if you read the first story on this weblog, you'll know that i expressed great dismay at the major site design change at Salon.com. in the two weeks that followed Salon's ill-conceived move, its editors suffered a torrent of criticism and virtual abuse, as Salon readers howled, making their displeasure known. i immediately contributed my voice to the chorus of protest, at a discussion of the redesign on TableTalk, Salon's conferencing forum:

Like many on this thread, I must register my deep shock at Salon's new layout. The 'look and feel' of it is about as far from the previous (let alone original) Salon as can be imagined. I've returned to the site again and again throughout my workday, and now from home, and it has been a jarring trip every single time. I desperately wanted to give the new site the benefit of the doubt, and to see if it'll somehow 'catch.' Sure, it's only a day but I'm really not sanguine about the whole thing. My eye (and mind) no longer latch onto the page. The feel of the home page is just like that of the numerous, essentially faceless portals out there.

I teach a course in web design for advanced high school students at UC Berkeley, and ever since Salon started, always used it as THE perfect example of a website that blends great content with sensible, approachable, reasonable, productive, and just plain cool design. Alas, I cannot make this recommendation now, and will in fact place Salon high on the list of how bad design trumps good content. I will, of course, continue to read Scott Rosenberg, Gary Kamiya, Camille Paglia, and Salon's host of truly gifted writers and reporters. But I will be finding them from the daily archives page instead of the front, and will need to turn off Style Sheets on my prefs (IE5/Mac) every single time I go to Salon, just to make the text bearably readable. (And turn it on again after I peruse the articles). Like many, I love Salon and simply cannot see myself NOT reading it any more. But I swear, I'll go as far as to fiddle with Style Sheets every time, to get the plain, clean look I need, just to avoid the hideous mess that is the front page.

I'm pretty depressed about this whole thing as it's not really likely that Salon will revert to its previous design. (Scott Rosenberg "extensively" involved in it? I would've thought he for one would be leading the mutiny by now! LOL.) Oh well, just my .02, and TTers and Salon watchers should note how many new TT non-posters and lurkers like myself are coming out of the woodwork to register their opinion on this. And to take it for what it is... a groundswell of dismay and loss.

usually, such venting doesn't work on the web. this collective and spontaneous effort did, however, as Salon's editors revoked the most egregious design changes they had foisted upon its faithful readership.

after a couple of weeks of enduring the sustained barrage of criticism from all quarters (virtually NO one liked Salon's redesign), they finally relented and brought back the important and familiar structural and layout elements that Salon readers had been accustomed to (for good reason!). my response to that, on the same TableTalk thread as the above post, was brief and thankful. it was in reply to a post by Scott Rosenberg, a managing editor at Salon:

Thank you, Scott. Just a quick bit of feedback... needless to say, my faith in Salon (and the grassroots power of the Net) has been fully restored. Salon will once again continue to be one of the centerpieces of my web design course here at UC Berkeley.

{ net.casting }
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