The new look is great.

But the newsletter of column links they sent me this morning linked to just one column. After failing to load any of the pages in three tries.

So I went to the web site to read the columns and all the columns linked again to the same column.

I tried to use the comment link to ask for help, and the comment link failed after I tried to send the message.

I looked around some more and saw a link that said 'Email us!" When I clicked that I was returned to the failed comment form.

I don't see the improvement. Unless you really like that one columnist.

Looks good! I like the News layout including the Opinion column with minis for contributors. Nice.

(Although, after reading Lloyd's comments, I share here I didn't try any of the links.)

Oh, yeah.

The new format that works badly and makes it hard to find what I want is SO much prettier than the old format, which simply worked.

And they have fixed it so quickly, too!

Oh, wait, no they haven't.

Well, at least they made it render less flexibly and made it distort itself when I resize the font in Firefox.

Yeah, this is the stuff, all right.

I might hire their graphic artist - but never their webmaster. It's not a printed page, dummy - it is an application rendered via a browser.

[/venting]

Lousy, plain lousy. Used to be my first or second read of the morning, but I'm not going to waste more time test-driving their beta version. Slow loading (I have cable), non-functioning or incorrect links, print versions in a tiny font, almost unreadable (or perhaps I'm supposed to copy, paste on a blank page, increase font size, then print?). Does it look cool at first glance? Yes. Does it work? No.

Sorry for the complications, guys. We're working out bugs and server problems, so I hope you'll stick with it. In the meantime, Parker, I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from calling me names. Uncalled for. I promise that I and the rest of the folks at Townhall have no intention of giving you a site that is pretty but inoperable.

My apologies to Mary Katharine for any offense taken, and I am sorry to be any distraction to addressing the underlying issue.

The term 'dummy' was used as a general expression of frustration and to emphasize the main problem as I see it, and was not intended to wound any particular target.

That said, the new rendering of the site, while pretty, is not really 'inoperable' - but it is LESS operable than it was before.

That it was released as it was speaks to an appreciation of form over substance - which is not what I associate with TownHall.

Gotcha. Thanks for responding, Parker. No harm done; I'm a little on edge this week. :) I don't understand everything that goes on behind the scenes with this computer stuff (betcha couldn't guess that!), but I do know that everything was working smoothly until we flipped the switch (ain't that the way it always goes). I think to some extent, the problems we're experiencing are just a symptom of redesigning after 8 years. There was a lot to be done, and we knew we'd run into bumps during the switch, but we'll have them ironed out asap. Our hope was to have the form of the site complement the substance, not take precedence over it. So our concerns are the same as yours. Don't give up on me too soon!

Mary Katharine: It's loading much faster for the past few hours...good news. Regarding the print version, I'm woefully ignorant, but couldn't we have a two or three font-size option.... kinda like you give us on the non-print version? I don't want to have to screw around with my browser (Firefox) all the time. Thanks in advance.

Mary K - it's nice to be able to reach you in this thread. Coincidentally, I was looking for Novak's 7/14/03 famous Plame article and couldn't find it at Townhall anymore. Then I searched for "Novak" - nothing. Then I searched for "Archives" and found only 2004-2005 archives. Hope you can restore your entire archives. (And fire the saboteur - is his name Gannon/Guckert?)

Novak's article used to be at:
www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/rn20030714.shtml

Fortunately, I then found it via the Wayback machine, here.

Regards, BR