UX Magazine

My first comment on SG.....and the first to comment here - wow

"very nice touch is that the layout is resolution-dependent"

Don't you mean the site is NOT resolution dependent.

Anyway - this is a truly fab site

I love well done grid/table layouts. CSS made them so hard in the past that we hardly have any good ones - this site being an exception!

I hope that this page is a sign of more great designs to come in the future.

The first site posted on SG that I rated a 10. Love everything about it.

This site is hot.

Such a nice site, too bad it hurts too much to read. I think it like it better with CSS off.

That's pretty damn impressive! I really love how the content adapts when the browser window is narrow. Very clever indeed!

I'm less enthousiastic about the very small text combined with very little line spacing. Resizing the text just one notch larger already results in parts disappearing.

Overall they did a great job on stuffing so much content onto the homepage but readability/usability did suffer a bit in the process.

The content itself is quite cluttered. Apart from the featured story, I'm not sure where my eyes are supposed to focus. There's not much information linked from the main page, and it doesn't seem to be organized logically.

That being said, I must say that the layout is great. Sites should keep several resolutions in mind. The way it moves the content is pure genious. It even lines up perfectly both ways! I'm impressived.

I'm with Chris: content organization is cluttered and confusing. The homepage is the worst culprit by far. The cutesy little green, blue and orange icons at the top of the small boxes are unhelpful; they should instead be grouped together by category with clear page headings and colours.

I "want" to be excited about this website - based solely on its purpose - but this type of information design mess makes me shudder. I sure hope they clean it up sooner than later.

I rated it a 10. One of the best sites I've seen featured on here.

I found the hompeage cluttered; I didn't know where to look and it was difficult to scan. Some lovely design touches, though. I particularly like the arrow pointing down to the image of Steve Jobs.

The resizing business is cool, but of course it's Javascript-dependent, so that reduces the coolness for me somewhat.

One beef: it took me some time to realize that the search box is a search box. To me this is an area in which one should avoid getting too slick--especially on a site concerned, even obliquely, with usability.

As noted in the review, the site is rife with Javascript, most of which should be handled server-side. The markup, while completely valid, suffers badly from "classitis," and the semantics are nearly non-existent.

Nice design overall, but the implementation could stand significant improvement.

being from a design background I am only going to comment on the design. and it is flawless. best site i have seen here and best i have seen on the web in a while, gave it an 8.

Beautifully smooth. I love it.

Design is great. Chunks information very well. I keep going back just to look at it. Superb.

Semantics went out the door on this one it seems. Even spotted some inline-css. Well, I assume that's CMS-related.

I really like the main structure though. A lot of options on the front-page which I don't mind when it's served so neatly.

Also like how they pulled the elastic.

Ooh, and the Print Sheet is awesome work, nice to see some attention to that as well.

This text is acctually on the front-page for instance:

"Don't print this

While printing this page seemed like a good idea, we would just like to recommend that printing an article is far more useful."

A great site!

I just love it.

A coworker showed me this site awhile ago, and I've been hooked ever since. I love the design and the snap-to-width layout. I am even more impressed that it's running on Textpattern. It's one of my Firefox homepages now.

Very nice design and good coding :)

mmm. clean grids.

One of the best designed sites ever featured on SG imo. 9/10

I quite like the concept and the way the idea is presented... It definately needs to clean up the homepage, as its too much of information for me to focus on... where shoudl I go...

But I really like the clean grids and the breathing space between the contents...

Overall very well done... 7/10

It looks nice and I appreciate it from a web development standpoint. Most comments are positive regarding the development effort and the general "look" of the site. They should be lauded for that - a great effort.

I do think the home page is a disaster. It's far too difficult to read. All style no design.

Perhaps when they finish whatever goals they have for the implementation they will have time to focus on intelligent writing befitting the topic they chose to discuss. There is very little and what there is doesn't concern itself with the "multiple facets of user experience" beyond code and business.

Maybe they could even run a user test or two.

Hi,

really love this site :) It gives a very clean feeling. I was just wondering what font they used (for logo etc.). It is amazing. Any ideas?

Thanks a lot

Wishing good luck

Madeo

beleive it or not thats Georgia, i said the same thing and emailed them and he told what it was and said i could snoop arround the css. and its georgia light. looks really good, they didnt do anyhting to it, besides i guess pick the correct font size to optimally display it.

The front page looks great at first glance (and must have involved real dedication from all involved), but there's just too much unorganised content. I'd like to see some hierarchy, and more white space to break up the monotony. Small touches like the nice personalised lead-ins to the comments field take away the feeling of this being a massive database-driven site.

Overall, clean, precise, sharp, but ultimately soulless. And still too conservative. But maybe that's appropriate for the subject matter - the content presentation isn't a mile apart from slashdot.

I've just deconstructed the uxmag.com grid system for an assignment at uni. View my URL if you want more uxmag grid joy! rik.

The top left navigation should not have down arrows. Many users will expect a dropdown menu when they click rather than a link.

Great site, fab design..... has great lasting appeal. Not a site your gonna forget the design of any time soon.

I think they need to go back to the drawing board in terms of UI and layout. It took me 10 minutes to find the primary navigation. I tried clicking on the steve jobs quote, then his picture, I clicked on that green ad in the middle, didn’t even notice it was an add. There is no hierchy to the site, besides the main article, all articles get the same size and position. They don’t even have a proper H1 or H2 tag in your source. There is no sense of what is a link, how important the link is, or how to navigate. I’m sorry if I’m being critical, but this website breaks all the rules of UI for no reason, it isn’t like the site even looks special. It looks like a newspaper on a website and it isn’t even a good looking newspaper layout. Try again.

it is very elegant and suitable i think.

Yeah, I'm thinking about it again and I don't think it's *terrible*. I guess my main problems are a lack of visual hierarchy, like make the site break down more then just 1 "Main artcile" and 10 "Other Articles," and good UI (that navigation up top is confusing as hell, why do they have down arrows if it doesn't open down? why is it so out of the way). But anyway...

hmmmi think this gallery entry is starting to get lag lash back. it was in the mid 7's now it's down in the high 6's. its been here too long. there need to be more entries.

well for me it clear, intuitive and really functional site. geat content and interesting way of navigation.

wadu...h canggih euy...(nyoba...)

I'm in agreement with those who think the UI is off. While a lovely tight grid-based design, some of the elements are visually misleading, and I actually find the articles themselves difficult to read. There's not enough gutter between the right-hand side of the text and other features. I would suggest an increase in the leading and the gutter might improve readibility here.

Also, as others have pointed out, the site is not great under the hood. There are no header tags at all in the source (use the web developer document outline tool to see the document hierarchy), and class/divitis is abundant. I do very much like the Javascript resize widget though, the best example of this exciting new layout technique to date IMO.

As they state on the site, they are still in Beta, so perhaps we should hold off final judgement until they launch officially.

Too much information on the startpage I think. How will one follow up the new stuff? It's not like I'm unable to figure that out, but since many surfers are "lazy" this might become a problem attracting new visitors.

I dont understand why people keep implying that this site is so great. take a look at my blog post about it all - "Case Study UX Magazine - When Good Design Is Poor Usability" at http://blog.theladderproject.com/archive/2006/03/24/127.aspx

I honestly like the cluttered frontpage. It's not immediately usable or transparent, but the visual metaphors became apparent very quickly: The hover on the trio of buttons at the top is the same as their corresponding entries in the body of the page. Not every user is going to make the connection that quickly, but not every user is going to understand the CNN homepage, either. Besides, I'd rather have something that takes a bit of thought to use, but looks beautiful than something that's stupidly easy and looks awful.

In many ways, the design reminds me of a blend of the old A List Apart design and the new ALA design.

My main complaint with the Javascript is a 'dancing' bug that I noticed in Opera. If I expand the window, the bottom columns danced around the page for about 20 seconds as the javascript tried to discover the correct layout.

I have to say that I liked this layout. It reminded me of the 'Snakes and Ladders' board game and whilst you have to spend a little hunting and searching - it's not overly taxing and makes the site a little more interesting. The colour work well and it looks slick overall.

I saw this site several months ago and I had high hopes for it ... but the biggest disappointment is that is a lack of content - in fact, the site itself proudly (!) proclaims that it was last updated 74 days ago!! Which again proves to me that design is nothing if you have no substance.

Its a shame that after some server problems, they seems to have abonded the site. I was an active visitor in the first month or two of the site, but recently I have removed it from my bookmarks list.

I hope it will make a spectacular return to its former glory ... at least there is stylegala. Although some new sites to review on here would be nice too.

It was a great site, design and content. Now "last updated 100 days ago".

I don't know what is happening to this site, but finally its not in beta.

There are also some changes, for example the top right menu. I am not really satisfied with the search box, but still a great site.