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The New Tyee: An Update

Some glitches, some tweaks, and a lot of great feedback.

Geoff D'Auria 15 Jul 2009TheTyee.ca

Geoff D'Auria is the Tyee's website manager.

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As many of you may know, working on a website or on any software project is something like trying to solve a Rubik's Cube. Moving one piece shifts six or seven others. But with software, it can be worse because you often don't know which other pieces are connected, and there are a heck of a lot more than six surfaces that you're trying to solve. It can be tricky business.

That said, as far as launches go, this one wasn't too bad, considering the number of changes we made to an otherwise well-functioning site. Yes, there have been a few glitches, which is what I'm here to update you on, and there's been some great feedback on some of our design choices (yes, I'm talking about the small, italic green text on the home page). But, all in all, we're well on our way to putting this Rubik's Cube back together.

First, the glitches...

Comments. When it comes to remembering which tab you selected -- All or Best Comments -- our commenting system is a fickle and apparently absent-minded beast. Those of you who comment here regularly likely remember this isn't the first time our system has lost the ability to remember which thread you've chosen, forcing you to choose All Comments every time you navigate to a different story. For our regular commenters and those of us who moderate, it can feel like online equivalent of a Chinese water torture -- the small drip on your forehead that drives you slowly insane. We do feel your pain. It's at the top of our list of things to fix.

Selecting 'Best Comments' is slow. For reasons related to the glitch described in the previous paragraph, it is very time consuming and cumbersome for our moderators to select 'Best Comments' among the 'All Comments' thread. That's why we've been spotty and slow in doing so. When the software glitch is fixed it'll happen faster.

Newsletter. It turns out, some e-mail applications aren't displaying the images in our newsletter. We're working on the problem but, as a result, you may see some interruption in newsletter service this week. We hope to have this fixed as soon as possible.

The Hook. Even though we didn't touch the design of The Hook, it wasn't immune from problems: comments vanished, as did the story tools (print, e-mail, and so on), and the list of recently published Tyee and Hook stories in the right column stopped working. I'm happy to report that the comments are back and our team is chipping away at the other issues.

Topics. OK, I'm a nerd, but this is one of my favourite parts of the new site. The fact that we can cross-reference our stories under more specific headings -- Environment, Video, Labour & Industry, 2010 Olympics -- warms the information architecture part of my heart. That said, the Topics menu (top right corner of the site) did have some birthing pains. In Internet Explorer 7, the Go button next to the Search box dropped to the next line and pushed the Topics box under the category header, making it look like the box was cut in half, horizontally. Internet Explorer 6 had similar problems. These issues are now fixed. You may have noticed, too, that some Topic home pages don't have much content. Watch as these fill up in the coming days and weeks.

Highest Rated. At first, this list wasn't displaying at all. Then, once we got it to display, the links weren't actually pointing to the right stories. So we disabled those links until we got it working right. It's now working right.

Other Fixes. In the last couple of days (not to mention the last couple of weeks), we've made countless fixes, tweaks, and adjustments. For example, did you notice that series stories didn't have our usual series box listing other stories in the series? Did you notice in book stories (if you were using Internet Explorer 7) the large gap between the book profile and the start of the story? (We blame Bill Gates, personally, for all Internet Explorer problems. It helps nothing but our sanity.) And did you notice our category cover pages -- Opinion, News, Arts & Culture, Life, Mediacheck -- weren't updating as we published new stories. And the Canadian Press feed, for those who were paying close attention, was not updating on Monday. These (and more) problems are now fixed.

Green type.Speaking of the Canadian Press stories, let's talk about the small, green italic headlines. In the comment thread that accompanied the story announcing the changes, G-West kicked off the feedback right away with this mild admonishment:

"Very snazzy...But... Pea Green headlines on a gray field? It'll take some getting used to."

To which SharingIsGood added some helpful website cooking tips:

"Re: the pea soup colour that others have mentioned: I understand the desire for maintaining continuity of The Tyee brand colour, pea soup. Perhaps the morsels within the soup can be made easier for readers to see if the luminosity can be toned down a bit. It shouldn't be too hard. Just cook it to thicken it a little."

Others sent their feedback directly to our feedback e-mail account:

"The new look is pretty snazzy, but green print? Sure doesn't do anything for my old eyes... now there's no news site left that hasn't "improved" itself out of my comfortable reading format..."

We hear you. Loud and clear. Yes, it's a lot of green. Yes, it's hard to read. Sometimes these sorts of things are hard to gauge until you go live. So, yes, we're going to have to give these headlines a bit of love in the coming weeks, as soon as we've wrestled some of these other issues to the ground. We'll let you know how that goes.

And on the other hand, please do continue to let us know how it's going for you as we make these changes. Keep commenting and keep sending the feedback. It's truly invaluable.

Oh, and for the man who complained, "If it ain't got MAIR, it's not welcome here," don't worry. Rafe Mair is still contributing his column. What you may be reacting to is the experiment we're running on the headlines. In the past, we put the author's names in all-caps -- MAIR, GEIST, RICHMOND, WOODEND -- in the headlines. We're now hoping the bylines attached to the featured stories at the top of the home page make it obvious who authored the piece. But we'd love your feedback on that, too.  [Tyee]

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