It used to be unique and friendly, and now it is just another Medium, 37signals, altered Bootstrap-looking thing with no personality. Not including dates in the highlighted articles on the homepage (and only highlighting two to begin with?), along with putting it at the bottom of the "More From" is a huge miss (as the date of these types of articles is important to the context and to give me an idea of how often they are written).
Having to click into, and then scroll, to see all of the topics instead of having them in a sidebar adds more clicks for the user to navigate. The mix between bolded blue links and thin black links.. the differences in formatting between every single title, date and author depending on which part of the site it is on.. The awkward "No" in "Issue No." and the misaligned/missing top padding on the button-looking elements.. The terrible overall typography.. Just noticed that when you're in an article and hover over a subheader, it shows a hidden element that pushes all of the content down.. The fact that the "Share This" crap is on there at all (or that it isn't just one line of gray icons) and that it is not spaced apart or visibly different from Kevin's byline (which deserves more)..
"Not including dates in the highlighted articles on the homepage (and only highlighting two to begin with?)"
Which is basically intended only to increase page views. If you're searching for something about web design, and Google's results show the slug for an entry as "Sep 21, 2004", you're probably a lot less likely to read that than the other link that is "current". So, better to take out a date altogether. The only person who loses out is the viewer, who might rely on sometimes vastly outdated information (says me, who has spent the last couple of days looking at Crystal Reports forums and having to discard search results from the early 2000s and even 1990s).
Only highlighting the last two posts, without dates, is a disservice to readers - particularly new visitors - who want to get a better idea of what topics the site covers and how often it does so. Tack on the fact that ALA is one of the only sites I visit sporadically because I know it will be relevant and now I'm lost trying to figure out where I'm at and where I should go. A content site should highlight the content, not hide it. Do they publish a certain amount of articles per timeframe, or is it random? If it's random, now the design is playing favors to posts who aren't up as long as the others.
Medium, 37 Signals and ALA look nothing like Bootstrap at all, so I'm not sure why you made that comparison.
I am not a fan of this new redesign at all and feel like Medium and 37 signals do the simple/clean layout approach much better than A List Apart. But as with all three designs, the primary focus is on the content, which I guess is why some people seem to think they lack 'personality'.
What really struck me as visually jarring was the top bar and how it permanently overlaps the title, "A LIST APART". At first, I thought it was NoScript doing something funny, but it's the same in Safari. It just feels like a temporary menu bar that should disappear after a few seconds.
I've always found A List Apart something of a contradiction: a lot of their articles are better than average, but their design and usability have always been weak. Mostly, I drop in every few days to see if there's a new feature article, and don't even notice anything else on the site. So while I dislike just about everything "arty" about the new design, for many of the same reasons as you, I'm hoping the quality of the articles will stay up and I'll still get something interesting to read every couple of weeks.
Everything you just said, plus the non-scaled header and footer image/text gives it a non-responsive feel, the search bar intrudes on the top nav...sheesh. The design of the comments is cool.
It used to be unique and friendly, and now it is just another Medium, 37signals, altered Bootstrap-looking thing with no personality. Not including dates in the highlighted articles on the homepage (and only highlighting two to begin with?), along with putting it at the bottom of the "More From" is a huge miss (as the date of these types of articles is important to the context and to give me an idea of how often they are written).
Having to click into, and then scroll, to see all of the topics instead of having them in a sidebar adds more clicks for the user to navigate. The mix between bolded blue links and thin black links.. the differences in formatting between every single title, date and author depending on which part of the site it is on.. The awkward "No" in "Issue No." and the misaligned/missing top padding on the button-looking elements.. The terrible overall typography.. Just noticed that when you're in an article and hover over a subheader, it shows a hidden element that pushes all of the content down.. The fact that the "Share This" crap is on there at all (or that it isn't just one line of gray icons) and that it is not spaced apart or visibly different from Kevin's byline (which deserves more)..
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