How Do We Look?

I kind of miss the audio/video cables, to some degree, although I do prefer the minimalism of the new logo. Otherwise, the non-aesthetic shifts all improve workability, so who's to complain?

James, sweet digs. Nice clean design, I really like the open white. Sorry about the Swampland thing, I visit there too, it may be hurting your numbers. But I never post over there, so feel truly honored.

Can I assume it's on WordPress based on my logged-in status?

I don't like all the red everywhere (though that's TIME standard, obviously), I wish there were a "recent posts" box on the sidebar, and I wish the feed button for the blog were bigger.

But, that whining aside: It's very clean, the preview for comments is excellent (though it would be nice to know what HTML is not available somewhere on the page, too), and it generally looks mainstream-bloggy. I approve, and lend whatever modicum of pleasure one random Internet voice can give to you and TIME.

I can still post, so I like it.

And Swampland is only more popular because the various partisan crazies get, well, crazy, and incessantly berate each other. Whereas here, things are a little more cordial.

The categories are a bit overwhelming but in the future they'll prove to be a great time/energy saver. I like it, a lot.

The replying to individual comments will be particularly useful come S6 of Lost. Should be a lot easier to sift through the comments.

The logo box is great, as are the categories/tags. I also love the "Reply to this comment" feature. My only real complaint is with the front page; the sidebar being on the left (rather than the right) is a little distracting, and so are the ad/most popular boxes in the middle of the page of posts. But the individual post pages and the comments look awesome -- much easier to read.

The individual post pages look fine, but the comments and main page section leaves a lot to be desired. Yeah, clean up the design a little bit, but whoever designed this took their love of columns and white space a bit too far.

Main content being squished all the way to the right is too hard to find if I want to read what a post is about. I think post titles should always be above the content, and it's too hard to search for the content I need to be scanning. I also wish the comments were distinguishable from everything else. It just looks like more text when I quickly scroll down the page, save for the user info. There's nothing visually distinguishing it.

That's a problem with the whole design. It all looks like one clump of text with some red trim and bold text. No font changes (the bold sans serif titles helped in the past) or anything but white space to distinguish sections in the body content.

Just my two cents from reading a lot of blogs.

I am having trouble commenting. For instance, this the third time I have tried to comment.

My wordpress log in may have been kicked irrationally into the spam filter or something?

I have reservations about new look, but I am to tired to type them all up again. I submit to the Time technocrats.

:/

Thanks to whoever fixed the CSS such that the returns are actually returns.

Many thanks to you, unknown TIME IT person.

I would love if there were a way to sort the comments so that you could choose whether to read them in ascending or descending order... If I'm late to the conversation, I like to read them from oldest to newest to get caught up, but if I've already read most of the comments, I like the newest first. Just my two cents!

One more thought...I was looking through the categories, thinking the alphabetization was off, but it's actually that some categories have sub-categories. The indentation is so slight it's hard to see. Bringing the subs in a little more would make the organization a little clearer.

JP: Great re-design. I personally LOVE that new comments are posted at the TOP of each comment list, and the "reply to this comment" option, both of which will make my Lostwatch comment surfing/discussion much more time efficient. Plus, when I tell people I once wrote a Lostwatch for Time.com, the blog search function will make it a LOT easier to prove it (I'm trying that line out at bars....so far, no success.)

Now, if only you could post the COMMENT box at the top, between the text of your blog post and the list of comments -- THAT would make things just about perfect.

Not a giant fan. Perhaps it is simply the resolution I run at (1200 x 1920, vertical style - I'm a programmer, I actually use many short lines visible at once), but there is:

1) Too much forced white space on the sides.

2) Too much wasted space due to putting titles and author next to, rather than above, the post. On my screen, the titles take one third of the the post area - and if there's a picture involved, the post text gets a whopping 21 characters (about 15% of my total usable area) per line w/picture.

3) Listing the WordPress categories in your template is a toss up. Yes, I see that you have been dutifully tagging all your posts for months, but after X number of categories, it stops being useful (especially if the subcategories aren't collapsible. Surely someone has written a WordPress template with collapsible categories.)
Especially since, ironically, the categories are far less useful today than they were 24 hours ago. As handy as a Breaking Bad tag is (though oddly said tag isn't under the show category), I can get nearly the same effect with the search function.

4) Although it would be handy if the search function looked through comments as well as posts. As amusing as seeing how many times, say, Chaddogg has popped up by name in the posts, I'm more interested in his comments (if Monaghan comes back, I need to be able to look up "Charlie is evil" comments!)

5) Although that would be handy if the blog system actually kept comments (especially from the early WordPress era). I realize that even Time's servers have a finite capacity for Swampland troll comments (Zing!), but it is depressing that WordPress comments from even this year are gone.

Or to summarize: Too much white space (especially due to titles next to, rather than above, posts); would still like to be able to search through comments; would actually like comments kept; wall of subcategories functional but not beautiful.

It doesn't recognize the Time people as TIME unless they are on their own blog. KT is a commoner just like us here.

Hmmm. This will take some getting used to, but I bet it will be better in the long run. I like the "reply to this comment" option, that will definitely help make LDGs easier to follow. I definitely think that there is a MASSIVE amount of wasted white space, which I don't like. Basically half the screen is wasted.

I definitely don't like how, on the main Tuned In page, the titles are to the left, with tons of wasted white space below, and the text is farther to the right - it looks unnecessarily crowded and seems like not enough text is showing. My vote would be for titles to run across the top of the post, rather than taking up the left half of the post space, which would allow the text to stretch across more of the space.

I agree it would be better for the titles to run across the top of the post so more text appears on each screen without scrolling down.

The main Tuned In page would appear more balanced if the column with the Contributors/Categories/Favorite Links/Archive features were moved to the right side of the page. This would center the blocks of text and make the white space less distracting. As it is, it is a bit awkward to scan text on the far right side of the screen. Otherwise I think the new set-up is great.

When you guys put links in can you make it so it opens to a new page (you know ... TARGET = "_blank"). I think it's a WordPress default but it drives me crazy.