New Qt Blog format

[Asperamanca]

Summary in one word: ouch!

• Huge blue banner takes 1/3 of screen space even on a desktop PC monitor. No content of value
• Even on my desktop, not even the top blog entry title is fully in view. I have to scroll in order to get anywhere. Overview over blog entries gone.
• The room previously filled with useful information is now filled with huge pictures that tell me (next to) nothing.

Pictures are great in contexts where they can convey more information than text, but for a technical context that requires a well-selected (and probably custom-made) picture.
Want an example? Scroll down to the "Qt Design Studio 1.3 Beta released - Collaborate together" entry. The picture has zero information value. The pictures of the other blog entries are marginally better, but a subtitle still helps me a lot more to determine whether I want to read the entry.

[rweickelt]

Same here. It's not only the blog although there it's worst, they messed up their entire website.

• now overloaded with banners and elements, I feel lost
• distracting animations everywhere
• almost unusable on a mobile device. The annoying "Contact Us" hover hides actual content

I am surprised that something like that this passed any internal review. Probably there was none.

[sierdzio]

Ugh, there even is the infamous "before you go popup" :O Why on Earth are people doing this?

UI-wise it's quite pretty actually, although it feels slow.

[AndyS]

Rest assured this has been checked by a number of people internally so it wasn't just done and no one looked at it before the update, but errors will creep in and naturally there is still scope for changes and so on. I will pass on a link to this thread to the relevant people involved so they can see your feedback, so I will thank you all in advance for giving it and to encourage anyone else who has any comments to please add them to the thread so that they can see them.

[sierdzio]

Great, thanks Andy! So one issue I think I'm seeing is that the page (main qt.io and blogs) take some time to load and in the beginning (first few seconds) when I scroll it seems sluggish. I suspect some scripts or stuff is still loading in the background.

... hm now that I tested again, it loads smoothly. Perhaps the extra data was cached and does not cause slowdowns anymore.

Chat & "before you go" popups - I'm strongly against any of this crap (also against RODO and cookies popups, but I know they are required by law :-( ), but it's probably a business decision rather than designer's idea.

Also, another probably-business idea: there is no clear link to Downloads on the main page. It is hidden behind Products->choose one->Download trial->Open Source. An open source version is not a trial. There should be some easier, more prominent link to downloads page. Marking the link as "trial" may discourage people from learning Qt.

[J.Hilk]

@sierdzio said in New Qt Blog format:

An open source version is not a trial. There should be some easier, more prominent link to downloads page. Marking the link as "trial" may discourage people from learning Qt.

sadly, that's a couple of years now in this way.
Didn't approve of it in the first time I saw it, and still don't 🤨

[sierdzio]

@j-hilk said in New Qt Blog format:

@sierdzio said in New Qt Blog format:

An open source version is not a trial. There should be some easier, more prominent link to downloads page. Marking the link as "trial" may discourage people from learning Qt.

sadly, that's a couple of years now in this way.
Didn't approve of it in the first time I saw it, and still don't 🤨

Yep, I know. Since Andy asked, I thought it's a good time to bring it up again ;-)

[AndyS]

@sierdzio said in New Qt Blog format:

Ugh, there even is the infamous "before you go popup" :O Why on Earth are people doing this?

Are you seeing that on the blog page as well as it is not supposed to show up there. It is only on some of the website pages and it is not supposed to happen on any of the blog pages at least. So if you are seeing it on any of them can you give a link as that would need fixing.

[sierdzio]

@andys said in New Qt Blog format:

@sierdzio said in New Qt Blog format:

Ugh, there even is the infamous "before you go popup" :O Why on Earth are people doing this?

Are you seeing that on the blog page as well as it is not supposed to show up there. It is only on some of the website pages and it is not supposed to happen on any of the blog pages at least. So if you are seeing it on any of them can you give a link as that would need fixing.

No, I have not seen it on blog posts, only on the main page (qt.io).

[aha_1980]

@sierdzio said in New Qt Blog format:

No, I have not seen it on blog posts, only on the main page (qt.io).

Indeed. Very annoying as I load pages in several tabs to switch between them.

Has anyone a browser-based solution against these annoying "before you leave" animations?

[J.Hilk]

@aha_1980 I did not notice them, is this a Browser specific thing? I'm using safari

---

now I noticed it, even worse, the popup is super low res -.-

[Asperamanca]

@sierdzio said in New Qt Blog format:

Ugh, there even is the infamous "before you go popup" :O Why on Earth are people doing this?

UI-wise it's quite pretty actually, although it feels slow.

I don't argue with pretty. But I rarely use screenshots of blog pages as desktop background. In my view, there are more important aspects to a technology-oriented blog site than 'pretty'.

[AndyS]

Re the route to Downloads, I am not seeing what you are, so if I am going the wrong way or missing something then please clarify, these are the two routes I just took:

• Green Download, Try, Buy button on the top right which goes to the main download page with Commercial on the left and Open Source on the right, the Go Open Source button underneath that takes you to the downloads.
• Via Products to either of the options which then takes me to the main download page again as above.

Did I miss something at all?

[sierdzio]

@andys said in New Qt Blog format:

Green Download, Try, Buy button on the top right which goes to the main download page with Commercial on the left and Open Source on the right, the Go Open Source button underneath that takes you to the downloads.

OMG I've missed that button! Sorry for the fuss! Somehow, then I'm looking for menu options I ignore the top row and search among the second one (Products, Resources etc.).

[AndyS]

@sierdzio said in New Qt Blog format:

@andys said in New Qt Blog format:

Green Download, Try, Buy button on the top right which goes to the main download page with Commercial on the left and Open Source on the right, the Go Open Source button underneath that takes you to the downloads.

OMG I've missed that button! Sorry for the fuss! Somehow, then I'm looking for menu options I ignore the top row and search among the second one (Products, Resources etc.).

Not a problem, glad to have cleared things up! :)

[Asperamanca]

Can someone explain an equally simple way to the forums?
The only way I found was to scroll down a lot (until no more content is added when scrolling, or you just have to be faster than the browser), and there is a link.

EDIT: I would have looked under Resources, but no luck

[sierdzio]

@asperamanca said in New Qt Blog format:

Can someone explain an equally simple way to the forums?
The only way I found was to scroll down a lot (until no more content is added when scrolling, or you just have to be faster than the browser), and there is a link.

EDIT: I would have looked under Resources, but no luck

Developers->Qt Forum.

[Asperamanca]

@sierdzio said in New Qt Blog format:

@asperamanca said in New Qt Blog format:

Can someone explain an equally simple way to the forums?
The only way I found was to scroll down a lot (until no more content is added when scrolling, or you just have to be faster than the browser), and there is a link.

EDIT: I would have looked under Resources, but no luck

Developers->Qt Forum.

Ah, same problem. Didn't see "Developers" in the top menu bar.