ESPN just rolled out it’s redesigned front page. It’s only been about 18 months since the previous redesign which wasn’t that great. They smoothed the edges, and added more tabs getting more links and content on the front page. Personally I think it’s a big improvement and I like it. Minimalists will probably hate it but I’m guessing they hated the old version more.
Thoughts?
Link?
Just kidding. I like it.
i liked the site BEFORE the last upgrade, like you did.
this new upgrade, i dig.
it’s got all the insider extras more accessible and it cycles through top stories by itself, which i like.
by the way, if you don’t have a password the the insider and you’re a sports guy, i STRONGLY suggest you go and get yourself one. i find it VERY worth it, even if it is to read some crappy articles. also, you get all previous articles by everyone, not the last 4 or so they wrote.
I’d like to be an Insider but I refuse to do so because it means signing up for ESPN the magazine too. If they seperate the two I’d pony up for it. I hate stupid crosspromotion.
Incidentally it seems that the figured out a way to have the ESPN Motion to the side able to resize dynamically so there’s no need to scroll left to right on smaller screens. Nicely done I think.
Now I just wish they’d redesign the Page2 website and get rid of the gaudy yellow.
Minimalist here. I like the last one better than the current one, but liked the one prior better than both. My biggest problem with the current one is that the headlining articles are all the way to the left side of the screen. It just feels a LOT more “right” when it’s a little bit more centered. The autocycling thing is cool because it makes me less likely to miss something, but annoying because (a) I keep clicking RIGHT as it cycles and getting the wrong article, and (b) when I rightclick on an article in the auto-cycling applet, my only options are “Open”, “Open in New Window”, and “Copy Link” (in Firefox 1.5). There is NO “open in new tab” like there is for 99% of the other links on the freaking internet, and this annoys the HELL out of me. I like how the top three articles for each sport are easily accessible. Don’t like how with the current “big headliner”, all the other headlines are down “below the fold” as it were - and when it’s the normal sized headliner, it just makes the headliner even more drastically off-center. I’m sure it’ll grow on me over time, but currently not a fan of the new design. It’s certainly not going to stop it from being a page I check several times a day, either way.
As for Insider, I feel pretty much how Omni does. That said, I’ll probably still sign up for it once I have a consistent year-round address to get the magazine delivered to.
the magazine isn’t too bad. it’s good for bathroom reading. worst thing is, you can get the entire magazine on the espn website if you subscribe. i can say that i’d pay what they want me to for the magazine ONLY for the insider.
knowing things like “who are the best european players in the next nba draft?” are priceless to me.
for example, if you like the nfl draft, they’ve got scouting grades for EVERY player. strengths…weaknesses, they’ve got it all. and yeah, when it gets closer to senior bowl, you can spend a whoooooooooooole lot of time rooting around there through all the information.
Information overload. Clunky. It still feels like I’m exploring the front-end of a database, which isn’t what a website should be projecting. It seems that I’m being offered a selection of what information they can present me with, rather than a menu of things I’m likely to want.
Oh, and it’s all locked into columns smaller than my screen, for no apparent good reason.
I hate, hate, hate this new design even more than the previous design. The one they had two years ago was pretty much perfect, why do they keep fucking with this every two years?
I totally agree with your description and that is precisely what I love about it. I don’t like when websites try and predict what it is I’ll find interesting. That always leads to me digging around and getting frustrated. I love having tons of information right up front to choose from.
Incidentally I like all the tabs they’ve included too. Seems a better implementation than it was before.
I much preferred having the various sports on the left, instead of across the top. The biggest reason for this is that I had quicker access to more sports. The Australian Open is going on, and there’s no longer a direct link to it from the front page! Even worse, college basketball (and college football) is no longer linked directly from the front page. Sacrilege!
As a general rule, I hate mouseover dropdown menus. Present content in a more accessible way, please!
Upon closer inspection, it turns out that there are direct links from the front page, but they are much lower on the page, which is just as good as not being there, since I can’t get to them without scrolling.
I’ve got the magazine as well. I had a thousand frequent flier miles on an airline I intend to never fly on again, so I used them to get a year subscription. It has its good points, though I don’t really care for the size of the magazine itself. I’ll see if I like it as much once football is over, though.
I don’t understand the complaint about the magazine. I have been an insider for as long as they have had the thing (my brother and I are HUGE NBA Draft junkies and you can’t follow the draft without Chad Ford).
One day, ESPN sent me an e-mail saying that because I was an insider, they were giving me a complimetary subscription to the magazine. My subscription price didn’t increase and over the years it hasn’t increased substantially enough for me to feel that I am “paying for the magazine.”
I figured it was a clever way for ESPN to increase the circulation of their mag to up ad revenues. There are places on the web where you can get magazine subscriptions for pennies on the dollar. At least this way, ESPN has incentive for people to give them money AND increase circulation numbers.
I don’t really LIKE the magazine (too big and bulky), but a free sports magazine is a free sports magazine.
The Sports Guy Column, Dan leBatard and Outtakes gets me through enchilada night!
As for the new design, I like it better than the old one, but I wasn’t a fan of the old one.
As a minimalist, I feel bogged down with too much content. I saw a report on CNN the other day that recent pysch studies indicate that minimalist websites (clarity and user friendlieness) are more accepted by the net browsing community than ones that throw too much at you.
Apparently people decide in under 2 seconds whether they like a website. Yahoo, which is vanilla bland and hasn’t changed in years, was near the top of the major sites in comfort and acceptance.
I hope the ESPN guys saw that report.
Both Tennis and College Sports are linked in the Menu Drop Downs. The biggest problme with the leftside nav bar was that it used up a ton of space on the page. Everything was pushed to the right and it limited how much content you could have on there. I think losing it was an acceptable sacrifice. Once people get used to using the top nav menu (which was always there anyways) they won’t miss it IMHO.
I don’t have a problem with them limiting the space. I liked the limited content on the front page. I don’t care about half that clutter anyway. I just want to browse the MLB, NFL, and NBA stories and then check out the Sports Guy’s site. Not only that, but ESPN Motion and all these moving pictures all over the site are the freaking devil.
Right now the website has a chunk of it skipping between NBA, MLB, NHL, NFL and Boxing. First off, who the heck cares about boxing anymore? Second, why do they feel the need to do this? It’s nuts.
Frankly, the same mentality went into this that ruined SportsCenter. Flash, style and slick graphics take precedence over substance. And it’s a shame.
Well, I think part of it is that your interests happen to coincide with what the ESPN guys chose to display previously. Personally, I care WAY more about College Hoops than NBA and was always annoyed to have to dig for that while they wasted my time on the front page with NBA and NHL crap.
This way the user gets to choose where to focus their attention instead of having it chose for them. I’ve never really understood how “clutter” ruins peoples experience on a news type website. Once you know where the items you are interested are located you look there, the other links are easy enough to ignore.
As for those cycling photo headlines. I’m not sure if those are a good thing or not but the implementation is WAY better now than it was. The old website would refresh iteself immediately after loading which was uber-annoying to me. Then it would constantly refresh every minute or so. Bad bad bad. They seem to have gotten rid of all that hassle now and those tabs everywhere are at least consistent in design and function.
Another thing I think they improved was the use of the space below the Motion section. Much better than the garbage before. This I think is a direct result of them removing the left nav bar and eliminateing the right hand fold.
i’m not a huge fan of mouse-over-drop-down menus unless they’re done well. the espn ones, are not. i agree with the design 4 years ago. that was the best design.
i’ve sent an email to the ombudsman of espn (know there was one?) saying that i don’t like sportscenter as much anymore because they’re pushing a product all the time and it’s just one huge advertisement. the way i look at it for the insider is either that you pay for oen and get the other free (the other being the magazine), or that you get one for half price…either way, i still dig.
maybe we should all band together and tell them to simplify the damned thing all over again. i’m down with that.
Yeah, but then you just had to do a quick click on the College Hoops link on the left nav bar. They just had a few top stories on the main page and if you weren’t interested, you just clicked on the sport you wanted. Easy peasy. Now every single story needs to have a link, a picture and a video on that home page and it’s irritating, IMHO of course.
So, I want to check yesterday’s football scores. I go to ‘soccer’ on the menu and choose England. I get a page with lots of stories, all about the premiership. I then have to go to England on the menu (didn’t I already ask for that? :dubious: ), and ‘results grid’, then Championship from the drop-down menu. Nope, that doesn’t have them sorted by date, and has silly three-letter codes (Sheffield Wednesday = SHE, Sheff Utd = SHE…great). Ahh, I spot another meny which has appeared directly below the previous one, with ‘Scores’ on it. That’s given me the results.
Yeah, easy peasy.
I’m not making this up - this is exactly what I did just now, to test whether my first impressions were wrong. Oh, and when I went to the ‘report’ for the Ipswich match, it had the wrong result in the headline. I’ll still go here for a simple clean site which presents the information in an obvious way.
…huh. I’ve had time to read this thread and post a reply and the ESPN page is still loading. It is also “streched” for me: I am using the latest version of Netscape. It looks like it will remain one of those sites where I won’t visit if I see it in the preview… 