Be better if a nice big search box replaced those stupid tiles. But it seems like every site is determined to do things Windows 8 style nowadays. As is the search box being tucked away in the corner just means I'll switch the bookmark to my user page. Same as the main page but less clutter being vomited all over my screen.
Said it in the RB, will say it again here: I love it. Very clean and neat style choice, and much better looking than the old version.
This looks like the Metro layout of Microsoft, with all these blocks. I am not a fan of that either and I will certainly won't like this either.Everything looks much bigger btw and don't overlap properly on my monitor (1024*768), making it look like a giant cluster*!@#.
There are some positive aspects of the new layout, but I have some major problems with this (/violin).The most outstanding offense is the red on gray. It looks terrible. In most cases it might be valid to suggest that this is subjective - a matter of opinion. But no, not in this case. Red on gray looks absolutely terrible.
First, I'm absolutely agree with others, who said that old simple search line in Google style was much better. I don't need all this news and interviews on main page. Wowhead is a database mainly, not a news site. Can you return old simple design of main page ? There can be link to news page for those, who interested in it. Or make old main page as an option in profile preferences for other people, who don't need news.Second is a bright red color everywhere. For example - buttons in post coment interface('Bold','Italic','Underlined','Submit' and etc.) or 'Add Reply' button in commets to some subject. This color is usualy used when needed some attention in error case, but not for ordinary button. Such color is annoying.PS: Sorry for my english, i'm not naturally english-speaking. I hope it's clear enough what I wanted to say. And this is a one of the reasons, why I'm reading news on wowhead not often.
Way too much open space, and Open Sans is a horrible font. Thankfully the textarea I'm typing in right now is Arial so it doesn't look like @#$%. There's massive amounts of padding on everything, and it's horrible. Why is the search box 3x the height of the text you type in? Why is there 45 pixels of emptiness between the paging at the end of a list on an item and the "Contribute" above the comment section? Why is there massive space above and below the "Previous article" and "Next article" buttons right below where I'm typing? This is like Babby's first website. It was clean and crisp before, now it looks like it's made for 4-year-olds.
#1 complaint: giant red "Add Reply" button (and all buttons).Red is a negative color, it should be for reporting, or errors, or actions you DON'T want to do, not the color for the primary action on any element.The main wowhead page is just a disaster. You've lost the focus as an item database site. Pushing the news, articles, guides, ads and other junk too hard. The database is almost buried in it all, a single text box hidden off to the side. The center of focus when you load wowhead should be the search box, like it used to be. With everything else being secondary, extra, unnecessary.In general:- too much distracting brightly and differently colored junk all over the place- too cluttered- just too 'noisy' in general, needs to be simplified- too many ads all over the page, top, bottom, right, in the middle... seriously?- all the different font sizes, styles and colors used in a single element like a comment on an item are unnecessarily distracting. There's no attempt with the styles to bring the focus to the relevant/important information.Also, ads with sound that randomly start playing in the background are just pure evil and need to be killed with fire.
The "Top results for" and "Guides for" above the search results are just annoying, distracting, and unnecessary. Just show me the search results.Also having a giant ad bar in between the search box and the search results is wrong. Put it above the search box, don't insert this giant dead space between the results and the most important element of the page.Oh, and a perfect example of the multi-colored insanity, the buttons attached to a post.edit = bluedelete = redreport = orangequote = purplereply = whiteAnd the text is yellow.Why?And then the tab headings are grey, de-emphasizing them when they're one of the more important and frequently used elements after you do a search.
Site does load a bit better when you go around and Adblock all of the junk that's on it now.
Add me to the do not like it side. I love the old look. Often used it as my showing browser window. Very sad to have lost it. I checked the news page when I wanted to read the news.That said, thanks for all you do Wowhead! <3
Still you haven't rolled back to normal front page? Do you think we like this because we stopped repeating that it sucks?
I must say I find the new wowhead front page just horrible.For me a large part of the reason I started using Wowhead to beginwith was the nice clean front focusing on what the user want 90% ofthe time - a search box. That is what made Google a success and thatis what made you a success.Web sites that try to fit everything into a single page just make myhead hurt. There is just too much going on and I can't seem to findwhat I'm looking for because I can't focus.Usually I go somewhere else that is less noisy.
It's not that I don't like it, it's that I don't want it as the front page. The greatest thing about Wowhead to me has always been the simple search bar, with some chooseable drop downs below the bar. That's it, it's clean, it loads fast, and it's simple. I have no issue with the new page design spreading the news/guides/whatever else, but I would be more for the old layout with a clickable that took you to the news page.
I'm not a fan of the new Wowhead front page. It feels cluttered and unnecessary. I don't understand why we can't just have the current front page be the "news" front page and the old simply front page be the main page. I don't really see myself just coming on Wowhead to browse anymore like I used to because of how clustered and annoying the new front page is. It isn't poorly made or anything, it just doesn't fit with the website.
So, what exactly is the new design trying to accomplish? How was the old font a problem? In which way the red buttons improved the usability? How the complete lack of negative space makes anything easier to read?It looks likes you are trying to fix a problem that wasn't even there in the first place.I'm a huge fan of Wowhead, but... you use a 15.4px line-height on a 14px font in some places. On some blue trackers I even found the line height to be the same font size. Everywhere the text is too dense.Just look at this very post. A lot of people are using 2 newlines between paragraphs. Heck, inspecting the HTML of the article, even you guys are doing it. Also, you are using <br> instead of <p>, which really doesn't help.The "Continue Reading" font size is almost as big as the news titles themselves.The blue tweets tabs read: .@CM_Exhil Same goes for Elite PvP gear — Holinka (@holinka) May 22, 2014That's it. Just a wall of plain text, without proper highlighting. Only the links but that's not enough. The tweet content should be separated from everything else. MMO-Champion really nails this one. They use a different color for questions and answers, then the author between brackets, in a different color (they also use only 2 colors, only right).By the way, don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about the news in the front page like it's ok for them to be there. It's not. You used to be Google. Now you are Yahoo or AOL.Keep it simple guys. :)