Having joined the Epinions community in early december, I've now spent about an equal amount of time with the new layout as the old layout. While my memory of some of the old layout is a bit fuzzy since I was still learning the ropes, I thought I'd give a gander at what I like and don't like about the recent epinions face lift.


THE GOOD

I like the new colors, and I like how the new front page looks. I think epinions made better use of the space of the opening page by including the "top recommendations", by putting more emphasis and giving more space to the featured reviewers, and by putting less emphasis and compacting the space of the search categories.

I also like how the site now offers more detailed information with dates - dates of web of trust, dates of when someone gave you a rating. Those small details are what I love, and they help me evaluate myself and my usefulness to the site, as well as giving me a perspective on how i view others.

Finally, I gotta hand it to epinions for handling such a monster. They've responded to my questions and bug reports and i feel like they are trying their best to accommodate as many people as they can during this time of transition.


THE BAD

Obviously, the new epinions still faces those yummy bugs that come with "beta" status. It's not too useful for me to comment on features that are "buggy" and temporary. I'm more interested in the seemingly permanent changes, ones that already seem to be complete. So...

[deep breath] Here goes.

To start, a short fairy tale. Once upon a time there was a Mendel who was browsing around some new epinions to rate. He looked at this epinion and that and found one which he thought was great, so he clicked his Happy Little Trackball on the "Very Helpful" button. A few seconds later, the epinion reloaded itself, and he saw to his dismay that his "Very Helpful" click didn't register. He tried it again and again with the Same Sad Results. He thought to himself, "What could be wrong? Other people have successfully given me ratings since the makeover.... why isn't it working for me?" Mendel with his Not Quite As Happy As Before Trackball decided to give it a rest and see if he could produce better results the next day, but when the next day came, he came across the Same Sad Problem.

Then, one afternoon, Mendel was checking his account on a public computer lab terminal. As he was randomly looking over a new epinion, his Not So Friendly Regular Mouse happened to move the pointer over that "Very Helpful" button and it *LIT UP*. A light bulb went off in his head. "A ha!" he thought to himself. "I bet if I click the 'Very Helpful' button now, it will work!" He tested his theory, and indeed it did work, so now he lives Somewhat Happily Ever After.

The moral of the story?....

I really have a strong dislike for javascript. On my computer at home, I have it turned off so I can avoid pop-up windows and exit consoles, little words or hearts following my mouse around the screen, things like that. It annoys me when I find a site that *requires* javascript to run (e.g. www.sony.com). I'll turn it on if I need to, but i don't want to.

With the old epinions, I could rate people's reviews without javascript. Now I can't. I could use the spell-checker without the use of javscript. Now I can't. What's worse, I didn't even *know* about these new requirements until i randomly tried it on a javascript-enabled workstation. I didn't get any alternative page warning me that I should have it on. What does that mean for those who are still using pre-javascript browsers but still want to contribute to the epinions community?

This brings up another quirk about layout in general. While I do like the new epinions front page design, a lot of the new epinions pages have been designed to be wider than my browser screen. In order to see all of an epinions page now, it seems like I would have to resize my browser window to the whole screen. If the only site i ever visited was epinions, this wouldn't be an issue, but this messes with the layout of other web sites who adapt to my normal screen size with little or no difficulty.

So combined with the whole javascript thing, it seems like epinions is now trying to fit a particular kind of user - like, say, one who likes javascript and occupies the whole screen with his/er browser. :) That is a little discouraging - i want epinions to be able to be flexible to as many people as possible, to embrace as much of a community as possible, even if they are weirdos like me. Is javascript Really Necessary to help epinions run? Is using the font face "arial" at its small font size really going to accommodate everyone who uses the site?

Another thing that bothers me about the new epinions is the new restriction on number of words for pros/cons, quick profile, and the like. I understand the necessity - to keep the site layout as compact and clean as possible - but in practicality, it would make more sense to have a character count restriction as opposed to a word restriction. If i'm going to be grammatically correct, I'm going to want to use the words "a" or "the" or "i" or similar, but when fifteen words is the limit, I feel like those words are wasteful. If it's a concern for space, saying "you can only use 300 characters" makes more sense. Plus it's easier to check - I don't have to go through the "preview opinion" part, have that page load up, tell me i have too many words (without even helping me by telling me how many words over I am). The limit restriction of the box itself will stop me before I get that far.

Finally... just what happened to the bold tag anyway? Does anyone else have the problem that bold text doesn't come out as bold?


OVERALL:

The new site design has potential, but it has some flaws in it that make it frustrating for me personally. Even when all of the bugs are worked out in the end, i think that I'll still like the old epinions site a bit better. It seemed more friendly for the masses - members and non-members alike.

Of course, all of this should be taken with a grain of salt. I haven't been a member that long, but I'm already an epinions addict - it has quickly turned my favourite web site because of its people and its usefulness. I love this site.

The problem is i'm just a picky guy. And very epinionated. Maybe someone should just tell me to shut up. Especially since I write weird little fairy tales about javascript. Crazy? Nooooooooooo... Mendel's not craaaaazeee.....
---


Recommended: No