I haven't made any re-design complaints because there wasn't much to complain about really. Sure there were bugs, but that's expected. In fact I even defended the re-design in several instances.
But it's been a while now, and I need to say something. Not only are some things still not fixed, but other things have broken.
Being in the business of Web design (functional not graphic) I'm not one to complain about re-designs because they encompass so much more than what simply presents itself onscreen.
That said, something really goofy broke in the last few days that's really bad form.
I use several different browsers. (Most heavily trafficked sites get hit by users employing nearly every browser available). Right now, I'm using Safari, and I usually do while reading this site.
In the list of diaries along the right, as I mouse over them (and additionally the number of comments attached to each diary) the comments highlight. And not just the one that I moused over, but all of them. It creates a long list of comments flashing. So I clicked.
Guess where it took me?
To the advertiser's page.
Why? It didn't do this last on Wednesday.
Now I can tell you from a professional perspective exactly what's wrong with this, besides the fact you probably didn't specify it to behave this way.
This action has absolutely no cognitive affordance. Clicking on it, one would at least expect to go to the diaries with the comments -- perhaps if only one 'comments' highlighted. But all of them? What does that mean? Where does it take me?
I tried in Firefox, and it didn't behave the same way. That was simply non-clickable text. I'll bet the difference between the two wasn't specified either.
And while I'm on the topic of things that are broken, what does this mean?
Seriously, when do you describe or explain something using that which you're trying to explain?
"Daddy, what's an elephant?"
"It's an elephant."
Hunh?
Whoever wrote the technical documentation and instructional copy was paid too much. Or perhaps not enough. Either way, it's poor usability and it seriously ranks as one of the worst offenses in Web design I've ever encountered.
While this is intended as constructive critiquing I am fully aware it probably comes across as really nit-picky. But I get like this when I spend two whole days travelling with far too much time spent waiting for delayed flights.
So, having tolerated all the critical diaries of your re-design (too orange, too much white space, and more that don't really make a difference) I can tell you that there are still things that need to be fixed. Like margins and disappearing text. Unfortunately I would guess that a lot of valuable feedback is scattered throughout the site because there was no point of focus for people to provide feedback. There was no method for people to provide explicit examples of bugs encountered in the system.
I sure wouldn't want to be the guy who has to sift through all those diaries trying to replicate and fix the bugs encountered.