Pitchfork: New & Improved / Same Old Boss?

I think broadly though it's worse now than it was a year ago. They've hit a groove, aesthetically, and seem pretty content with it. Since their aesthetic - ambitious indie-rock - and mine don't much crossover, I find I like the site less.

Does being a trust-funded fake-me-out "indie rocker" kill brain cells? Or did these cretins not have any to being with?

Their content didn't appear to be my sort of thing: their aesthetic and the artists they cover doesn't gel with my mine and the things I like. They're just a tad too testosterone-y for me, I suppose I can't relate.

I don't want to give the impression I'm dissing Pitchfork, it just doesn't speak to me.

(the Lily's '3 way' an 8? More like a 5).

I want to declare a moratorium on references to trust-fund kids by American and Canadian posters. Otherwise, how are we gonna be able to keep making fun of Brits with their obsessions about who's a public schoolboy and who isn't ?

Sort this out Ryan Pitchfork !

Also, props on the Georgia look-alike font for the reviews! (Is it Georgia?)

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/c/cure/cure.shtml

the left hand panel is too wide - resulting in the positioning of the review being too far to the right - and you have to use the scroll bar to read the reviews.

this would fail basic usability testing

contrast with an indicative review at the bbc
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/rockandalt/reviews/killers_hotfuss.shtml

the positioning of the review - is centred on the webpage, i.e it has a user centric design and easy to read.

I blame you for ruining my day DJM ;)

For real? I think it looks way more attractive and easier to read now. The layout is still kinda lame, but whatever.

Besides, I'm not talking about pop-ups and shit. What browser gets rid of embedded ads on the page?

i do like the slate blue/seafoam green scheme - its easier on my eyes.

in the reviews, i might give a little bit more spacing between lines -- a pixel or three. i just feel like with the wordiness of pitchfork's writers, it gets overwhelming to see everything in such close quarters.

one last thing: the section headers ["new content" etc] are a bit too blurry from anti-aliasing/compression.

OK. im really done now.

That makes two of us ! - Ryan Pitchfork please direct your webdesigner to make changes - usability and information design are important issues!

You'd think that in the age of content management some enterprising soul would stick each news item in some sort of database as an article, which would let you directly link to each. I also sent an email a while back mentioning that it'd be cool to search by reviewer, but I was informed that I should just do a search on the reviewer's name. I guess it's the same, but there seems to be a lot of stuff they're just not doing.

http://giganticmag.com/images/Capture-pfm.jpg

That doesn't exactly say, "We're professionals." It looks more like a gallery of web advertisement than a page with content. Nothing is "above the fold." Some of the small touches are nice, but they're overwhelmed by a fundamentally broken layout.

The information problems are obvious... At first I thought it was just because I use the Firefox, but I checked in IE 6.0 and it still looked the same. The fact is, most people use an 800x600 resolution. Myself included on my desktop PC (though on Linux with my laptop I run 1024). To have to scroll right just to read the review is terrible. I'm sure you can write a Javascript function that reads what the viewer's resolution is. It's been a while since I've done web site coding, but I'd guess it would be reliable in most scenarios. And personally, I think the navigation bar on the left side is vastly disproportionate to the rest of the page. That might even be able to be chopped in half. I actually kind of like the two column new music box, but it doesn't work in with the general layout chosen.

Advice: new color scheme is good, correct major design problems outlined by many here, space the lines in reviews and choose a better font, and change the Pfork Newswire pic to fit new color scheme.

Also, I personally don't like how on the main page the title for each section (WATW, Reviews, News) fit perfectly on top of the pictures. It just looks, I don't know, amatuerish. Or perhaps what I don't like are the TABLES. Do you know what I mean? How you go to the front page and the first thing you notice after that amazing gigantic title of an ad are the three generic columns. It kind of worked under the old design, but now it just looks unfinished. Something should be done to smooth this out. I'd at least cut the space between the three columns down a bit.