Adobe redesigns...

April 3, 2001 9:31 AM

Adobe redesigns... ew. (Man, am I feeling linky... twice in one day!)
posted by silusGROK (16 comments total)

Weird. The site is now much more focused on products, instead of the community building content that once dominated their site. There seems to be a "buy" button on every page.

I wonder if producing content was just too expensive.
posted by mathowie at 9:44 AM on April 3, 2001

I noticed the new product-selling focus too. Which they're certainly entitled to do - they're a business after all - but it's not what kept me visiting their site. And Zeldman notes that the columns he and others wrote for Adobe are gone.
posted by dnash at 9:48 AM on April 3, 2001

Kinda...plain.

Something about round buttons(especially with weirdly-cropped images in them) has always pissed me off, too.
posted by Su at 9:59 AM on April 3, 2001

I wonder if Macromedia will pick up the ball Adobe just dropped.
posted by Brilliantcrank at 10:18 AM on April 3, 2001

have a look at the little [-] at the right-bottom of the page, if you mouseover it you get the option to rate the page.. Let em know what you think...
posted by fvw at 10:28 AM on April 3, 2001

Hey, those circles look a little like my blog. Of course they did something more creative with them.

No really, though, lets hope they get some of the real content back up there. And speaking of Macromedia, their site is (IMO) uglier after their last redesign. Grey and pastel? Not bold enough for me. And I think the navigation suffered too. Here is hoping their next design shows they firmly have the ball in their court.
posted by mutagen at 10:33 AM on April 3, 2001

fvw: i've seen onlineopinion at a growing number of sites, i imagine it'd be a useful utility if enough people voted on it.
posted by pnevares at 10:36 AM on April 3, 2001

They're also making the jump into subscription land
posted by owillis at 10:40 AM on April 3, 2001

(Curses. MeFi just logged me out as I was posting... weird... now let me see, what was I saying?)

I have two complaints, really: the front page is way too chaotic. My eye doesn't settle on anything long enough to really get understanding of how to move around the site. Very unnerving. Case in point: I hardly even noticed the lack of content because my eyes were bouncing around so much I could hardly think straight. Additionally, the navigation for the interior pages is off. It feels more like a technical forum or a VAT terminal (I don't recall what VAT stands for, so maybe the "terminal" is redundant)... than it does a site for the premier design software manufacturer.
posted by silusGROK at 10:45 AM on April 3, 2001

that plus/minus thing in the corner doesn't work for me (mac ie 5.0) - every time i mouse over it, it scoots away diagonally down and to the right, making the page area larger each time. It seems like something i'd see on some silly artsy site, not the adobe front page. Then again, I'm sure that's not its intended purpose.
posted by chrisege at 11:25 AM on April 3, 2001

The [+] widget has been a part of the Adobe site for a few months, now... and has only stopped working for me (on MSIE 5.0 (2022) for Mac) with the site redesign.
posted by silusGROK at 11:44 AM on April 3, 2001

The front page is almost blank if you're running Webwasher (Mac OS 9.1 / MSIE 5, if Adobe's web team is watching). Oops.

And I love how when I click the link to the Tomato story, I go to the Web Products page, instead of to the content I just asked for. Groan.
posted by endquote at 1:32 PM on April 3, 2001

I agree with you Vision -- the design is very chaotic. It must be the circles -- it's hard to find something to settle on and read.

I followed the "tomato" link after someone pointed it out and then followed the "What Happened to the Web Center" in the top right. Which takes me to a page which doesn't on the initial glance look like it's going to answer that question at all. "Now showing" doesn't seem like the right wording for the answer.

Anyone know who did the redesign? I wonder why they felt they had to get away from content.
posted by amanda at 2:28 PM on April 3, 2001

Yes, placing images, etc in a directory called "ads" is not a good idea.

Also, a simple mouseover of the "Care to comment?" link crashes my browser consistently. (NS 4.76, Win95) The whole rating thing is busted in general.

So I basically get an ugly, broken page. Yum.
posted by whatnotever at 2:33 PM on April 3, 2001

The sad thing is that at the end of last year, Adobe discontinued Adobe Magazine so that they could focus on their website. They've had little new content since then.
posted by dws at 3:08 PM on April 3, 2001

I don't know who did the redesign, Amanda, but I e-mailed Adobe and received word that their new design does not constitute a turning from content... they are "very committed to content". Could have fooled me... Zeldman's articles gone, content accessibility compromised, and a front page that screams "go away"; doens't look like much of a commitment. Unless of course you're talking about "being committed" in another, more institutional, light...

*sigh*
posted by silusGROK at 3:34 PM on April 3, 2001