I love it.
I love how you take the time to blow up and crop a meaningful image
for each post on the homepage. Those images convey more to me then
words. It makes it refreshing to browse through old posts looking for
what catches my eye. Seriously refreshing. I'm a visual person, what
ever that means, and seeing your new homepage for the first time
points out for me how reading to much text stalls out my creative
flow.
I like the YouTube favorite.
I like the blast from the past, but the ADD in me hates the sideshow
when I'm trying to read a post details page. I wish I only had to
pause it once.

Liking the snazzy new look. The attribute, categorize, participate headings are a nice touch and the use of images for each blog post on the home page is great.

One thing I'd suggest, though, is a better way to visually separate the titles from the background images. Black text on a white background is tough to read when the image behind it is also black text on a white background. (e.g., "Highlighting Political Bias in Texts")

Nice work, and I can appreciate your need to rant at the CMS after a redesign like this!

p.s. Oh, just noticed that the comment preview layout is broken in FF2.

p.p.s. Had trouble posting this comment, too. Good luck working out the last of the kinks. (-:

I can't see images anymore in the page, the usability level is decreased.

I second what Daniel said about the headine legibility. The contrast is too high for my taste. I also find the austoplay in the slideshow distracting. Other than that, I like the new design. Keep up the good work!

What a pleasant surprise when I refreshed your site today!

Looking very sharp! I like it =)

@Dominique: What do you mean that you cannot see the images any more? I have also made the slideshow slower, maybe this helps, let's see.

Brilliant!

It looks very fresh; I love the new look. Excellent job!

Whoa...

Despite all the previous positive comments, I can't seem to even grasp the concept of the new layout. The inclusion of the headlines inside of the images is just dreadful. There is a complete lack of contract separating stories from one another, making them and the sidebar items blend together to look like a 90's-era image map.

For being an information aesthetics blog, the blog really isn't conveying any good information through the large, in-your-face images for each entry.

I've enjoyed this site for a long time, thank you for making it possible! I am therefore regretting it very much that a tremendously present top advertisement bar is present. It is all the more annoying in that at first one expects to see the latest addition of an information visualization feature, just to discover that one has spent time looking at a commercial banner. Really not a good addition to this site. It almost seems that someone else has taken ownership of this great site. The advertisements on the side, however, are not distracting and often quite interesting. They seem handpicked to be related to the topic of information visualization. I hope you'd consider removing the top banner and keep up this quite useful, interesting and fun site!

The issue of the (top) advertising is quite interesting. At least on my side, about 50% of these banners are relevant to the visualization topic. If it would decrease, I have to consider to handpick them instead.

Lots of people address the text overlay on the homepage. Especially with a background image with some white parts, the readability suffers. One of the goals of the new layout is to put the images, and therefore the content, in the foreground, on the homepage as well as on the entry pages. I am not sure whether (or how) to change this immediately, but am surely considering it.

Hey sorry, but I do not really like the new layout. Lost its clarity and looks a bit like everything else that wants to be up to date and modern.

If it wouldn't be about infosthetics, I'd say: Who cares, it's the content that counts...

Andreas

Unfortunately I have to agree with some of the previous comments. The loss of clarity is quite striking, with a good amount of discordant visual overload. All you have to do is scan the row of images with your eyes slightly closed to notice that is a jumble of noise, with little structure.

I can see where the concept was headed and perhaps making just a few changes could improve things greatly. Remove the overlaid text from the images and give it some space to breath in. And give the images some separation so that fewer are in view at once...

Just some things I might try to regain the sense of clarity your previous site design had.

Cheers! William

I actually did a Google search for a recent blog post of yours, found it but didn't recognize the site it took me to (this one), and went back to Google for some more searching before I realized, yes, this is the same site :)

That is quite funny. Not sure what went through your mind when seeing this design instead?

Unfortunately I have to admit that I do not like the new design. Especially when the images contain textual elements (which is the case with many visualizations) they interfere badly with the headlines. I like your blog very much and I hope you will soon iron out the wrinkles here and there.

Just wanted to say thanks for continuing to post such great content. I really enjoy this site.

For those still following this post: I have made the images on the main page clickable, instead of only the titles. Hopefully this should resolve much of the confusion.

Instead of trusting the CAPTCHA system, comment spam is now normally filtered out by a 3rd party plugin.

hmmm looks prettymuch like www.nzz.ch
i find it a bit confusing.. it's hard to concentrate
with ol those diagonal lines by the side..
but i love the content you're posting here!

infosthetics.com - great domain name for blog like this)))