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I, for one, welcome the new SB Nation United (or whatever) overlords

To be totally honest things are a little slow right now and I'm really just killing time, but I thought I'd take the new format for a spin and also offer my take on it. I think SB Nation did a good job on the rollout, at least here, which shows good testing and good testers - you can never get enough good testing before going live with a new site. Several things running through my mind, in several sections, about this. Most of this is positive, and the negative is admittedly nitpicky, but anywho...

  • First of all, the FanPost doesn't look new. It may be (I don't have many of these to begin with) but it looks how I remember it looking. Not that it needs to change - I like it as-is.
  • Not a fan of the new "cover", as I'd guess you'd call it in "magazine" parlance. The site's tagline should be above everything, for one thing. I'm also not a fan of the red tint on the articles in the right half - I feel like I've burned up some pixels on that side of the screen or something. As an aside for the top of the page, it may have been a result of tweaking some things but I've had to login 3 times in the last 4 hours. That's going to be a problem if it's a "feature".
  • I really dig the site-specific menu bar, though. I like dynamic menus, and I like to have stats, rosters, etc all in one place so I don't have to keep 9 tabs open when trying to back something up with facts. And, after all, we're big on concision around here.
  • I liked the old vertical sections for FanShots, FanPosts, etc because they were all near the top and easy to navigate. Having to scroll around (or learn to use the aforementioned new menu bar) is more complicated than before. I'll get used to it, but I can see it being a turnoff for some folks. And am I the only one that saw Kyle's YouTube videos in the middle of the front page and immediately thought, "Is my Ad-Blocker working correctly?"
  • BIG fan of the new article/post layout. Big text, better fonts (IMO), and a more fluid feel to it. NOT a fan of the Comments section now - I can barely distinguish the unread posts from the read. And I just noticed that formatting apparently isn't coming through from articles to the front page (e.g., in the last "You're On Notice" vineyarddawg has a strikethrough on 'Troy McClure' that doesn't show up on the front page.) /nitpick'd
  • What the heck is this 'Library' thing, anyway?
Overall, I think it's a tremendous upgrade with a lot of potential and 99.999% will quickly get used to it and/or like it off the bat.. Where they may be aiming (or maybe should be) is for this to be a preview of a tablet-like (or, Windows 8-like) layout. It's a matter of perception and opinion, but if all these breaks were laid out horizontally, I think it would flow a lot better. Judging by SBNation's responsiveness to feedback about the iOS and Android apps, the logo, etc I'm comfortable that they'll tweak whatever is needed if we request it and it's in their power, so I'm just gonna sit back down now. Oh, and I'll check this out on my phone and tablet - I think it's going to be that much better on those devices.

                                                                                                                                                                                                               

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