The new Salon.com is unreadable

Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share (MPSIMS)
#1

Click on an article and "waiting for twitter, waiting for facebook, waiting for static.parsley, waiting for cdn.twitter " and on and on and on and on and on. And after clicking on the article, its just a preview, you have to click “read more”. Then all the crap tries to load again. And then again if you want to read comments.

Granted, im not using the newest computer, but Salon routinely turns my computer into a paperweight. My mouse will barely creep across the screen as the new layout tries to load god knows what. 2 out of 3 times I end up having to kill it in task manager. Too bad, there’s a few articles i’d like to read.

#2

I’m not terribly fond of it, either. I preferred the old layout. It was quicker loading, and easier to read.

#3

I’m having the same problem. I so much as click an article, the browser freezes and dies. And I have a pretty zippy set-up, too. I also think it’s too compressed and ugly. I don’t see why an article preview is necessary. If I clicked on the headline, I want to read it. Ugh.

#4

It’s right up there with the new (well, not so new anymore… it was a few months ago) design of LifeHacker and Gawker and their whole set of sites. I used to go to them all the time; now everything is all Ajax-y and Javascript-y and takes forever to load and times out on me.

And I’ve got a kick-ass computer, a super fast Internet connection, and several different browser. If I can’t get it to work, I’m wondering who can.

#5

They probably went with the “Click to preview then click to read” to increase their pageview stats. Fuckers.

#6

That is an awful, deceitful tactic and it makes me wonder who do they think they’re fooling.

#7

It locks up my web browser at work too.

#8

Wholeheartedly agree. I’m aware that EVERY website redesign inevitably earns howls of protest from detractors, which seem to die down when most people get used to where they’ve moved shit (and then rise up again when the next redesign happens). But they really, really made the site worse with this one. It’s slow, it’s ugly, sometimes my browser locks up, user comments don’t even display… it sucks.

I used to read Salon daily, but now it’s on the pile of “websites I stopped going to” along with the Smoking Gun and Metacritic. Nice job, guys.

#9

Installing a combination of AdBlock and Ghostery (available for all modern browsers) helps a lot. It blocks those third-party downloads that eat your bandwidth and clog your browser.

#10

I’ve written this before on SDMB, many times:

I run my browser with JavaScript turned off nearly all the time, and it makes a world of difference – for the better! This disables a vast amount of the junk. I also disable most cookies and most image. I don’t use any kind of ad-blocking software, beyond the built-in tools (including pop-up blocker). I only turn on JavaScript when I need it, like when I pay bills on-line.

Oh, by the way, I am running on an ancient machine (2.4GHz, tortoise-speed my modern standards), 1Gb memory, old system (Linux 9.10), old Firefox (3.6.9), no ad-blockers or virus-protection – and pretty much everything works just fine.

The biggest thing you can do, to cut down on Web cruft, is disable JavaScript.

ETA: Oh, I suppose I should have mentioned: I just went to salon to take a look, and poked around a bit, and I don’t see a problem.

#11

It works alright for me (perhaps the fact that I use Flashblock helps, I don’t know), in the sense of loading and functioning as it should, but I absolutely hate the new look. The color scheme is awful, and there is that annoying, stupid and useless red toolbar cluttering things up at the top all the time. It is even worse than the sites that put a useless toolbar at the bottom of your browser window. Does anybody actually like, or make use of, these nasty things?

Mind you, I think Salon’s content has been on the slide for a long time now. I now no longer care very much that they have made it ugly and difficult to use.

#12

…wait - there’s a ‘read more’ button?

It doesn’t show up on my browser (Firefox 12.0 with a few anti-ad things turned on). I honestly thought they’d gone to a one-paragraph model of commentary.

Huh.

Now I have to ask myself if it’s worth it to load two pages to read something, and I think I’m realising that no - Salon articles aren’t really worth that.

I used to go there once every few days or so, but I think I’ve just stopped reading Salon.com.

#13

Would it be imprudent to suggest that their old website was unreadable, too? Only now the layout is to blame. :wink:

#14

Hate the preview link, locks my browser at work, comments don’t load in my mobile browser, and the redesign is butt-ugly. Fuck 'em.

#15

The comments not available in mobile browsing is what has killed Salon, for me. I use Pulse Reader on my phone for the blogs/sites I want to read. Before the redesign (which has been around quite a few months, maybe almost a year), I could select an RSS Salon story and tap the title to load the actual website, which would show the article and all the comments.

Now when I click on the title, it loads some shit-tastic mobile menu of several stories I can click on to read. Sometimes, the story I FUCKING TAPPED TO READ MIGHT EVEN BE ON THIS LIST! Fantastic! But if not, you’re basically SOL trying to find it. :rolleyes:

I even emailed Salon tech support on two separate occasions, politely letting them know of the problem. I didn’t even get a canned response. Fuck them.
I seriously can’t believe how many sites are really driven by their commenters and don’t even realize it. Salon, the best parts of your damn articles was reading the debates between commenters. And don’t get me started on that fucking assclown Nick Denton and what he’s doing to the Gawker network of sites. Tool.

#16

I can’t read Salon.com on my iPhone, I emailed them and they said basically, “Yeah, we know, we’re working on it.”

Did they ever think of testing before they rolled this out? What a bunch of dumbshits.

#17

It completely locks up ALL my open browsers. WTF were they thinking with this crap?