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0 pointsdavb11y ago0 comments

I've been using the new design on mobile for a while here and the user experience is awful compared to the old design. Although the parent comment might seem a bit patronising, I think he's right - they've focussed too much on the technology and design fads.

Compared to the old site, there's a lot of "big text", too much of a focus on images (when you drill down into the site) and less on text, and low information density.

Worst of all (for me) - when loading on latest stable Chrome on Android, with a very fast internet connection, the page appears loaded but as soon as I scroll a number of the images disappear and the layout changes. I have to scroll back to where I wanted to be. Lots of scripts, client-side rendering, etc. It's overkill for a site whose focus should be content, not interaction.

While I'm sure the team built a technically impressive website, I don't think they've built the "right thing" and I certainly don't think it's better than the old one (from a user perspective).

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mattmanser11y ago· 1 in thread

The guardian have also similarly screwed up their mobile implementation, with at one point they broke the back key because they had expandos that couldn't remember their state.

But both these sites still suffer from "the flash", where it renders once, and then renders again half a second lafer with everything moving. It's disorientating and simply a bad UX.

Also the BBC used yo have this terrible experience for a few months where it would flash up a load of code, but they finally seem to have fixed that.

IMO both these sites are presently advertising that the responsive trend sucks ass.

I have started to realise that compared to the desktop sites it's almost impossible to get information out of these mobile sites at anywhere near the speed or information density I previously used to simply using the built in pinch and zoom and desktop layouts.

Like you scan broadsheets and desktop layouts, but the mobile you get a big, useless picture and a story title.

smcgivern11y ago

I like the design of the new BBC and Guardian websites, but I agree that if they're aiming for mobile first, they still have a way to go.

In particular, 'the flash' you mentioned on The Guardian means that often, instead of iOS 8 Safari scrolling when I try to scroll, it activates a link - or worse, an ad! It's infuriating, and it's significantly less usable than their old site in that regard.

For a truly bad mobile site, though, try going to Cricinfo: http://www.espncricinfo.com/ Go to an article, then go back. Notice that:

1) Your horizontal scroll position in the article list is lost.

2) The page renders, then re-renders exactly the same (for me at least), with a jump to the top of the page in between.

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