Dear Readers,
We are pleased to introduce +972’s new and improved website.
+972 Magazine has been around for two years now. We started as a small group blog operated by several volunteers; today, we are a group of more than 20 writers and editors, covering news and developments in the region on a daily basis.
The new version of +972 Magazine is suited to meet the changing needs of the site and the expectations of our growing readership. The new site will look much better on your mobile or tablet devices. It will also include some new features, among them a more sophisticated commenting system, prominent videos on the homepage, an attractive group blog format, and a nifty little feature called “What We’re Reading” on the right side of the site, which allows you to see what our bloggers are presently reading from around the web.
You will find all our bloggers on the left side of the homepage along with a couple of new channels we are very happy to introduce. The first is a photojournalism channel, operated by the talented Activestills collective. Activestills photographers place special emphasis on covering protests and grassroots activism; their new channel will feature photo essays and the week’s best images, among other things.
We are also pleased to introduce the +972 Resource channel, which will showcase reports, maps and other collections of valuable data, collected mostly – but not exclusively – by civil society organizations. We hope these resources will provide much-needed background to better understand the daily reality of the region, with special attention to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. (Check out, for example this report by B’Tselem on so-called “State Lands” in the West Bank, an issue that has been in the news due to recent Israeli Supreme Court rulings.)
We want to take this opportunity to thank all our readers – those who have commented, shared our content on social networks, wrote us emails or simply visited the site. A special thanks to all those who have donated to this project. +972 is a small operation, based mostly on volunteers who are motivated by a desire to share their knowledge and experiences with readers, in the hopes of helping make this a better place. The costs of maintaining the site are constantly on the rise, and without the ongoing support of our readers, this project won’t be able to survive. If you’d like, you can donate at any time by clicking on the link in the top right corner of the site. If you haven’t already, we would also like to invite you to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
This makeover was made possible due to a grant by the Social Justice Fund (USA). We would also like to thank the Moriah Fund and Heinrich Böll Stiftung, whose grants have enabled us to provide editing services for the site throughout this year.
We invite you all to share your comments on the new look, or any other thoughts you have, by writing to us at info@972mag.com
Noam Sheizaf and the +972 Team
UPDATE: Several readers have reported problems and bugs in the comments section. We believe they will be solved in the coming days. Thanks for your feedback!
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Ahad Haadam
I can already say I don’t like the new design.
Aaron
But it has “Reply to comment”! Now we can *really* get in your face. This’ll be fun.
Aaron
Well, except that “Reply to comment” didn’t seem to work. Oh well.
Does it have whitespace between paragraphs?
Noam Sheizaf
Aaron – that one seems not to work that well right now too… working on it!
David
I like it a lot. The only thing I’d wish for was the eliminiation of ‘what we’re reading’ on the front page. They can tuck that away somewhere for the interested.
The same is true for the names on the left, take that to the ‘About Us’ page.
Other than that, the new design is very good and clean.
Mitchell Cohen
I guess every new design takes getting used to, but I feel lost right now….:-(
Vicky
I was also a bit startled when I logged on, but once I’ve learned my way around I’m sure I’ll get to like it. It’s pretty snazzy.
Potential glitch: I notice that some of the articles that were on the main page right before the transition now have fewer comments than they did before. Why are the missing comments no longer showing?
Noam Sheizaf
As always with new sites, there are indeed some bugs and glitches. Thanks for pointing them (we noticed a few more problems in the comments section, btw). We will take care of those issues in the coming days/weeks.
Ahad Haadam
This is really bad. Just from the two minutes I browsed the new site:
1. The visual effects are annoying, give a headache and don’t add anything. I don’t want to hover over the headline to read the rest of the headline or an excerpt.
2. There is no mention of the number of comments for each article so you can’t tell which article is popular or controversial.
3. The “load more comments” is again redundant or at least it should appear after 100 comments or so, not 5. Then it shows “load more comments” even when there are no more comments.
4. The only advantage I see so far is that you added “reply to comment” but even that doesn’t seem to work.
Anyway, that’s what I caught, right off the top of my head.
Noam Sheizaf
@Ahad ha’am: We are working on all the problems you have mentioned in the comments section, I hope that we will be able to solve it all in the coming days.
Thanks for the feedback regarding this issue and others.
aristeides
I’m not seeing a “back to home” link.
Jack
Bug.
There is a lengthy horizontal scroll on every channel.
Carl
Nice layout and design overall – good work.
I’d ditch the expanding thumbnails on the front page though as it really makes the page jump around: bad enough for me, terrible for people with bad eyesight. Defeats the idea of a thumbnail I really.
Also the ‘Show more comments’ and ‘more’ combination in the feedback section meant I had to click about 8-10 times to be able to read the handful of comments on this page. A combination of ‘show all thread’ and ‘show all threads’ buttons would help. Otherwise it’s a lot of needless clicking to do what you could do with one click before.
Keep it up all involved, anyhow.
Carl
Well to emphasise what I just wrote, after 8 or 10 clicks I hadn’t noticed that Ahad had made my points already. Another three or four clicks looking to see if my post had been sent and I found Ahad’s and mine.
Nested comments are a good idea, but the ‘click to reveal more’ is extra effort for less utility.
Jack
Yes the “click more” feature is a bit complicated. Also the fact that you are moved up to this fixiated commenting function, so to answer a reply you have to scroll up and down.
Noam Sheizaf
thanks again for all the feedback. some of the problems in the comments should be sorted by now. We are working on the rest.
regarding the dynamic feature in the homepage, it’s an experiment, and so far we had mixed reactions – both highly positive and others saying it’s “too much”. we will keep listening and see how it feels in the next weeks/months, and if necessary, go back to the drawing board…
Carl
Noam just on the grounds of accessibility I’d have an option to remove it (CSS should be a means I think). It’s awful for the visually impaired and if you use a large font, the layout’s all over the place.
Some of the threads are showing up multiple times as well when I press the ‘load more comment button’.
Noam Sheizaf
Gotcha
aristeides
The jumping thumbnails are like staring at a strobe light.
aristeides
Also, if you try to click on the headline link, the thumbnail jumps in the way and moves it around.
sh
“regarding the dynamic feature in the homepage, it’s an experiment, and so far we had mixed reactions – both highly positive and others saying it’s “too much”. ”
To be honest, that feature makes me seasick and then recoil from looking at other pieces on the menu. Carl’s comment on it about people with poor eyesight is definitely something to consider too – possibly also epileptics, I don’t know. Also the high-jump whizzing past all the comments when I pressed Reply to Comment is a bit startling. Can’t wait to see what happens when the Submit button is pressed, … one … two …
Elisabeth
The way the stories enlarge when the mouse moves over them makes me dizzy. But if others like it…
Piotr Berman
I made a donation based on content of the site, even though I DO NOT LIKE the new look. There are too many font sizes and the comment window is very narrow and small, with no “edit” function that allows to edit the comment for some time after the initial posting.
Noam Sheizaf
Pioter, thanks for the donation, and also for the feedback. some of the bugs will be corrected by the end of next week (including few on the comments section). there is a lot of testing involved with the new features, so such comments are very important to us, even when we can’t solve all the issues.