Cult of Mac: a blog about the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone - and the people who love them

101 comments

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theguycalledtom, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:02 pm

nothing to hate … nice!

abetam, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:03 pm

It would’ve been better if there were no empty spaces on the sides throughout the design as it looks better when the whole thing is covered up.

Also, the black background for the top leaderboard really looks out of place. It’d be better if the snow leopard background thing extends as the leaderboard background, replacing the black one.

Sayam Aggarwal, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:04 pm

Perfect. Everything you do is fine. Verdana still
sucks, sorry.

Martino, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:09 pm

Side bar better on right (as was).

Top-middle nav makes me think I’m on a subpage for some reason. Maybe too tall with too many options. I kept clicking on the main nav “home” trying to get rid of the clutter.

brookshanes, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:12 pm

Sidebar – in my view: it’s a terrible idea. Much better to have the sidebar on the right.

matthew, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:12 pm

The left side frame is distracting to me. if it were on the right side, because it is more Advertisement related. Since it is only two columns, the actually articles go to the left… and the right can be reserved for stuff i dont need to read or look at.

postmarque, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:17 pm

The side bar on the left makes the ads the focus of the site so I vote for having it on the right. Or you could change the name to Cult of Big Mac

Dick Nick, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:19 pm

Not digging it. Far too busy. And the sidebar definitely needs to be on the right. You should concentrate ad units so they don’t break up/distract from your content.

Ted, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:21 pm

I vote for moving it back to the right. On the left, I keep losing focus on the articles and having to reorient my focus.

TonyC, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:30 pm

Sidebar back on the right – please.

Dave, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:32 pm

The sidebar on the left is very distracting to me. It feels like the web equivalent of aligning a paragraph flush right.

mongo, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:32 pm

The sidebar really didn’t bother me before I read all this stuff… Maybe, it’s just me!

Sayam Aggarwal, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:34 pm

preferred the sidebar over the other side… just a traditionalist perhaps!

Matt, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:38 pm

move it back!!

Todd, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:40 pm

Right side for the bar. Only that.

Gog, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:40 pm

I did like the sidebar on the right, but I’m sure that’s just because I’m used to it there. Just from experience I think more websites have their sidebars on the right… could be wrong

Greg, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:40 pm

The sidebar was much better on the right. This feels like you are just trying to get advertising clicks because the links for the featured articles are so far down on the side. I noticed the featured articles more on the right and the page didn’t feel as cluttered.

tim, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:41 pm

decent. I say move the sidebar back.

ted, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:46 pm

move the ads back to the right. But youre still the best for mac news. As long as the excellent reporting carries on I can’t complain.

ben, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:52 pm

I like the left sidebar. The top is quite Gizmodoesque, anyway not bad

Andrea, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:53 pm

I prefer the sidebar on the right.

Shane, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:55 pm

I use firefox 3.5 on my imac and the top of the page looks broken
sidebar on the left side is disturbing me, cause it’s absolute unusual.

Didi, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:55 pm

For some reason the INTERACT REGISTER etc. bar does not allow me to click the hyperlinks without floating my mouse into space, and even then the hotspot is about 1 pixel tall. I’m using Firefox 3.5 on a PC.

P.S. The sidebar was better on the right.

Alex K, on October 28th, 2009 at 4:56 pm

This is… uh… a big ol’ mess. There’s no visual hierarchy – I’m not sure what’s an ad, what’s content and what’s navigation.

Jason, on October 28th, 2009 at 5:06 pm

Sidebar should be on the right
The dark stuff on top bug’s me out. It used to be a neat white with mac-purple header.
But hey, we’ll get used to this

Luuk, on October 28th, 2009 at 5:11 pm

Sidebar on the right, please, it’s simply awful!

Top looks great though

aletz, on October 28th, 2009 at 5:13 pm

If you place the sidebar on the left, it places the editorial content on the right. However, if a visitor to the site is typing in the CoM url, their eyes will naturally drop down to directly below their typing to see the content – except that content will now be on the other side. Perhaps it would feel more natural to have the content placed in such a way that your eyes are naturally drawn to it, without having to search for where it is. Also, while the redesigned top portion (header) elements are nice looking, it is overwhelming to look at when you consider the fact that your new CoM toolbar/header attracts as much attention as the ads on the left which attract as much attention as (finally) the content. Bottom line: I think that the content needs to be what draws the eye, not all sorts of flashiness competing for your attention as soon as you get on the site. Reminds be a bit of all the stickers you see beside the keyboard on a new PC laptop advertising this and that with this crappy feature now being activated with this “hot button” or whatever….

Miguel, on October 28th, 2009 at 5:17 pm

something is funky with the text… too bold? just doesn’t fit the elegance of the writing on this blog (and the subject matter). the new header graphics are an improvement over the previous design, and a step in the right direction… but I still am hoping for a more sophisticated overall design given who you have dedicated your content to.

I agree that it needs some visual hierarchy, and could also use a bit more whitespace to give the elements some breathing room.

Outside of constructive criticism, if you need any professional design help on it, give me a ring: http://www.exkclamation.com

(Ps. Great seeing you on Monday night.)

kc!, on October 28th, 2009 at 6:03 pm

Not a big fan of that bold font in the “interactNav” part of your masthead.

Otherwise good!

Doug Aghassi, on October 28th, 2009 at 6:05 pm

I love your site, but being honest: I don’t like the design at all. I think it isn’t consequent. Some corners are rounded corners (example: the tweet button) and some aren’t (example: this comment). The new header doesn’t really fit in the whole site design, in my opinion. But the previous did that too.
I don’t like the adds, I really hate them. They make the design even worse. I know that you need adds to make money, so I’ve got an feature request. You make a donation button and if someone donates 5 bucks or more, the adds disappear for that particular ip address.
I hope you that my criticism will help you.

I’m sorry for my bad English, but I’m from Holland.

Samuel, on October 28th, 2009 at 6:07 pm

You’ve still forgotten to set a default bgcolor or background colour attribute in either the HTML or CSS. (Hint to your design team: setting the browser’s default background colour to Pepto Pink will guarantee you catch errors like this every time.)

cl

Chris, on October 28th, 2009 at 6:09 pm

As a follow-up to my last comment, I think the font stack for that masthead font maybe needs some tweaking.

Font-family: “Lucida Sans Unicode”,”Lucida Grande”,Lucida,Verdana,Arial

Most here are likely using OS X, so I would at least change order of stack to have the better “Lucida Grande” in front of “Lucida Sans Unicode”.

Also, I think either version of Lucida look bad when bold and light colored on a dark background. Maybe actually use a stack with helvetica/Arial first, or even Veranda—it’s reversed bold looks better than Lucida…

all this IMHO, of course

Doug Aghassi, on October 28th, 2009 at 6:14 pm

Although I really like your site, and check it daily, I hate the new design…it was much better before. And you should calm down with the adds…It’s getting out of control !

francesco, on October 28th, 2009 at 6:53 pm

yes, switch it back to the right. it’s weird

David Jones, on October 28th, 2009 at 6:59 pm

Loving the new design. All i would change would be the colour of the wide leaderboard at the top of the page. The black colour is just too dark, and stands in your face a little ‘too’ much.

Andrew Macdonald, on October 28th, 2009 at 7:00 pm

Sidebar needs to be on the right. The site suddenly feels boxy and crowded. I had a hec of a time trying to distinguish between articles. Compare this site to how easy it is to read the Appleblog.com for instance.

The header of the site seems confusing and blocky also.

Having said this, I think cultofmac does an exceptional job with it’s content. Especially over the weekend! I notice other sites tend to give up on the weekends almost favoring the traditional news cycle. Not my cultofmac!

But for design? I think it’s a step back. not enough white space! Using white space well is, afterall, an Apple thing.

George Fulton, on October 28th, 2009 at 7:01 pm

I certainly prefer the previous layout, but my issues with this one are only minor. I definitely think that you should move the sidebar back to the right hand side, though.

Meghann, on October 28th, 2009 at 7:02 pm

Extremely annoying an inefficient. Left sidebar? 1/2 the webpage wasted in white space? Did you design this on an 1024×768 screen? You do know the world is moving to widescreen format right?

Zedd, on October 28th, 2009 at 7:02 pm

change the sidebar back please!

webbs, on October 28th, 2009 at 7:05 pm

How much do I hate it? A lot. It’s mostly fine except having the sidebar on the left is highly distracting – people expect the most important content to be on the left. It looks especially bad after you scroll past the sidebar content – having a huge empty space on the left side is exceedingly weird.

Sean Peters, on October 28th, 2009 at 7:07 pm

Oh, and here’s another thing I hate even more than the misplaced sidebar – having to click “continue reading this post” all the damn time. Do you just not want your readers to read the whole article? Because I can guarantee that I’m skipping a lot of content I would otherwise read, because I can’t be bothered to click over and over again to get said content. Please, stop hiding half of all your content behind these mindless extra clicks.

Sean Peters, on October 28th, 2009 at 7:10 pm

Hate it. Move it back to the right and reduce the width

Terry, on October 28th, 2009 at 7:34 pm

put it back! put it back the way it was. move right please.

Jack, on October 28th, 2009 at 7:56 pm

I vote to move it back to the right. My eye goes to the left first and it’s a little annoying.

Billy Adams, on October 28th, 2009 at 8:08 pm

zomg, please, return the sidebar to it’s original location, it’s home! where all it’s childhood memories, and friends were! the world is crashing down at it’s current location….!

omni, on October 28th, 2009 at 8:08 pm

I prefer the sidebar on the right. Otherwise it looks fine.

Frank H, on October 28th, 2009 at 8:18 pm

switch back please

solar, on October 28th, 2009 at 8:23 pm

Back, back, back to the right! The current way throws everything off balance! Almost all of the sites I visit have the sidebar on the right. It’s jarring and confusing to see it reversed.
Otherwise it looks good.

Mark Crummett, on October 28th, 2009 at 8:43 pm

Woof! did I just saw back to the right? Left! I meant to the left!
Aw, man. Now _I’m_ confused.

Mark Crummett, on October 28th, 2009 at 8:44 pm

Sidebar on the right, for sure.

Gabriel, on October 28th, 2009 at 8:51 pm

Please move the sidebar back to the original location. Please Everything else is good.

Cookie, on October 28th, 2009 at 8:52 pm

Old design was better and less-cluttered.

Dundz, on October 28th, 2009 at 9:02 pm

the less clutter the better. Since we read left to right, the ads are really distracting. Right is better.

Thor, on October 28th, 2009 at 9:34 pm

I have to agree that the website was better the way it was. At least put the side bar back on the right side. Otherwise good job as always!

Paul Spitsen, on October 28th, 2009 at 9:38 pm

Aweful. Aweful. Aweful.

Hmmmm… What site am I on? – Looks to be Solar Energy Charity right now… Oh, duh, that’s a banner ad… The site’s name is further down on the page in this tiny little bar thingy…

Then, there’s another bar thingy with different options… Oh, and then there is all this crap mixed in with news on the left side.

Ugh.

Scott, on October 28th, 2009 at 9:42 pm

Sidebar on the right, please.

Wireman, on October 28th, 2009 at 9:43 pm

Six of one, half a dozen of the other but I vote move sidebar to the right.

Will, on October 28th, 2009 at 10:07 pm

as others: Sidebar back on the right – please

(who puts it on the left? – no-one!, there’s obviously a reason for this)

media_lush, on October 28th, 2009 at 10:15 pm

AWEEEEEEESOME …..now it looks different than those other blogs and as easy as cake to navigate

Diego Mamani, on October 28th, 2009 at 10:30 pm

I would like to see the sidebar going back to the right. Still, the contents are the most important part and I would like to see it at the top-left-hand corner. For your consideration. Thanks.

Winkins Lam, on October 28th, 2009 at 10:57 pm

Too much white!

The outer-space / black part at the top now stands out like a sore thumb in a sea of white. Simply changing the gutters to either side of the page (the strips you see when the window is wider than the page) to black would fix that.

PeterG, on October 28th, 2009 at 11:10 pm

like everyone here.. +1 for side to the right..my eyes need to re-orientate to look at the content and it’s very annoying.

alvin, on October 28th, 2009 at 11:27 pm

I liked it before. Moving the sidebar right seems natural. Makes things flow much easier.

Joshua Zimmerman, on October 28th, 2009 at 11:59 pm

I’ve removed CoM from my bookmarks as of now. I’ll check back in a week, and if it’s still an eyesore of a site that’s more focused on “dealmac” and “retweets” than honest and accurate content, I won’t be visiting at all again.

nak, on October 29th, 2009 at 12:16 am

When you scroll down, it is unbalanced. If anything, it then makes more sense having the sidebar on the right.

Adam, on October 29th, 2009 at 12:45 am

Definately move the sidebar back to the right, it overshadows the articles massively on the Left and makes the page look messy/ ugly where before it looked quite nice

Max p, on October 29th, 2009 at 1:09 am

Move it back to Right please..

Ammadz, on October 29th, 2009 at 1:27 am

Definitely keep it as it was!! Left side is very distracting…

matsuyamakiwi, on October 29th, 2009 at 1:44 am

Put your sidebar back! If it’s not broke then why fix it?

Tim, on October 29th, 2009 at 2:24 am

Move it back! Watching the site now makes my head spinn.

Fower, on October 29th, 2009 at 3:13 am

font-family: “Lucida Grande”,”Lucida Sans Unicode”,Lucida,Verdana,Arial

I see you made the switch, much better looking

I almost accidentally clicked on an ad, forgetting that the sidebar had been moved to the left

…studies say ads placed in the top left of the page have the highest click-rate…bla, bla, bla.

Great content, keep it going.

Doug Aghassi, on October 29th, 2009 at 3:40 am

all fine except side bar should be on the left!!

jamie Bishop, on October 29th, 2009 at 4:34 am

Sidebar on the left please, rest looks sweet!

Marco, on October 29th, 2009 at 5:17 am

move the sidebar to the right, everyone reads from left to right, i want the important things on the left. sidebar also takes up too much space. thats all

aeyulous, on October 29th, 2009 at 5:39 am

Thanks to those of you who’ve posted constructive criticism. New designs are always divisive, but I’m glad to see most people helping out by offering helpful comments.

To respond to some of the points raised here:

- The sidebar thing is an experiment that we’ll run for a few days. The response here has been pretty negative, so it may well switch back tomorrow.

- Layout breakage/dead interact links were due to a layout screw-up. These should be fixed now—I’ve tested on Camino, Safari, FF, Opera, IE 8 and 6. Apologies for this.

- Body text: nothing has changed there. The only changes made have been to make the layout a little more compact, the addition of a one-pixel border above each header, and the tweetmeme bolt-on.

- Adverts: there are actually fewer on this design than the previous one (we’ve removed two major ads so far). They’re a necessary evil.

@Doug: the font stack was a hangover from a test version, and the switch has been made. That said, it doesn’t make much odds, since few Mac users will have Lucida Sans Unicode installed anyway—that settings a fall-back for Windows users (like Lucida is for Linux users). Anyway, cheers for the nudge.

@Zedd: Yes, we are designing for 1024 x 768 (well, a 960ish pixel width), and that’s because when we trialled a widescreen design we got so much shit that it was pretty damn apparent people didn’t want a wider layout, despite about 80%+ of our users running such displays. Frankly, I think that’s fair enough anyway—most people I know with big displays don’t run browser windows full screen.

@Terry: Why do you want the width reduced? The site width is the same as it’s been for years.

@aeyulous: The sidebar has to be 300px wide to take an MPU ad slot. Nothing we can do about that—almost all similar sites do the same (or more).

Craig Grannell, on October 29th, 2009 at 7:23 am

Very nice design, but it’s totally overshadowed by the two enormous banners on the top and the left side. Viewing starts top left, so not only is it very distracting but those ads bite a big chunk out of your screen space. Look at the screenshot you posted, a third of the screen is taken over by ads.

Krrrnel, on October 29th, 2009 at 7:24 am

arrrrgghghghghg switch it back, switch it back! best 10 minutes you could spend in a looooooong time!!!

JeremyD, on October 29th, 2009 at 7:51 am

Well, that’s pretty much explained by the message above.

Krrrnel, on October 29th, 2009 at 8:25 am

Yuk!

Ged, on October 29th, 2009 at 8:59 am

Definitely prefer the sidebar on the right! But I like the new look at the top.

Josh, on October 29th, 2009 at 9:06 am

I’d place the navigation back on the right. Puts the focus back on your articles. And, while I like the new header, I agree with the comments that it should extend across the entire top of the screen. Looks small and more like an ad than your masthead.

OregonMac7, on October 29th, 2009 at 9:12 am

EEEEK! Put it back on the right. PLEASE!

Liked everything else

John, on October 29th, 2009 at 9:17 am

Earlier on, i said the only thing that annoyed me was the black leaderboard at the top. Now you have changed the colour of that, its much better, but i now ‘totally’ agree with what 80% of everybody else has said in these comments.

The left sidebar is just terrible. It’s too distracting, the eyes are looking at the sidebar instead of the content, and that is fundamentally the wrong way around.

PLEASE move it back to the right.

Andrew Macdonald, on October 29th, 2009 at 9:58 am

Have some respect for your audience and drop the ads. They are an invasion of consciousness and an uninvited one too. Use your collective intelligence to find other ways to monetise the site.

chano, on October 29th, 2009 at 10:17 am

Craig, I have Lucida Sans Unicode installed on my Macbook, so the font stack change made a huge difference in my browsers…

Doug Aghassi, on October 29th, 2009 at 12:57 pm

Having the sidebar on the right gives me a HUGE white margin on the left for 90% of the page while reading comments or a long story. Bad UI, but that’s IMHO.

Sidebar on the right is much less invasive and more natural to read for anyone reading left-to-right.

Scott, on October 29th, 2009 at 2:27 pm

Nice, but please move it back, all the text is way too far over to the right, which is really annoying!

Elise, on October 29th, 2009 at 2:42 pm

you said putting it back would take 10 minutes over a day ago!

do you actually pay any attention to your readers?

media_lush, on October 29th, 2009 at 2:44 pm

I definitely prefer the sidebar on the right. I feel the content is taken away from your eyes natural position when the sidebar is on the left. Might just be me.

ghostshadow, on October 29th, 2009 at 2:48 pm

Move the side bar to the other side. It’s just not right on the left!!

Steve Wanless, on October 29th, 2009 at 4:30 pm

I thought my browser was messing up. It’s not a bad look, but it’ll take a while to get used to.

Fabian, on October 29th, 2009 at 4:40 pm

arrrghghghg still on the RHS!, will now resort to once a day visits until “fixed” to limit the aesthetically induced visual impairment that I’m sure would result from further exposure, shame was of my top Apple websites

JeremyD, on October 29th, 2009 at 5:10 pm

your new design doesn’t work well and here’s why. moving the sidebar to the left has made reading articles more difficult. this is because each time your eye flits back to the beginning of the line to find the next line, it is distracted by the graphic cacophony of deals, reviews, how-tos and ads all of which have a bunch of text right where your article’s next line might be. i suggest you either switch the text and images in the sidebar or, as most of your readers have sagely suggested, move the sidebar back where it belongs. and while you’re at it, make the sidebar images all the same size and unify the appearance of the various text links so at least it has some graphic coherence.

you also have problems in the header area where there is too much going on in a small place. it just doesn’t work. take a close look at it. you’ve got a gradient bar, which holds an ad, cutting right across the implied border of the page. this feature is unhappy both logically and graphically: neither the ad nor the gradient bar appears to relate to the rest of the page or to each other. fortunately the site’s navigation menu/search bar is clear and meaningful, and the logo is appropriate and great [ and as the only significant identification element could well be much bigger and more prominent - you could make a good case for putting it right at the top of the page ].

but what about those pseudo-tabs? they’re NOT tabs, so they shouldn’t LOOK like tabs. you’re confusing me and wasting my time by mixing graphic metaphors. please don’t confuse me. just make things simple, coherent and immediately understandable.

trev hatchett, on October 29th, 2009 at 7:17 pm

I think you’ve messed up something that was just fine before. The left sidebar is annoying on a 13″ screen, and the header and ad banner just eats up more space. Please revert!

Diane Phillips, on October 29th, 2009 at 8:15 pm

“A” for effort, however the whole site is feels ‘noisy’; visually the colors chosen to separate the various elements of the page do not work my friends and the layout is clunky. I would sum with a comparison of MySpace and Facebook. I feel like I’m looking at Myspace here. I’ll still come back though.

Josh, on October 29th, 2009 at 9:42 pm

Prefer the ads on the right, have to endorse all the calls for it to be moved. Also hard to find the editorial content amongst all the clutter though…..

chris, on October 29th, 2009 at 11:26 pm

Side-bar on the right.

roy, on October 30th, 2009 at 3:10 pm

please put it back on the right! it was nice to try, but this new layout gives me a headache!

ryan, on October 30th, 2009 at 7:20 pm

just move the sidebar to the right side…its very distracting. other than that everything else is cool.

LV, on October 31st, 2009 at 1:02 pm

Unless whoever redesigned your new cultofmac.com is of arabic descent/middle east origin; where they’re very much used to start books or restaurant menus from the last and flip through pages to the right / or find the road signs on the opposite side (I now live in such a country ) the ‘normal’, usual, or at least more western-like way to start reading anything is:

top to bottom-left to right…

but hey!, whatever rocks your boat mate, right?

Alex B, on November 1st, 2009 at 9:02 am

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