New CalgarySun.com

[Jackpot_Smooth]

it looks like they're were trying to save mad cash and had some employees cousin make it for them since he/she needed the experience and took a course.

[Regulator75]

Every time you visit that site, a kitten is tossed into an industrial pasta maker.

[Barnes]

Pretty good. Metro style tiles increases content discoverability. Will lead to significant page hit increases as people get attracted to pictures headlines and bright backgrounds. Get stuck in a rabbit hole...

The article quick read HUD is awesome as well with options to tweet, share on Facebook or read related stories.

Header still too large. Could be slimmed down significantly and restyled to be more Tile-like rather than a conventional tabs and menus.

I do have a problem with them having a top banner, skyscraper, bg image and sticky footer advertising. It's bit much.

[redflamesfan08]

Originally Posted by WilsonFourTwo

And the fact that the ENTIRE site is wrapped with a Cadbury Easter Ad is just brutal. I just can't imagine a web and marketing team doing a worse job. Just unforgivable.

I had to open the link in an alternate browser to confirm the Cadbury thing - one more reason I can't imagine the internet without an ad blocker running, that hurts my eyes even more now!

[Crazy Bacon Legs]

Wow. Now my eyes are bleeding. Coincidence?

[Bigtime]

Originally Posted by Barnes

Pretty good. Metro style tiles increases content discoverability. Will lead to significant page hit increases as people get attracted to pictures headlines and bright backgrounds. Get stuck in a rabbit hole...

The article quick read HUD is awesome as well with options to tweet, share on Facebook or read related stories.

Header still too large. Could be slimmed down significantly and restyled to be more Tile-like rather than a conventional tabs and menus.

I do have a problem with them having a top banner, skyscraper, bg image and sticky footer advertising. It's bit much.

I'm assuming your are speaking as someone with experience in web design and stuff like that?

Because to me (a person with no knowledge of that kind of stuff) it is impossible to make any sense of, and I will not be bookmarking it yet alone ever going to it to find any information.

[Yasa]

Originally Posted by Crazy Bacon Legs

Wow. Now my eyes are bleeding. Coincidence?

Too much cheap wine, I figure. You're taking "blind taste test" too literally.

[JustAnotherGuy]

I just want a list of all the articles and then I can decide what to read. But they seem to only show 5 - 10 different articles again and again. They get my attention for about 3 minutes and then I move on.

I like that they at least tried to improve it. But they failed.

[fredr123]

Originally Posted by JustAnotherGuy

I just want a list of all the articles and then I can decide what to read. But they seem to only show 5 - 10 different articles again and again. They get my attention for about 3 minutes and then I move on.

I like that they at least tried to improve it. But they failed.

I just go here: http://www.calgarysun.com/news/calgary and then click "more" at the bottom for stories from the past few days. This only shows you stuff about Calgary but you can do the same with Alberta, Canada and the world. It's not ideal but it works for me.

[JustAnotherGuy]

I just noticed that there are two buttons that allow you to change the size of the pictures. Hit the second button and you can just list the articles 24 at a time with a small picture.


Looks like you can also filter that list.

[Buff]

I try to checkout the site, but I just see some blog designed by somebody who doesn't know squat about web design.

[MickMcGeough]

Nope, I don't hate it at all.

Well, I automatically hate any site that sells it's entire background for advertising. 6 identical ads all over the site? Boo. That's the only huge issue I have with it though.

I'm finding that on the smaller story panels, the titles are lacking readability. If it were me I'd put the white headers on a semi-transparent black background.

I think it's weird that they don't organize the stories by category either.

I don't know what the the skyline header image adds to the site. I'd ditch that entirely and focus on the articles.

They're loading up the sidebar with too much stuff - nobody is going to scour all that stuff.

Did I mention I hate all the ads?

The footer is great. Excellent expanded nav presentation.

I normally detest lightboxes but this is actually a pretty good use of them. Check out the first few sentences of a story and decide if you want to leave the homepage to read the rest. I think it works.

I'm interested in how they lay the home page out. It would be very cool if they'd visually indicate with a larger panel or something which stories are generating a lot of hits or social media buzz.

Today's Sunshine girl is gross.

As far as content presentation goes I like it. A little bit intense though. If it were me I'd fade the background pics out a bit until the user hovers over them and reduce the sensory overload. They all seem to want your attention all at once.

[browna]

Originally Posted by Cowperson

Its an awesome design if they were going for distracting, hard to follow, hard to find anything and just outright terrible on the eye.

Cowperson

At least they are striving for consistency with the paper edition.
The website certainly will be a big hit with the ADD crowd.

As for content, at the folks and they had today's copy. While I don't expect any article on religion on Easter sunday, the screaming headline was lingerie football. The Royal wedding as well, depicted by some bloke in a costume Elton John wouldn't have been caught dead in in 1976, blowing on a pinwheel. Oh, and as an afterthought, some body was found outside of town for second day in a row.

[c.t.ner]

I'm on the fence about this redesign.

Personally, I like the shift to a tiled landing page, especially for online magazines. If it's done right it can make it easy to get lost in the content and it can be an attractive change from the standard layout. Not to the same extent, but http://www.good.is and the tumblr explore - http://www.tumblr.com/explore do a good job of it.

What I don't like about this redesign is that with how the varied blocks interacts with the Sun headlines, all this feels like is a bunch of SCREAMING BLOCKS. (WINNIPEG UNWELCOME - STAMKOS CHECKS IN) It feels incredibly overwhelming and makes me want to scream - WHY ARE WE SHOUTING.

Anyways, kudos for them for taking a chance, maybe over a few weeks of testing it they'll get it down right. But I don't think it's going away for a while.

[Flames0910]

The big tiles make sense and can be good for making stories 'pop' as well as making the page to scan.

But it's too cluttered and the small tiles are hard to read. Having to add a badge such as 'news' or 'lifestyle' is also adding to the clutter problem.

Good concept, poor execution.

[TorqueDog]

Not a fan. Maybe it's alright if you're the type of person who only reads books for the pretty pictures, but I can't stand it myself.

[WhiteTiger]

Not a fan of the change. I liked their old setup for picture galleries, with the pics the same size. Now when you click on a gallery, you get a resized pic with every shot, and the "next" button moves with every picture. Don't like that at all.

[FanIn80]

Their old layout looked like it pre-dated the internet by about 20 years... but I'd still take it over this new one. Just awful.

[ricoFlame]

I actually like this better than the old one...but it's not great.

[Bertuzzied]

it doesn't even load for me! it's great!!!