess I'll have to start getting all of my news somewhere else.
Holy cow! I just tried to read the obits. It made me enter password to get to the page and then asked again for each obit I tried to read. Um, did you ever hear of BETA TESTING?
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This is gross
Bad, bad, bad. What were you thinking? Appearance is tacky and need a GPS to navigate the site!
This MS PPT-looking wallpapers is horiird t and hte NAV is far less user freidly than either of the last 2 versions. Seriously - is this supposed to be a Philly Weekly type site or a news site that represents the Inquirer/DN? The Tabs you were using in the last rev were a great feature I used every time I visited the site. This version is an embarrassment that makes me want to ... order an actual newspaper to avoid it! Fess-uop -- who's 14 year old son designed this?
can't go from one thing to the other without password and don't remeber what i used.
absolutely horrible.. think nyt or washingtonpost - although not as horrible as fox29 horrendous site - you need to revamp quickly.. the colors don't make sense - aqua blue/brown/beige? and the whole layout leaving a good portion of the right usable portion of the screen for 'ads'.. you need to get your refund from the designers - come on you could have done better.. what was it - a free get your website redesigned offer you couldn't refuse.. shame on you..
Your kidding me right... did you have the website redesigned and outsourced in India? It looks like a 12 year old without any perception and or understanding of color theory or interface usability built this site. And what is up with your header and that bouncing "philly.com" logo? And for the love of god whahy did you use a beige textured wallpaper in your background it look very 1996ish.
One word comes to mind "FAIL"!
ERIC
Welcome to 2008
Wow. Congratulations. With those horrific handwritten section heads, you've finally come up with something more atrocious than Comic Sans.
(Couldn't you at least have asked someone from Our Lady of Good Penmanship to do the job? Sheesh.)
Congratulations, I think this is an improvement! I like the use of color, which I think draws attention to the amount of content on each page as compared to the white background.
Really? Cartoons for headers? That sums up the whole look. This is really a step back in design, usability, and overall experience of a news site. Remove the giant header on the PDN site and you are the closest to something I can use. Only hope that is a first attempt.
Yes,yes,yes,yes. Change is good. Relax mq, you will get used to it. It's got to be better or improved. Have you ever tried 6ABC's site. It takes forever just to load an article to read. Then if you click on the video link you think you are getting news footage but it's the reporter reading to you. Lame. Good job Philly.com!
Comment removed.
I like it. The old format was jumbled and unorganized. Also drab and boring. I haven't checked out the new layout much yet, but I can tell right away it's an improvement. Some people don't like change so there will be complaints. My first impression is "Good job".
No, no, no, no....horrible new layout. I liked the old layout, because I saw more choices for stories, features,etc...Now there is too much drill down clicking to navigate.
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