Die by the Blade Gets a Face Lift

by David Oleksy on Nov 3, 2009 9:04 AM EST

If you are a regular at Die by the Blade or any other SB Nation team site, you were in a for a big surprise this morning. I assure you that you are in the correct place. The goal is to make the site easier to navigate and more importantly, easier to read.

As with any change there are going to be bugs with the functionality. I assure you the tech team will be all over it and will get it fixed quickly. If you notice anything in particular, e-mail your experience to support@sbnation. I would also like to get your feedback on what you like and dislike about the new look of the site. The main goal is to make the experience as great as possible for the readers. Help us make that a reality.

Poll

What do you think if the new look at Die by the Blade

I love it...makes the page easier to read

26 votes

Not sure yet...give me some time to get used to it

30 votes

Not Good...why change if it's not broken

9 votes

Other...I'll post in comments

1 votes

66 votes | Poll has closed

Tweet Comment 5 comments | 0 recs |

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Comments

It looks nice

clean type; a bit easier on the eyes – thumbs up!

by ccthemovieman on Nov 3, 2009 9:17 AM EST reply actions

it does look nice and i especially like this

“Buffalo Sabres Blog for Intelligent Fans”

by returner3 on Nov 3, 2009 10:31 AM EST reply actions

Guess I'm the only one voting for "other"

So I’ll explain!

(1) I hate polls like this. Less than 24 hour after a major facelift (and a pretty good one overall) you want me to either bless things (which I just can’t do this quick), say it’s no good (which it certainly is not), or blindly vote not sure / too soon (which is the only way any regular visitor can vote this, uh, soon. :-)

(2) Fantastic choice of fonts. FANTASTIC. Right there you’ve earned my thumbs-up.

(3) I’m pretty sure you have no control on this, but the amount of “noise” seems to have been turned up a notch. Noise as in two things – inline ads (which I’m sure you have no control on) and inline eye overload (which you may have some). Right now as I’m commenting I can see two Flash ads, a search section, a FanPost section, and a list of recent posts. (The Twitter box is barely visible so I’ll try to ignore it.) That’s a lot – A LOT – of stuff to throw at the newbie or the regular. Not sure if you can find where to put some “white space” but if you could? Much appreciated.

(4) Speaking of noise – I’m amazed nowadays at how many things have to load for what to me is a simple Sabres fan blog / community. In Firefox 3.5 it was noticeably slow. Not because of the true content from here – because of something called cdn2.sbnation.com and static.technorati.com. Sure, the former is part of the community – but FIVE stylesheets? Along with images and javascripts I count at least 7 individual files being downloaded for what is a single page. And yeah, that technorati link always makes me wonder why someone cares about my browsing habits!

(5) But back to the positive – I noticed how certain HTML tables (at least I thought that’s what they were) of statistics would crop off the last few weeks. They look very good now.

(6) Did I mention the font choice? That alone makes the face lift worthwhile for me.

On a scale of 1-10 I’d give things a solid 8.5 – which I’ll take for this hockey season any time. :-)

by dfderie on Nov 3, 2009 6:36 PM EST reply actions

You walked right in to my trap

This is the type of feedback I was looking for. I thought the poll was a nice touch to trick people in to commenting.

For the record…I’m with you guys. I think the change is mostly a good thing. The internal feedback has been mixed but mostly negative.

I’ll have more later when I’m on my computer.

D.O.
www.diebytheblade.com - An SB nation destination for Sabres fans everywhere

by David Oleksy on Nov 3, 2009 7:38 PM EST via mobile up reply actions

I’m usually along the lines of “don’t change what’s not broken”, but this is still pretty sharp. I’m sure with some getting used to I’ll love it more than the old design!

by Afino on Nov 3, 2009 7:28 PM EST reply actions