Yes, Lifehacker has a new look! We’re rolling out a new look across all the Allure sites this week. Here’s an overview of what has changed, and what will be coming in the near future.
We know that whenever there’s a design change on a familiar site people complain — heck, we’ve done that ourselves — but the aim is to make the site easier to read and navigate, not to radically change the way it works.
We’ve tested pretty hard, but inevitably stuff will get broken when there’s a change on this scale. Let us know if you see any random bugs and weirdness, either through the comments or by hitting the Contact tab on the right.
The obvious big new feature is the Top Stories block, which lets you easily slide through six stories representing the crème de la crème of our most-recent content. It’s effectively replacement for the old right-side Editor’s Picks box. We’re also using that top section to highlight Regular features such as Planhacker, Road Worrier and Ask Lifehacker for easy access. (In the near future, we’ll also have listings of the most commented and most popular posts.)
You’ll also notice that our seven key categories are now colour-coded, which makes navigation easier. We’ve made images larger, improved tags (for tag-based navigation), and made the content area about 10 per cent wider on both articles and the main listing of articles. Our comments feed now also supports Gravatars, so you can add your picture to comments.
Finally, page load times should be better thanks to faster image servers, streamlined code, plus slightly fewer ads and improvements with how they’re displayed.
One final quick point, before anyone asks or suggests it: no, this isn’t based on the redesign that happened on the US site earlier this year. We run entirely different code bases for our sites, so when it comes to design, it’s an all-local effort. Let us know what you think, and if you encounter any teething issues, in the comments.
Again, I don’t like it. Looks too much like Kotaku. If you are going to do this, at least make each site have different default colours because I thought I was still looking at Kotaku when it changed.
a little tip Barry. The name of the site is up the top.
Wow – nice!
Not a fan of Kotaku myself, so I don’t frequent, but this new look seems sharp enough to me, hopefully they’ll get to Giz soon.
thats why google rushed their updates to Reader and Gmail….they heard Lifehacker was updating 😉
Same problems as Kotaku here…. the banners at the top are gigantic and the comment box doesn’t really have good contrast (although it does look slightly better than yesterday on Kotaku)
Will you still be having the annoying full background ads? I know you’re ad supported, and refrained from blocking ads here for that reason until they started to appear. If they’re a thing of the past I’ll stop blocking the other less annoying and faster loading ads
I don’t mind it… It’s funky and pretty sleek. Though this font in the comment text editor is hideous.
The redesign looks OK to me, but nothing special really. I have an ad blocker on – specifically because the ads on Allure sites annoy the hell out of me – and it just looks weird with all that empty space.
I also noticed that there is no place for a website in comments anymore.
Yeah, why no website link there anymore? I really liked that feature, and did get a number of hits on my site from curious people.
Probably saves a whole bunch of spam that attempted to pass off as a useful comment but just had the link in the user’s URL.
I also miss that, got a bunch of hits but also it was a great way for me to find some quite clever sites the rest of you guys have.
A shame.
I like it. Nice job guys!
the gradients are too intense! especially in the post a comment box which doesn’t really fit with the rest of the page
As long as I can get all my stories with a brief ‘synopsis’ or intro paragraph, and go page by page in chronological order I’m fine. I *HATE* with a passion the US version of Kotaku / Lifehacker / Gizmodo etc, because it makes it difficult to work out just which stories I want to read in the first place if not using content tags.
Moral of the story: Looks fine, just don’t change it much more.
Agreed, I really feel as though you’ve surpassed the US sites here. Please DON’T ever go with their look. This one rocks.
how do I fix it so the font doesn’t look like yuck? I’m on a windows xp machine (yeah at work haha)
Sweet jesus! Not a subtle change I’ll give it that much!
My biggest gripe is that we still can’t track our comments (without bookmarking the URL somewhere) so we can respond to add on comments later.
Also nice to see that avatar’s are now visible on the desktop site – but I take it they only appear for comments made from a mobile browser?
….apparently not
Oh btw, nice touch that we can now RSS subscribe to US and AU stories independently! Will come most in handy for Gizmodo!
I don’t think that’s new… I switched to local posts only for Gizmodo a few months back when the US articles turned to shit.
I understand Ad’s allow you to run this website, but damn.. They are SOO BIG
Not bad but not amazing.
I prefer more information density. Perhaps you could add a toggle for that like in the new Gmail look?
There is a massive gap between the banner and where the story starts for me. It that normal?
(I am on Chrome)
Yep, I had the same issue so I checked on FF and there’s a Nokkia ad there. So I assume it’s because I use adblock on Chrome.
Personally not a huge fan of so many gradients (I’d prefer the top-most bar to be flat), but the design is pretty awesome 😀
If you’re running a maxmised window, the fixed width area means there is a lot of black on the page when you scroll past the header – just something to think about?
Well i like it. Makes a technology website look technological and less ‘bloggy’
i like it! nice one
The Comment system still need a major overhaul.
There is an upgrade to the comments system in the works as well.
Very glad to hear it! The comment system we have is archaic…
Yay! This news pleases me 😀
Hate it….loved the sunny white color
Me Gusta.
Lol with adblock plus it looks so EMPTY. I shudder at how much it must be plastered with advertising
Is it possible to toggle the old view? I prefer it the old format.
I like it, but I haven’t tried the mobile version just yet.
Does the +1 button update with the number of clicks, just like the other icons for comments, likes and tweets?
Loving the new look! Nice work
Overall the site looks good, but I would like to point out that the distance from the top of the page until the first article is quite large. Look at the site from a smaller screen means that you need to scroll quite a bit. I understand the need for advertising, but that coupled with your two heading bars seems excessive.
Also why do you use so much flash? All that stuff can easily be HTML. That way all visitors would see the ads and content.
When zoomed in +1 step (the text is too small for my eyesight), the top stories block doesn’t scroll correctly. Using Google Chrome 15.0.874.106. Also I find the size of the images too large compared to the text size. Not that keen on a dark background, but workable.
Nice design overall, but the comment system needs overhaul as suggested earlier. Main lacking feature is the option of ‘notify me of follow-up comments’. Even better way would be to install a full commenting system like disqus.
Never having been to Kotaku I dont’ care about any comparison to that site that seems to be upsetting everyone….
Humans hate change…. it’s that simple… anything that looks very different… a large group will “hate” just because it’s different… our brain says…. “Arrrggghhhh this is not what I am programmed to receive… does not compute… error error…. ” And then after a week… we forget how the old site looked… and when we see that format again… our brain says… Wow… that looks dated….
I like the new layout. A change is as good as a holiday. If I wasn’t happy I’d ask for my money back :-/
Don’t like the font much – it’s kinda hard to read…
Otherwise, not so bad.
Wow, quite a change. From usability point of view, I like the new layout, however, the choice of colors is a bit daunting. Black is not the easiest color to look at. Maybe the intention was distraction free reading and focus on main content, but for me it does not work. Anything but black would work better.
Could use a little more whitespace on the left of the content, between the text and the dark background. My eye keeps tracking to the dark background when I move to a new line of text since the text and dark background are so close.
Tricky to explain!
Yeah, was so sunny before. I don’t mind the change tooo much as long as it doesn’t become life facebook; obsessed with updates and changes. lol.
Gnarly! What’s the new font, it’s quite sharp..
The new look redesign is starting to grow on me, it seems weird that the new look is better suited to a netbook then my PC and laptop.
I have a Aspire One netbook for the kitchen and the gaps on the side arent as big as they are on my normal laptop, As i use Adblock on Firefox there still is a huge gap where the advertisements are.
Keep up the good work.
I don’t mind it. Looking back at Giz now feels really old and basic.
Love it.
Something about the new layout seems hard to read on the blog post. I think it’s the size of the font and the length of the lines. It just doesn’t feel right and it feels kind of uncomfortable.
Also the heavy use of gradients would be ok if they actually had more purpose instead of being thrown in there for the sake of it. As it is half of them are incredibly annoying because some are fairly blurry. It seems kind of amateurishness from a web designer point of view. This also includes the next and previous buttons on the previous stories. Lastly I think the comment box section looks awful and out of place.
I do like the comments section (besides the post your comments box) and the section at the top of the post that displays the category looks quite nice.
Overall I feel it feels like a cheap template that was bought from one of the various wordpress template stores. This isn’t a case of me being afraid of change either, I quite like viewing websites when they change the layout 🙂
Overall I don’t come to lifehacker to critique your site design, I come to read the excellent (mostly) articles.
I think it looks great… Well done…
As Micahael says… With ABP it looks really sparse as nothing moves around like it does on the mainstream media sites… ie. If there’s a huge ad on the right hand side for example, something will slide up/right to fill that space…
Looking really slick thus far though…
Looks great Gus, nice clean design.
People are afraid of change, all the haters will forget about it in a week.
there’s too much random space between the “work, organise, communicate etc” tab and the Top stories section…..
I think what a lot of us have been used to, are compact site designs. What I like about the new look is it isn’t too dark nor bright; easier to read; and the features you’ve explained. It may be hard to read at first, but I think it’ll take time to adjust.
Top stories block is okay; I think it’s suitably dark and easy ignore for frequent readers (like me) who just want to get straight to recent stories.
Thanks Allure.
Oh, and I wish there was a way we could edit and fix my typos up 🙁
FFS, I made another typo.
Still waiting for the Lifehacker App. 🙁
The background outside the wrapper now stands out more than the content inside it.
I’m really liking the new layout. Seems more focused
I honestly didn’t notice the change when I loaded LH up 5 mins ago, I realised when I saw this article though LOL! Maybe cause I was just on Kotaku..
I don’t know. Just don’t pull the same crap that the US site pulled I started coming over to the .AU site from the US because of their stupid layout change.
I like it!!! Nice and crisp.
Aw man, it looks like every other dark tech site! 🙁 wish there was a light version, and I wish even more that LH AU followed the US design!
I would say it is not enough of a change. Layout doesnt seem to have changed at all. Just got darker. Ads are still too large and too many. The US sites are still light years ahead of the AU ones.
Really like the new look. Very slick.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.