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Updates and an announcement from LWNUpdates and an announcement from LWNPosted Jul 5, 2012 3:40 UTC (Thu) by pest (subscriber, #76936)Parent article: Updates and an announcement from LWN
While I find the current website layout quite comfortable and utilitarian, I think the very basic look and feel of the site is probably one of the biggest hurdles you have to gaining more mainstream acceptance from your potential reader base.
Put simply, at first glance it's hard to take the site seriously.
In this day and age of HTML5 and CSS3 a site that looks like it's been rendered with lynx doesn't immediately produce feelings of confidence in the value of the sites contents. It's ridiculous I know, but it's a fact of human nature. Having spent the last 10 years trying to convince customers that something that's free can be as good or better then something that costs an arm and a leg, I know exactly how embedded these kinds of assumptions are.
Certainly I felt some trepidation shelling out when I first signed up, not having a clear idea of the kind of value I'd receive for the money made it hard to pitch to my then-boss too.
Having been a subscriber for a while, I get the most value from the daily mailouts, and occasionally visiting the site for more detail on security alerts, so flashing up the website would make no difference to my experience. But in my opinion, if you want more subs, you gotta make it look pretty.
Luke.
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Updates and an announcement from LWN Posted Jul 5, 2012 4:12 UTC (Thu) by hp (subscriber, #5220) [Link]
The right designer might be able to do a restrained freshen-up that would make it look professionally done and more modern, but not give up the minimalist utilitarian vibe.
Updates and an announcement from LWN Posted Jul 5, 2012 7:32 UTC (Thu) by KotH (subscriber, #4660) [Link]
But the simplistic style of LWN is exactly what i like about it: It's simple, the information is there where you expect it to be, it's fast, no java, javascript or any other flashing and blinking, pop-up generating elements... just pure information. Yes, the colour theme might be a bit outdated. But i dont care. I like the look of LWN. And heck, it's even simple to parse it with a couple of lines of perl to generate a latex document (and then farther to pdf) for easier reading.
Updates and an announcement from LWN Posted Jul 5, 2012 8:14 UTC (Thu) by pest (subscriber, #76936) [Link]
I wholeheartedly agree with what you're saying, however if the goal is to improve subscription rates, and subsequently improve the volume and quality of the content, I think a compromise should be attempted.
Updates and an announcement from LWN Posted Jul 5, 2012 14:04 UTC (Thu) by patrick_g (subscriber, #44470) [Link]
>>>Yes, the colour theme might be a bit outdated.
Go to My Account -> Customization -> Display preferences.
Updates and an announcement from LWN Posted Jul 9, 2012 14:31 UTC (Mon) by jwarnica (subscriber, #27492) [Link]
So a "Print to PDF" button would be of some help to you. See, changes already and we haven't even started thinking hard :)
Updates and an announcement from LWN Posted Jul 14, 2012 6:44 UTC (Sat) by panzerboy (subscriber, #16142) [Link]
Maybe also ePub or mobi with the option to save directly to Dropbox.
Updates and an announcement from LWN Posted Jul 14, 2012 11:21 UTC (Sat) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
I second this. MOBI could even send directly to kindle via email. (I do that a lot: all as a big page, printable format, select all, paste in mobi editor, send to kindle via email)
Updates and an announcement from LWN Posted Jul 5, 2012 8:11 UTC (Thu) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link]
+1
Updates and an announcement from LWN Posted Jul 5, 2012 13:09 UTC (Thu) by Lovechild (guest, #3592) [Link]
I'd personally like a mobile version of the site. I mostly end up reading LWN on my phone and my tablet and having a good mobile version would certainly improve that experience. Ars Technica's mobile site e.g. is a great improvement over their desktop site for small screens.
Updates and an announcement from LWN Posted Jul 5, 2012 15:42 UTC (Thu) by jond (subscriber, #37669) [Link]
Agreed. I use "instapaper" for some of the longer LWN articles.
Updates and an announcement from LWN Posted Jul 6, 2012 10:05 UTC (Fri) by ersi (subscriber, #64521) [Link]
I'll second the need for some mobile/small-screen customization of the site and/or article. It would be very pleasant to have.
This should hopefully not require too much change to the current site :-)
Updates and an announcement from LWN Posted Jul 6, 2012 13:31 UTC (Fri) by pspinler (subscriber, #2922) [Link]
I disagree. This is one of the very few non-mobile websites that renders nicely and is easily readable on my smartphone and tablet.
Please, keep this site as simple and fast as it has always been! It's a breath of fresh air in the over CSS'd, flash heavy internet.
-- Pat
Updates and an announcement from LWN Posted Jul 6, 2012 19:22 UTC (Fri) by geuder (subscriber, #62854) [Link]
> I'd personally like a mobile version of the site.
Just for curiousity: On what kind of device lwn is not usable?
I used to do 90% of my lwn reading and even some commenting on an N900. Of course that's a better device than many others. But recently I have been forced to downgrade to an older Symbian device, because my dear N900 shows signs of mechanical aging. And lwn still is fully usable even on that infamous platform. (Not sure whether this proves that less (eye candy) is more or whether Symbian is better than its reputation, probably both...)
Updates and an announcement from LWN Posted Jul 6, 2012 19:30 UTC (Fri) by boudewijn (subscriber, #14185) [Link]
It's pretty hard on the n950 -- even in landscape position, the lack of reflow means the fonts need to be rather small.
Updates and an announcement from LWN Posted Jul 6, 2012 19:40 UTC (Fri) by geuder (subscriber, #62854) [Link]
Ahh, I'm short-sighted and comfortable with small fonts. Maybe it's worse for normal-sighted readers.
Crowd-sourced funding for improving the site? Posted Jul 9, 2012 0:50 UTC (Mon) by alison (✭ supporter ✭, #63752) [Link]
Lovechild opines:
>I'd personally like a mobile version of the site.
A mobile version of the site most definitely: not a horrid tablet app, but content that rerenders properly so that constant scrolling isn't necessary.
A better RSS feed and better search engine are also no-brainers. Improved external visibility of the content would help popularize the site.
What about a Kickstarter/IndieGoGo project to hire a developer to make some of these improvements? I'll go on record saying I'm willing to contribute. We funded the Debian sysadmin manual this way, and we can fund LWN Upgrade too!
-- Alison Chaiken
Updates and an announcement from LWN Posted Jul 12, 2012 14:31 UTC (Thu) by Jandar (subscriber, #85683) [Link]
> Put simply, at first glance it's hard to take the site seriously.
Quite contrary, I find sites with much "design" mumbo-jumbo untrustworthy. KISS is one of the most significant design-principles.
Updates and an announcement from LWN Posted Jul 13, 2012 1:07 UTC (Fri) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205) [Link]
>Quite contrary, I find sites with much "design" mumbo-jumbo untrustworthy. KISS is one of the most significant design-principles.
I second this. Upon seeing a site like LWN my first response is to check the visible headlines for a 2012 date somewhere (just in case :)). If the site is actually active, I'm thrilled to bits.
And with Noscript and RequestPolicy both running, "fancier" sites tend to look awful these days, so LWN seems pretty slick by comparison.
Updates and an announcement from LWN Posted Jul 13, 2012 13:30 UTC (Fri) by philomath (guest, #84172) [Link]
That's right, that's what made me subscribe here.
Updates and an announcement from LWN Posted Jul 17, 2012 15:36 UTC (Tue) by Baylink (subscriber, #755) [Link]
The... daily... mailouts.
Huh?
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