Good god, has anyone else seen the redesigned “slate.com”? What a sprawling, over-crafted mess. Any website that all but needs a map to navigate it is dead in the water. Meanwhile over on “salon.com“.
Redesigned Slate – The Web Equivalent Of Spaghetti Junction
AN SIONNACH FIONN 
could be have been intended as tablet webversion and accidentally launched :p
LikeLike
It is horrendous though, isn’t it? Reminds me of the Daily Beast at its worse. Blocks of text and images lumped in no particular order some of which randomly scroll or have drop-down boxes. And they paid someone to produce that? I thought my freebie WordPress blog was bad… 😉
LikeLike
probably me getting old: went through all that web-design stage in late 90s – i’m becoming more of a luddite – until i get a plastic sticker-browser at 2.99 for my specs…
LikeLike
Ah, I think not. I’ve always felt that less is more with web-design. I know my site is bogged down with RSS feeds (not to mention poor off-the-shelf design) but most readers like the feeds so who am I to gainsay. Anyway, it’s a blog 😉
Slate.com is just a mess now. The homepage gives no visual cues to how one should navigate it. For a professional outlet it is very poor.
I want some “Google specs” and I’m no spring chicken! 😀
LikeLike
Sql, php – it’s all morse code, Sionnach! It’s like that scene in one Star Trek film where Scottie starts talking to a desktop computer and fails: we’re still in the dark ages, all the while we’re being fleeced in buying junk software and – importantly – where Irish graduates /programmers have to compete with British india’s costbase, wages, contracts — bring back the glorious age of 18thc Dublin book printing, I say – jettison the silicone chip! -:) @
LikeLike
Oh, on junk software I certainly agree. The amount of crap out there that people are conned into buying or is bundled with their new PCs/devices. Vive la Open Source! 😉
Book printing will be the luxury item of the late 21st century. A sign of wealth (and taste). At least that is my excuse for all those purchases which laden my bookshelves 😉
LikeLike
ah well… and whatever happened to the 90s paper-less office?! – does someone want to take their i-phone/amazon chip-board/laptop (that cost a fraction of the price in china) to the bath tub with them – *or* a disposable paperback…. space is the problem of course – god knows it’s about friggin’ space 😦
LikeLike
The three times I’ve visited this week, I’ve been greeted with a screen offering to give me a tutorial on how to “use” the redesigned site. Probably not a good sign when a news site requires a tutorial to understand.
LikeLike
“… top secret cables are written on the typewriter which can’t be tracked”:
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-09-27/uk/42458373_1_spy-agency-gchq-edward-snowden-the-nsa
perhaps our state ‘start up’ companies would see the merit of having locally sourced pre-digital ‘hardware’ – made with materials and serviced by Irish workers – imagine if a ‘bespoke’ typewriter was Déanta in Éirinn, with a typeface cartridge for Gaelic, Urdu, Russian typesetting – already invented but marketing in a ‘post-information’ – sustainable jobs and independent of FDI and vulture capitalism B-) @
LikeLike
Can’t have that, Oz! It would be a “retrograde step”, “regressive”, “antediluvian”….. get back to work, monkey and let the Dells, the Microsofts take you for a ride and pay you peanuts! 😛
LikeLike
whist woman! -:) @
LikeLike
Ain’t dat da troof! 😉
LikeLike
Considering that in the 1990s the Special Branch and G2 bought their “secure” communications equipment from the British via an inter-governmental deal I wouldn’t hold much hope of the Irish inventing anything that anybody anywhere would regard as secure any time soon 😉
LikeLike
anything is possible (in france!)
@
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/30/live-only-products-made-in-france
LikeLike
Whatever one can say about the French at least they know they are French 🙂 Not like some other nationalities 😦
LikeLike
Very true. I’v’e never been much of a “Daily Beast” fan in terms of the website, very cluttered homepage. Slate is now like the Daily Beast on steroids. I have the Android app on my phone, etc. and it is lagging well behind the website. It hasn’t updated in days. Very poor. I now skip straight to Salon or Alternet. Slate is no longer part of my daily web-browsing.
LikeLike