'Death of the 'Do you do it from your bedroom?' MSE design' blog discussion

Former_MSE_Penelope

This is the discussion to link on the back of Martin's blog. Please read the blog first, as this discussion follows it.

Read Martin's 'Death of the 'Do you do it from your bedroom?' MSE design' Blog.

Please click 'post reply' to discuss below.

Print_Screen

Liking it so far. Not to different so I struggle to find things but looks better.

Looking forward to the final version.

SnowMan

Speaking as someone who complained to the BBC about their awful new homepage I have to say I like the new MSE home page. Looks excellent.

The old (current) green in the masthead now looks completely out of place colour scheme wise but the new proposed masthead will solve that one.

Only question is has the page been checked for accessibility and use with screen readers?

Mandelbrot

You might want to check how to spell categorisation ...

There's some overlap between the Shopping and the Deals & Vouchers categories - seems inevitable in view of their likely content - perhaps combine them?

New layout seems better.

jamesd

It looks quite pretty though if I expected to look at it much the first thing I'd be doing is configuring my ad blocker and/or browser settings to prevent the annoying rapid scrolling between items in the news and tools parts. As it is I was glad when I stopped looking at it and got rid of the annoyances that way.

And actually, while I was looking, I did that anyway. MSE now longer gets to use anything contained in http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/scripts/app.js anywhere on the site. I'll refine it if necessary, but that'll do for the moment.

Or as an alternative way of viewing it, I found that so obnoxious that if you'd done it on air I'd have changed the channel to get away from it, just as I do the moment I hear anything resembling a soccer crowd or commentator.

later: MSE modified the site scripting a little so that the filename app.js is now masked a little.

meher

I hope we retain that element of a professional media site, not a business one.

Actually that's a perfect sentiment, I didn't quite think it that way. A corporate image wouldn't have the personality to make a resourceful site look inviting enough. I like pictures, flowcharts because most of the money saving articles have some jargon to someone like me and the only thing that would engage me are pictures. But not use of photos, it is too business like. Instead clip arts of tiny size, preferably exclusive ones to mse. Any graphic art sudent would do it for you if you offer them a placement. But one person has to do it so that the style is uniform. You could have a link somewhere for the videos as well. The information needs to be interactive because this is a generation with the short attention span of a gold fish Do we have any games with the money saving expert even a scarbble session would do.

SonOfPearl

The first thing I tried to do was find the latest email by clicking the date of the email on the homepage which used to be a link but now isn't. It took a while before the scrolling news at the top presented me with the link. Can the date be made a link again if possible please?

The next thing I wanted to do was find the 'money makeover' article, which I used to be able to find from the 'where do I start' link on the old homepage. I had to do a search on google to find that! I think that article is quite fundamental and I come back to it again and again. Sorry, I don't mean to be negative! I'm sure I'll learn to love the new design eventually!

flexrider

SnowMan wrote: »

Speaking as someone who complained to the BBC about their awful new homepage I have to say I like the new MSE home page. Looks excellent.

The old (current) green in the masthead now looks completely out of place colour scheme wise but the new proposed masthead will solve that one.

Only question is has the page been checked for accessibility and use with screen readers?

considerating the fact the BBC site is mostly adapted for all users online and based their design on the 2 second click accessabilty rule(Search bar and the way you can move stuff round on site in terms of news articles) I would have to disagree with you on there site i love the site and think its a good innvoation being a web-designer myself.

wondering if this new look on MSE will support JAWS and the upcoming software.Will you be more social friendly as in the new Google+ service. will the new design support H1 an H2 web usability design for users. is the forum going to stay a whiteboard with primary colours...so many questions

Former_MSE_Lawrence

flexrider wrote: »

wondering if this new look on MSE will support JAWS and the upcoming software.Will you be more social friendly as in the new Google+ service. will the new design support H1 an H2 web usability design for users. is the forum going to stay a whiteboard with primary colours...so many questions

Hi,

Indeed once we're done with it the rebuilt MSE site will be far more accessible than ever before, and easily navigable with JAWS and other screenreaders. Neil (MSE's lead developer) and I have recently been talking with the RNIB about gaining some sort of accreditation for the final product. Watch this space!

Lawrence

jamesd

Good to read about the RNIB involvement and accessibility part of the work - nice move!

snowleopard61

It does look quite nice (sorry if that sounds less than enthusiastic; in general I don't like it when websites change their design - my first reaction is suspicion that I've landed on a fake lookalike!).

MSE is hugely helpful and an absolutely brilliant resource. My only wish is that the search facility were better. However I try, I can hardly ever find anything I'm looking for (even having read the tips) - and I can generally use Google Advanced quite well to narrow my search to find just about any information I want in terms of the wider internet. More often than not I end up resorting to Google to find the info on the MSE forum instead of using the forum search.