I've just noticed the new rep/vote counts look different, and not in a good way (IMO, obviously people will disagree).
What else has been changed, and is it permanent?
欧罗巴联赛状况频出里昂逆转 末段丢球曼联战平
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11Yeah, I've saw it rolled out on meta first. And now on SO. I wonder why the change?– MysticialCommented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:06
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5If Facebook has taught us anything, it's that changes to the layout/format of any site is BAD!!!!!!– User1000547Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:06
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61I sort of liked the clunky, curmudgeonly old bold fonts on SO. Leave the nice sleek interfaces to the new wesites on SE.– user200500Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:07
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4Eeek! Your post is missing something...– LixCommented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:11
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11But +1 for the free-hand circles. And arrows.– User1000547Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:13
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4The vote arrows look so fat.– ZeldaCommented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:34
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9That's not nice, @Ben - they're just retaining rep.– Shog9 StaffModCommented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:36
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5@asa - you were 100% correct to put a screen shot. Once they change their minds this post will serve as evidence - a living history of... a bunch of neophobiacs...– LixCommented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:40
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2With the holiday season quickly approaching it was time for SO to go on a bit of a diet. There's a little less to <3 now but we'll make up for it - promise!– Geoff Dalgas StaffModCommented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:54
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18Bring back the bold! (At least for rep)– Travis JCommented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:59
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2I like it. Looks sharper.– elclanrsCommented Dec 15, 2012 at 1:10
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3@TLama: meta.stackexchange.com/a/158770/178438 Done :)– ManishearthCommented Dec 15, 2012 at 1:18
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4Now - if we could remove the rest of the pointless bold and also stop using Arial for Helvetica, we could begin to have a typographically consistent site :-) Thanks Jin– Sklivvz StaffCommented Dec 15, 2012 at 1:40
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3Wait, you're not Panama...– Michael MrozekCommented Dec 15, 2012 at 3:30
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8You look different tonight, Stack Overflow. Have you been working out?– PekkaCommented Dec 16, 2012 at 2:04
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Show 23 more comments
13 Answers
answered Dec 15, 2012 at 1:18
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Yeah I was fiddling with it, but 110% for font-weight didn't seem quite right.– user200500Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 1:20
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3@Asad: Yeah, I looked it up on sites where it hadn't changed. StackApps itself still has the normal style. Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 1:21
I agree. Compare the healthy
to the poor undernourished
I want the old style back.
answered Dec 15, 2012 at 0:08
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53The score text should get fatter as it goes up and thinner as it passes zero...– LixCommented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:09
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13Interestingly, a bug on several sites was actually causing posts scores to get bigger as they passed 100. This wasn't intentional though (they're supposed to get smaller at 3 digits). Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:12
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11I'd be more concerned about the vote count netting a full 64 votes lower after the change... Eeeeek!– seheCommented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:34
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1@sehe Not only that, the question text became a lot shorter too. Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:35
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Maybe the vote count isn't undernourished, but the arrows are obese? Commented Dec 17, 2012 at 10:27
The old design was nice, but those heavy, bold numbers added unnecessary weight. With over 280,438,789 views a month on Stack Overflow, that weight was no longer acceptable, particularly considering we're still running off of backup hardware in Oregon. Fortunately, our brave designer-in-chief was able to find numerous small ways to slim down the text without sacrificing clarity.
The new font styles trim the fat, allowing emphasis where it's needed without bogging down the pipes pushing all those extra pixels.
Next time you load up Stack Overflow and the page appears in 70ms, be sure to whisper a quick, "thanks, Jin!"
answered Dec 15, 2012 at 0:08
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51Okay, so it's like April Fools with extra Christmas, right? Right? Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:09
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8While I generally agree that the 'unbolding' is a good thing, I'm not sure I truly appreciate the unbolding of the vote number on posts.– WillemCommented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:10
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14I honestly think the unbolded numbers look much more professional... Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:12
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11@Mysticial He said something about them being heavy and adding weight. I never knew you had to pay for bandwidth by the kilogram.– user200500Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:12
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10Shenanigans. The size of the font doesn't matter (we users take the pixel-moving hit), unless you're saying the extra
font-weight:boldtext in the CSS was clogging your servers. Really? Oh, wait. It's Friday. (slowing down your servers with a bit of bold/italic. You're welcome)– user102937Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:27 -
2Joking, @Asad? I'm shocked that you would think that - SHOCKED! Per the conservation of energy principle, energy lost to the extra white pixels now on your screen are complemented by that saved during transmission - so for a trivial cost in battery life on your end, we save millions in transmission costs! Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:27
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28I personally think it looks like... not good.– NullUserException อ_อ ModCommented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:29
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23I'm sorry, but "professional" should not trump readability. The new font is universally smaller, and harder to read.– KyeoticCommented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:50
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10Anyways, I think I've found the solution. We can just revert the font, and close chat.SO down instead. This will likely save more network traffic, while having the added benefit of doubling the effective answering capacity on SO– seheCommented Dec 15, 2012 at 1:02
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3@Tim: If you're having trouble reading that text, you might want to get your eyes checked. The score is still a much larger font than the rest of the text on the page. If you can't read the score, how are you reading everything else on the page? I actually think the text is easier to read without the bold. It goes both ways. Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 1:17
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6@Asad you just answered why the changes were made. When everything is made important on a page, then nothing is. Sure, it may take some time to get used to if you're a regular user but I believe the changes are for the better. Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 2:56
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7@Asad thank you! I'm very conscious about making visual tweaks to a high traffic site such as SO. There's this perpetual struggle everyone wanting something new and fresh, but still wants to keep the familiarity. I've gotten a lot of requests to "redesign" SO. I won't redesign SO, but my goal is simply to tidy up the site a bit. Instead of a major release of changes at once, I prefer to do small incremental ones so it's less of an impact. Give the new changes some time to sink in. I bet you won't even notice after a few days. Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 3:01
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14Does this diamond make me look fat?– user50049Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 4:57
The new style objectively sucks! ? I can tell from some of the pixels and from seeing quite a few voting widgets in my time.
The thinner font makes the vote counts look off-center. Example (colored lines added to demonstrate the pixels are off-center):
The digits are too far to the right:
The digits are too far to the right, and too low:
While the bold style probably wasn't perfectly centered either, this is the first thing I noticed with the new style.
(This is with Firefox 17 on Linux.)
answered Dec 15, 2012 at 8:58
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2That's inevitable when you move the cheese, you need at least one pixel. Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 10:56
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4FWIF I like the new style. But you’re right about the lack of centeredness of everything that contains a 1. Blame the lack of proportional font support by browsers. Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 11:41
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4It's actually the arrows that are offset to the left by 1 pixel, due to putting a 26px-wide arrow inside a 41px-wide box. The text is perfectly centered. The arrows are just, eh... a mess... Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 20:56
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2
Pffft.
Every time Facebook makes a little change to their page, they have to endure the weight of hundreds of thousands of emails from disgruntled users crashing their servers.
You'd be kerfluffled no matter what the change was. Give it a few days to get accustomed to the new look, and then file a bug report.
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46But I'm angry NOW– user200500Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 0:35
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3I checked the site on my iPad and thought "this (the vote controls) looks awful" but figured it was maybe an issue with how the ipad was rendering it. It doesn't look as bad on my main computer but it doesn't look right either. There's a few changes made as part of this 'revision' of the site layout that make sense, but I truly think the vote layout change is a mistake. Getting used to something that's wrong might stop the complaints but it doesn't correct the problem.– Rob MoirCommented Dec 15, 2012 at 11:20
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Attention bold lovers
It is now clear that Stack Overflow is no longer the place for you. Fear not, Programmers will always welcome your bold awesomeness.
Just no "what language I should learn next" questions, mmmkay?
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What else has been changed?
A few other places that I noticed:
Question lists:
Inside a post:
In profile, tag lists:
In profile, account list:
Question list top tabs:
Inside post tags (tagged):
IMO: looks cool, minimalistic, sophisticated. And as Yoda says, deal with it.
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Anyone has a diff please? I already hardly remember what it looked like before…– pokeCommented Dec 17, 2012 at 10:10
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Just look for screenshots on the Internet. They changed the vote count, answer count, reputation score, number of questions tagged, tabs, relative time - remove bold or reduce size or both. Removing bold for reputation score of user in question/answer is an OK decision, but the rest just make it harder to see (for me at least).– nhahtdhCommented Dec 17, 2012 at 10:22
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@poke i guess that means that you are already used to the new style, we are programmers, our brains adapt fast :) I don't have a diff btw. You might want to search for screenshots as nhahtdh suggests.– bool.devCommented Dec 17, 2012 at 11:54
Dropping emphasis and styles made the site harder to read. Drawing the eye's attention to the highlighted parts of the page is important. Having to scan longer with the eye makes more strain.
There are millions of users here all who probably get enough eye strain as it is. Why add to it? I will take my load time of 71ms and some nice styles instead of 70ms and eye strain.
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7Scan harder for what? After a few days of using the site, you should know where the vote count is at. You shouldn't need to "scan" for it. Commented Dec 15, 2012 at 1:19
If we are sticking with the non-bold counts, can we consider less bold up and down arrows? :-(
answered Dec 17, 2012 at 12:27
Do these new rules need to be !important? Certainly it looks like the font-weight on the "answered" rep score works fine without it.
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6The draconian CSS nazis want to make sure no one beats the system by using an alternative style sheet.– user200500Commented Dec 17, 2012 at 9:24
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2Well, we can just override the rule with another
!important.– nhahtdhCommented Dec 17, 2012 at 10:22
I almost didn't notice the changes in the layout.
I just wondered why so many posts were made community-wiki, until I noticed that I was wrong. If I remember correctly, the old design had some grey boxes surrounding the user info underneath each post, only posts marked as community-wiki had not. The new design omits these boxes, giving the first impression that each answer (questions still have the box) is a community-wiki one. The community-wiki answers had no user image showing, but still this confuses me...
answered Dec 17, 2012 at 9:29
The new font style is fine to me.
However, other things which were previously very well balanced with the old font style are now completely out of balance. On top 1 the vote arrows. They are now clearly disproportional. The fix should be relatively easy: make them smaller and very maybe put a 1x wide bright shadow on it to be in balance with the new font style.
Further it is also distracting that the new font style didn't made it into Top Users list, Answers tab nor Tags tab. It's still the old and fat font style.
While it was extremely annoying at first, now I've gotten really used to it. I think everyone has. In fact, I've gotten so used to it that the styling on StackApps looks fat to me and burns my eyes:
For reference, StackApps and MSO had the same styling before the CSS revamp, and StackApps still has the old CSS.
answered Jan 2, 2013 at 17:39