Coming soon - an updated look for Fodors.com
 

Hi everyone,

I’m excited to let you know that later this week, Fodors.com will be sporting a new look and feel. As you’ve probably heard, we’re celebrating our 75th anniversary this year. Our web team has been hard at work on an updated look for our site in honor of this significant milestone.

The crisp, new design will make it easier for you to find the information you need without affecting the site’s core functionality and should not affect or change the way you currently use the Forums. We’d love to hear your feedback, and certainly want to know if you have any problems or questions. As always, you can reach me at [email protected].

I remember the last changes and the many unhappy posts - put on your padding and helmet! Hope these changes go smoother. :)

Will you be increasing the speed with which the posts load? Fodors is a slow site. I'd like to see it speeded up, especially when searching.

Cannot wait !
When will it happen?

Yes, I hope this has been thoroughly user tested so that all these new features work with all browsers, for example, and that your web team hasn't stuffed it with stuff that works great for them but NOT for the users. Did you have a focus group of experienced and newbie Fodorites try it out?

I'm not referring to your team specifically, but I've dealt with too many IT and/or web teams who, in their heart of hearts, think the company/site/organization is there to serve THEM rather than the other way around.

So I shall hope for the best but not be surprised by any snafus.

Looking forward to the updated look. An updated feel? I'm not sure about that.

Progress in the name of what?

Last time this happened there were a lot of moans. Many including me stop posting for months.

Please explain what is wrong with the current format.

I am NOT excited. Remembering the last change gives me nightmares.

Agree with the poster above that Fodor's is slow compared to other sites.

Fodors is EXTREMELY SLOW when using Internet Explorer. Google Chrome is a little better. With IE I sit there, twiddle my thumbs and can't do a thing while all those ads, flash, etc. loads. It is like deja vu and dial-up all over again. We don't want bells and whistles and other fancy stuff. Content is king!!!

Uh...oh.

StCirq: more like oy-vey :D

<i>The crisp, new design...</i>


Humph, trite description.

Re: design .. I'll wait for my own opinion.

Not sure whether I ought to be thrilled. I promise I will be if the many inconveniences of the current design (that I never learned to love) are to be corrected. If it goes the way the last relaunch went, however...

Can't we just wait to see what it looks like first? :)

Thanks for the heads up Amy...looking forward to seeing what you all have come up with!

cheers,
CC

Computer-wise, I am not very sophiscated. I hope I can still get around here.

Ooh, can't wait! Change is always invigorating. :)

Ono! iHavnt getgot ovr the lAST "uPdayt yet

Miserable gits you all are!

Amy, thanks for this. I look forward to seeing it.

Poor Amy, you are in for a rough time if the contributors don't like it, fingers cross that it is fabulous!! :)

Hope we get an edit function, with all those typos!

will the prices increase too?

Mm, I also stopped using it for months the last time. Can we hope it will change back to how it looked before ? :-)

One feature I still really miss is having own's own contributions to a thread highlighted, to make it easier to see where you last were especially in a long discussion.

A few more details: This new redesign is going to the most prominent on the homepage and destination pages. The changes to the Forums pages will be more on the cosmetic side, not changes to the functionality.

I'm taking notes on all of the suggested changes and and will keep them in mind for future updates. Once the changes are live, you know where to find me for feedback and/or questions.

I know we don't put our email addresses on Fodors, but it would be nice to have a way to click on someones name and leave a message or ask a question directly of that person through these forums. Do you follow me? We could check our profile and see if there were any messages.

"One feature I still really miss is having own's own contributions to a thread highlighted, to make it easier to see where you last were especially in a long discussion"

Is a very good point.

Two things annoy me from the last set of changes :

Forums are subdivided by country. This allows posters with little else to do in life but out research everyone else, to dominate specific geographic areas.

The second introduction was the ability of posters to click on your login name and come up with all your posts. This gives, the average nut case out there with little else to do, the ability to psychological profile and research everything you have posted over the past 4 years prior to slamming anything you are posting. God help those who have little else to do in the real world.

The ability to easily find someone's posts is very helpful if you want to, for example, look through Kerouac's many contributions on the subject of Paris.

PS On an unrelated note, I am going to assume that the centre justification is a bug, not a "Feature". I sincerely hope so anyway. :)

Looks like it just changed. I use Google Chrome as my default browser, and everything is centered, including the text in the posts--very hard to read! I tried it in Firefox and IE and that wasn't an issue.

And now it's left justified...never mind!

Yup, mine has changed as well!

Hmmm ... centered when looking at it in Safari. Very difficult to read. Hope that's temporary :(

Hi Caroline

Yes I agree the highlighting function was handy. I pointed this out at the time of the last revision and the editors stated they were going to look into it but it wasn't adopted. Maybe the decision will be reviewed and included in the latest version.

Why is this soooo BIG!

Cheers Amy. I like the new format.

I see the speed has not improved.

That orange heading was rather shocking this morning. Two colors I absolutely hate are red and orange!! :(

Looks like a new font?

Oh dear - I use Firefox and mines still centred, I hope this changes, much prefer left.

Lots of wasted white space of the page. Scrolling down the list of 100 posts in the narrow column on the left is looooong.

The centered paragraphs are unpleasant to read. Also, I miss a division between the individual posts in a thread.

If it is supposed to stay like this, thanks but no thanks. The old layout was not good compared to other forums, but this is a mess.

YIKES---I use Windows Explorer and with the update the posts are centered and view by country, search the forum and new topic search are overlapping. I hope this is is a temporary problem. I like the orange, it's very "fresh" ;;) Deborah

Using Firefox, mine is centered.

Using Safari, it's left-justified.

Looks really good...I'm using Firefox (v3.6.15) Font is much nicer

I'm using firefox 3.6.14 and everything is left justified. There is a lot of white space on the right but that's for the advertising that isn't loading at the moment.

Try closing your browser and re-opening it to see if the centering gets corrected.

Well after refreshing (Firefox), it is now left-justified!!! No change in speed though....