I really like it!
I think that a colored background would be nice.
It would be cool if the featured comics were accented a bit more.

It is a bit crowded, but that seems like a worthwhile trade off for the thumbnails.

Atom Apple
I have a feeling this isn't the whole page, could I see a full screenshot?

Here you go. And right click and “view image” of course…

TheMidge28
noticed Volte favorites! :)
also noticed Volte filters out sprite, sketch, experimental, photographic, and stick figure comics. :(

He does what?
…
If this is true I'm changing my comic from stick figure.

Also, I think the admin's descriptions of featured comics are better.

EDIT - Oh wait, HE filters out the stick figure on his end.
But we can change it for our selves?
Hm, I guess that's an alright idea.

I like all the new ads and the fact you're keeping the animated flash player on the front page that still has a 30% chance to play without prompting. Those are always my favourite features on a site update.

I also like how so many people voiced their distaste over the new look that you decided to do it anyway.

It would make more sense to place our account info above the ads.

I don't like how this is affecting the forums.

The ads to the side for the fourms seems SO tacky. =\

Nevermind, they do line up, but the mouseover lags some so it displays the one I just went over previously for a bit too long.

Here are my views
:3

The site looks horrible and loads even slower than it ever has because of the new ads you decided to plaster all over every freaking page for no reason.

Remove the ads above my account info you cash-cropping sellout.

…The old page was much more friendly, I must say, even if it was a bit wordy. This new layout is almost like…picture vomit. With ad takeover. It was much easier to sort through before, now some newcomer could come to the site and not know what the crap is going on…"What does top shelf mean? how is it different from ‘the rack’? What is this site even for?“

EDIT: Thumbnails are also more deceiving than titles. You'd have to censor them in the end to weed out those who attract veiwers with ”pretty pictures" including, but not limted to, porn.

I feel that the front page looks a bit cluttered (especially with all the ads), but overall I like it.

Although I'll miss elements such as having the top 10 for BOTH stories and strips, I like a lot of the new functions.

However, the look of it feels very… unfinished, to me, compared to the old one. I loved the old design, and this one seems like the functional elements were put in place with only a half-done design, and left at that. I'd like to see some more colour, some more arrangement especially in the main background and with the faves list, which to me looks very unattractive.

Functionality is great, but it's the initial look that's going to attract (or put off) new comic artists and readers, and I worry this is a look which might turn people away

Are you still integrating this thing, as at the moment it seems to be quite the mess. I'm sure it could be thanks to the lack of any shade of white, or tables, etc, but then again it does seem like it's not finished quite yet. Mate, it's got a ton of potential, I actually think it could look a hell of a lot better than that last template, but at the moment I can't help but think it's got a ways to go.

Also, fat ad over the user bar still counts as just a dumb idea. :/

It's still being fixed.
With the way it was, it was too difficult for volte to keep up the old look while working on the new one.

I also miss the admin talk with the featured comics (and the way that was set up before with the numbers and rotating features looked more professional), and agree that the white needs to be less…..white.

Other than that, there is nothing about this new look that I can't live with. Except things load in a kind of laggy way now…

I know this is still beign worked on by I'll just throw my two cents in as I think it stands now.

- I'm throwing in with the “Crampt & Bliding” crowd. It manages to look really basic and empty while at the same time over loading people with stuff. It reminds me to much of the Wizards of the Coast's Magic Site except this one physically is hurting my eyes.

- My comic news doesn't really seem to be doing anything the news tab doesn't take care of.

-The loading time on my comics is a clear drawback over the last site design.

- The ads crowding our control are not so good too. I don't mind ads (up to a point) but I've got the baaaaaaaad feeling I'm goint to end up clicking these things on accident a lot which isn't a good thing.

- I don't think the preferce thing is working as it only takes me to my PQ's.

+ On the plus side I like the way ads while browsing comics are handled much better in this lay out.

+I like that the comic descriptions are finally working.

- But how come the descriptions only work on the main page? That isn't cool.

+ I kind of like the new search box.

Vastly vastly vastly prefer the old one over this new one.

What would be perfect would be a refinement/fix of the old one, not this completely foreign alien one that makes my bar slow with all the loading. I want to come to the homepage and immediately be able to look over my bar.

I do not want to have to first scroll down to get to my bar, then have to click on the tabs, then wait for this to load. Every page.

Look, why don't we just have the old design back, fix the non-updating thumbnails, fix the Manga/Horror page feature box, and call it a day?

This is me:

“hmm, I wonder if there are any new forum topics I can look at instead of working. *refresh* OH DEAR GOD WHY!”

It's just too much.

I can't even dream of loading this from my stolen wifi connection at home

not trying to be a pompous arse, but did you guys run any usabilty test with a sample group before going forward with this?

When I entered the site I thought it had crashed again.

The white and grey background looks like the Wii menu screen and just as minimalist and boring, there seems to be less space for site info and more for adverts and the main page layout is so cluttered it looks like a social networking site rather than a list of comics.

Still, good to have the comic description back, although I only got it to work on the most favourited.

This is pretty…well awful. The site was already fairly slow, normally, but this new design has made it even slower. It's far too image-heavy. Not to mention the fact that there's no happy medium with your layout. You either get assaulted with advertising on every conceivable square inch of space, or you block those ads and wind up with massive amounts of wide open space that is glaringly bright, due to the fact that it's ALL WHITE.
And if this new layout is still being worked on, why did you implement it? Rule one of the most basic web designing is that you don't start using the new layouts and pages until they're 100% done. You could've just as easily set up a secondary site to test out the new layout and see what people thought before going ahead and slapping it up here, despite the fact that not many people seem to like it, if any. Not only does that indicate poor workmanship from the design perspective, but it indicates a lack of respect or even interest in your clients' (us) opinions.

Anything good said about this new design is just a bunch of sucking up.

So…how do I get to my comic stats now? I think someone should fix the trophies (I still don't have a trophy saying that I'm in the top 1000 and top 500) before they try to fix the website. The website wasn't broken before…but now it is.

Hurray I return… But with terrible news. I am afraid that I am not pleased with the templates. News and reading (in my opinion) should always be a focal point of a website, and heavy images take ages to load when you are on a slow network. Beyond that I seem to remember this site having trouble with bandwidth issues when I was still massing up my hits, this sites new layout isn't going to improve this issue. Another issue I am having is that your Javascript takes forever to load the information from your user profile. It would of been easier to go with a Javascript library like mootools, lightbox, or prototype to smooth out the kinks in the pages loading abillity. The last problem I am having is that the site looks like its just floating out in space without any form of containment, as if it could all seemingly come undone at any minute. If you want a quick fix to this it would be easy to add in a background and a border to accompany the rest of the page

I sincerely think the new design looks more clean and professional. But it also feels like too many images with too little text. I don't know what I'm looking at until my mouse is over it. And there's not much of a place for my eyes to rest.

And it feels like 45% of what we're looking at is advertisements. In fact, it feels like advertisements are cleverly surrounding out content and closing in on it, ready to kill it at any time. I want to feel like the content is king here at Drunk Duck.

I like being able to filter what the front gives me. I also like the fact that you can hover and get information. All the nice info and filters for my favorites list is cool too.

Aside from that the old design was much better.

The biggest annoyances to me (that I didn't see mentioned) are the shortcut buttons to the stats and upload pages are missing. And comics I assist on are not in my list of comics.

I also dislike the news not being on the front.

If I had to choose between the pros of this new site design (as it stands now) and the old one I'd still choose the old one.

I hope this is up to get instant feedback that will be addressed with much haste. At which point when the new design it “somewhat” acceptable I then hope this new mold makes it quicker to fix the bugs.

I mean heck, I would be willing to pay a monthly fee for the services here if it sped things up and such. The service is most valuable. I'm gonna stick with the optimistic view that many things will be addressed soon.

it looks like some teen magazine threw up on my screen. It's too busy, too white and nothing is compartmentalized.

As for everyone's dislikes, I agree with them. as for their suggestions… one way to get rid of the stark white contrasted with the technicolor vomit of all the images would be to used a segmented background, blocking off each area with a different color… also, some sort of modifier that slightly mutes the brightnes of each icon/thumbnail until you mouse over it.

There is something to be said for simplicity. I myself prefer the old old style of DD that was blue and white w/ a bit of orange trim here and there. Sure there were things wrong with it, but it was visually the most elegant and professional looking. The new one looks like someone's photobucket gallery or an image heavy geocities site…. (Remember those? DX )

Anyway, that's my two cents.

To me, I like the upper bar and the account info (besides the placement) but otherwise, The forums are all being squished to the side and there's no difference between text and links.

I am not one of those that's in crazy-hate over the new design, but the thing that REALLY BURNS ME UP is the loss of some of the essential functionality of the site.

Specifically, the chore that it now is to access my favorites is just not something I'm excited about. The accessiblity and ease of function of the favorites list was my number one favorite thing about DD…and it's been ruined.

Shift that puppy up the page, don't make me click on it to drop it down and give me back my same-screen editing function. Please. I'm begging you. I can't imagine visiting the site on a regular basis the way it is now.

And…put me down as another person upset that the top comics are no longer divided into two. As a person who is FAR more interested in strips on the web, mainly seeing full pages in the top ten is discouraging and not very useful.

And where's the news? That should be on the front page, no question about it. Now, it might as well not be there.

Basically, accessibility has been lost.

I know the site designers are gonna get a world of crap thrown at them this week for this, but overall I think the site is headed in the right direction. The ability to see a list of all past featured comics is great. So is the idea of multiple, editable lists on the front page. The popout comic descriptions are also quite nice.

But there are some bugs. There are some real issues here. Some of the essential charm and functionality of DD has been taken away. I hope it can be restored.