Tuesday Rockpile: A visual refresh

Almost to the point where it looks like the site has taken a step back in terms of layout/design. However, I’m sure I’ll get used to it. Some things, such as the navigation tabs at the top, look better.

and the “less purple” appearance brings a twinge of sadness, but it won’t be any less entertaining and interesting which, in the end, is what matters.

to get used to i was just checking the blog last night before bed and everything was normal then this morning bam hah

but it really needs to be more eyecatching…maybe bolder and purple. As long as Rowbots stay fun and entertaining..we"ll be ok. :-)

better than the baseball player…but gosh RED stars, ugh.

All this white and gray everywhere is terrible. The colors helped make each site feel like it’s own little slice of the internet. It was a small touch, but a nice one.

Also, the comments are a lot more condensed. Very uncool, guys.

We officially sucked the least. Only the dodgers and marlins were less sucky with the bats, and the rockies were twice as good pitching wise as any other team. Thank you dlr and hammel

Of course this means we weren’t as impressive in the positive war dept, which makes sense as we don’t have a Mauer. It also means a big step up from someone like cargo puts the team in a fantastic position

even if it has

is that in my favorites tab, the purple PR went away and is now a red star. Ick.

Dexter Fowler for Chris Coghlan. I’m aware of Coghlan’s crazy BABIP this year, but I feel fine entrenching Cargo in center, and Dex’s tools aren’t really suited for a corner outfield spot. If there are reasons why this trade is ludicrous, don’t pull any punches

The old look was clunky and old-fashioned and took 20 minutes to load the front page. This is slicker and quicker, and the superficial changes will become normal very quickly. I like the headlines better now, especially.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20091102&content_id=7605858&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb

Hurdle remains a candidate.

I perused Fangraphs over lunch and checked the leaderboards for UZR from 2007-2009. Interesting. Carl Crawford and Randy Winn were the top two outfielders. Guess who’s third?

It now has a big red border. I don’t like it…I keep thinking I’ve caused a huge error

I think I have to admit I’m not quite as neutral about the WS as I pretend to be. I have a hard time just mildly wanting one team to win — generally after a few games of watching I can get quite involved. So yeah, I think I’m rooting for the Phillies. Why? Who knows. I just don’t want the Yankees to win. And I can find a few reasons to support the Phillies (fans notwithstanding), so there you go.

So , game 6 and 7 (hopefully), where will I be?

In rehearsal. (Did I fool you?) Though I would MUCH prefer to be plopped in front of the TV (which would also mean I’d still be on break, which would be fantastic).

My thoughts exactly.

The biggest problem I have with the changes is the plain look to site. Contolled_slide made a great point about baseball reference’s site looking plain and how you better have an awesome site if it’s going to be plain. What I think makes baseball reference’s look work, aside from it being an awesome site, is that the boxes of information stand out from the background. This draws your eye strait to what’s important and gives the site a sense of organization which is what you really want from a site like that.

I don’t get that sense here.

The stuff on the left and right like the fanpoasts and sections are still in that classic purple shade. With the center being so plain my attention is drawn away almost to a point where I think I should be looking at the fanposts or something other than the frontpage story when I first enter the site. I like the purple on the sides but there needs to be something that makes the stories in to center stand out more. A border, different shapes where the center and the sides meet up or even bolder colors. (Preferably purple)

It actually gets worse when you scroll down and the stuff on the right becomes the SB nation recent stories. Now instead of just the stuff on the sides looking more important, everything clashes because of the all white background. I feel like I’m on a site designed by amateurs.

I don’t just want to complain about everything in this post so I’ll expand on a couple of suggestions I made above. First of all I think there NEEDS, NEEDS, NEEDS to be some sort of border around the stories in the middle. A border always makes things look sharper and it will make the stories stand out from the stuff on the sides that already have a border. Second, put some color in the middle. A purple center for the stories and the commentswouldgive the site it’s personality back. Colors reflect moods, the ones up there right now reflect boring.

I know I’m still relitively new here so I might be out of line making these comments but I really don’t like the changes.

Anyone agree/disagree?

I think you should have a poll about what people think of the changes

A) Like them

B) Not sure if I like the change but will probably get used to it

C) Don’t like the changes

Something like that

via Jon Heyman

(good, keep him away from here)

just my $0.02

I just got back from work and there were a bunch more e-mails on the changes. Here’s something from one of the guys who headed the refresh:

feel free to talk or brainstorm with your
communities about colors – what would help? Do you want white text on
a richly colored background? Colored margins? Richer graphics in the
header that set a more unique tone for the community? There may be
simple but significant changes we can make to this new design to pull
in more color.

All suggestions are welcomed.

as the Rangers new hitting coach

http://sports.espn.go.com/dallas/mlb/news/story?id=4620945

I’m not impressed with these changes at all. And this is not because “change is bad”. Bad change is bad. These are mostly bad changes.

The site just has a completely different feel to it. It’s boring. It seems like each blog is just a spinoff of SBNation with nothing unique. The banner needs to be back where it was with color on dark background. The font is better, I guess. But why on earth do you have a headline that barely looks like its bolded. It must be very strong to really be noticed.

I definitely get the sense that some developers did this to make the site more manageable on their end :) I’m pretty sure the placement of the ads at the top is why the banner was moved down. The longer your eye lingers in the vicinity of the ad. the longer your brain registers the ad. Almost subliminally. It doesn’t seem they took into consideration the aesthetic appeal that draws the reader to the page. The color backgrounds need to be reinstated.

If I’m asked in a poll, this is not an improvement at all for the reader.