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CrackBerry 10 Explained by the Design Team

The design team behind the new CrackBerry 10 emerges from their respective man-caves to introduce the new Topic and Article pages, image galleries and more.

Also, Kevin cries.

By David Lundblad on 6 Mar 2013 05:48 pm
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Ok wow it’s finally done. I’m behind about a week on sleep, so judge this article accordingly.

First things, I would like to take a minute to thank Kevin and his team of writers. This team has been absolutely killing it getting the site ready for the new format. To give you an idea: 1000’s of articles have been manually edited to format into the new design.

This. is. hard. work. 

...Tech Director Stephane Koenig, Super Ninja Coder Tom Kaminski and Design Lead Jose Negron...

We have a small but absolutely fantastic design team consisting of, in no particular order, our Tech Director Stephane Koenig, Super Ninja Coder Tom Kaminski and Design Lead Jose Negron. We've barely worked on anything else for the last 10 weeks. Which, by the way, is damn fast to build a site like this. Credits aside, let's dive into the meat of it!

The New CrackBerry

This project was first named ‘28 Days Later’, which was literally the exact number of days we had to plan, design and build the new site to coincide with the BlackBerry 10 reveal in January. Could we have gone live then? Maybe, but there would have been a ton of bugs and lack of features on a site that our writers had no experience working on during the most intense content upload period of the year. So, we decided against it and have pushed for an early March launch instead.

CrackBerry 10

"I'd say I'm most excited about the fact that the level of craft and work put into the design is beyond anything I've done before." Jose Negron, Design Lead

We hope you’ve noticed the tweaks to the brand as well. Although we messed around with an all new logo design we quickly came to our senses and just gently tweaked the old one with a new font and color. The font is also used across the site for both headers and body text. This is the most thorough approach we’ve taken to a consistent typography and branding direction.

Some early branding ideasVery early mockup of the new homepageFirst article design draftArticle pages starting to come togetherOh, and look! Topic pages come to life

The little things matter

"What I love most is what you guys can't see - how much better and more powerful our platform behind the scenes is." Kevin Michaluk, CrackBerry Founder & CMO, Mobile Nations

In the end we settled for a smaller feature set to allow us to pay more attention to the little things. More options for writers to create content that reads and looks well; different comment colors for authors; better images and better presentation of images; a consistent mobile and tablet experience without loss of features; a floating menu that sticks with you; better ad placement that's designed with the content in mind; ability to expand and hide areas of content, which you might only want to read once; and many more small graphical improvements to make the experience of using CrackBerry 10 better.

About the new Homepage

"We now have a solid foundation to build amazing desktop and mobile experiences for our readers. I am very much looking forward to exploring the new topic page concepts, and to bring this design across all of the Mobile Nations network." Marcus Adolfsson, CEO & Founder, Mobile Nations

Extending the life of our good content was an absolute priority with this launch. On the old site popular articles pretty much disappeared off the radar in just a day. With the new site we can have a much more flexible editorial control over what content goes where.

The home page still has a viewing option that looks very much like the blog view Crackberry readers have grown accustomed to. If you feel strongly about it the old format then just switch over. We'll remember your preference and only show you that version of the site. Personally, I love the new sidebar that gives me the 21 latest stories in one go. Kevin is probably most excited about the Topics dropdown and he left a bit of an Easter egg in there if you can find it.

notes on the CrackBerry redesign homepage

About the new Topic Pages

"I coded the original site back in 2006, never thinking for a second CrackBerry would turn into the giant community and success it has become. It's nice that I can now go back and really build a wicked site." Tom Kaminski, Code Ninja

When we sat down to sketch out how we wanted our new Topic pages to work, one core design principle stood out; if these pages feel like they have been built automatically from our database we've failed. By assigning a moderator to each Topic I believe we set the right tone for how these pages will grow in the future. This is supposed to be an editorially driven landing page - a topic page like CrackBerry Games might be the go-to page for many of our readers and we want it to feel like a site on its own. Now, we're not quite there yet but it's a start.

notes on the CrackBerry redesign topics

About the new Article Pages

"I feel like I have been waiting for this launch for years. There are ideas in here that have been brewing since I first met Kevin." David Lundblad, Design Director

Interesting content deserves beautiful and thoughtful design. With this design directive in mind we were faced with a tricky challenge; CrackBerry is 6 years old and has 1000's of articles that have been hacked, squeezed and violently bent into shape inside old content management systems in order to look the way the writers wanted them to. With the new design we had to tell them to not only stop doing all of that, but also to go back over old content and remove all those dirty hacks. We're sorry guys, it will all be great from now on!

notes on the CrackBerry redesign articles

Wow-factor, Speed and Cross-Device

"I'm most excited about the opportunity to field modern display methods in an environment where there's an abundant supply of quality content and, at the same time, optimizing the delivery of the whole experience." Stephane Koenig, Tech Director

These were the three guiding principles for us when we laid out the plan for launch. With a small team and a tight schedule we had to be extremely selective in what features we had at launch and which features could wait until the site was live. A big part of projects like this is to figure out how to prioritize all the great ideas into something we can actually build.

Wow-factor is all about the first impression as well as the little things; the 'moments of charm' if you like - we really did not want to drop the ball on this and we're not going to tell you about all the little things as that would ruin the surprise.

Speed is...uhm...all about speed. Basically get the site loading as fast as possible across devices.

For us, cross device is about delivering a great experience on desktop, mobile and tablet - we've not been great with this in the past so this was a big one for us. In addition you can now also get the BlackBerry 10 CB App.

Tablet & Mobile

We wanted the new site to look really good on both mobile and tablet but it also had to load fast. We're trying something new out on mobile which we're curious to get your feedback on - the navigation sits in a sidebar that appears on click. On tablets we hide the sidebar completely - it's a great reading experience and you can still get to everything you need.

Lastly...

Finally, one night before go-live date I'm chatting with Kevin when he starts speaking from the heart:

I really hope you all enjoy the new site. We have great plans for it in the coming month and would love to get your feedback. Leave your thoughts below but please put bug fixes and recommendations into this super great forum thread so we can more easily keep track of them.

Topics: BlackBerry 10 Editorial Site Stuff

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154 comments

Sam Sabri

This is gorgeous. Great job guys!

acegi1983

Love the site. Looks great!!!

Plazmic Flame

I'm in love with the mobile site!!! Viewing it from my iPhone was such a pain. Having to scroll from side to side just to read a line of text. Now?! Oooooh man, lots of hours will be lost browsing through CrackBerry!

Also, that convo with Kevin on BBM is hilarious! Haha!

cletis

That makes one of us. I guess older BB browsers were left out of consideration as too old to care about; my 9550 displays the site on only the left-hand 50% of the screen. Bummer to be a years-long BB owner and evangelist and feel discounted.

acegi1983

Love the site. Looks great!!!

Brecht Ryckaert

Great job guys. You should get bonusses! Best new design for a techblog I've seen in a while...

cesarpq

hahahahaha kevin its right... its like the crackberry we all want *_*... great job you guys... the site just look awesome... cant wait to see everything its comming... crackberry 10 FTW

ddlax22

great work guys. it really is amazing, modern and fluid. hitting topics is addicting..

Michelle Haag

Great job everyone! CrackBerry continues to grow and evolve every year, and this is a huge milestone. I look forward to many more years with the #1 BlackBerry site in the world!!

BGK

Looks pretty nice, looking forward to everything.

Scooter68

Looks good. Where's the HUB again?

Rock and Roll this...

Bold9930trooper

I am liking the site big time. I was also going through withdrawls. Way to go CrackBerry.

amp323

Beautiful new design :D Keep up the great work!!!

AVPTI

Definitely some big changes...but those changes are awesome.

Good job to everyone who played a role in making this redesign this amazing!

SlcCorrado

It says there is an option to view the blogs "old-style," can someone tell me where that option is please? Thanks guys

pepe241185

very nice guys .... great design .....

cbvinh

I spent most of the day in the Forums and recently decided to check to see if the new site was up yet by clicking on the logo... wow... gorgeous! Bravo!

diegonei

I'm surprised. I expected it to be good, but not this good.

I am having issues accessing it on my PB and 9780 though. But no problems on the laptop.

Wow. Relly wow. Impressive work.

DWPGQ

I also cannot access the site with my playbook. Have the latest OS, did a reboot, and still no access to the site. All other sites that I usually visit do still work. Very odd.

Anyone have a fix yet?

dannyd86

Mobile site is good as gold. Thats where Ill spend most of my time. But great all around. A desktop/mobile site/ and mobile app experience like no other. Seriously whats better. Youtube, google, ebay, netflix. They could all learn from the crackberry team.

AidenSurvival

:G OH MY GOD.

CAN'T CONTAIN HOW MUCH I'VE LONGED FOR AN UPDATE TO THE SITE DESIGN!!! YEARS and it's finally...sexy. :D

CarBob

Just love the new site, Team CrackBerry. I know how much hard work is involved in creating a NEW site.

Am looking forward to coming back every day and checking things out.

KEEP ON CRACKING !!!

jgpatricio

Been cruising around the site and it's looking awesome!!! You guys are doing a kick ass jobs with all the updates:)

4abetterworld

Absolutely a fantastic job! Well done. I can believe how great it looks. Might be one of the best designed sites I've ever been to...

Proudly sent from my brand new Z10!!

Marcus Adolfsson

First test from the CB10 App on the new design, let's hope it works!

Posted via CB10

Titoeuf

Take that AndroidCentral and iMore!
BlackBerry fans now have the most beautiful fan site of all!

Seriously, great job guys, I'm even more proud to be a BlackBerry fan now!

David Lundblad

Fantastic to get such great feedback. We really appreciate it. We seem to have finally solved our server issues

el_excelsior

Thanks for all your hard work!

AjaxMilanBarcaSC

Looks very swanky! I especially love the high-res pictures and the new font.

jmm1990ca

Overall like it, but it's a pet peeve when I can't cmd click to open articles in a new tab.

Edit: This only happened under one of the topics. Homepage seems fine.

Kanibe

Here, my first post. The design is beautiful. Thanks.

BBOttawa

It seems a bit unfinished, kinda like BB10, but still cool. Not loving the white background on the main story list on the right. And the whole site seems narrower than before, though that may be an optical illusion by the chosen colors, I'm running 1920x1200 and it seems very narrow.

Also not sure how many will know to click on the Topics dynamic drop down list thing to see where to go, it's kind of hidden for a newbie, and not a big fan of those drop downs in general, though they seem well implemented here.

Just nitpicking, but know you guys want feedback so there it is.

Mel25

Gotta grow on me but good job guys.

BB_Bmore

VEry glitchy on mobile lagacy OS but the site looks incredible. Obviously a ton of thought and work went into this. Congrats on a job well done. Looking forward to getting the hang of things.

bizzyqu

Great looking site, really impressed. I feel like every time a blog does a redesign it gets over done and just becomes a mess (N4BB and Gizmodo are good examples). CrackBerry hit it out of the park with this one.

maitot

I love the new layout. Great job!

DocDRM

Truthfully I'm blown away. Looks almost as good as it could from a first impression - just needs more breasts (bigger font on the breasts please).

PostMortem

Very nice, can't wait for the PlayBook BB10 update. The Site doesn't perform as well on it now. Visually stunning though, the back to top shortcut was a great idea!

Spinnaz370

Lovin' the design. Great work!

Thunderbuck

It's spectacular, at least from what I've seen so far. The overall design scheme is clean and exciting (though advertising might be a little better integrated).

What I particularly like: it has a very BB10 kind of feel to it. Not too literally, but it definitely seems to inform the design ethic. Well worth the wait!

caseylai

Is it possible to move the left pane to the right, it could be kind of distracting while reading the blogs.

Or could it be made an options to hide it?

luv4berrycrack

Love this new layout. Great work Guys. Love the new side bar. When my crackberry dodge article got posted it got lost in less than half a day because of all the content going up. Absolutely loving this new set up. Comments do look great too.

Nickstarmaster

Terrible, a site is suposed to give information on the most efficient way possible(in teory), but this one... Jesus it simply sucks, also works like crap on the PlayBook.
For today only forums for me, you know, you could let an option for choosing between the new design and the old one.
-1

DJRikko

Love it! But I still can't comment from the CB10 app!!!

Marcus Adolfsson

The new app will go live in App World tomorrow.

Posted via CB10

jvictor77

A lot of hard work which has obviously paid off. Well done - and thanks guys!

red2wu

YES!!! My #1 comment in the "just a little bit longer" is shown. Woot!!!

Oh, and I love how the comment box is up top. No more scrolling down forever on the playbook to leave a comment.

SDTRMG

Gotta say I like the new design, with take alittle getting used to.

psarna

Great job! kudos to the design and tech team!

MidnightWatcher

Looks great, but I'm not overly fond of news section. I preferred the quick blurb after the title, but now it's just a news title, then another news title, and another news title, etc.

Kevin Michaluk

Not true... you can get that view!

At the top of the news feed, there's a button on the right. Tap that and it will take you to the standard blog view.

http://crackberry.com/content/blog-view

djdnz

I didn't even notice this button before you mentioned it.

sk8er_tor

Great feature! Can you have it so that the site remembers our choice for future visits?

Pam Pam Naraidoo

Looks great very good job you guys are crazy and insane for getting it done in the time frame. Thanks for everything and good job again you guys

TheMacDaddyTJ

Am I the only one who DOESN'T have stars in his eyes for everything the Crackberry teams puts up on the screen? I hate to sound so negative because as a web producer myself I know a lot of work goes into just an initial design, and a complete overhaul is an even bigger undertaking. So congrats on that. But....geez man, this new site is jacked.
1. On a positive note you made it look more serious/sophisticated without looking corporate and stuffy or less fun. Cheers for that. Not an easy balance to strike.
2. Nice visuals and integration of visual modules and elements. You made nice color selection choices too. Probably my favorite thing about the redesign. Color selection is everything!
3. Nice typography choices, and the thought that seems to have gone into the function of the modules is...interesting. More good than bad.
4. But the design scheme and architecture/layout is a freakin nightmare. If you need to EXPLAIN the design/re-design of a site...the design is a failure. And the new design totally needed an article to explain it.
5. I don't understand the logic of taking the star of the show (news articles) and relegating them to a single column on the left, with less important fluff on the right taking up 2/3 of the screen real estate. Seems backwards to me. Unless you've determined that your market is more interested in the fluff than the substance. My opinion: Blackberry fans are 90% about substance and 10% about fluff. But you know your market better than I do. I'm just saying it seems drop dead backwards to me.
6. Site maneuvering and navigation is clunky. Like somebody designed it using a Geocities interface and went hog wild with tables. It loads like crap on my iPad3. I'm scared to try it on my Playbook.
7. Screen is way overpopulated. I mean holy sh-t!!! It's visually overwhelming with no space for the eye to "rest" so to speak. Like getting shouted at by 28 drunk lunatics all at the same time and you're not sure which one to pay attention to, because you can't make out which one is telling you the more important thing. But you recognize they're at least dressed well (design elements)
Again, I don't mean to crap all over everybody's hard work, and I recognize that this was a lot of work, a lot of time, and a lot of love went into it. And all of that is admirable. But giving you my own opinion as a web producer, this site has officially gone insane. Hopefully you refine it on the quick. Personally I hate having to look at it now; even despite the great color choices and typography. Everybody else seems to like it. That's great. God bless 'em. But frankly your fans would probably love for Crackberry Kevin to vomit all over their screens, and they'd think it's the greatest thing since the Mona Lisa. Not to say the fans are "dumb"...not saying that at all. Blackberry fans are the last geniuses left on earth. I just think sometimes people tend to be a little TOO supportive. I'm a supporter of you guys. But my support doesn't make me blind.
I will now wait for the haters to throw stones at me. But be aware, I throw back. Hard.

Kevin Michaluk

Thanks for the detailed feedback. Couple quick thoughts from me, as I know our David (Design Director) will probably be the one to address your lengthy comment.... 

1. I feel like you missed the fact we still have the traditional blog view available to people. At the top of the news feed, hit the little toggle button. You'll end up here: http://crackberry.com/content/blog-view   That's like the old CB for people who want the big news feed. Easy peasy.  We are going to change up those buttons to make them a little more discoverable.

2. Re: The Design Article. That wasn't **needed** but we did it for folks like you. :) 

3. Even our own Derek Kessler (@dkdsgn) is loving this redesign... and he HATES EVERYTHING. Seriously, I'm not sure he's liked any new change we've made on our sites in the last four years. So for him to say that he loves it. Well, that just means any other negative comments we see we're just not going to get to worked up about. We usually get a lot of push back on changes we roll out - so far this is far and away most positive reception we have seen to a site upgrade ever. #PUREWIN

4. We're not done yet. We already have a 8 week road map planned out of further tweaks and refinements. And we're of course going to take into account the feedback of our users and community members. If we find over time there are things that don't work, we'll change them up. If there are things that are good, but can be better, we'll change those up too. Nothing is set in stone. However, I do like when suggestions are provided in a positive manner and not in a silly ranty way. No hateration, man.

Thanks again for the feedback!

rgshah3

No mobile forum website anymore?? We need the mobile foum website

Kevin Michaluk

Yep, it's there: http://m.forums.crackberry.com We still have some tweaks to make on mobile detection and redirection on the new site. If you run into issues: http://m.crackberry.com - mobile site http://m.forums.crackberry.com - mobile forum

crazeee4u

awesome!! I signed on and was watching BB Canada, glanced back over to see what new articles were up and I got this shock haha! Love it :D Great job guys!

AjaxMilanBarcaSC

When you hit reply to a person that had the last comment it is a bit confusing as to which input text box is for the reply to the person and which is just to add your comment. Not sure if you guys noticed that.

blakobecwa

Well done Crackberry!!! AMAZING REVAMP!

obaquerizo

I'm using my 99 now for the first look of the page love it, I will keep seeing it with my tablet and computer and the mobile view, great work nail it, ALSO LOVING the ORANGE!!!!! I'm using it on my stuff too

nemogamo

Great job & perfectly executed... Well done !!

Easy-G

I'm generally resistant when it comes to changes in a format I'm accustomed to - Facebook growing pains as an example. However, I'm immediately welcoming of this new format. Good stuff!

Mr Gill

Wow props to the team, it looks absolutely amazing!

DragonFlyer

Very Impressive! Keep up the great work. CrackBerry Forever!

shiera99

Truly loving the new design. Great job!

sandra_17

Overall I like it, tho will take some getting used to.

A few comments:
- I too use 1920 x 1200 and it seems that the site takes up only about half the total screen space. Would love if it "stretched" to fit.
- I have a Samsung Note 10.1 tablet where of course it "fills" the screen - but the desktop version on that is much easier to read as well.
- I can't log in on the tablet unless I disable Adblock in Firefox (prob nothing to do w/CB)
- Mobile site looks good on my 9930 (haven't tried on my work phone yet - 9650)
- One thing I really hope changes is that once reading an article, the font on the left column is white on dark grey - really hard on my eyes.

Kevin Michaluk

RE: your request for a BIGGER desktop site. Yes, that's coming - it's something I want too. We actually had that built (going from current site to super size in a dynamic fashion)... pulled it out for the re-launch just to keep things simpler (plus we still need to decide exactly how we want to treat the extra real estate), but it is coming. Give us a few weeks on that one :) 

red2wu

Go to sleep Kevin, what time is it there for you? 3am? You need sleep so that you can make the website load faster. I read that in the change log...

macspapa

it is BEAUTIFUL. Worth the wait. Great work CrackBerry Team.

00stryder

Looking great, good job guys!

mithrazor

Wow this redesign is AWESOME! This really blew me away. Good job guys.

But one thing, is there a way to switch the utility bar on the article page from the left to the right? It makes it easier to know where the article starts. Higher chances of someone reading it?

jimmychen17

Excellent site. Except it seems a bit slower than the previous one in terms of loading

macallik

Overall I like the new design. I can only imagine it getting better with tweaks. #CrackBerry #BlackBerry10

mobius1127

Sweet!!!
"I'm so excited and I just can't hide it
I'm about to lose control and I think I like it..."
Pointer Sisters

martijn44

Congrats on the new site! Really dig the typography in the articles. Fresh colors as well. Not so sure about the 'hot stories' bit on the frontpage though.. looks unfinished. Nevertheless a great improvement!

etumang

Loving the new design and feeling such a great buzz around here! Hats off to you guys, well done!

rSaad1784

The redesign looks great, and it couldn't have come at a better time. However, one thing to note: the homepage is very cluttered. There is way too much going on - try to simplify this by putting less content in each section. Right now there are 3-4 different categories of things going on within one horizontal (left to right) section of the layout. With the redesign the articles have been reduced to small links; whereas, the main focus of the design should be your articles (which are your forte).

Remember, "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication".
#teamblackberry

PiotrJot

I love the new look! Just need to get used to it :-)
And BTW Kevin, does it mean that you plan on another version with more breasts ? :-D

Alooi Divona

it's great with awesome looking ,, but i prefer using the old one :P

I'll try to get used to it if not I'm switching the old one xP

omega supreme

Well i'll start by saying it looks cleaner but that's about it... I tend to be mostly on my playbook and compared to the old look this is a lot worse... 1st, it now takes a good 12-17 sec. for the blue "loading" bar to finish loading which means you get checkerbording up and down the whole site...the old site didn't take this long.... Not to mention this long loading happens anywhere you click so it could literally take you close to a minute to get to and read 1 article...

I liked having the latest news right on the home page BIG with a brief (sometimes full) text that would determine whether or not i want to continue reading or comment on the article... The new site "explained" claims there is a way to go back to the old style but i don't see anywhere to do that.... I will probably repeat this if there is a forum for it in here since my comment will soon be buried under several pages with no easy way of finding it (a feature that's in the forums but not here??)...

Also, as i type this and wanting to make a correction or two, i can't get the cursor on the playbook to hone in on a particular spot. It literally stalled and jumped from one spot to the next...(never happened before)...not sure if this is considered a bug or not....i just noticed something else in here.... All comments look blurry unless you pinch and zoom...they didn't before.

David Lundblad

Do you still have the same problem with the Playbook?

Also, check the switch on the homepage in the left-hand corner - we left a traditional blog view there for our old users who prefer that (and maybe new too!?)

djdnz

The button is hard to find. It looks like a black square with white lines in it for reference to anyone looking for it. It's the button immediately above the article name column.

Rootbrian

Looking ultra bloody sharp!! :D
Great explanation and editorial!

csantoss

I have only looked at the mobile site and it looks beautiful. I'll append this when I see it on my Playbook and Desktop. Quick comment: for some reason the article was "flickering" on my 9900 as if it was refreshing every few minutes. May be a bug you would want to check out. Other than that, excellent job!!!

shleigha

this goes over my head but its coool!!!!

potatoguy

Congrats on the new awesome site!! Looks great!!

LiLAzNNewB

This site looks amazingg! :)

JAGWIRE

Great job CB team!

The site looks great and is a huge improvement on the old site. For some reason the old site never felt very...idk Berry-ish but this site is 100% BlackBerry. Havnt had the chance to check out the Mobile or Tablet site yet but when I do I'll be sure to let you guys know about them too.

As always thanks for all the news and information CB team you guys rock!!

-Jagwire

msps

Colours, typography etc but I just can't stand reading from right to left.

Is the design team from Middle East?
Why the heck the main column is on the right,
and less important stuff eg available accessories or related stories on the left??

What's next, log in box bottom left corner, vertical address bar?

talberry

The new site looks amazing!
Great job guys!

ltlowe

Unfortunately I find the new site almost unusable on my playbook. Very slow page loading ... Since I'm on my playbook now that's all I have to say.

ltlowe

How do I edit ? I used the edit link on my original post (using chrome this time) and editted the comment, but then I was unable to actually get it to commit the edit. Anyhow, here are my additional comments that I was trying to add to my original post:

I've now had a chance to look at the site from a pc using chrome, and it's snappy, and clean. Very "modern" :-)

The problem I have is that I tend to read crackberry from my playbook more often than from my desktop, and it's unusable. As I noted above, pages are very slow loading, but also:
- links are problematic - I tried to tap a link to a forum article, and there was no indication that it was even a link, nothing, so I tapped a few more times. Eventually decided it wasn't a link, and then noticed a bunch of tabs had opened in the playbook browser - but the feedback was bad.
- on this article, the two slideshows didn't load, they just showed as large black spaces.
- on the main page, I find the borders too large for the playbook. I'd like to have the tablet site borderless to allow the content to fill the width of the smaller screen.

I was on t.crackberry.com when viewing from the playbook.

David Lundblad

Thanks for your feedback - fixing the Playbook is a priority for us. It seems to be working fine for some people (and for us too annoyingly) so we're working hard trying to replicate the issues so we can fix them

ltlowe

Things seem to be working better for me now. Hopefully you actually did something and it didn't magically get better :-)

The main page is a lot faster. I think this feedback section is as well, but it's still slow. If I can use the main page and the forums reasonably, that's good for me. Btw I changed to the blog style for the main page.

I still find the wide borders when viewing portrait mode on the playbook to be annoying, but if the performance is ok, I won't complain too much about the layout.

MOE BEATs

Way to step it up people! Clean...

asd216

Looks good! I think Phil over at android central needs to hire your design team! It's looking a bit stale.

naviwilliams

Nicely done everyone...

Frehley

Hi, the desktop site looks great. However viewing the mobile site on a 9900 is not that great. The default view of the forums requires me to scroll side to side. If I "double tap" the screen, it resizes to fit within the screen width, but the text is so small it's almost unreadable. Is there something that I am missing?

Thanks!

rider997

Brief comments:
It is eminently annoying not to be able to cmd-click on a link to open it in a new tab! Please fix this...

The CB articles/blog entries should be more prominent on the main page rather than being relegated to a tiny monochromatic column on the left that requires scrolling to even find if on a small screen- the content you create is what sets CB apart from the "other" BB sites.

David Lundblad

We're on it. I use that feature too so it WILL be fixed. Remember you can still use to old blog view by hitting the switch on the top left next to 'News'

D.Vader

Guys the site looks really good! Very sharp design! I think the title font is a little big and the area there near the title with the author name looks like it could be better utilized.

Prince_Poppycock

Great job on the new site design!

ylsf

My initial gut reaction was "wow, so much going on, this is nuts"

When I clicked on "show all news stories" button it didn't show them all, the top result was the Alicia Keys contest but nothing else showed up. Is there a difference between a "news story" and a "blog post"?

I will stick to the older view for now, but, even then, the side bar takes up a lot of real estate.

If I had come to your site for the first time after this re-design I probably wouldn't have given it much time to be honest. I was shocked to see so many people saying that they love it, maybe they are checking out the site on mobile devices/tablets, but, on a desktop/browser experience I am not too impressed.

stabstabdie

I can't find the easter egg :(

Kevin Michaluk

OUR COMMUNITY      CAN HELP YOU     W/ YOUR ADDICTION!

mkye86

hmm not what I was expecting but cool I guess.
lol

stabstabdie

LOL I noticed that but I never thought that it was the Easter Egg!
I was looking for a hidden link or something! Good one!
BTW I LOOOOOVE that my/staff posts are highlighted blue. I always love to hear what the staff has to say to us, but hated wading through a lot of pointless posts (which I am also guilty of posting)

mkye86

Where's the Easter Egg!!

The new design is super nice btw. Thank you for building a better mobile experience. Seriously, I never understood why a blackberry site had such a poor browsing experience on "BlackBerries" lol. Awesome job guys!

FRoStYisGoD

Liking the new orange as the logo as well as the font and the font style or should I say typography or w/e haha. But other then that it's ok not bad. Good thing u fixed the most important thing which was the font, the old one was ugly

mandm1229

Looks great. Cant wait to explore it all. Great job guys!

sauron4

Liking the design of the new site and the mobile version looks great as well.

Posted via CB10

Mathrin

I will have to read it later. The page is constantly blinking/resettling on my 9900. So far, the new CrackBerry for mobile is a big fail in my eyes.

Would like an option to go back to the old set up where I don't get a headache trying to read an article.

David Lundblad

Is the problem still there for you? Can you check if your mobile is loading m.crackberry.com?

kuppyr

I am having this issue as well, every time i go to crackberry,com on my 9930 is loads and then crashes. The browser actually closes and restarts. it shows http://m.crackberry.com by the url

ReigerZA

It is articles like this that really makes you think of just how much work goes into web designing just from a "surface" point of view, not even to think of all the coding that's going on underneath. You guys did a superb job.

Many congrats and loving it!!

SaltySnack

Great job guys!

Z10 is Epic

wickednoize

This is awesomesauce. Good job guys! <3

pmich

Can i ask a dumb question... how come all websites look identical now? They all seem to have the same font and use the same headers. Is this a new template that sites use? It's quite odd.

volvospeed23

crackberry for crack heads or crapberry for morons?

Francis Pavolko

Nice! Nice! Much easier to see what is happening on the site with a quick glance. Easy to navigate and a great look overall. I like it!

Furyia

Can't say it enough. Truly an amazing job. :-)

nt300

Had some major issues with opening pages and screen freeze ups on my work PC, home desktop, laptop and Playbook. As of late you must have fixed something because now it opens and responds great on my Laptop. The new site looks amazing, good job.

Driftdreams

Any update on the PlayBook app

mkmilan

Sorry guys, but site is overwrought on my Playbook and beyond a disaster on my 9900!!! The old design adage- Architect here- less is more still holds true. I will take understated, simple and snappy vs pretty, top heavy overkill anytime: at least for just surfing the Web .
i.e. How many times on page do I need to find out the boss is now a Canadian, and explain the difference between trending, new and top 10 on th same page.... Simply exhausting!

David Lundblad

We're aware of the Playbook issues and are working on them. You make a good point on the issue of stories repeating - that is something we will tackle in the next update.

Remember you can still switch to the classic blog view too.

mkmilan

Posted below: hitting any forum links on PB takes you to forum home page, NOT the titled thread

decypher44

Does NOT work well on all devices. Terrible on my 9930.

Mikey Gardner

I love the updates done to the cb10 app I'm loving it!

Posted on my Z10

kill_9

Congratulations on the the CrackBerry 10 redesign! Its appearance conveys a level of professionalism lacking in the older website and forums. Now please continue improving the CB10 app so we can comment on blog articles, upload images for messages in the forum, and address the duplicate postings within a thread when refreshing the page within CB10. Again CrackBerry 10 look great and displays much more smoothly.

drcrane

I absolutey love the CB10 app, the mobile site is reasonable, the desktop site no thanks! Not positive on the desktop design at all, sorry ...

In order to read the site I now have to scroll down really slow, read left to right, up down. Different sections are starting all over the place, I can't scroll past sections of the page without looking left and right because all sorts of things are starting/ending in random places.

The multicoloured background is distracting, white or off-white please.

I counted 150 http requests to load the homepage, spread across 38 unique domain names. Either of 2 reactions can happen here when a person isn't on a superfast connection - throw monitor out the window or head back to google.

I honestly had a knot in my stomach as my brain tried to comprehend what I was seeing and resist seizure. I would highly suggest clean and simple design (Google?) with logically organized sections rather than trying to have links to everything on a single page.

Hopefully it doesn't sound like I'm bashing too much, I think it needs to be said. I enjoy your site, the forums but this busy design will drive all but the die-hards away.

EchuOkan1

I like it. I love that it loads faster than the old page. Great job. Keep up the good job CB team!

TheRealRoland

what's up with the font? On an XP/IE combination the main article font looks like a very unfinished / uneven font. The font used on the comments is a bit better, but still looks uneven. Difficult to describe i guess without a screenshot, i guess. This is on 1366x768 (yeah, the standard resolution of corporate laptops nowadays).

That same resolution kills your front page - with the three large images at the top, and the ad banner directly underneath, you don't see any of the main content 'above the fold'. I see that as a design fail... But, it all depends on what resolutions you decided to mainly support :-/

At least i bookmarked my blog view url. Can't believe that's not a default / saveable setting...

David Lundblad

Once you have selected Blog View it should always load when you go to crackberry.com. If this is not working for you please let us know what browser and OS you are on so we can fix it. Also, it may be that the Blog view is desirable to people like yourself (and myself incidentally) we have many different stakeholders to consider. One of our main challenges was that content had a very short shelf-life so we needed a solution for this. In my estimates the homepage is at 30% of what our vision for it is so expect some major changes that might make you change your mind.

mkmilan

Ok: on PB, hitting links to ANY forum item takes you to forum home page, NOT the thread!!!!

pandapurple

Thank you for this! Am a 2 day old X10 owner and this app is just brilliant for folks like me who need to work our way through setting up our new phones the way we want and also get the latest Z10 news.

Posted via CB10

The London Geezer

I'd have thought that the website would have been formatted to work perfectly with hi-res computer screens...

David Lundblad

it's coming - we left it out for launch because we did not feel we had a good strategy in place for it yet and did not want to do it half-arsed

Residing

Obviously, the team put in the effort to change the website, but I find it to be a cluttered mess, and NOT inviting AT ALL.

While I previously visited the site, sparingly, to read some decent articles, thankfully, I don't have to visit this site; so I won't be dropping by as often, if at all.

Crackberry addicts surely appreciate your efforts :)

D.Vader

Are you guys using WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or something custom?