Maybe I'm a weirdo, but I like it more than the old clusterfuck of a page. That being said, I don't really read Kotaku all that often so it's not really a big deal.
They need to higher a new web designer. The only reason I go to Kotaku is to scan a bunch of articles for interesting news. If I can't do that, bye-bye Kotaku.
hate it i use kotaku mostly to read the headlines and in this new layout it's impossible to do that unless you go to http://kotaku.com/classic also the amount of space that advertising takes now is crazy
" @niamahai: Never been a fan of Joystiq's layout but compared to the new Gawker one it is brilliant. "
The only reason I used Kotaku over Joystiq was because it was easier to scroll through. I get the feeling that a lot of people were like that. Since Gawker fucked that up, I wouldn't be surprised if Joystiq starts getting more hits. I know I'm moving.
@Skogen: i09 has some decent articles sometimes, but some of the bloggers are pretty useless. I remember one of the more prominent/frequent bloggers described a monster as a "space Cthulhu" and I went replied that what she said was basically the same as calling a Honda a automobile car she still didn't understand.
" I dislike it so much that i'm tempted to un-bookmark Kotaku from my browser. The new design looks terrible and makes it harder to scan through the multitude of topics that they most on a daily basis - to anyone who doesn't sit on their frontpage constantly it's going to be a complete pain to look through multiple headlines as the blogroll presentation style has been shrunk to a stupid size and left cramped at the side of the page. The ability to use the arrow keys to flick through articles is nice, except half of those articles are shit and I don't want to see them, ever. "
I agree 100%. I hate it so much I'm probably going to stop visiting the site on even a semi-regular basis. I liked being able to scroll though the whole front page and decide what I was interested in with a glance. It was faster before and easier to briefly check out a blurb. Now it takes forever to load and is too much work find what I am looking for. If Giant Bomb ever pulled something like this I would drop it in a second.
Fortunately there is Kotaku "Classic." The downside is though when you click the Kotaku graphic at the top it takes you to the crappy Kotaku instead of "classic", so I'll need to hit "back" when done with an article and "refresh" to keep the pages current as opposed to just the "home" at the top. Too much work (yeah I am that lazy)! I'll probably be visiting Joystiq more than Kotaku now.
EDIT: Ah, there is a "blog view" button on the silver bar at the top so that's what I'll be using all the time. Crisis averted. Still, the change is horrid.
It loads like five to ten times slower on my various computers and browsers, so forgetting that place ever existed, and it scrolls so slow it's like I'm browsing it on my Nokia E61 phone from 2005. Which I have tried.
You guys realized that you can change the sories from the little box to a more "blog view" of the site right?? I am a web designer and I think that the new layout is great. Kotaku wants people to read their articles and that is what they are aiming for. An easier way to show their content. Thumbs up for Kotaku I say.
" You guys realized that you can change the sories from the little box to a more "blog view" of the site right?? I am a web designer and I think that the new layout is great. Kotaku wants people to read their articles and that is what they are aiming for. An easier way to show their content. Thumbs up for Kotaku I say. "
Don't know about you, but the scrolling in blog view is horrible for me. Also, as a reader, this is not what I want from Kotaku. If they are trying to reinvent themselves, fine, but I won't be going there anymore. If they can't be a place for headlines, I have other options.
Considering the site isn't loading for me, my opinion is clear. However, it does look nicer than the old design. It does not concern me however, because I did not use Kotaku and likely still will not. If news is big enough to interest me in a game, I'll get it on Twitter because someone has inevitably retweeted it.
The right-hand side bar seems to be perpetually loading for me in both Firefox and Chrome (even with Javascript enabled). Also the blog view will only display the first page. Guess I won't be going to Kotaku anymore.
EDIT: Hah, the rhs bar finally loaded. And then the flash ad kicked in, meaning I can only read three or three headlines at a time. Terrific. I'm all for websites trying to get revenue for ads but not at a cost to functionality.
Might be good format if everyone was on an iPad or something like that, for normal PCs it's rubbish covered in dust from the bottom of a cheetos bag.
Edit: even finding that the blog view is excessively broken, can't seem to get past page1 so guessing until it's fixed I'll not look at kotaku for any 2ndary source for gaming news as well as gizmodo.
Absolutely horrid. When I go to Kotaku, I just want to quickly breeze through any headlines to see whats going on... its 10 times worse with this new format.
Seems a little gimmicky. I understand the thinking behind it, but it breaks the user's expectation of how a web page should work. I'm not sure that's a good thing.
@damswedon: I would suggest VG247.com. They have regular updates and focus on news. They also had an design change last week and the result was quite nice.
I like it, though it's a bit jarring to see at first, since it's not really set up the way you'd imagine a web page would look.
Also, I'm finally coming around to this whole "Kotaku sucks" thing. The commenters are either complete idiots (someone literally posted "Angry Birds is the Hitler of video games" which is the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard) or dicks whose heads are so far up their asses they can tongue their own balls, and the writers are almost unabashedly biased, especially in anything that's not a review (where it's ok to be biased/critical of something). I only check the site because they post up game news relatively quickly (quicker than Giant Bomb), and Lisa Foiles is a pretty funny writer when she contributes a column here and there.
I think the new design is horrible, i can no longer load the site (unless JavaScript is enabled). So yeah, i am considering un-bookmakring the site until they change it (which may never happen) to something that can load without the use of Java.
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