Comments on: Comments on 20717

Post number 20717

zeoslap — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 23:57:00 -0800

Wired just got hit with the ugly stick

By: zeoslap

zeoslap — Thu, 10 Oct 2002 23:59:05 -0800

Although to be fair, the nav does lend itself to exploring deeper into the archives

By: majcher

majcher — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 00:04:04 -0800

I think it actually looks better than the previous design, and easier to use, to boot. Then again, I'm not a regular visitor there, so that's just at first poke around. What, specifically, don't you like about it?

By: shepd

shepd — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 00:09:23 -0800

Ahh, lynx, the wonderfully fun browser. I see even wired has taken to insulting it. "Note: All of our content is accessible to all versions of every browser. However, the browser you are using to view this page prevents you from seeing most of our site's design details because the browser doesn't support basic Web standards. Later versions of most browsers do support these standards; specifically, Netscape V6.0 and above and Internet Explore V5.0 and above. Wired News supports the mission of the Web Standards Project in the campaign encouraging users to upgrade their browsers." And where does the link go to? A site that doesn't have any textmode browsers to reccomend. And Lynx is 100% "web" compliant. It does a great HTTP 1.0 negotiation sequence, and fully supports all HTML 1.0 codes. Without screwing up. Or crashing. The worst part? It does it with all text browsers. w3m/(i assume)links included. BLECH. "Wired" they are not. Maybe GUiED should be their new name.

By: nathan_teske

nathan_teske — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 00:16:01 -0800

... arguably Wired was hit with the ugly stick long ago. Many might see this is an ongoing abuse. And shepd — I find Wired's lack of support for lynx disturbing; incompatbility with lynx probably means incompatibility with screen readers.

By: treebjen

treebjen — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 00:37:05 -0800

Actually ... if you scroll down a bit past the verbage regarding web standards (which is really intended more for Netscape 4 users who are wondering why the page looks so odd) you'll see that ALL of the content is incredibly easily wonderfully accessible in Lynx (and screen readers, etc). In fact, there's actually additional navigation that shows up in Lynx (and would so for screen readers) that allow quick jump-links to the navigation section and to the content. This is actually one of the requirements for Section 508. The power of web standards. And easy to boot! It's great to see high profile sites like Wired finally, finally jumping on ship.

By: sixdifferentways

sixdifferentways — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 00:40:03 -0800

I'm able to access all the content and navigation in lynx - it says at the top the "design details" are absent, but I can read the content and links. Though it's sort of misleading to have the message right at the top like that - you don't see the content unless you scroll down. Somewhat of a bad design choice, I'd say. You see the message first thing and think you're S.O.L. (The version of Lynx I'm using is 2.7.1, and I know it's not the latest version.)

By: adamgreenfield

adamgreenfield — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 00:43:44 -0800

I just think it's less useful than the previous version, which had a good broad spread of features every day. This looks like it's about leveraging an archive, rather than having to underwrite the ongoing expense of producing hot content daily. I'm not pleased, and I *did* make Wired part of my daily rounds. But then, I was already disgusted with the Terra-Lycos frame/branding. Maybe this is the straw that broke, etc.

By: humuhumu

humuhumu — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 00:58:06 -0800

I'm with you, adamgreenfield. It was nice to hit the site once or twice a day and scan the main page and know what they'd posted up. Now it's going to be a trawl through the different sections... Though they have at least lost that huge bottom advertising frame. Actually, I quite like the look of it - bit busy, but hey, they do like to be 'trendy'...

By: nakedjon

nakedjon — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 01:21:02 -0800

Yeah, looks like crap in Opera. I'm glad though they got rid of that crap and red and black scheme for left hand topics.

By: Orange Goblin

Orange Goblin — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 01:52:01 -0800

Yeah, it sucks. Scratch that from my daily visits...

By: spazzm

spazzm — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 02:04:09 -0800

Not too bad.

By: holloway

holloway — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 02:17:06 -0800

Lynx is 100% "web" compliant. It does a great HTTP 1.0 negotiation sequence, and fully supports all HTML 1.0 codes. Without screwing up. Or crashing.

By web standards they mean CSS is required. CSS is by design optional and here is abused and relied upon to change the HTML content. Nothing new. Like webstandards.org they wouldn't know web standards if they yadda yadda...

By: internook

internook — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 02:36:22 -0800

I wonder if the design company was named, "Ugly Stick Design Group"? That would be funny. I'm color blind an I can see that some cataract sufferer was in charge of this project...

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 02:41:11 -0800

You people are weird. But, you know, in a good way.

By: godidog

godidog — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 03:09:30 -0800

I like standards compliance ( Flash-only pages suck BTW ) and that it works in Links, but they still PAGE their stupid articles. It might be that they're trying to make it more like the dead-tree version where you have to turn from page 49 to page 97 to page 513(*), but to talk about good user interfaces and then do that is unforgiveable. I hereby launch a campaign to boycott any links that read "Page 2 >". (*) That was in '99 of course - it'd be more like page 113 nowadays...

By: digiboy

digiboy — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 03:32:52 -0800

XHTML + CSS + layout improvements = Good However, their site isn't valid, and is being sent with the dubious, but popular (hell, I even do it), practice of sending XHTML as text/html. Not so great. ..and yes, the colour scheme still isn't the best. Better than before - sure - but still hard on the ol' eyes. As for paged articles, I don't understand the need for that either (more adverts displayed then?), but you could always read / link to the print versions instead. I suppose.

By: mcwetboy

mcwetboy — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 03:46:31 -0800

Better link here. (Sometimes it's better to wait rather than just post to the front page.)

By: bhell13

bhell13 — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 04:07:26 -0800

Gah!

By: delmoi

delmoi — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 05:00:23 -0800

Heh. I don't think it looks that bad, in fact, it's very reminicent of the old school mag. You know. Before it sucked.

By: snarfodox

snarfodox — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 05:03:22 -0800

Large companies are taking accessibility issues much more seriously these days. There is an Australian legal precedent where the complainant was awarded AU$20,000 in damages against the maintainers of an inacessible web site and an American case is pending.

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 05:06:35 -0800

does anyone know how many "big" sites are now xhtml/css? in my last job it took me months to get the designer to understand what css was all about - i'm thinking i should have got him to load a site like wired into his horrible gui tools... (how can you be a web designer and not know what <a> is?!)

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 05:12:22 -0800

ps arguably it looks better in lynx - certainly the content is more obvious. note that the warning about browsers is at the end of the page (not the top) once you follow a link. maybe they'll move the warning on the front page too, once people are used to the change.

By: piskycritter

piskycritter — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 05:23:19 -0800

I hereby launch a campaign to boycott any links that read "Page 2 >". posted by godidog at 3:09 AM PST on October 11 I suppose that onenever dials a number on a touch-tone phone anymore, or asks what the dial up speed is on a modem or punches in at work. Sure, these are often linguistic anachronisms, but I suspect a majority of people understand what is meant by saying, "Next Page," instead of something more glaringly modern, like "Next Screen."

By: rcade

rcade — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 05:35:18 -0800

I don't think the concern is linguistic. Paging an article spikes your ad impressions at the expense of usability. For those who are keeping up with the site enough to care about this interface change, Wired News offers an RSS feed that makes it easy to find the newest stories. Personally, I'm glad to see that the spirit of ugly design lives on at Wired. One of the things you could count on during the mid-'90s was that Wired would be on the forefront of garish Web design.

By: padjet1

padjet1 — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 06:00:20 -0800

That horrific green is literally giving me a headache.

By: hyperizer

hyperizer — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 06:12:06 -0800

Anyone know the relationship between Wired News (owned by Lycos) and Wired Magazine (owned by Condé Nast)? I know they cross-promote, and they used to be owned by the same company, but their editorial standards seem to be quite different!

By: mkelley

mkelley — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 06:16:58 -0800

I don't think it's bad, it sure is better than the frames-based site they've had up for a while. XHTML + CSS isn't bad for anyone.

By: dayvin

dayvin — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 06:29:01 -0800

From mcwetboy's link: "Longtime readers will notice that many of the early design elements are back, the color scheme is different (and will be changing daily) and several navigation capabilities have been dramatically redone."

By: serafinapekkala

serafinapekkala — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 06:29:39 -0800

daaaah! it looks like that Whitney Houston video with the dayglo gloves and lipstick and sunglasses...feh.

By: Stuart_R

Stuart_R — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 06:36:50 -0800

Yikes! Those colours.... Fortunately, since the colours/design is being controlled by CSS - you can turn it off! I've put a toggle CSS favlet here for anyone who needs it. ;-) It would be great if they could let users pick their own stylesheets!

By: Yogurt

Yogurt — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 06:54:10 -0800

I had stopped reading Wired because of that awful moon-sized ad frame at the bottom. Looks like it's now safe to return. As for the colours, if it weren't garish, how would we know it was Wired?

By: Captain Ligntning

Captain Ligntning — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 07:28:06 -0800

Standards compliance don't mean dick if the color choices blind people. I've seen puke that was more attractive.

By: RJ Reynolds

RJ Reynolds — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 07:38:19 -0800

I suspect a majority of people understand what is meant by saying, "Next Page," instead of something more glaringly modern, like "Next Screen." What would be wrong with the medium-neutral "more" or "continued"? I actually love the colors! It makes me happy!

By: Tlogmer

Tlogmer — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 07:55:49 -0800

Web standards are great, and it's great that Wired is (sort of) using them, but I'd be willing to bet that the main motivator behind this was cost. Back In The Day, ad revenues could cover the costs of serving 20 megabytes of frames and nested tables and javascript with every page view; now they have to cut back a bit.

By: Lleyam

Lleyam — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 08:01:07 -0800

The BBC has an interesting web-app, Betsie (BBC Education Text to Speech Internet Enhancer - phew!) that converts nested table-style design (or in fact most kinds of text markup) into "plain" HTML to improve its accessibility particularly for screen readers. But those colours? Eeuggh!

By: dayvin

dayvin — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 08:49:28 -0800

Zeldman weighs in with his thoughts on the redesign, and explains why it doesn't validate due to third-party content from advertisers, etc.

By: SpecialK

SpecialK — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 09:01:20 -0800

Tlogmer - How is Wired (Sort of) using web standards? Zeldman's page states that the only reason that both the CSS and XHTML on Wired's new page does not validate is because of the non-standard HTML coughed up by ad banners and the ad banner middleware. Save the code, cut out the ad banner stuff, and it validates like a charm. (On preview - dayvin beat me to the Zeldman link.) Personally, I agree with Zeldman. Appearance aside (And, as many people have already said, Wired ... both print and web form ... has always been at the forefront of incredibly garish web design... no keed to keep stating that ad nauseum, please! Besides, Wired is PROUD of being ugly. They go to great lengths to calculate their ugliness.), the fact that Wired is now CSS and XHTML 1.0 compliant means that I can do it too. The fact that at least one other organization that is not "one of them crappy teenager-run web design mags" is paying attention to standards, combined with some of the recent lawsuits, means that I get a say when our graphic designer works up photoshop comps, just to make sure that I can code things in a compliant way. It means that the new corporate website where I work will validate to XHTML 1.0. It means that I can simplify the output code for our corporate CMS. [This is good]

By: copacetix

copacetix — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 09:18:37 -0800

Wired is irrelevant.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 09:26:39 -0800

I love it, the articles are easier to read, everything seems to be in the right place, and the color scheme is reminiscent of their classic designs. To me as a longtime user of wired news and magazine, it's a 100% hit. The only bug I see is that in mozilla, the second paragraph on every article has a weird right hand margin that doesn't line up with the rest of the article. I haven't dug into the code, but I would guess they're doing something wrong there with the positioning of the left hand side info (which should just be simply floated left to let the article flow right).

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 09:55:20 -0800

"My eyes! Ze goggles, they do nothing!" Anyways, it's business as usual for Wired. I for one will keep reading.

By: Tlogmer

Tlogmer — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 10:03:57 -0800

Whoops; I stand corrected. (I actually had skimmed the source before commenting and didn't find anything horrible, but it was just a skim and I took from the other comments in the thread that...eh, you get the picture.)

By: inpHilltr8r

inpHilltr8r — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 10:49:47 -0800

It's a damned site more readable than it used to be.

By: teradome

teradome — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 11:35:34 -0800

the fact that Wired is now CSS and XHTML 1.0 compliant means that I can do it too. RES went XHTML+CSS last month as part of the print magazine redesign. We're still working out the kinks and missing pieces as we go, since we had a serious crunch of a deadline to turn it out. In other words, we know about the embed. It'll be gone soon enough. :) Kind of a self-link by paycheck, sorry.

By: 2sheets

2sheets — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 11:58:50 -0800

This is still way better than 1997-98 era hotwired, when they were oversizing gifs and going for that blocky look.

By: zeoslap

zeoslap — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 13:12:47 -0800

To be fair when I posted it, the site had a totally different color scheme from the one everyone can see, it was a weird orangey/black thing.

By: babylon

babylon — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 13:15:55 -0800

All in favor of standards here, and glad to see Wired is as well, even though I'm not a big fan of them... One thing to point out re: splitting articles by pages -- it is typically not done to reduce page load (since the general load is just text, it is far outweighed by ads and graphics loading around it) -- but to increase ad views. Famed sites like television without pity as well as more prominent ad-driven publications adopt this approach often -- sometimes explicitly, sometimes not -- to drive up the number of eyeballs that 'see' (read: 'mostly ignore') their ads.

By: samsara

samsara — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 14:20:03 -0800

eesh! Looks like hotbot, which kinda makes sense since both are owned by TerraLycos. Yet Hotbot has had that "why are my eyes burning?" color scheme for quite some time...

By: misangela

misangela — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 14:37:57 -0800

AAAAAAHHHHH! My retinas! My retinas!! That green should be banned as a web color!

By: fraying

fraying — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 15:16:26 -0800

And yet, with all that nifty standards hoo-ha, they're making the oldest mistake of all: running text from one side of the browser to the other on story pages. Long text lines are hard to read. That's why newspapers have columns. Readers don't care about CSS and XHTML - they care if they can read the stories.

By: Tlogmer

Tlogmer — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 17:32:31 -0800

So adjust the window size. (Yes, I know; nobody does that. I didn't myself until quite recently.)

By: mathowie

mathowie — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 17:53:23 -0800

it looks like a happy medium. The text flexes to window width until the text block gets to be 800px, then it stops stretching. They could have gone with a narrower max, but I like that it's fluid below that. A little wide, but not so wide that text is painful to read.

By: wackybrit

wackybrit — Fri, 11 Oct 2002 23:09:47 -0800

Yay, they've gone for making their articles span the entire width of the browser. Great, now I only have to resize my browser to read the article without getting neckache *g* Fixed width columns have their place, people.

By: Lynsey

Lynsey — Sat, 12 Oct 2002 00:56:04 -0800

I don't mind the fluorescent green as much as the black side bar, which makes the main text on white harder to read - something a little less high contrast would be nice.

By: y2karl

y2karl — Sat, 12 Oct 2002 19:26:29 -0800

Oh, man, is this a keeper.