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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 1,601-1,650 of 3,113 (3113 new)
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Noushin
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Dec 16, 2015 12:18AM
really happy with the update. :)
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The font color and size is too hard to read on my bookshelves. Gives me a headache. Seems stupid to make the font smaller on website that's about READING.
You should make changes to make things better, not worse!This font is really unpleasant, thin, discontinued and harsh. I think you don't need 1677 comments to see that.
I think it was good before. Would you consider switching back?
I ended up "forcing" my Firefox to use my own font. I tried to check the update in which Goodreads said "pushed out an update this afternoon that improves the sharpness of the font for users" -- yeah, NO. BIG NO. The new font hurts astigmatism and myopia. Only few minutes I get MAJOR HEADACHE.
noooooo go back to the old way this new way sucksssssss!
The font is AWFUL! Why are you doing this????
HATE IT.I guess your eyes doesn't work properly. How can someone like this font better than the old one is a mystery to me. It's not working with letters like "ş" or "ğ" those letters looks weird because they're not supported by this font. When we write messages letters are too big, but after we send it, they're too small. Are you trying to make us blind like you?
bu yazıyı bulanın, kabul edip sunanın, onu beğenip onaylayanın, o onayı alıp kodlayının yedi sülalesine iyi dileklerimi sunuyorum. bu ne ya?
I don't like it at all, looks like I'm going to be cutting down how much time I'm on here, from what I can tell it kind of hurts my eyes and I wear glasses all the time.so can you please fix it back or fix the problem so it won't hurt my eyes.
Mostly OK, but the background is much too bright. The glare is hurting my eyes, and I don't seem to be the only one. Could you tone it down a bit?
It does look a little better now the rendering issue is resolved, but I concur with those who would prefer larger text and a darker background - it still strains the eyes more than the old version.
Ouuchh..my eyes!!! @_@ It's too bright!! and what the hell with the font color and the size!!??? It's hard to read everything in such comfortable way. Please change it back to usual or be more creative while you upgrading it. I 'd love it if it's done ASAP. Thank you.
Completely agree with the comment about widescreen monitors. Everything is in a stripe down the middle and those two wide swaths of glaring, empty bright white on either side hurt the eyes. And the font is still too thin and unpleasant for reading. There was NOTHING wrong with the old font.
meltem wrote: "HATE IT.I guess your eyes doesn't work properly. How can someone like this font better than the old one is a mystery to me. It's not working with letters like "ş" or "ğ" those letters looks weird ..."
+1 :D
Next change needs to be: being able to add a second, third, etc read to the same book, without losing its previous reviews! PLEASE.Thanks.
Almost any change will meet resistance at first, especially with something visual like a font or a website redesign. People don't like change. It may get better when we get used to it.
But, having said that, no I don't like it. The font is too thin, the background is too bright and the overall look is more old fashioned than modern.
The comments on some discussions i follow is not seen anymore, I see the commenter name but can't see the comment.
I don't gaf about the colors. It's the font size that bothers me. Way too small.
New font is quite hard to read.
Terrible. Very difficult to read so I won't be spending as much time on here.
You need to put the writer's name back to the head of every book page, because now it's note shown when I touch my friends books by mouse, I need to go to the book's page to know the writer.
I hate the new layout. New fonts are too small, harder to read. In Czech there are problems with some letters with diacritics (ě, š, č etc.) . - there are not really included in fonts, so they look weirdly and the whole text is dificult to read. Also the layout could be changed for widescreen - now it is still waste 2/3 of monitor which is blank. And background is too brite.
Pudu wrote: "it doesn't support some letters in turkish, like ş, ğ .... also it's killing my eyes -.- go back to the way it was."background is too bright too. there was nothing wrong with old colors and font. I think this is an assassination. They're aiming our eyes and trying to make us all blind. I can't find any other explanation :/
ortaya koymuşlar cücük gibi, kenarlar bembeyaz. lan bunların ne garezi var bizlere. "nasılsa çok okuyolar, gözleri yorulmaya alışıktır" mı dediler. sadece kitap okuyanlara özel bir göz hastalığı var da, ilaç haklarını mı satın aldılar. hepimizin gözünü bozup o ilacı mı satacaklar. dertleri ne ya :/
I can't see the auther or the book name in some books pages, what did you do?
Some links (author names on the book pages, the % to switch to percentage, there may be other things but I didn't look) look now exactly like the "normal" text. I know they can be clicked on, but new users may get confused. I would make them different from the "regular" text.
To whoever it may concern :)The font seems to be fixed in the comment sections (both writing/editing/preview and posted). The issue remains with the font-size on the home-feed page... actually everywhere else, but in the comment section, the font is still a little too small and the links in the content are not as easy to distinguish as before-change. A reading-status displayed in home-feed, for example, could use a slight size increase; the letters are almost blurry at their current size and due to the nature of the font (being very thin/light) they are hard to read.
Also, this might be personal, but, as much as I like the new color scheme, I have to admit the teal shade doesn't do its job well. This particular shade doesn't stand out from the rest of the content; the links are as obvious as before, thus harder to spot on first glance. It could use a bit of a saturation increase (or something similar)
As I've said before, and I've seem some other users mention this as well, the website doesn't adapt well to bigger screens, leaving loads of blank spaces around the content (dare I say, around 40% of the page's body, if not more) ^__^
Very unimpressive. New font has done nothing to improve the overall look of the site, and small text in particular is hard to read on my (old laptop) screen. Brings on eye-strain after a couple of minutes.
So much better! :D But, the small thin font is a little hard to read sometimes. The colors I love!
I love the new font but I think in some places it doesn't improve anything. It will take time to get used to it.I think users should have a button or something where they could choose the fonts they want, that would be the thing to aim for.
THIS IS TERRIBLE!!C'mon guys. This was completely unnecessary. Now everything is so much harder to read; the font is blurry and the colours hurt my eyes. I thought I was going mad, or had done something to the font; I even manually increased it. That's when I realised it was not something I had done.
You can do better than these unnecessary changes. E.g. finally having an option to select Timezones (this was requested 4 years ago), the ability to edit a review without changing the date it was written, or any other many, necessary changes that have been requested.
This is uncomfortable to read. No more killing time at work on Goodreads for me.
It looks great but the font is not very readable.
The font is ridiculously small. The section headers that use to be in brown boxes are gone. That wasn't a smart move. Now all the text blurs together. Those boxes were needed to organize the page. I do not like the new design.
really don't like it.. the font is so hard to read and jsut readign a review gives me a headache!
https://www.goodreads.com/trivia/work...The trivia questions all run together. There used to be a box separating each one. Can you at least stick a black or gray line in between? Really, this requires too much eyestrain to figure out where each one begins and ends.
I would not have noticed the font if you did not told me, but the links colour however... This teal/half-green/half-blue is too light, too pale, it is hard to notice, it does not stand out very well from the white background or from the black text surrounding it. One colour for everything is ok but it needs to be darker or brighter.
Based on your UPDATE: Some changes are for the better -this is *NOT* the case. Did you test it on all browsers/platforms (I use Windows and Firefox BTW)? If you did, you's see how hard to read and ugly this new font is. Roll back to the ORIGINAL asap.
Apologies for one previous comment: I mistakenly said that Merriweather uses an oblique, not an italic, but I find this isn't so.It could be that the Goodreads Website is sometimes applying its own oblique style to the font, rather than using the italic.
For example, see the "UPDATE: Thanks for all the feedback...", which is oblique, or look at this text which I've tagged as italic. It is also oblique. But the text of descriptions on book pages seems to display true italic, which looks nicer.
I preferred the old font better. This new font is all squashed up.
I'm surprised to hear the font deemed reader friendlier. Overall I like the airier design, but the fonts are incredibly choppy-looking, like pixels are blurry around the edges of letters (iPad). Not a fan.
I really like the font design, and don't really understand why people say it's un-readable. However, I don't think it was really necessary - couldn't you have done a useful update, like incorporate a half star option for ratings?
I think it would be better to use the font that supports different languages. I read mainly in English and in Russian and I prefer to shelve books in whatever language I originally read them and now my page has MORE fonts instead of less and i makes it so much more difficult to use. Sorry, but can I have a BRING TH OLD DESIGN BACK button as well?
I'm not sure I love it, but I think I prefer it to the old version. This one is a little easier on my eyes and has (so far) made it easier to scan things. I'm still getting used to it, though.
Looks great!! Love the new fonts! Brawo Łukasz :)
The font is inconsistent. For example in the comment box here it's too small, like in the GR update feed button above. But in the general update box the font is too big.The white background makes the blurry (and not very attractive fond for a website! Book, yes, but not a homepage!) font difficult to read and it hurts the eyes. The pale grey boxes we had helped distinguish content and relaxed the eye a little. Those boxes use e.g. for reviews and the comments right under the reviews. They were visual markers and relaxing. You have to remember that many people work hours and hours on computers and an all white background with no distinctive features is exhausting for eyes and brain, as well as not very aesthetical.
The green for the links and the buttons are dull and lifeless. Apart from he hating that shade of green, it's also not inviting.
I wished the buttons and start weren't flat, semi-transparent and flat...
You want to look modern? Great, but not like every homepage everywhere. It looks joyless and not very pleasing.
Also italic doesn't look good. Too much tilt to the right.
All in all, it doesn't look harmonious. It's difficult to read/look at and it looks cold and uninviting. For a website building on community this new look is too cold and distant.
I think if some changes are adapted and others dropped, the overall style would be better.
I don't like it, it's very difficult to read!
