10 ms·

Too much space is taken up by navigation in this scheme. There's a reason Wikipedia's design is dominated by text.

• jwm 14y ago
  I agree. Websites that do this are awful, Google Plus is guilty of this. Re combo-boxing the language list: Wikipedia is the most successful multi-language website by far. Highlighting this to new and old users is a great thing. Its not like the search box takes up any more than one line anyway. For Wikipedia, this redesign blows. I do like the visual style though. This is really just showcasing the webdesign company's talent, right?
  • stephengillie 14y ago
    Wikipedia is probably the worst site for this redesign, which is probably why it's so eye catching - we're seeing all of these elements in a shape that's terrible for wiki but great for some other site. Since it's such a terrible fit for wiki, we can clearly see and identify elements we'd glaze over if we liked the changes.
• dredmorbius 14y ago
  That's just the sort of element change that looks distinctive, and makes a redesign appear appealing, but almost certainly tests horribly under actual use. As another response notes, G+ is absolutely horrible at its content-to-navigation space allocation. The more so as most of the navigation elements are styled as "fixed", and won't move. I pretty much always view the site with an editor open to pick off the most annoying of these features. I'm working on a Stylish script.
• zanny 14y ago
  This all the way. If you are trying to design a web page with usability in mind, the most important thing to do is make sure on the default 16:9 or 16:10 screen everyone is using that the content dominates the page with the least navigation overhead as possible. That is the main reason why I prefer sites that use vertical sidebars to horziontal top of the page navigation frames that take up 1/3 the initial load.