New layout is awful.There's a reason most savvy people prefer Google over Yahoo. The comparison is especially apt in this case since the majority of Wowhead users do use it for its search/database aspect.Going beyond the flawed motivations for the new design, the actual design itself is poor, too. Just looks busy and amateur, I guess, hard to say much more than that. Furthermore, the font that's being used looks horrible. I'm using Firefox 29 on Windows 7. The font appears to be a browser-downloaded font named "Open Sans"? Looks like complete crap compared to the standard Microsoft fonts. Need proof? I took a screenshot of the top navbar in its current form, then used the Firebug extension to modify the style of the page, removing Open Sans so the font goes back to standard Microsoft Arial. Here's screenshots of the word "Guide" from the top nav bar, at 400% zoom, first one is the normal way it looks right now, second is after I made it use Arial instead of Open Sans.http://i.imgur.com/Zzyj9cI.pngAlso, the whole Open Sans thing makes reading forum posts literally painful, as forum text appears to use it as well. I run with ClearType turned off, perhaps Open Sans requires it to look halfway decent, I don't know.EDIT:Screenshot (at normal size, no zoom) of the first part of my last paragraph above - the top version is what Wowhead looks like right now, the bottom version is after switching the font to Arial using Firebug:http://i.imgur.com/t37Jbd8.pngTop version is amazingly ugly, with jagged crap hanging off just about every letter.
For anyone that knows or did anything in design, this looks way worse than it did before. Increasing the font size on the old design would've been better than this.
The Google style with just a search bar and a few options was objectively better than sending me directly to a cluttered news page containing a bunch of crap I don't care about, when all I want to do is search for something in World of Warcraft.
BTW, here's a screenshot of your profile page: http://i.imgur.com/cvfhXGf.pngLook at the garbage hanging off all the curved surfaces on that font. It's especially visible with the green color. Look closely at the left and right sides of the lowercase "o" and "c" letters. Surely you're not going to say that looks good to you.
Bring back easy access to the random button! I loved that it was just there for me to click when I was bored.
not a fan either. I liked being able to see at a quick glance what was new on the front page, not by having to scroll down through the text :( won't stop using the site though
I don't hate the looks of the font as much as some, but I have to say I find it very hard to read; I'm finding myself squinting at the page constantly, which really shouldn't be necessary given it feels larger than usual. I haven't got the knowledge of some of the above posters who've clearly explained what they dislike, I just know it doesn't work so well for me, it just always seems slightly blurry. I have Cleartype turned on, but going on the screenshots from the poster with it turned off, I don't think that would improve matters for me.As for the frontpage and hidden searchbar, I gave my opinions in the preview thread, and they haven't changed after using it for a few days. The amount of clutter on the frontpage is very offputting, and really seems like you're trying to minimise the database side of the site. Given the database is what made Wowhead what it is, I think that is a big mistake. You've also really failed in making the news more prominent, as I have to scroll to even see all of the first article - 1920*1080 is not an excessively small resolution, but the massive boxes at the top and wide side panel takes up SO much space that the old frontpage showed more, and would've been fully effective even at far smaller resolutions.
I liked the old layout better, it was cleaner and finding things was easier. The new style feels to cluttered and it looks really "forced" to look modern.
Bring back old front page! I come here for searching, not spam!
I made it through about 4 pages of mostly generalized "i hate it" or "i love it" comments before skipping to the end. Personally, I'm not a fan of the front page layout, it seems too cluttered, but I have a suggestion for fixing it. Make a subdomain (www.cuckhead.com/tbc, maybe. or something similar) that has just a search interface. The database item pages themselves are ok, and I'll probably get used to the layout/font changes that have applied, but 9 times out of 10 when I (or probably most of your users) visit Wowhead, it's to search for something :pSomething about the font choice is bugging me, but it may just be that it's changed. Or it may be that I'm getting old and cranky.