Meh

Sep 19, 2006 at 4:49 PM
17 comments

I don't like the new vox front page. I used to be able to see at a glance my recent comments on my blog and other blogs and after a couple days I finally found it in the vox reader, hidden in an option on the left. I'm not sure I find the recent favorites more informative than recent comments, and the favorites list seems to be system-wide, which leads me to all kinds of posts I don't really like. I kind of want to just see things my friends/contacts favorited.

17 comments

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[this is good]

I completely agree! I like seeing what's being favorited, but other than that it has no use for me...

[this is good]

Word to your mother on that. It's...uh...yucky

the last update also made it so if you are reading Vox on a phone/mobile device, you can only read the first few bits of a post. I miss easy comment tracking as well

yech. i'm glad to know i wasn't the only one.

[this is good]

Ditto. The front/home page is almost useless at this point now. It's more focused on exploring than the personal blogging bit. I wouldn't mind the front page they have now as the primary page for the "explore" page.

The bottom 'slideshow' of recent posts is very confusing. It's too fast to read anything.

I second the slideshow complaint. By the time I scroll down it is already a few posts down the list, and I have to click back to the most recent one anyway.

Time to implement the [this is bad] tag (or tib) for any posts that turn into a bitchfest

I now just go to my neighborhood and skip the front page altogether. It used to seem to be about "me" (=me and my friends), now it seems to be about "everyone" (= strangers I don't care about).

Yeah, that's my feeling as well Meg.

The other thing that strikes me as weird with recent Vox changes is that the Neighborhood page is kind of buried while the Reader page is being promoted.

Monteiro mentioned this, but The Reader feels really application-y and nerdy and less friendly when compared to the Neighborhood page, which reflects what your blog looks like and is easy to get used to.

Vox is such a friendly simple blog service, I'd like to see it move towards having features reflect that instead of reflecting the applications on my desktop.

[this is good]

I completely agree and concur with Meg. The front page was the selective things I cared about, me and my friends. It went beyond the collective to the mob of masses. Not only do I not know these people, but they don't have any similar interest. Introducing people with a nice sweet algorithm is one thing, but above the fold people who evoke, "these people also use Vox? My lovely Vox? That my friends use?"

Strangers with no similar interest is not social networking. Please bring back the old front page.

Thanks for piping up Matt, I may have stayed silent and added Vox to my "sucks" pile. I love Vox too much for that.

[this is good]

True! I also just want to be able to see my contacts right there and then, without having to look at a bunch of Other People.

Now I can't find recent comments. Where did those go? I don't see them on Reader and they're not on Neighborhood. That was one reason (I now realize) why I'd go to the front page. How am I supposed to follow conversations now?

It's in the reader, click on the recent activity link on the left side. It's kind of buried now (I also used the front page to keep up and why I said in the original post that it took me two days to find that option in the reader).

I love vox to death, but the front page and reader feel like steps back to me. I love the photo thing on the front, the slideshow text thing is nice eye candy, but not being able to see recent comments and recent posts from friends in a single glance feels like a loss of usability. The public favorites feels foreign, since I don't know any of the people favoriting things.

I think what could work well is making the front page more you-centric as it was before. Non-logged in users would see something close to the current front page. Take the current front page stuff and move it to Explore. Right now "Explore" is just whatever happened to be the last few posts. The current front page is a much more suitable map/guide to potentally interesting things to explore.

I also realized now that I'm not seeing the QotD by skipping the front page and going straight to neighborhood. I did figure out the comments thing on the reader, but it's not nearly as clear as the list was on the front page. I'm sad about the new Vox. I agree with Matt, this new release seems like a step backwards.

[this is good]

Another agreement here. In fact, I've found I just don't come back to Vox anymore at all, because my experience on the homepage is so bad.

Vox folks, if you're listening, please return the homepage to be about *me* - put the global stuff somewhere else. And for the Love of God, KILL that fucking animated slideshow thing. Worst idea ever.

The good news is that they killed that animation. The half-good news is that they put back Recent Activity on the front page. The half-bad news is that they buried it at the bottom half of the page under what all the "other people" content that should be under the "Explore" link. The good news that only I care about it is that they fixed many of the things they broke in the mobile version with the previous update. Oddly enough, the front page of the mobile verions is much more me-centric (see my report/screenshots)

Meh

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