So…?
Notice anything different? That’s right! Macenstein is finally emerging from its crusty brown chrysalis, and turning into a beautiful butterfly, albeit one that at the moment is missing a couple legs and only one has one wing, but over the next week or two, we hope to have the site up and running at full steam with some cool new features to make it even more awesometastic than ever before, if you can imagine.
The programming wizard behind this “Can’t Buy Me Love” transformation from geek to super stud is faithful Macenstein reader James W. Lane from Skipping Stones Design. He’s been somehow able to take my Photoshop site layout and breath life into it through the magic of CSS, and let me just say, if any of you have any web programming needs, James is one hell of a code monkey, and a genuinely nice monkey as well.
So stay tuned for more awesomeness.
I’d say some padding, and font work are in store at least for Safari. Too lazy to open FF.
I Kinda like the old site better.
I like the new brighter look. You lose a little bit in terms of that down-home blog kinda feel, but if you’re trying to update and compete against some of the other Mac news sites, bravo.
I give the new site a B+! No A because I’d like to see a logo redesign…
You’d want to change the hover color attribute for links with White background.
Totally agree with Preshit, it is near impossible to make out the words on hover
Overall, it is a very nice change from the brown, kind of like when Apple abandoned beige… yeah, shameless referencing of such things is rather um, well, never mind. back to critiquing…
It seems to load up quite faster it seems, at least in firefox; tho the posted by doc, date and titles are scrunched up together.. but your working on that, so no biggie… animated mac chicks slide show is nice… it also seems a bit more mac desktop like, with having main items on the right where we instinctively go to on macs for our hard drives and other media….
Tho some other issues of note is that the categories and links text are a wee bit too small for these eyes… and below links the text in white against that blue is rather difficult to read… if it had a shadow it’d be clearer or if the text it’s self was a different colour… also its a long scroll to get to the next button, perhaps less items posted on main page would be good? with so many items there is a whole lot of nothing right of the posts… more room for mac chicks! 😛
overall..I’ll go with an A- …
Thanks Doc for you kind words and I will take everyone note and try and implement everything with Doc’s approval and should have a final product in a few weeks.
Do like!!!
And the wonderful Elise in the banner….. I am mesmerized!
Seriously, looks great DOC ;p
Hey Doc,
I see the site is changing. Since you asked, here’s my opinion:
I like the original. The new banner makes this site look like some sort of teen porn site. How am I suppose to look at it with the family around? Geeez. Also, still very slow to load. Here’s for hoping it keeps improving, as for now, the old site is much better.
Doc, you knock your brown, but that is what made you stand out from crowd.
Also, from a design standpoint, your logo takes second stage, maybe even third in your banner to the MacChick, and the banner does not state your theme about Macs at all. New visitors won’t get it. I also like your links (twitter, FB, etc,) in a more accessible area. Too much focus on the MacChicks. (though to look at indeed)
overall….a downgrade
I do like, although of course, the padding needs to be sorted. I have great vision and I’m finding it hard to make out what the categories say – could do with a bit bigger size there to be honest…
All over it’s a nice change from the old one, and it seems to be a lot faster as well.
There’s something in the navi that isn’t right (at least on my Safari):
http://tice.de/downloads/macenstein_2009.jpg
Clever…putting a picture of one of my most favourite Mac Chicks in the top banner. Just for that, you have my clicks for at least another year! 😀
The site looks great – but no iPhone-site?
I kinda love the way tuaw looks on mobile Safari…
nice
FEEDBACK:
Like the new one better, bcoz it’s easier to navigte and read! brighter and things are more orgonised than before!
bu the header doesn’t change for me! i donno if that suppose to change daily or its per each refresh!
but looking good and we will wait couple of weeks to see how it’s gonna end up!!!
i like the new banner very very much
Digging the new site. (Especially the new little link bits at the bottom of the site.
My 3 Opinion updates:
• Centre all the main stores so have one of the columns to the left.
• Loving the top banner but a feel a lack of apple-fandom in there. I know there were some very sexy ones with ipods and laptops in.
• Maybe it’s just me but the site takes 3 times as long to load than before. (I don’t think its me)
Otherwise good job!
I kinda like the old one better as well.
But maybe it needs some getting used to.
Regardless, the animation of the chick pictures on the right is awful. Couldn’t it be changed into something smoother?
On the other side, I like the banner a lot.
Love the redesign! I like that a MCotM is on the top banner!! Very nice job Doc & James!
I like the look, but wanted to mention that some people may not be as able to look at the site on a work machine with such prominent display of MCotM in the banner. It’s one thing when they were relegated to a small size ad, but another when it’s a major feature of the site.
just my .02
Thanks for the input guys.
In theory the top banner will change daily, with Mac Chicks only showing up o the weekend, so work surfing should not be an issue for most people.
-The Doc
am I the only one that feels like I have to lean to the left to read here? I love the banner and the colors are pretty good. The old site did seem a bit dark, but I really preferred the meat to be in the middle. Seemed more ergonomic to me. Just my thoughts, otherwise things are looking good.
Oh, one more thing, if you have 2 lines of text in the heading, they are touching and it looks jumbled. could use some spacing to be more clear.
I am loving the new design. Very nice.
I really like the new look. I have only a couple comments – I share the sentiments of those who think the Macenstein logo needs updating. This website is unrivaled in content, and now in appearance, but the logo needs a facelift (perhaps the need for another contest?).
Other than that, I’d like to see the text in the Categories and Links at the bottom to appear larger, or readable. Other than that AWESOME site, and love the MacChicks.
I agree with most of the comments here.
I do like the new redesign (as a designer, I always love to see something new when it comes to visual stuff). Do agree a lot with Jim and Adam regarding padding, logo redesign and some font work.
The top “Mac Chick header” looks great, however it kind of takes away the idea that this is a Mac related info site, not a “hot chick site”.
I understand that the Mac Chick section is probably the most visited part of the site, and in that would make some sense to give it that importance.
Do not like the favicon, I’m not sure how it was conceptualized. Maybe there can be a “contest” for designing it.
And yes, you kind of have to lean to the left to read!. Great observation dlowe402!
Overall I like what you have done!
I want the old cool-looking Macenstein back! Now it looks like some unprofessional kid’s porn blog! I really don’t like the banner, which makes the site look very, VERY, unprofessionally designed, the rest is OK. Love the new font. But You should change the banner, Doc
Very impressive change! But it it is not a Porn site! The MCotM should not be on the banner. It would be blocked by corporation very quickly. I know mine would. But other than that, it is an impressive look. Good luck!
I like the new look. Good colors, a nice layout and finally No Captchas! That makes me very happy.
thought i do love the MCOTM… Truth… the banner makes it hard to look at yer at work.
i do like the new look.
Hmmm I have a lot of recoding to do O.o “Cracks open more caffeine”
NICE !!! I like it !!!
PS: try moving the articles to the right … my neck hurts from lookin’ 2 my left 😛
I agree with an earlier post- the panning Mac Chick image is not smooth and slightly distracting. I was a fan of the original page, but I’m willing to let the new look grow on me.
Faster! Would personally like less of a header area and maybe narrow up the right columns a bit and work on some font tweaking. The best thing is that it is faster… Nice start to a redesign!
I liked the old design MUCH better. This new design looks like crap. It looks like some $10 generic blog template. I have showed several people macenstein links in the past, and they always commented on how nice the site looked, and that they liked the layout. They won’t be saying that anymore.
Doc, the website isn’t macenstein anymore.
Not only can I not go to it without those around me thinking I’m looking at porn, but the website looks unoriginal and similar to the thousands of other blog sites that exist on the web. Old macenstein was nice and original. New macenstein, not so much.
Just look at the logo for the website. Before, it was a macenstein “m”. this was something easily recognizable and knowable. now, it’s generic hogwash.
i’m sure you and your reader put a lot of time into this, but i feel mildly disappointed.
Please remove the girl from the top banner. I do enjoy the mac chick of the month, but when Im at work looking the site, I dont want a bunch of co-workers looking over my shoulder going “ooooh yea!” thinking im looking at PORN.
Regards,
Aaron
I like how much faster it loads on my iPhone.
Give that code monkey a banana. I really like the new site design compared to the old one 🙂
Well trying to make the masses happy I am working on the backend to improve it some more and Doc and working on the front end looks. Give us a few weeks and I am sure we can make 97.9% of the Macenstein readers happy. But like in the real world we can’t make everyone happy.
i digg it. even in safari. and i really like the idea of the rotating/updating banner.
It’s totally cool Doc!
Looks brighter and fresh… new year new expectations… and a new desing totally cool ;)…
I don’t mid it at all 🙂
The good thing is it’s a contemporary look & feel. The bad thing is it’s a contemporary look & feel like about 150 other sites I see every day. It’s lost its “Macenstieiness”.
I am in agreement with those who think the MacChick on the banner is inapproriate. The MCotW may have brought me here, but it’s not what keeps me coming back (hmmm, or maybe it is???).
Yeah, I like the overall concept of this new site aswell, But a few things really need to be taken care of before I’ll browse it on a daily base.
* We read from left to right, so either don’t use a long slogan and leave the MacChick on the left of the header, or move the macchick-pic in the header to the right.
* It’s now kind of a unprofessianl simple fade from the MacChick-to the header.
The header is the text-logo, slogan and the nice reflex-shapy green background.
I would like it better if those shapy-creative lines would cintinue over the lines, and the header is not CUT into two pieces, but becomes 1 thing.
* There now is a navigation bar and a search box. And to the left there is an rare and unpleasant empty space.
I.M.O. it would be better of either there is an empty space to the right, and the navigation to the left. Or maybe even better, let the navigation and search box fill the entire width (navigation a bit wider, search a bit wider) so there’s no empy space whatshowever. But either way, navigation on the left or center. Not to the right 😀 😀
* I like the footer very much ! Nice !
* The category-chooser-picker is currently drawn away from the picture. It all the way down invisible at first sight at the most bottom of the rightside column.
It would be better if it’s more connected to the Populair Posts-section.
And second…. Why a drop-down menu ? a Tag cloud or just a simple link-list (like Populair Post) has would be a lot clearer.
—
Thanks for the website,
Way to go !
keep up the good work
—
Grincer
Personally, I am totally happy with it now and I love the banner the way it is. Not sure if it was my suggestion on centering the text and spacing the headings that got them changed but I am going to tell myself it was. That did it for me. I am now totally happy with the site. Thanks
Doc… love the speed of the new site.
Just don’t think the header and some of the look and feel represents macenstein.
Put the logo and name back on the left.
And maybe not so bright… I liked the old gritty feel. (it was just too slow and brown)
Nice and clean. Looks great.
Another test of the comment system…
i think i liked the brown color scheme because it stood out from the crowd. if i were to open a series of tabs and was flipping through them, there was _no_ doubt when i was reading the macenstein tab. now… it seems more likely to blend in with the rest of the color schemes.
that being said, everything appears to be loading a little faster for me since the update. not sure what other behind the scenes tweaks took place, but it’s an improvement.