Howdy,


I'm wondering what you think of the new design for UK & Ireland? I know change can be jolting, but in terms of navigation, search and overall ease of use, how do you find it in comparison to what we had previously? Any other comments much appreciated as well

(BTW, if you don't see it yet, clear your DNS cache.... go to cmd and type "ipconfig /flushdns" without the quotation marks.)


Regards,



Aaron

Hmm, sorry to be a bummer, but a few issues on first impression:

1) After I log in to the forums it takes me to a German config page
2) The 'See all topics' link on the home page also takes me to a page in German
3) The forums Mouseover Marquee on the front page has been removed - put it back or at least let me access the US site where it still exists!
4) The design is too simplistic - at least let's have it like the US site. It just looks too bare in my opinion.

Visually, it is mostly better. however as expected with new things its a bit buggy
1. I can't alter my profile, every time I submit the changes it reverts back
2. I agree with ethel, Bring back the scrolling forums thingy
3. the left side bar looks to bare, looks like something is missing from it.
4. The 'in the news' bit at the top of this page (and probably others) looks messy.

It's nowhere nearly as instantly accessable, you can't simply scan the headlines of the news (which is one of the first things I do when visting) you have to go through a numbered list (which also cycles) to see them all is too long winded and highly annoying to use. If you want to keep it then use it for reviews while moving the headlines to a list below it.

I've seen a number of website revamps recently and in each and every case good design seems to have been thrown out of the window as ease of use should be the priority rather than how fancy it all looks/operates. And I agree with the above bring back the forums highlights scroll.

true, I also Like to just scan the headlines aswell

In one sense I hear you; but I also know that after every redesign we've done in the past couple of years we get "The old one is better!" This after bashing said old one when it was new... I think there's always a reluctance towards change that's natural.

As to German pages cropping up, to the bug cropping people I go! If you get that just let us know and we'll shoot it down ASAP. As to feature requests, in particular the scrolling forum bar, I'll look into it for you and let you know hopefully by tomorrow.

Some of the german links have been replaced. Let us know if you see other please.

Good point, change is always resisted at first but then accepted.

But the layout does look unbalanced - in the left hand column there's 3 options taking up 30% of the screen vertically, on the right hand side it goes down 2/3 of the way, then there's a column in the middle that's 2 screens high. It needs to be balanced out to make it look more visually appealing.

Oh, and it looks like the forum on the UK site is a different version / different config to the one on the US site, cos the quote button is in a different place?

That's just me moving your cheese for no good reason. I think it's slightly different, but you can access the same areas etc, and see all the same posts, so no sweat.

The menu thing will be sorted as we add features and suchlike in the coming months. The empty space is earmarked for stuff.

The look and feel of the new design is okay.
However, the one omission which throws the whole lot to the dogs is the Forum Ticker. I used to bring the site up, see there's no new news, and then watch the forum ticker and open all the topics I wanted to read in new tabs.

Now I've got to go searching through? Sod That!

The other issue with the forums is sometimes I get up a full page advert. That makes you wait before you can go to the page you want?
Instant window close.
Ads are a part of life, and they're fine when they're on the page, un-imposing. They're not supposed to stop me getting to my content!!!

I bought a HDD DVD recorder so I can watch TV programmes without adverts, I wish I could do the same for this site.

If you have firefox, then download Adblock it is very handy for getting rid of annoying adverts.

I'm not saying bring back the old site, it did have it's flaws. As for change I'm not adverse to change things have to change or they stagnate (you should see the number of changes I've done to my site) but I'd just like to see some elements from it carried over that made using the site a little less awkward.

Like many here, i also miss the easily readable headlines and forum-scroller-thingy. They both made the site easier to navigate.

I dont think it would greatly compromise the new design of the site to include them.

PS. If you do bring back the scroller, please try and make it work better with firefox. In firefox, moving the mouse around inside the scroller still made it scroll so i often ended up chasing topics off the page. This issue isnt there if i use IE.

http://tomshardware.co.uk ....... avec!

i would like to see the forum ticker back, i helped a lot of people by just clicking a topic i thought i could help out in. im not going to go searching in the forums to help people, i could do that anywhere. the ticker was great. i doubt i will visit the forums at all now that the ticker has gone.