We can’t help it. Just three months ago we refreshed the site, with completely overhauled backend and polished pixels, but we weren’t satisfied. By we, I mean Patrick Patience, who was dead after me to change the design—something to the tune of “I love SA, but that header sucks”. Soon even I started feeling that way, and before you know it, Espresso and Photoshop were employed into service. A little soul searching, sleepless nights, and behind the scene fights—“You aren’t serious about that are you? Please tell me you aren’t serious”—resulted in what you see today.
There’s a lot going on with this redesign. We’ve tried to keep the same look we’ve sported over the years, but you’ll immediately notice how lean it is. I took a look at my browsing habits, asked a few others about theirs, and decided to cut down the noise. I didn’t want it to look like the next Mashable.
Everything from the header, to the sidebar, to the individual article pages themselves, have all shed a little weight. This not only created a much cleaner, more readable layout, it also allowed us to bump up the font size (after repeated requests), and to post bigger images without worrying about breaking a layout. We’re using the gorgeous font Calluna as our serif, fed via the fabulous service by Typekit. Unfortunately, the iPad without OS 4 isn’t able to handle web fonts that well, so till then it’s Georgia all the way. And lastly, it’s still running the super awesome Thesis 1.7 core.
•••
Quite important to us, we’ve set up a new way to present ads, along with the iXyr ad network. Gone are the four in-your-face ad blocks, and in comes a sleek block in the sidebar. We figured we’d rather focus the attention on a single product than dilute it across multiple blocks—much like the Deck and Fusion. We hope you enjoy the relevant advertising, and support our sponsors by checking out their products. This ad block is repeated on Beautiful Pixels and any other future projects we might have, so if you need to get your product in front of the right audience, do get in touch.
There’s also a premium ad spot right there in the header. I don’t know how to describe it other than, it’s there. Those are the only two ads on this site, so hopefully we’re winning.
•••
When it comes to comments, I’ve always been torn between either side. On the one hand, comments can be very useful. We’ve never had any problems with ‘engadget’ comments, but on the other hand, boasting of a comment count isn’t what I have in mind. So comment count is gone. We also have a new moderation policy. Up until now, our moderation policy was “If it’s not spam, it stays”. This time we reserve the right to moderate comments that don’t contribute to the discussion—posts like this one, and giveaways being an exception. If the comment doesn’t contribute to the discussion, it doesn’t need to be there.
Most of all, as always, we hope to continue to bring you unbiased, well-researched, opinionated, and fun tidbits from the world of technology surrounding Apple.
[Thanks to @Sam_Symons, @gogocosmonaut, @PatrickPatience, @SteveStreza and @Teucher for the valuable feedback.]
{ 29 comments… read them below or add one }
A great start, but that new masthead takes up way too much space. The search box also looks to the casual user like it’s apart of the logo and not a functional page element.
Just stumbled here randomly. Looks great.
Also, Michael, the masthead does not take up too much space, and the search box does not look to the casual user that it is a part of the logo.
Also: objectivity vs. subjectivity!
Just kidding around
Michael: If you compare the two designs side by side, the articles now start higher than before. You might say it’s still too big, but we do have to maintain our brand in the grand scheme of things. Since you’re going to scroll anyway, I don’t see how it affects readability.
About search, it’s not the primary mode of operation on this site. Most just use the older/newer navigation to get to extra articles. Also, I asked non-computer-savvy specifically about the search. They could find it within two seconds because of the hard to miss search icon.
But we’re still listening to feedback, so, thanks!
Nice work guys. Keep up the good work.
WAIT WTF PATRICK GETS A SHOUTOUT AND I DON’T? Bullshit Milind. Bullshit.
Looks great guys.
Great design! But I can’t help but gak at the gradient on the top. It’s repeating in *just* the wrong way… and it doesn’t smoothly transition into the dark grey! I’m sure it’s a simple matter of choosing a different, wider slice to export… (and maybe a bit higher-res)? Sorry. But everything else is totally awesome! And I really like your writing
Lots of great stuff!!!
This is spectacular. A lot of tech sites are going to have to one-up SA. And I just added an exception on my ad blocker for Smoking Apples, since the ads aren’t annoying anymore. Great work!
Really good job as always guys – my favourite look yet.
Nice new design. It’s smokin’! I love how everything (eg. fonts, images) appears to be bigger. Big screens are the shit these days.
Very nice guy’s. Good typography, nice search box! Take a look at your background image, it’s a little pixelated.
oooow nice footer!!
Great design, clean and sleek! I agree the masthead could be a little bit smaller though.
And the font is beautiful.
But the comment section… WOW! Great work! The only complaint I have is that the user info could be a little bit smaller so that each comment doesn’t take to much space, because when the comments start to pile up allot of scrolling down will be done.
In my crooked research, I’ve found that if there’s more emphasis to each comment, it encourages lengthier, more thoughtful comments. As for scrolling, I’d say it’s hardly an issue considering how scrolling friendly computing platforms have become.
In fact, no one knows this, but the comments were even bigger until one of the feedback masters told me I was crazy.
Wonderful redesign, just the colors and the look I love. The comments layout is fantastic, I really like the slight overlap of the boxes.
The one problem I noticed is that typing coments on the iPad is hard, as for some reason it’s impossible to properly position the cursor in the already typed text. Finishing this comment in Simplenote
Thanks Aleksandar! I agree about comments (never tried leaving one while testing) so hopefully I can fix that soon.
UPDATE: Fixed. Turns out the iPad is really not ready for web fonts. Turned off Calluna in the textarea (for the iPad) and now you can tap around freely. Thanks for noticing this bug!
Where are the scrollbars?! I had to press tab to get down here!
No scrollbars?! The oddest thing I’ve heard all day. Can you tell me which browser you’re using and on which system?
Wouldn’t expect anything less. Good work Milind.
I like it, but I don’t like it. I can’t decide yet.
As usual, Milind and Preshit, I would expect nothing but pure unadulterated sexiness! The site looks great and it’s so easy to read. Calluna is a great choice as well and Typekit rocks! Keep up the excellent reviews, opinions and design. BTW, why can’t you have a long footer? Since we can scroll into eternity why not show off a little?
Looks great! Smoking Apples was already one of the best looking blogs about Apple stuff, and now it is even better
Nice.
But your background gradient is messed up now. Too much dithering. If you can’t see it, try looking at it on a different monitor, or pump up the brightness.
visual eye candy are OK. But the content are fighting each other. It’s very hard to tell which part is the most important, because all use the same freakin color!! I like the previous theme, better visual guide.
I too love the layout and general minimalistic-while-still-being-incredibly-dense-in-information thing you’ve got going. I have only one criticism (while I have dozens about any other website, including my own): the background. I love the noisy-ness of it all, and the top gradient is nice. I like the idea of fading out of noisy-ness and into a solid colour as you go down, but there’s a problem; at one point during this transition (to the direct left to the line beginning “—“You aren’t serious…”" in this article) the colour switches from light to dark very abruptly. But, apart from this minute issue which only someone looking for mistakes would notice, well done!
P.S., nice touch of Calluna in the comment box as well as the titles
Thanks for bringing that to my notice. I’ve tried my best to choose the appropriate colour, so hopefully it isn’t as jarring as before. And am glad you like Calluna. I fell in love with it the day I saw its italics. I wish I could use italics all over!
Much better! I was about to say that this site is perfect now… and it is… except the somewhat-hideous “CANCEL REPLY” button :/ Nut besides that, I agree with the italics, generally whenever I use Georgia for any bits of coursework etc. I always use italics, looks great
You don’t like the big ass cancel button? What kind of guy are you?! Aww who am I kidding. It’s down to what it should have been. I’m gonna miss that big cancel button; I sure am gonna miss it.
It’s only me or what, the tags(Navigation) below are not working. And I am finding diffiuclty to read your old posts.
No it’s not just you, and I’m trying to figure out what the problem is. It works in the sandbox, but not here. Categories work (though they’re not listed anywhere). “Stay tuned”.