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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 1,651-1,700 of 3,113 (3113 new)
Vanessa wrote: "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..."We all have different screens, different machines (PC, phone, tablet etc) and different levels of eyesight ability. The new font may work for some, but doesn't seem to work for everyone.
Ira wrote: "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 no..."Same problem here: Русские буквы выделяются на фоне английских, и это выглядит аляписто.
It would be nice if a user could decide which version of fonts to use.
HATE HATE HATE
Now really, can you throw away this "modern" shit? It's just awful. Or an option for a "classic" L&F?
(Or perhaps it's good you did it now, I'll start recording my books in the next year on LT)
Now really, can you throw away this "modern" shit? It's just awful. Or an option for a "classic" L&F?
(Or perhaps it's good you did it now, I'll start recording my books in the next year on LT)
If it's NOT broken, DON'T fix it!!! PLEASE put the old version back. This new version looks awful, is horrible to read and looks like it was designed with nursery school kids in mind.
it seems a little bit different now than when I checked a few hours ago (O.o)
At first I thought I had involuntarily turned on the zoom on my browser :DI like the new font size, but I preferred the old font...this one on Chrome under Ubuntu looks too "spiky"...
Good choice with the links, there were too many colours!
The layout, colors and aspect doesn’t bother me. I can live with those. But the fonts are atrocious!The books title font looks blurry to me. The fonts are too small and are hard to read.
In my opinion, just ditch the fonts and keep the layout.
I love it! Works fine for me and it looks MUUUUUUCH cleaner and modern.
Not liking the font, maybe it will grow on me.
Would really be great to have a choice... the new fonts look rather pixelated... -.-;Also, the site looks way to bright. It is really hard to look at. Please give us a choice!
It'll take some time getting used to, but I think it's a good change.
The text's definitely sharper. But a little too sharp maybe? Don't know. We'll get used to this too. :)
The update is much better looking on Chrome now. The design will still take some getting used to, but at least it doesn't hurt my eyes anymore.
Font is definitely smaller and harder to read.
I like it a lot, much cleaner and more modern. Nicer colours too :)Text looks bigger than the old one to me, but I would still like to see it even bigger.
The font styles are lovely but there's something wrong with the sharpness of letters, which makes it definitely harder to read. Love the new layout!
Not a fan of this at all. As somebody who uses Goodreads day in, day out, the font is simply jarring and I had to zoom in on Firefox just to avoid squinting and headaches. Overall the font brings forward the site's brightness to an uncomfortable level.
...so very unnecessary. Everything seems so smaller and squeezed in. (except the book headings, those are HUGE)
I loveeeeeeeeeeee the new layout even though the text gets a bit blurry at times.
It's very nice! I like that there are no gradients anymore, they are out of fashion after all, as are squared avatars.I have a major complaint (I'm browsing with a pc and a 14" screen), however, and it's about the serif font (but the sans-serif one is slightly better). It feels blurry, it's not easy to read. Actually, the whole page feels a little out of focus (but I think it's due to the font) and it's headache-ish. I'm having problems even writing this post.
Secondly, the green color. There is little contrast with the black, links are less easily identifiable.
A minor thing, I liked that there was a background with the smaller headers inside the page (Readers also enjoyed, About Lauren Groff, Friends reviews in the example). Upper-casing the headers and leaving out the background doesn't help in identifying them at a glance, and all this mix in font sizes and styles is confusing. Can't you simply leave those in lower case, and add a background with no gradient?
Also, the "notify me when people reply" is too big! Bigger than the font-size I'm currently write this post in. Could you normalize that?
However, I've tried the new desktop site with my smartphone (5") and the results are better. The font is still a pain for the eyes, but the links are more identifiable. Please do not sacrifice desktop navigation for mobile's sake. I really really hope you'll reconsider about the font, I think everything else can be digested over time, but the font is indeed problematic.
Really liked the small changes made. Its very soothing to the eyes : it feels like coming home back in the spring. Loved the colors that you guys have chosen. :)
Nope...don't like it...font is too skinny and harder to read. Home, my books, recommendations, explore...all too small now. The "Want to Read" box is well...an awful shade of green. I'd love to have it back the way it was. There was nothing wrong with the original colors. The "currently reading" section on the home page..that whole section is too small. I won't be spending as much time looking for books and doing things here as much as I used to. Guess I'll go back to putting my book list down on paper. :( Be easier to read.
I really like the colours! And it does look more modern (although I was fond of the slightly-behind-the-times-vibe the old goodreads had going on). I don't really get the passionate against-comments, although they might refer to the pre-update blurriness? The fonts are easy to read, especially the sans serif. The kerning in the serif font is a bit off, it looks really wide and the s's seem to be shifted slightly to the right.
Am I the only one who didn't notice anything? Could it be that the changes aren't activated where I am or something?
the #siteheader should be 45px height, 10px padding-top.and the navlinks at least 15px.
13px is just too small
I still find the text too pale and hard to focus on...
Still blurred, despite update. May work well on some screens but not on my laptop.
I noticed the changes immediately! Then I clicked on your announcement for the explanation. I find the site to be much improved. Thank you!
Gerard wrote: "Still blurred, despite update. May work well on some screens but not on my laptop."That's precisely my problem...
Umm, I used to like how things popped out at me, now it all seems blended together which makes it aesthetically unpleasant to me. I find myself squinting now, it puts too much strain in my eyes, I don't know why.
Having complained about the way it looks on my PC using Chrome, I see now that it looks quite nice on iPad. So the disparate responses reflect not only different tastes, but also (perhaps mainly) the variety of platforms. I now recognize that the redesign was aimed mainly at improving the experience of mobile users.
"Also really, really hate that your can not longer expand out (wider) the forum comments." +1
I love the new layout and the colours. The text can sometimes be harder to read when on the site for a while, but I think the update to sharpen the text makes it look a bit better.
anything is better than what it has been. I wish there was more customisation allowed on goodreads.
•To enhance the readability of text - sure? it's worse!!! It looks quite better but harder to read
When I saw "Did You Notice Something a Little Different?" in my feed reader, I was expecting a change in the design. GoodReads' design is, in my opinion, one of the ugliest and most outdated.As for the the fonts - and I dislike being a buzzkill - I find everything harder to read.
It's worse. Blurry and more difficult to read.
I don't like it at all - it hurts my eyes and makes it much more difficult to read.
I don't really like the smaller font. The pages look skinnier which makes it harder to read.
I still have an issue with the page numbers at the bottom of the page where the page you are on is highlighted with bold but that is barely visible to me! I just can't see the difference between bold black page number and the other blue numbers. It is struggle to know which page is the next for me to look at. Otherwise it looks good.
While I don't mind the Sans Serif font in the links, I'm afraid I'm another one who doesn't like the Serif font used for most of the text. Also, not sure if I'm posting this before or after you've repushed it, but it's still a) too blurry, b) hard to read, and c) despite both a and b, the messaging thread font still manages to be too large - I keep looking at my browser bar to see if it's zoomed in.
Also really, really hate that your can not longer expand out (wider) the forum comments. This box I am typing in is not the width of the comments above. You've made it so you cannot increase the width of the comment box. This sucks!!!
Fix the sizing of the commenting boxes so that either they are automatically the width of the comments above or that the user can make it wider, not just longer. I want to be able to put more on my page not a lot less, 1/3 less to be precise.