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Mashable's Responsive Redesign

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Re: Mashable's Responsive Redesign

#31

Post by pknight »

cheald wrote: post #12
zachwill wrote: post #8

Interesting that you can't look at any of the articles without signing up. No thanks.

It's a technical measure, not a marketing one. We're going to open up pieces of the product to general use as we smoketest and validate their performance. The join page is more or less there to be served Very Very Fast (and still let people be notified when stuff opens up) more than it is to lock people out of content. This iteration is a ground-up custom build rather than an iteration on Wordpress, so we're being co…

Are you guys moving away from WordPress or will the new design be ported over? Anyhow, I actually think it looks fantastic.

Re: Mashable's Responsive Redesign

#32

Post by cheald »

pknight wrote: post #31
cheald wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a technical measure, not a marketing one. We're going to open up pieces of the product to general use as we smoketest and validate their performance. The join page is more or less there to be served Very Very Fast (and still let people be notified when stuff opens up) more than it is to lock people out of content. This iteration is a ground-up custom build rather than an iteration on Wordpress, so we're being co…

Are you guys moving away from WordPress or will the new design be ported over? Anyhow, I actually think it looks fantastic.

We're moving off of Wordpress with this redesign, and don't have any plans to port it at this time.

Re: Mashable's Responsive Redesign

#33

Post by thetrendycyborg »

rmrfrmrf wrote: post #28
thetrendycyborg wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason that the big content is on the right is that it is the most popular content, likely already read. The new stuff is on the left, and we want the eye to move across the page in the natural way to help promote newer and rising content.

Why would content that you've already read be the most prominent? Following the convention of 'newest on top' would make more sense.

The big content is for the people who jump into the site and want to read just a few articles. It's the "most important". It gets clicks. The people who sit on the site all day are going to appreciate the left column, but it doesn't have the same prominence, because we already have their attention.

By throwing the big stuff on the right, we're also making people who jump into the site for the big stuff move their eyes across the content, which might prompt a click.

We've thought very hard about who our site is designed for and the path their eyes will take. The column hierarchy is designed for different groups of people looking for different content.

Re: Mashable's Responsive Redesign

#34

Post by dw0rm »

When I hear about responsive design I always try to resize the window and see how the things rearrange. This one feels really slow during the resize, almost freezes the browser.

And just a couple of clicks have caused redirect loop.

Re: Mashable's Responsive Redesign

#35

Post by hfz »

bluetidepro wrote: post #20

> " Use anything from your Nexus 7 to your mom's iPhone 4 to browse Mashable's new adaptive design. " (A quote from within the left column marketing image) Is it often referred to as "adaptive design", I've only heard it as "Responsive Redesign". Is there a difference between the two in any way? I doubt so, but I just figured I would ask so I don't miss something with the lingo... Also, for the record, my mom actuall…

There is actually a difference if we're talking about "adaptive layout" vs "liquid layout". In adaptive layout, the layout is adjusted in steps according to a limited number of sizes (various screen sizes, usually). While in responsive layout, the layout is adjusted continuously to every possible width.[1] When we're talking about responsive design, most example uses liquid layout.

Adaptive layout, though, is arguably better for readability. Optimal readability involves having control of the line-length of a body of text, which can be achieved with adaptive layout. In the case of liquid layout, line-length varies wildly over every width change, which is sub-optimal readability-wise.

[1] http://informationarchitects.net/blog/responsive-typography-...

Re: Mashable's Responsive Redesign

#36

Post by cheald »

dw0rm wrote: post #34

When I hear about responsive design I always try to resize the window and see how the things rearrange. This one feels really slow during the resize, almost freezes the browser. And just a couple of clicks have caused redirect loop.

Yikes, you definitely shouldn't be seeing redirect loops. Do you happen to still have the URL you got it on? We're doing some muckery with Varnish that may be causing that issue; I'd like to track it down and kill it!

We're working on minimizing reflows and improving the speed of any given reflow, as well. It's not where we want it to be yet, especially on lower-spec hardware.

Thanks for the feedback!

Re: Mashable's Responsive Redesign

#40

Post by humbyvaldes »

cheald wrote: post #16
RollAHardSix wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YANA. - Just made my day I got to use that! I too, do not like this trend. Does the average consumer (statistically)?

(I'm the tech lead at Mashable and on this project) Our analytics and testing have indicated that there's a direct correlation between how visual (versus textual) our presentation is and how well it performs. Personally, I prefer a much more linear and text-heavy presentation (I spend all day on HN!), but our core audience is apparently different from me. Over the past couple of years, our audience has grown to be mu…

My basic beef with this is that I dont think design should behave like water (take the shape of its container). I like visual presentations, just not this one.
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