I like the re-design, which seems to be using the new IOS7 flat UI style. Feedback: 1. Would prefer the titles to be above the images / videos. The embedded vids don't always clearly show the article topic. 2. The green divider lines help differentiate articles. But, with the embedded videos there's no gap between the line and the video, so the start/end of articles is less distinct. 3. Logging in with a made up name from the front page, gives no result. Nothing happens. Same with using the forum logon. Should really provide some form of feedback. 4. On the hot games page, the images are cropped, so can't see the full image / text. Sometimes this doesn't matter, but other times words in the image are partially cut-off. 5. This article has a blank rectangular area where presumably a video should be. http://toucharcade.com/2013/08/30/ta-plays-rewind-beans-quest-a-fantastic-platformer-now-loaded-with-content/
Oops, I started a new thread about this and didn't see this one! I'm not liking it. A lot less content spread over many more pages making it a big hassle to navigate and looking more like the Play store, which sucks! What are they thinking? Gonna take so long to see what I need to see and there is a lot less to it. Too much emphasis on individual games and before it was a simpler and better interface in general! One-stop-shopping. Like I said, maybe I'll grow to like it, but I don't know. I can't even find the newest releases and things seem to just be larger with less total content than before. I know it's gonna be a work in progress, but so far, I don't dig it.
Ok, I'm not a fan of the new header on the forums, thought it may grow on me I'm liking the section at the bottom of the forums though Edit: Any chance the forum software shall be upgraded?
How do we get at the "new games" section? That is one feature I loved, all new or marked down games on one page, I miss that
Elements of the background advertisement that were intended to be visible are obscured, but I assume that's because you need to update your partners with new dimensions or something. It also fades into black at the bottom, while the forum background is some kind of blue-grey. And the beginning of the search bar is still cut off by the "Forums" button Bookmark this until a link is added somewhere: http://toucharcade.com/newest-iphone-games/
*smack myself* thanks for pointing out the obvious, sometimes you don't see the forest for the trees. That would work too, of course. Like the old sidebar, just "pimped up" to fill it's own page. This would allow the use of larger fonts and more spacing as well. Say, two rows instead of one, in style similar to what it looks like now with the new design.
Ya I miss the new threads / new games area from the older site. Not being able to expand the forum list is also a problem. I am having to go more places to get the same amount of info.
Totally agree with both of these. Even if you don't want to bring a dividing line back, having the video above the title is just wrong and confusing. For example, the first time I tried picking the TA Plays Fart Cat video, I ended up playing the Doodle Army video by mistake, and nearly sent a complaint that you linked the wrong video to the article. But dividing lines between all articles would be good as well.
I'm not sure if it has more ads or it's that they are presented differently but I'm feeling bombarded and it makes the scrolling sluggish. I already have accidentally clicked the background a couple times to be taken off the site and brought to the iTunes store. It doesn't feel welcoming any more.
For me it's not the ads, it's the game icons in the right side bar... too much going on on the site in general and the information I'm actually looking for (forum threads for current releases) is buried somewhere in the middle of mostly junk.
I am not crazy about the new design. On a big screen the alternating black and white areas (video player followed by a white block with a bold black title font and then the text make it more difficult for my brain to parse it and locate the bits that I want to read. This is worsened by the fact that all 4 elements of the entry have exactly the same indent. The old site has similar indent but for some reason it is harder to pick stuff out. Perhaps one reason is that the green "TA PLAYS" has fairly high visual complexity and it doesn't stand out from the advertising border as well which often has a lot of fine detail so my eye/brain kind of blends the two together. BTW the advertising background/border is one of your sites most interesting and pleasing qualities. I always liked the sense that the website is floating over something that makes me curious about it. While still there the sense of separation is a lot less. If you could change the border of the video window box to something else like gray it would help. Similarly the right column of latest floats somewhat higher than the blog column but both appear about the same distance/difference from the ad background. This makes the latest column draw attention to itself in a distracting way. (IE I am noticing the design elements rather than the content) The net effect of this is that the visual signal to noise ratio is worse than before and makes me less inclined to visit on a daily basis.
I've actually visited more today than I have in the past month or so, now that the site looks like something designed post-2005. One minor downside I'm having is that my browser hangs when there are too many YouTube videos on the page, and this is on PC. I understand that putting the videos behind the jump just puts another hurdle between the user and the content, but it might be worth trying for a while and watching whether or not your views dip.
i full agree here.. just now the page was swamped with new articles and i find it very hard to distinct the different articles. another odd think is that the layout is not consistent.. when i take a look at the star wars card game.. it has no video so the headline is right above the text (where it should be imho) but even the images shown in the article are not shown in the overview maybe the video themself are not really helping the layout either because most of them have a huge black border around them , which makes them look odd.. some video editing to blow them up while keeping aspect ration of the video would be nice.. not sure if it was sanuku back then but there was a time one could watch ipad videos in fullscreen on the ipad without the border if you don't plan to size them up maybe a proper TA style border could be edited into the videos, so that the video preview picture does not break the design that much.. a fine horizontal line after each article may also help to make it clear where the "bottom" is , or make the colored divier lines thicker? maybe also show the "pennant" bigger in size.. Edit: little mock http://i.imgur.com/eyMVI6Z.jpg
