Interesting link, Tom. I wouldn't have seen it since the "Keep" thread isn't one I read very often. But wow!... Little did I know that I was looking at such a... well -- classic during those months I spent reading the old SI.
The following is addressed mostly to the classicists among us.
Heh. "We want the calm, the spaciousness, the proportion. The beauty." "Beauty"? "pure design clarity"? Really? How many would say that if they were looking at one of those pages for the first time?
Let's compare the two and try to identify that pure design clarity, shall we?
We'll start by putting the two sites side by side in browser windows. We'll set the browser to the minimum size. Do that by narrowing the window on the Bookmarks/SubjectMarks page until a horizontal scroll bar appears; then open it until the bar disappears. The old SI is 640 pixels wide -- the standard web width, and also the maximum width still used by a minority, but still many machines. The new SI is about 660 pixels. An odd width. Not much is gained by the extra 20 pixels, but it makes the site frustrating on a minimal machine. The old SI wins on the width test.
So let's consider the lists. The new site is columnized. Looking at the New SI list, I can easily which subjects have the most new messages. If I have only a few minutes to read something, I will usually pick a thread that has fewer messages. It's difficult to see that in the Old SI because that number is all over the screen, sometimes even jumping down to a second line. In the old SI, one must move the mouse both down and right or left to choose new messages in different topics. Although the click-region is smaller in the New SI, it's placed within the same region for each thread. The New SI wins on the list information test.
And let's just mention the colors up at the top of the page. In the New SI, we have a dark blue, medium gray, and dark gold-like color. In the old SI, we have Yellow, light green, light gray, light blue, light blue-green. Now who would really want to argue that such an easter-egg profusion of pastels is "pure design clarity"? It's a mess. It even has medium gray type over the pastels, giving one of the lightest contrasts one can achieve. Color: New SI wins. (Even though it was an even clearer winner from a design perspective with the original colors.)
And from this point on, the new wins every time in my estimation, so I'll stop keeping score:
Now let's look at a message. To do this, please give the new SI it's due and turn off boxes around messages. They weren't there in the original design and still make it cluttered. Since we're using a narrow window, you should also choose "Stretch messages..." option. (This will actually make them narrower the a 660-pixel window.)
I know that the classicists won't agree with me here, but I think it's only because they're not seeing what's there. When I look at the two pages, there's no doubt in the New SI where the focus of the page lies. The eye moves toward that negative space in the upper middle of the page. There are strong horizontals throughout the page, but there's one (and only one) area that is separated from the borders by white space on the edges. That is the message. The design of the new SI highlights and isolates the message on the page. That does not happen in the old SI.
Looking at a message page in the old SI from across the room, my eye is pulled down to the only non-pastel element of the page -- a dark blue block on "StockTalk" in the group of links at the bottom of that gray block at the bottom of the page (which is, by the way, made up with a graphic that's bigger than anything in the new SI).
The message does start three lines lower in the new SI which is a negative on limited systems, but otherwise it's the best design I've seen in a web bulletin board.
Now let's try two examples of navigation. Let's look at index comparisons. In the old SI, pick "Spotlight" from the links at the bottom. Pick several links within that page.
In the New SI, choose MarketTools from the dropdown menu, and then Movers/Shakers. Select several variations on that page. Pick other links on the page.
Now there's a problem with filtering here. The new SI provides more filters but doesn't provide the same filter that's used in the old SI. That's a significant issue, but not a design issue.
Now here's the design challenge: How do you get back to the message base? If you're lucky, and you didn't press more than 9 links within the Spotlight section, you can go back to the history list in your browser and find the page you moved from. If you're lucky. The design of this section sure doesn't help much. You have to press Home, and then press Bookmarks. That doesn't tell me that the Message is the primary feature of the site. Hmm.
On the new SI? No matter how many links you press, SubjectMarks is just a click away in either the toolbar or the dropdown menu. Or, if you really like going home first, you could do that too. Notice also that the look of the page does not change radically when moving into a new section. The look is optimized for messages, but is repeated throughout the site. That, folks is, "pure design clarity". The jumble in the old SI is not pure, is barely even design, and is more obtuse than "clear".
I won't mention the issue of how many feet the mouse pointer must move to do anything in the old SI, but will mention this little design flub.
We're through reading messages, so let's go to bookmarks. We press "Bookmarks" up in the yellow toolbar. So now, after our eyes have adjusted to the shifting letters and the new color up in the toolbar, we see the list, but walk away from the machine. When we come back, we want to see the current list. How do we do that? Hmm? Isn't that odd? There's nothing in the design of this often-refreshed page, that allows us to refresh the design. Fortunately, the browser is (hopefully) designed to allow that. We can press f-5 or press the browser's refresh button, or right-click and refresh. But this is not clarity of design. We cannot use the same action to refresh the page that we used to get to the page. We can't press the "Bookmarks" in the toolbar.
The New SI, on the other hand, provides a perfect example of clarity of design in this feature. You press "SubjectMarks" to get to the page, and press it again to refresh the page. Simple. Easy. Elegant. Clear.
You could also use any of those old browser-supplied methods, but the design issue here is that you don't have to. You only have to know one thing to get the newest thread list in the new design: Press the "SubjectMarks" link in the toolbar. (Or, if you wish, choose it from the dropdown.)
As you've probably figured out, I could go on, but the two of you still reading should be spared. I will, except to make one point:
If one is going to use terms like "classic" or "pure design clarity", one should take the time to explain why they are valid in the context used.
The Dwyers created a superb and distinctive message system -- a simple system that is incredibly rich. That system continues almost unchanged (as it should) in the new SI. When the "classic" SI was introduced, it was no doubt very attractive. But that was the Netscape 2 era. The graphic design that gives a face to that message system hasn't aged well. It isn't classic. It's simply old. |
