A tragic cable service outage scuppered all our morning content. That’s the way the cookie crumbles.
But keep the tips and notes coming in. The response to the new site has been overwhelmingly positive and we’re really gratified. Also we are still tinkering, so the suggestion box is OPEN.
Your Comments
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Heidi MacDonald, editor-in-chief
Assistant Editor: Kate Fitzsimons
Contributing Editors
Torsten Adair
Jen Vaughn
Technology Editor: Bruce Lidl
Entertainment Editor: Shannon O'Leary
Columnists:
Todd Alcott
Michel Fiffe
Marc-Oliver Frisch
Rich Johnson
Paul O'Brien
MK Reed
Illustrations:
Maggie Siegel-Berele
To my old eyes, the print in gray is too light, making reading just a bit hard.
Allow us to correct and delete our replies?
We’ve all been there. We all feel your pain. The new site is snazzy.
Seconded on the “gray text is hard to read,” issue, but other than that everything’s aces. Really like the new logo.
My “no comments” preference will likely fall on deaf ears. :)
I just hope people will notice the author block and not misidentify who writes what.
I’ll third the grey on white text is a bad idea for readability (as I mentioned in the other thread).
I read the old Beat via Google Reader, but it can’t seem to get a grip on the new Beat. Instead of showing me new entries as separate Reader items, it goes to the main page irregularly, every few entries.
If there’s a way to set it up so Google Reader can read the new Beat like it did the old one, that would be dandy.
kdb
yeah there is something wonky about the feeds. On the to do list. As is the grey on white. This was part of the OLD old beat on Comicon, and gae the blog, i thought, a sophisticated, debonair flavor, grassy but not insouciant. But readability is important!
I liked the way it looked on PW better. I can’t say exactly why though.
“Allow us to correct and delete our replies?”
I’m against this idea. I hate going to a message board or some blog to see people talking about a comment that no longer exists. I like the idea of being able to fix inadvertant errors, but I’d prefer it where everything that goes up stays up for good or bad. But it’s your blog, so you’ll do what you like. Generally, I think most comments are unnecessary, but sometimes they’re great for getting immediate feedback… even when that feedback is of an asshole-ish nature.
I like the new logo. My only comment is that I think some of the spacing is slightly off on it; the B looks slightly removed from the other letters. Is it just me?
“I just hope people will notice the author block and not misidentify who writes what.”
I like this feature too. I’ve noticed that it’s often filled with “The Beat” though. Unless that’s done intentionally to mask the identity of the author or if multiple people worked on the post and it’s considered a group credit, I’d prefer to read “Heidi MacDonald” as the author. Same goes for using the comments section. But again, it’s your house and you’ll do what you like.
Hey, congrats on the move.
Your link to Comics Reporter on the bottom of the page is wrong– it reads “comcisreporter.com”.
Just thought I’d mention it.
If you go straight to comicsbeat.com without the WWW it gives a 403 FORBIDDEN. You need to adjust the server setting for that. WWW is so 1998. :-)
Re: The Logo (Not to criticise Comicraft, they’re amazing.)
The “A” seems a bit too thick compared to the perpendicular strokes.
The “B” and the “T” need to be kerned closer to the “EA”.
The leading, the top and bottom margins, should be reduced to make the banner more balanced.
My Treo “negates” any graphic when I move the cursor over it. The Logo POPS with blue letters, orange drop shadows, and black background.
The bold “NY Times” headline font does not work as a text face. That is, when reduced in the replies panel, it becomes unreadable. It also isn’t TrueType or whatever…it looks blurry when enlarged. (My treo translates it into a generic sans serif font.)
My Treo browser turns the date bullets into black circles.. The dates also do not show exact time or year. Can that be added to the bottom of each post?
Otherwise, it works well on my cell.
The new site is legible and clean, but I kind of miss just scrolling down to read the comments. Clicking to read comments is just one additional step back and forth, but seems more”formal” now, and takes longer to scan (ie: read).
I’m okay with the grey body text, but I guess you should go with black for best legibility. And I agree with Torsten’s comments about kerning and letterwidth in the new logo. But maybe it is intentional, to emulate the old hand-lettered comic story titles.
The RSS feed is not keeping up; maybe that was already mentioned.
Oh… another suggestion (I sent you an email Heidi):
PREVIOUS and NEXT buttons or links.
Thanks, Torsten, for the verification that I wasn’t just seeing things!