Welcome to Consumerist Widescreen. Gone is the sea of black, replaced with a lake of purity.
We’ve tweaked things here and there, everything from headlines to dates to blockquotes. The site should load faster, too. Big props to our techs and designers for doing such a great job.
Overall, pretty simple and clean, letting us focus on the most important things in life: kicking ass.
Let us know in the comments or tips at consumerist dot com what you think, and if you find any bugs. — BEN POPKEN
Coolness. White, as ominous.
It’s a bit less edgy and a little more corporate, but it’s still easier for me to read so I like it!
I like it a lot better! Nice job.
Ypou should have some menus on the right-hand side, I think, and a little contrast would be nice..but overall, much better.
Good jorb, guys. This is much better. The key to all design is elegance. The pink-on-black of the old design was the epitome of inelegance. This new layout is functional and elegant. Not overly busy or annoying to look at. Kudos.
More contrast and less brightness. I agree with the comments on visually separating the elements on the site. Love the faster loading though. The previous incarnation took forever to load.
I just inverted the colors in MSPaint, and prefer it that way. Black background, white text, and white-outlined private eye guy in the corner. Of course the reds should stay the way they are.
Anyone besides me coming up with this ‘bug’ in Firefox?
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b268/structuralpoke/Cons…
This makes it easier for me to browse at work since it looks a lot like an official document at first glance. But wow, is it bright. Thought my computer was wonky.
Ouch… my retinas… Nice, but you really need to do something to kill all of the white space…
I don’t see any errors in Firefox 1.5.
@structuralpoke:
yes, i’m getting it too. looks okay in safari, not in firefox.
I’m going to second the comments on the need for borders and clearer lil’ icons. Maybe borders that bring back some of the gravitas of the sea of black, but without the sea of black?
I agree with a previous poster…. where are the kitties? need more kittens!
i like it..loads a lot faster
It makes my Bloglines all wonky.
Faster loading is a bloody boon. Good job. As for white space, bleh, it’ll never be possible to sastisfy people with big monitors anyway. Fill it with Gawker artists stuff maybe, that stuff is really good.
For people who prefer the old, why not offer a switchable stylesheet? You could even take that idea and run with it by letting us users submit a few custom stylesheets and offering up the best ones.
Overall, I do like this design much better, but I’m still going to edit it to use more of my screen. I’d be happy to share it when I’m done.
I liked the black theme with the little touch of evil
but widescreen is nice too.
I like everything, but the same animated ad in two places on the same screen.
I like it.
Yup, I got that bug in Firefox, too. And for the record, I hate the new look. The black look kicked ass. But hey, I’m a tech guy, which means I should never, under any circumstances, be allowed to make decisions regarding design.
I must also add my vote of NO for the new look. It is far too bright, and the new page breaks Firefox. the ‘Read More’ links overlap the article text.
this looks too much like other blogs now, I liked when it was black and red, felt unique.
it doesn’t look broken to me, but maybe it has been fixed in the mean time? my vote is for yes for everything except the cowboy guy. but that’s just my personal taste. it makes a lot more sense than the gates to hell look that was going on previously.
Re: bug
Yes, getting the same CSS bug under Firefox that StructuralP calls out.
Re: widescreen
As Inigo Montoya points out to Vizzini:
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Re: Suggestions
Would love to see a list of available HTML tags. I keep forgetting the one for block quotes, and I’d like to know if there’s one for bulleted lists.
OMG SO SO SO SO MUCH BETTER. background colors need to die.
thank you!
Ahhh! My retinas!
I’m going to have to change the colors in Firefox back to black now.
Ah, going Gawker again. I can’t say I like the color scheme better (black and red were awesome) but congrats.
It is pretty hard on the eyes…i usually spend about 15-20 minutes per day on the site and now after 10 minutes the eyes are hurting…can you tone down the white or give it something to contrast with? UGH!
The “tips@consumerist.com” is extremely hard to see. Perhaps change it to white? — apologies if someone has already mentioned it, I haven’t had the time yet to read through the comments.
Awesome change!
My eyes are burning! The nuns told me that would only happen if I looked at porn!
Other than that I like it, and no errors in Firefox
I have to say, your graphic work is becoming less and less entertaining. The images you guys have been setting for each post aren’t nearly as funny as they used to be. That was always my favorite part of this whole site.
I like it.
I love it, I can finally read it on my sidekick phone. Before it was showing up as black on very dark grey.
Yeah, I don’t get the whole wide screen thing. I use a widescreen monitor and the whole right side being filled with white kind of hurts my eyes.
I dislike the change, but as with most sites changing their design I will probably adjust in a week or so. Then in 2 months forget what the old design was.
I’m with Sharkjumper. I used to have to use the cursor to highlight the black text against the black background in order to read anything while the graphics were loading. Pain in the neck. This is better.
White is so blinding. Black is easier on the eyes. Can we at least dull it to a grey?
Loads faster, which I like. But there is a huge sea of white. Maybe a nice tan??
I get the same overlap with “read more”, but I got it on the old site, too. Maybe I’ll write a style to get rid of that box with the read more and digg icons. I’ll put it up on userstyles.com for any of your firefox users using stylish.
Heh…looks like someone beat me to it.
It is a touch bright, but thats easily fixed by just , you know, finding something to fill up all that neagtive space. Or I guess I can dim my monitor.
Overall though, I’m loving it. It’s so much less “creepy angry guy coding in his basement” than the last design. I’m sorry if thats harsh but the little flames over the “next” link were just so 1997 hacker.
I love it. Like a few others, the black background and black text were always first to load for me, and the tan background always took a good year or two to arrive on my screen (despite the crazy fast internet everywhere else). I prefer the simplicity of a white background.
ACK, too much white. Do a pale color of some kind to ease it, please.
Hnnnn… How do I change it back? I’m not happy with the changes here.
I liked the strong contrast of before. It provided an anchor for the text. Now articles are adrift in a sea of sorta-pink.
How about giving users the ability to choose what colors they would like in their background or for their text? Something like those custom homepages on the internet.
Either that or find a nice shade of grey to mute out the blinding snowstorm i see here….
I liked the old site better. The detective at the top is nice, but once you’ve scrolled down a bit it’s just too bright. You really just went from one hard on the eyes (the black) to another (the bright white). I find soft to medium colors like light gray and light blue to be the easiest backgrounds to look at for a period of time.