Usually I try my best to refrain from criticizing a work. Obviously the new redesign is somebody’s brainchild and somebody’s work. But, couldn’t keep my "mouth shut" :). I hope this isn’t the final release of the redesign. Tell me its in its alpha stage (not even beta).
Couple of points I think worth mentioning -
Recognizing the need to redesign - Kudos to that.
The new design DOESN’T work properly in firefox.
The earlier design was more compact and disciplined, the new one though has a lot of whitespace in it, is not very user friendly as the user has to look around the real estate for stuff. its all spread about.
The google ads have not been placed properly.
The fonts used are of poor choice - there seems to be no easy differentiation between, content, ads, action points and navigations.
I really feel you guys should look into ajax or any such RIA technologies. That would help you go miles in making the site user-friendly.
The review editor provided could have supported more functionalities - like bulleting, smilies and image tags.
The rating control is cool.
No hard feelings :). I don’t mean to belittle anybody’s efforts here. But, I honestly feel more work should have been put in into the testing, feature list finalization before releasing it out to public. And mind you, I really like mouthshut. I want it to look better. These are just some opinions from a user experience professional.
Regards,
Uday