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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.
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Comments Showing 1,551-1,600 of 3,113 (3113 new)
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Carmen
(new)
Dec 15, 2015 10:52PM
I don't know about this update. The new font makes it difficult to read, and I'm near sighted. I'm not entirely sure how this is supposed to enhance the readability of text. I hope that there will be an option available for us to choose whether or not we want the new or old format.
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I really like it, especially the fonts :-)
Maybe you can try to darker it a little.Some fonts are unreadable...
What colour is that new font? Stuff that only comes in shade cards?
Wow, looks like I'm in the minority here, but I really like the font changes!
LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE!!!!!! One of the many reasons I didn't use this website often is that the layout (and font) used to hurt my eyes, this new layout is so much better! I FELL IN LOVE WITH GOODREADS ALL OVER AGAIN
Now I can't read anything. It's blurrier than before.
Please change it. It's atrocious.
Carmen wrote: "I don't know about this update. The new font makes it difficult to read, and I'm near sighted. I'm not entirely sure how this is supposed to enhance the readability of text. I hope that there will ..."Exactly
This is like the Blue/Gold dress all over again. Some of us think the new fonts and colors are great and others, like me, are finding the fonts and colors really hard on the eyes. Seeing that this is a site for readers, and all of us DO read with our eyes, hurting so many of our eyes don't really seem the right thing to do? I've already tried to reduce the brightness on my screen but even after just typing this comment, the glare is starting to affect my eyes. Sorry!
Goodreads is now quite literately giving me a headache, and I find my eyes blinking and watering as I try and read and everything blurs together before my eyes. So, no, if you keep this font then that is the end of me and Goodreads - I am not risking headaches and sore eyes because of a bad font.
The latest update resulted in a slightly sharper font, but the contrast is still very bad on my eyes, too bright (I'm 48 and wear reading glasses; I use GR either on my PC or laptop, not phone etc.). The text size when writing a comment is too small.I guess the good result of this change is that now I'll be spending more time reading and less time on GR...
Looove it. Much needed. I thouht of tweeting to you about changing the boring layout.
The font size in the messages is a little too tiny (in the inbox), 14 would be more comfortable :)Not accustomed yet to the font used in the posts, it's still difficult to read when the texts are bigger than 5 lines.
Timeline is ok, but I'd like too a bigger size for the update status and a decrease for the titles.
Thanks Santa Reads :)
It's better than last night (from a European perspective), but I still find the font hard to read.
I like the fonts themselves, but I think some tweaking to line spacing, kerning, and size might be in order to make the two fonts a bit more uniform. Like exactly 50% of your users, I find the site infinitely easier to read on my display, but like the other 50%, I find something dizzying and disorienting about it when I look closely and switch my focus between the two styles.But overall, I think it's a step in the right direction. The sans-serif font works especially well in these comment forms.
So, I really do not care much about the font, I don't think it's an improvement, but it doesn't bother me much. The colors are fine (except i think the background is too bright? This is a matter of opinion, but a hint of off-white would do the background some good.) My main agenda js the missing boarders and headings, my profile page looks very clumsy without it.
It's not good. Too bright, and there are problems with letters from other languages, like my native lithuanian - ąčęėįššųųū. They don't look good when posted, the size differs visibly.
I really, really, really, really love the new design. The design is noticeably tighter and definitely cleaner. However, I have noticed that the text (though a lot more legible) is leaning more towards the smaller side and the readability is a little bit compromised. Despite those setbacks, everything else is aesthetically pleasing!I'm using Safari on a MacBook.
I don't like the font, so maybe instead of deciding a single font and color scheme for everyone, there could be some options available under the settings for us to choose our layout tastes. I think having a font and color customization option might be more preferable.
Bring it all back; the changes are very unpleasant. The serif font was easier to read and the design changes eliminate things that helped focus and navigation. Instead, everything looks kind of bland now, and it's harder to read for it.
Perhaps the "update" that is being pushed out just didn't reach me (cleared cache before reloading) but the font problem is still here. The antialiasing simply isn't working well, it is making the font blurry, particularly on the brutally bright background, and many unicode characters with diacritics are simply not supported by the fond and default back to a system font.I think the core of the problem is that most of the people here are hard core readers, not designers, and as such you have a larger-than-usual percentage of people with imperfect vision (whereas designers usually swing in the exact opposite direction).
I will be disabling web fonts for this site, but it seems a hell of a lot of work just to be able to read a site that is supposed to be all about reading, and probably not something your average user will know how to do.
It's too small, thin, spidery and light. and the background in glarey bright. My ampersands have changed into "amp;" The fonts have been reduced by 17% in the main and about 28% in the comment box. The sans serif font isn't pleasant to read on the screen at all, you can't read more than a few lines of it. This is why the serif fonts are so popular and so few books (if any) are printed in sans serif, because they aren't so readable.=
Not sure yet...I really liked the serif font.
Not a fan of the font change. It makes my dyslexia go nuts.
It's not looking so bad but the background is too bright and it hurts the eyes. It's not making it easier to read. People should have the option whether they want the new features or not.
While I like the look overall I find the new font very small and very thin which means I have to strain my eyes to read :/
There are quite a few problemstoo bright
too thin fonts
non thought for people who read a lot on a screen (short sighted people and people with Astigmatism are completely ruined
Too soft colours
everithing too flat
Are we sure it was thought for READERS?
Really not liking this new font makes it uncomfortable to read, I find myself screwing up my eyes and blinking a lot.Also the background seems brighter, feeling the glare.
For a site targeting readers not the best of changes!
Well, I figured out why the fonts look so thin and spidery--it's the font smoothing you've got going on in your css. Without it, both fonts are easier to read and the serif italics look more attractive.Unfortunately, I can only get rid of it by turning off javascript and the site doesn't work without it. So maybe consider getting rid of the font smoothing.
I really like this, I am short sighted and these fonts are much easier for me to read, agree that it is a bit too bright though
NO NO NO! Please go back to the old font :(
Could you do something to adapt the layout to widescreen monitors. I've got a 27 inch monitor with the entire page squished in the centre and huge swathes of white on the left and right. Such a waste of display 'real estate'. I do like the new fonts but they are a bit thin and difficult to read.
I like the font, it's aesthetically pleasing, but the font is a bit blurry to read. It feels like I had to expend extra energy to focus and read the texts on the screen.As for the book page, I love what I'm seeing right now~!
Hi, if anybody's reading this, the 'like' button for reviews is not coming on the extreme left, as it's showing for this blog post.First, number of likes are being showed, then the like button is being displayed, followed by number of comments and more information.
I think this should be fixed.
I love it! It looks really nice and very classy - as well as easier to read!
Pleasing to the eyes! Wish the app would be updated soon. It needs some serious changes!
Not particularly keen on the new font as I find it harder to read but I guess I'll get used to it eventually.
it doesn't support some letters in turkish, like ş, ğ .... also it's killing my eyes -.- go back to the way it was.
I don't mind the rest of the changes too much, although I'd pick the original version if given the choice. BUT THE BACKGROUND IS WAY TOO BRIGHT A WHITE! It hurts to look at!EDIT: The more I use the site like this, the more I dislike all of the changes.
The font is crisp and clear when I use NoScript, without it the font is blurry.
I'm seeing where the letters are too thin, the letters have holes and little gaps in them that other people have been talking about, on listopias, e.g. the words World War One Literature here:https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...
And I have magnification set at 110% and the letters still have holes in them. Can other people see that?
I have an astigmatism and I'm finding the site very difficult to work with - the white of the background is too bright, and the font is difficult to read unless I set Chrome to zoom in to ca. 130% size. Even then, something akin to glare is making the site almost painful to look at - I'm finding that I'm squinting a lot and have the beginnings of a headache. While I applaud the sentiment behind the changes, it definitely doesn't work for me, to the point of being actively uncomfortable to view.
Still having issues with the text (size and font). Comments are unreadably small and the sidebar (with books currently reading, recs etc.) seems to be blurry. Have to browse the site at a higher zoom level or I can't seem to read it, especially those parts. The background is also really bright, which is not great.
