My commentary on the new Roanoke Times online..
My biggest complaint is the design, its extremely jumbled and, for an average user, very frustrating. And thanks for disabling the right-click feature so now I actually have to use my back button (which I rarely ever use) rather than my usual rightclick-back. You've also taken away my ability to open an article in a new window, thus ensuring that the main portal page is now rubber cement. Your stuck there, and you just keep bouncing back.
Also, would someone please download Firefox there? It's really simple to use, and includes many features which will be found in the new Microsoft Internet Explorer, when it ships with Windows Vista. Most of those features you have blocked with your new design. Oh yeah, and thanks for dropping us bloggers off the main page (remember back when the Blog of the Day was actually changed day by day?) in favor of your two blogs.
If your going to block everything in sections (New River Valley.. The Lake.. Business....) maybe you should invest in someone with the coding know-how to run Ajax or Ruby on Rails, so the user can customize their own start-page. The homepage information is still static, the headlines for The Lake and Neighbors has not changed in a week or so.
The Times updates its entire site at 1:30am, but doesn't seem to free it of errors until later in the morning. I can look over the site now and still find the same errors that were online when the update went live.
There is plenty to like about the new Times homepage, but it still needs plenty of work. But please, clean up your CSS sheet, and cut out all the gaudyness.
Now - to another topic on the main page, real estate. As you all know I, your future Overlord, and my wife are currently searching for a new HQ. So I tend to read any story on the Roanoke Valley's real estate market with keen interest. But I have to say, never have I seen a delusion to this extent played out on paper. I was told that every house is priced over assesment, which is true - but the prices that are being asked are way over assesment, and for homes which should be valued way under assesment. I've looked at houses in undesireable areas (more commercial than residential, and not convient to anything) where the price was firm. And I mean firm, yet the sellers were allegedy motivated. How can you be motivated and yet not change your price? Thats not motivated by any stretch of the imagination.
I've been in houses which need more work than one would normally care to do. Again, the price is non-negotiable. If I have to invest 10k to clean and repair the home, Im not going to pay you that 10k AND pay it out to have the work done. That's stupid on my part.
And yet even with all the work these homes needs, the prices stay firm. And sit, and sit, and sit for months on the market. And Im not kidding about that. Im talking 3 months average for some of the homes We have seen, with no price change. After 3 months, do you not think there may be an issue?I'd be willing to say there is...
If you want to sit on your property until someone stupid enough comes along to pay full price, then make that clear from the outset. Stop playing games.
I realize the Roanoke Real Estate system is different from the one Im used to in NY, but for all those differences, the delusions are still the same. And Im not sure if the blame lies with the agents or the sellers.
/end rant
My biggest complaint is the design, its extremely jumbled and, for an average user, very frustrating. And thanks for disabling the right-click feature so now I actually have to use my back button (which I rarely ever use) rather than my usual rightclick-back. You've also taken away my ability to open an article in a new window, thus ensuring that the main portal page is now rubber cement. Your stuck there, and you just keep bouncing back.
Also, would someone please download Firefox there? It's really simple to use, and includes many features which will be found in the new Microsoft Internet Explorer, when it ships with Windows Vista. Most of those features you have blocked with your new design. Oh yeah, and thanks for dropping us bloggers off the main page (remember back when the Blog of the Day was actually changed day by day?) in favor of your two blogs.
If your going to block everything in sections (New River Valley.. The Lake.. Business....) maybe you should invest in someone with the coding know-how to run Ajax or Ruby on Rails, so the user can customize their own start-page. The homepage information is still static, the headlines for The Lake and Neighbors has not changed in a week or so.
The Times updates its entire site at 1:30am, but doesn't seem to free it of errors until later in the morning. I can look over the site now and still find the same errors that were online when the update went live.
There is plenty to like about the new Times homepage, but it still needs plenty of work. But please, clean up your CSS sheet, and cut out all the gaudyness.
Now - to another topic on the main page, real estate. As you all know I, your future Overlord, and my wife are currently searching for a new HQ. So I tend to read any story on the Roanoke Valley's real estate market with keen interest. But I have to say, never have I seen a delusion to this extent played out on paper. I was told that every house is priced over assesment, which is true - but the prices that are being asked are way over assesment, and for homes which should be valued way under assesment. I've looked at houses in undesireable areas (more commercial than residential, and not convient to anything) where the price was firm. And I mean firm, yet the sellers were allegedy motivated. How can you be motivated and yet not change your price? Thats not motivated by any stretch of the imagination.
I've been in houses which need more work than one would normally care to do. Again, the price is non-negotiable. If I have to invest 10k to clean and repair the home, Im not going to pay you that 10k AND pay it out to have the work done. That's stupid on my part.
And yet even with all the work these homes needs, the prices stay firm. And sit, and sit, and sit for months on the market. And Im not kidding about that. Im talking 3 months average for some of the homes We have seen, with no price change. After 3 months, do you not think there may be an issue?I'd be willing to say there is...
If you want to sit on your property until someone stupid enough comes along to pay full price, then make that clear from the outset. Stop playing games.
I realize the Roanoke Real Estate system is different from the one Im used to in NY, but for all those differences, the delusions are still the same. And Im not sure if the blame lies with the agents or the sellers.
/end rant
4 comments:
Thanks for the comments on the new design! Please understand it's going to be a work-in-progress until March.
With that in mind, I can address a few complaints.
The right-click was disabled to prevent our images from being downloaded without permission. Apologies for the other side-effects!
To the second: I use FireFox religiously, and other than the fact that it digests CSS far better than nearly everything out there, I don't use extensions that are blocked by the site. Could you list these?
The outside bloggers will continue to live in the blog section (soon to be updated). There simply wasn't room on the front for that content.
Your third complaint is valid. We would LOVE to have the ability to have users customize their own frontpage. Unfortunately, those technologies are somewhat cutting edge (especially for most newspaper sites). We are looking into AJAX for future features.
If you can identify the errors you are speaking about in your fourth complaint, please let our online editor know and we can try to fix them.
Again, thanks for the comments on the new site design. Please keep checking back for updates.
Good on you Patrick for owning up to the mistakes. It is far easier to criticize than it is to praise, then again people don't want to read about a bunch of people blowing smoke up each others butts. I commend the Times for updating. The old design was tired. The new design is crisp and refreshing. I do feel as though the bloggers, us, have been put on the back burner. Not necessarily due to us being taken off of the front page, but rather due to the fact that on our page there are so many staff blogs above us with full length banners. Shouldn't they be under the columnists. The timescast isn't a blog at all, it is a podcast. "out of my element" hasn't had a post since October, and it was a single issue blog which has ended. Same with the "aid from the valley" and the "get the skinny" and " from the kiln". So actually there are only 2 blogs on there from your columnists which are up to date. Even then I wonder if they hold a candle to the readership of the "amatuer" blogs. I am very grateful that you all have page for us, I am. However, if we did not serve a purpose you would not have offered the space. That being said, I do not think that the RT blogs should have these huge banners that take up so much space while the rest of us are down at the bottom.
Thanks for the time. Rock it out Keith. Now I am going to write about something I know about.
Patrick, the left/right arrows do not work in Firefox 1.5. And why is there no room for those whose blogs you somehow wind up at while searching Technorati for "roanoke times" and "roanoke"? One way or the other, your'e getting readership from our posts about the stories you run.
But thats just the punch list..
When people come looking to Roanoke.com, they are looking for Roanoke - and Roanoke stuff. The deadwood and online version of the paper seem to be lacking in local content as of late. And I think thats really people's largest complaint about the Times. There's really no reason for the Monday edition to be thinner than a 1 subject notebook. Spiral bound at that.
All in all, I do like the style of the new version, but I liked the simplicity of the old version. This new one plays off as gimicky, and for us advanced users it's simple to adjust, but for the older crowd - maybe not so much. And it gives them another thing to gripe about.
And in short - the 4th item, well - it seems that up until about 10am or so theres a 50/50 chance of double headlines, or stories appearing in the wrong section.
Oh, and I personally would appreciate a byline next to some of the articles, which turn out to be columns by the likes of Kevin Myatt and Larry Bly. Without forethought, I'd think they were just articles....
OK, to address a few updates:
The right-click function has been restored after a lot of complaints.
I don't understand why you're having problems using the site with FireFox. I'm using the most bleeding-edge browsers available (including FF v1.51), and am not experiencing issues.
To reiterate, the blogs page will be part of the redesign. We haven't decided how the in-house and external blogs will be divided yet, but we'll take your comments into consideration.
Lastly, if you have a complaint about content please address the appropriate editor. We in online don't have much say in how much print content is produced.
Thanks again for the comments.
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