This is awful!

30 March 2002 | Me

[Nogbad]

No, this is awful!
I don't know where anything is anymore!
Where are the sidebars?
I used to go straight to them
to find out
what was going on.

[SunnyUsa]

"But "change" for the sake of "change" is simply unnecessaary. Why fix something that is not broken?"

This is exactly what I think has been going on, there have been some improvements I've appreciated (like how you can no longer screw up with html - leaving all posts to follow yours in BOLD, or Italics etc)

But basically they have made this site much more difficult to navigate, people don't have the time to be clicking through all diff screens to see whats important and what everyone's talking about.....

[pepperhead]

It was on the beta site for a month. All the complaints were handled as they came up. All those who ignored the beta site will have to wait their turn. You had your chance to give input.

Tell John what is wrong. I'm a programmer. Telling me "I hate it" doesn't get you noticed. People who don't have specific complaints generally are just complainers who eventually just go along with whatever happens. In two years, they will complain about the next format too. But they will go along with that one too.

Be specific. It shows you really care.

Ok Appy, My suggestion since it's doubtful that Free Republic is going to go back to the old format is this. Either have more articles listed in the sidebar or let us pick a number of articles to be displayed in the sidebar. I think it is a good suggestion. It is quite obvious that many people liked the old sidebar and that is basically what we don't like about the new site design.

[B Knotts]

I'm kind of surprised it doesn't work well in WebTV, since it works quite well in Lynx (text-only web browser).

Then again WebTV is now a Microsoft product... :-P

[Humbug]

I've been using both the Beta and the old version for about a week now. At first i liked the Beta version - it was something new to play with and i liked the feature of adding different forums to the sidebar. But then i started to realize that it was taking me a lot longer to surf through the Beta version and to find articles that interested me. So eventually i found myself migrating back to the old version for less stressful surfing.

What i dislike about the New FR up to this point: 1) doesn't have the convenient search at the top of the page; 2) the sidebar forums keep changing position..for instance, i'd rather Breaking News stay at the top; 3) the polls are okay, but usually are just a distraction and means more clicking and more frustration as you have to scroll down to see the sidebar listings; 4) in short, the layout seems too busy and you often have to pause to try and figure out what part of FR you're looking at and what you need to click on next in order to get where you want to go

Hopefully things will be fine-tuned a bit over the coming days and weeks. For example, would like to see an option to be able to start off by viewing all postings from all forums or else postings from a particular forum of your own choosing. And would like to be able to use the search to search through all forums at once, not just one at a time.

[Valin]

I want a Porsche 356.

[PayNoAttentionManBehindCurtain]

Its headed that way!

BigMack

[ArneFufkin]

Believe me, there's been numerous changes to the interface over the years. Sure, we all lost control of our bowels at first. But we're humans, we have the capacity to adapt, and somehow we plodded on to our regular regimen of inane posts and irrelevant commentary.

[SkyPilot]

One new feature: When you post an article, you don't have to use HTML. Just copy and paste.

What about PICTURES?

Or is it still as easy as:

<586872,40040-+00d04>Post crick here....{{{{_9d9^^}}}}}....

ERROR!Photopoint.com_%%User not known*&&&

[bvw]

Dittos! Give us back the old, simple, plain, fast FR!

[Wonder Warthog]

"Click on "Search" and in bold maroon letters up top it says:"

So now one needs to navigate thru TWO pages where only one previously sufficed--and that is supposed to be an IMPROVEMENT?? I think not!

The "new and improved" look and feel is anything but. It is visually atrocious, far more user hostile, and significantly slower.

No thanks!

[Gem]

I have to agree that so far, this is awful! I just spent 3 days, over 24 hours after a new install of Windows, trying to get my machine back to the way it looked before. For the most part I did, though created some other problems along the way, and now this!

I thought I was somewhere else, and am not sure where to go to get what I want, now that I know I am where I want to be!

I agree with, if it aint broke don't fix it!

Gem

[InvisibleChurch]

my head's starting to hurt and i feel a little woozy

[B Knotts]

You can *already* pick what you want in the sidebar. Click on "Topics" in the upper right, and click on something you want in your sidebar (like "Breaking News). Once you are in there, you will see a little link on the left (right under the "United We Stand" picture), where it says "Click here to subscribe."

That way you can have just what you want over there. I now have Breaking News, US: Oregon, and US: Washington over there. I like it better than the old sidebar.

[Petronski]

Be specific. It shows you really care.

Provide a way to eliminate the left flag gutter. Provide a way to eliminate the regional comments at the top of the page. Restore the font size (yes, yes, one can go View | Text Size, but that screws up the formatting of all other web pages). Provide a way to restore the old format of the pages in toto.

My question is the same as that voiced by others above: Why change?

[snippy_about_it]

When you select Topics if you look on the left there is some small type that says either "You subscribe to this topic..." Or, "You do not subscribe to this topic, click to select".

My problem is differentiating between News/Current Events, Breaking News and Front Page News.

The headlines repeat themselves.

I think I'll choose Breaking and Current News as my two topics and just jump around from there.

[metesky]

Do I really have to open Windows Explorer and clear my cookies just to log off? Seems so. That's a pain when you've got two or three Freepers under the same roof.

Other than that, I'm starting to get used to it although it still seems awfully busy, busy, busy.

[pepperhead]

Your a little late on this. I got the sidebar working. I just don't like that there is only 5 articles on it.

[dalereed]

I was one that requested that he return to the format prior to the one before this and that his BETA totally stunk. When I checked out the BETA it wasn't even 1/10th this bad so apparently he kept changing it for the worse day by day, he must be smoking something!

This is so horrible that i'm taking the FreeRepublic.com bumper stickers off of our vehicles and will discontinue making my $100/quarter donation to FR.

There is no way that I would contribute to crap like this or even acknowledge that i'm associated with it.

[B Knotts]

No, there's a "Log Off" link at the bottom of the left column.