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Did You Notice Something a Little Different?
UPDATE: Thanks for all the feedback! For those of you who were having issues with blurriness, we have good news: we pushed out an update this afternoon that improves the sharpness of the font for users who were affected. We’re monitoring all the comments and will keep you posted on any further updates.
If you’re a frequent visitor to Goodreads, you've probably noticed a few tweaks we’ve made to the fonts and colors on the desktop site today. Our goal with these small-but-important changes was to consolidate and refresh our visual styles and lay the groundwork for some design improvements that we’re planning in the future.
What’s different?
To enhance the readability of text on Goodreads, we’ve adopted two new open-source fonts. Lato, our sans-serif font, was designed by Warsaw-based designer Łukasz Dziedzic (“Lato” means “Summer” in Polish). Merriweather, our serif font, was created by Eben Sorkin and was designed to be pleasant to read on screens.
To make it easier to scan the page for information you need, we’ve touched up and modernized the design of common page layout elements like section headers, tabs and links.
To simplify and modernize our visual design, we’ve reduced the number of link colors we use, removed gradients from buttons and the site navigation, and applied a more harmonious color palette to interactive elements such as buttons, stars, and links.
Before:
Comments Showing 451-500 of 3,113 (3113 new)
message 451:
by
Dragan
(new)
Dec 15, 2015 11:46AM
New fonts are horrible - letters seem to float above and below each other!!! For the site focused on reading this was rather a strange decision...
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☾мiпx wrote: "❝ ashley ;; wrote: "☾мiпx wrote: "PLS STOP GR THIS IS ATROCIOUS ily but im sry"RIGHT ON"
And the title of this is so taunting. "Did You Notice Something A Little Different" .........YAS BITCH I ..."
I KNOW RIGHT. I <3 GR and everything but maybe have a poll before changing? or change it and leave the font alone please and thank you!
It's very difficult to read. The font is beautiful but it's not a good choice given the size.On Chrome, on a Windows computer with a resolution of 1920x1080 it is very difficult to read. However, if I set the zoom to at least 125% it is readable.
Please make the font size bigger or set a different font, it is very uncomfortable to read with this font.
Can't we have an option to have the old layout back? Pretty please! I already have glasses and this is quite annoying....
The colors are really nice but the words are blurry....especially in the headings along the top. I can't read them :(
Much harder to read!!!!!!!!! Thought it was just me but I see that lots of us are having the same problem. ex: Just posting this the font makes me think I can't type. Small t's look like l's because the t's don't look crossed. Small f's are also not crossed. Hate it.P.S. after it is posted the t's and f's look o.k.
The new font is harder to read. Not easier. Do not like.
I went to the link that describes the google fonts and I think the problem is that the font is set as thin or maybe light? I find the regular font much easier to read and IS pleasing to the eye on screen. This is a real problem for me and my news feed is blowing up with friends that are also struggling with it.I don't mind the new layout, freshening things up from time to time is nice.
If you are truly in the mood to "tinker" with things I could provide a few suggestions for what would make my homepage experience significantly better.
Inge wrote: "This is me trying to read on Goodreads right now:Also, my headache has gotten worse."
Exactly.
The font is indeed really blurry, thin and difficult to read. The other changes are fine, but please don't sacrifice legibility. It is a terrible strain to the eyes. Even writing this text is a bit difficult with anything less than 150% zoom.
Ok, I changed my mind. After poking around some more I do not like it.The serif font is not crisp, specially when it is bold. I think that's what people are saying by blurry.
On Safari (vs Firefox, my default) the links seem very thin, I guess because of the teal color. I'm old fashioned, I prefer dark blue for links. I was never happy with the old green either (color blind people hate it)
The gray fonts (like under group topics) is almost invisible.
I'm ok with the sans serif font.
Steven wrote: "Seriously? Why weren't the functionality improvements the first thing on the list, rather than unrequested visual changes that have no bearing on features we actually asked for? Like advanced searches for one thing?"Hey Steven - we noticed that as we were rolling out new features, we didn't have consistency between the pages. We chose to do visual design as a first step so that future features would fit in with the overall Goodreads look. Having a consistent style will help us iterate faster in the future.
Dragan wrote: "New fonts are horrible - letters seem to float above and below each other!!! For the site focused on reading this was rather a strange decision..."
If you see letters floating in the wrong places, could you send us a screenshot at support at goodreads dot com and include the browser that you're using?
Everything is a bit washed out and gives the impression of being slightly blurry. Much more difficult to read :/
Looking at your "After" photo, something is seriously wrong. What you display there looks nothing like the totally unreadable font that is appearing on my feed. Interestingly, *this* page conforms to your proposed font, however this "comment" box looks like the terrible font in my feed. If needed, I can send a screen shot to show you what I am seeing. If you *can* fix it to look like the "after" page above, that would be fine. But the current font simply will not work. I am a librarian, and I need to be able to quickly scan my feed from work, and in its present form, that would give me a headache.
I have to squint just to read the font. It is terrible. Serif font would be better.
It looks like Emily said this was a font-rendering issue? Like, hopefully the font is easy enough to fix.But I still prefer everything about the previous design. Look at the way, for instance, that "READERS ALSO ENJOYED" and "FRIEND REVIEWS" is allcaps now, instead of the old way where it just upsized capital letters. The old design actually felt bookish as well as practical; now it feels like I'm reading Flavorwire or something.
Feel like I"m talking to my dog ... "Bad font! Bad, bad, BAD font!"
I like the changes. Don't listen to the nay-sayers.
The font is a little too small, the letters are maybe too thin and they are missing parts (like the crosses on the small/regular Ts, As and Fs and the top parts from the small/regular As, E, Os, Ss... Just to give a few examples. And this happens only in the comment section. In the writing and preview section of the comments it behaves differently. Please test the font on multiple screen resolutions and browsers, as well as in multiple 'uses' :)On top of that, this new design leaves too much blank space on the sides (I suppose it was somewhat common before the change in Chrome, but in Firefox it used to cover the body of the page better when the resolution changed). It is especially noticeable on a big screen (with resolution 1920x1080)
Otherwise, the design seems to aim for a neat-look (which it can achieve with a few tweaks) and the new color-palette is well put-together (in my opinion) :)
The font is difficult on the eyes; after a short period of time my eyes began to ache. Is there any way to have a font option? I would like to go back to the old one.
Emily wrote: "We are working on further updates! "We truly do appreciate the development team's hard work, Emily. But these changes are not what we hoped for. I look forward to future (functionality) updates.
I have 20/15 vision and this hurts my eyes. The font looks faded and it is hard to read on my laptop. I am NOT a fan of this change. You're going to make me need reading glasses!
Great job!! I really like it.Now the pages are cleaner and easier to read
Crochet Buddies wrote: "I like the changes. Don't listen to the nay-sayers."Yeah! Don't listen to 95% of the users who literally can't read the site anymore!
Give me a break.
I like new fonts. But what is funny is that on my computer polish charachters do not always show properly.
Polish designer forgot to design them? ;)
Gęślą jaźń
So the color scheme is good but the font style? Not so much. Can we get the original back and keep the rest??
Crochet Buddies wrote: "I like the changes. Don't listen to the nay-sayers."Ummm, people have different opinions - . - not everyone likes this font
I don't mind the teal color, but the font is very difficult to read. Many letters seem to have bits and pieces missing and it is actually too light.......strains the eyes.
Madame wrote: "I think it's lovely, Goodreads Team. It's so silly how people can get so worked up over something like a simple layout change. My apologies on behalf of the crazy haters."So, everyone that sees the site all burry and can't read properly is a crazy hater for you...
On behalf of other "crazy haters" like me, I would like to say that if I have written my opinion is because I care, not because I'm a hater and have nothing better to do with my time. I love GR and the problem is not a "simple layout change", it's the site's usabillity.
Emily wrote: "Joe wrote: "It looks terrible. About 10% of all the letters are just missing on my screen."Hey Joe - where are you seeing letters missing? Would it be possible for you to send us a screenshot at ..."
It's not 10% of the letters, it's literally parts of the letters that are missing. I'm using Firefox and I can barely read this text. AND it's too small.
It strange, but the font and everything that is blurry and hard to read on my PC looks great on my iPad. Maybe you should check this and see why the big difference???
It's nice enough, but... please make the letters BIGGER. Please. And bolder. I'm 24 years old, have perfect eyesight, but still, it's incredibly tyring... I feel the need to wear glasses...
I know - polish characters do not work with sans-serfif font. Bad luck...
This is great!!! Easy to read and nice to look on!
I thought I'd accidentally zoomed out or something when I first came on. I have to agree with everyone else: the font is wrong. I can't afford to strain my eyes like this.
This new change is horrible. Too blurry and unreadable. Should have given us a choice whether we wanted the switch or not.
Nope. This new font is unreadable and I have to squint to read what I'm writing. This new design makes GR look like a tumblr half-way done: the font size and colour for the titles and other links makes everything look very choppy and not "harmonious" at all. Sorry, but nope.
Aweful & there no crosses on the A, t or f's when typing or reading it...... it was fine before...... if it aint broke.....
There should absolutely be an OPTION to revert to the original layout.
Harder to read. It's evident you didn't take the 'over fifty' club in mind, and it's very common to have vision issues as one ages. Glasses, contacts, eye surgery, yeah, yeah, I've had it all but this is STILL hard to read.
If you're looking to make things more consistent, and you feel that style is the way to do this, why wouldn't you poll existing customers/users and get a feel for what they'd want to see? While some people are 100% on board with the changes, it seems like the majority is not... which means a little market research would have been a wise predecessor to implementation...I'll get on board if I have to, but you could at least do your best to provide options to people who would prefer the old layout until the new one is fixed and legible and doesn't hurt people's eyes. And even then, it's not hard programming to allow people to choose background colors or fonts to make it easier on their eyes... why not work that functionality into it and then it's a win win for everyone.
I really like the new design. The typefaces look more aesthetically pleasing, but I also find it easier to read.I especially like change in link color. I use text and book links a lot, and it's important that they're more readable.
Yeah, no. I can't see anything! Who made this terrible decision? I don't want to go blind from having to squeeze my eyes almost shut to see this horrible font!
I actually like it a lot. It looks really aesthetically pleasing. Especially the color changes.
