iLounge

1

Just having the headlines refresh each time you visit the home page would be better. I can grasp pictures rotating, but as soon as my eyes focus on the text and I start to read…. bang! it’s gone.

Posted by Stephen Worth in North Hollywood, CA on October 7, 2006 at 2:21 PM (PST)

2

I agree, rotating stories are really annoying because as soon as you try to click on one, it’s gone.  At least they’ve allowed us an easy way to go navigate.

Posted by Galley in Greenville, SC on October 7, 2006 at 2:46 PM (PST)

3

I agree that it is annoying and it isn’t even helpful because no matter what story you click on it takes you to page one, then you get to click through six pages of really cheesey animal shaped flahing light speaker systems to get to the story you wanted to read.

Posted by JuanoTejano on October 7, 2006 at 2:48 PM (PST)

4

Thank god! I was getting sick of just missing a story and having to wait until it rotated through again.

Posted by Ayala on October 7, 2006 at 2:54 PM (PST)

5

Stephen and Galley: We may slow down the rotator so that the headlines don’t change as quickly. That will probably solve your problems.

Juano: What you’re describing is a fault in the way that we link to individual First Look articles. Most of the time, what you’re describing isn’t as big of an issue, but we’ve been processing 15 or more new accessories every day for the last little while (most of which go into First Looks), which is moving day-old Looks further down the page list. We’ll fix this, too.

Posted by Jeremy Horwitz in East Amherst, NY, USA on October 7, 2006 at 2:59 PM (PST)

6

Great job iLounge Staff!

Posted by Black Beauty on October 7, 2006 at 3:33 PM (PST)

7

The headlines should work well when those little things are fixed.

Posted by JuanoTejano on October 7, 2006 at 7:51 PM (PST)

8

Thanks for the heads up. I had missed it and it was a much needed feature.

Posted by meir on October 8, 2006 at 1:49 AM (PST)

9

Hey, at least it’s nowhere as bad as the rotating headline on our minor league baseball team’s site.  Not only do they rotate too often, but the section automatically resizes, causing other elements on the page to shift as you are reading them.  Aaargh!

Posted by Galley in Greenville, SC on October 8, 2006 at 4:52 AM (PST)

10

I like this feature much better. I hate it when I miss a headline and have to wait for it to rotate back.
Thanks!

Posted by jerneedog on October 8, 2006 at 11:54 AM (PST)

11

I really hope rotating articles such as this doesn’t become popular on other websites. I just skip these articles altogether.

I tried the new controls and they are a lot better than what we had before. Still, they don’t improve things enough to bother with them.

I’ll continue reading the articles that stay in one place on the page. If the rotating articles were important enough, I’ll probably read about it in the forums or some other website anyway…

Posted by joseph on October 8, 2006 at 1:49 PM (PST)

12

A needed feature is that when you move your mouseover the article, it pauses and stops the rotation until mouse out.

That would make it much better.

Posted by Stephen on October 8, 2006 at 4:29 PM (PST)

13

I don’t quite understand why you don’t use the tried and true approach of newspapers—whether dead-tree type or internet-based—and simply list all the headlines at one time, as text, on the webpage. That way readers can scan the headlines themselves at their own pace and choose the stories they are interested in. It works for the New York Times.

I almost always skip the rotating headlines because it is so annoying that they rotate. I just immediately start scrolling down to the news items below.

PD

Posted by Paul on October 8, 2006 at 8:40 PM (PST)

14

I am so glad to not have the page jumping up and down all the time as you try to read other items.  This new way works great.

Posted by Sig on October 9, 2006 at 9:07 AM (PST)

15

I find the new changes confusing:

- why are there two pause buttons? Do they do different things?

- why does each of the two articles scroll separately? This behavior has no parallel I can think of. I would expect one set of fwd/back buttons or a scroll bar.

Rather than waste time fixing these issues, however,  I would recommend simply scrapping the functionality. I just don’t think you can ever make a sudden, non-user-initiated change of content seem like a good thing to most users. If the stories were constantly and slowly scrolling up, that would be one thing, but the user currently has no idea why content has disappeared.

Posted by Mark on October 10, 2006 at 10:38 AM (PST)