New Design - What do you think?
 

I hate to be a curmudgeon - but the new layout is extremely hard to read - and seems to be a change without a purpose. Obviously there are different ways to lay out copy - but there are a couple of standard rules in layout (I have spent my entire working life in advertising):

There are several things that always make copy difficult to read: using drop-out type on a bright or dark color background, using ital type, and using type that is centered rather than flush right. All you have done is prove you can move your cursor to the "center" rather than "flush right" indicator - and made the topics very difficult to read.

Well that's interesting it disappeared wile I was typing.

nothing is lined up in the forums questions and answers. it is all over the place on my mac. tabs everywhere it seems. not good

now it is lined up suddenly.need to play around with this and see what is up.

Someone on another thread suggested logging out and logging back in. I did - and it looks a LOT better after than before. No more centering or jumbled text.

Looks fine to me. ;)

It's better now than it was earlier today. What was the point?? Does it take up less room than the old format?

I use a Mac with an ad-blocking utility. Without ads, the new design looks really stripped down. The top is just an orange banner with white text and my profile postage stamp. Neat and clean. All the other colors seem toned down--the blue doesn't look quite so blue, left column more pale.

Why the pale blue? Makes it hard to read.....

It's funny, but the blue is not pale on my proifle page--the old blue is there. The pale blue is not as bad in the right column where it is just our screen names. But I agree that it is difficult to read in the left column when it is on the tinted background.

Is it my imagination? Did the pale blues just get slightly less pale? I thought so. Must be the Fodor's genie. . .

I logged out and then back it, but the text is still centered, although not as much as before. There's also much too much white on the page. The combination makes it very difficult to read.

I HATE the centered justification. Makes it difficult to read. I will log out, then log back in & see if it changes.

Still centered!!! Fodors, hope you can change this to left justification.

And now it's not centered. The Fodor's genie must still be at it.

On my Mac with Safari, I did not experience the centering/overlapping problem.

I just noticed that the margins (far left beyond the Recent Activity column, and to the right and below the current thread) actually have the palest of pale gray tones. This tone is also between the individual posts on a thread. The posts themselves are on white with the thinnest palest dashed line at the bottom of the white area. This change in tone and dashed rule are barely perceptible, and I have my brightness turned up all the way. Perhaps the designers want to use this very subtle tone to take away some of the white glare. (it cold be that this tone was there before and I just never noticed.) I would appreciate if the separating rule was slightly more perceptible.

We will all get used to it and our addictions to the forums will overde the complaints we have for the moment.

Try control F5 and see if the text becomes justified.

It is very hard to hard.

My LOG OFF/ LOG ON worked and reset the text... the titles of the posts are too light blue... they need to be darker for us old folks!!!!

It doesn't look as modern as the previous version. The orange strip at top is garish and the typeface is difficult to read.

Just wanted to let you know that I've read through this post and am taking notes on your feedback. As I've mentioned in other posts, we're working on fixing the left justification. Logging out and back in, refreshing the page, or pressing F5 seems to be working for other posters in the meantime.

We're also working on making the lines between comments stronger. Let me know if you have any other questions or problems at [email protected]

I pressed F5 and now the text is left justified. But the lines between comments are still too light.

I HATE the "centered" format rather than left aligned Hard to read, and pretty ridiculous since I don't know ANY book that is set out that way.

There are lines between the posts???? On my IPad, I did not see any division until I read Amy's post, then by squinting I was able to see a very faint dotted line. This needs to be more visible for sure. Thanks for your help Amy.

Katie, if you're still reading, the center justification can be fixed by refresh or re-logging in, but subsequent clicks brings it back to center justification.

Mine has stayed left justified since refreshing.

So has mine. I like the light gray and the attempt to make it something other than glaringly white (looks, upon very close examination, that it's hatched?), but agree that it could be a tad darker.

And ditto ellenem - with the ad blocker, my page is extremely clean, which I love.

F5 worked for me. Now it's left justified and it is much easier to differentiate between each post.

Darker lines between posts! Thanks, Fodor's!

Thanks for the dotted lines. Much better. Justification has been fine for me on IPad all day. No problems.

As of 5:44 CST, I like it. I do notice it takes longer to load pages, but a few seconds won't hurt anything.

Was there any new or improved functionality added? If not, why the change? The $$$ would have been better spent by sending us all some baggage tags.

I think a lot of the change had to do with using the site on smartphones.

SEEING NOTHING BUT HARD TO READ PAGES. IT IS AWFUL.

Gretchen... have you tried any of the fixes described above???

Try them before you jump out the window... some of them work...