Oh dear. Hope this is just a trial a it looks shocking

Very slow load/render times on my work machine (around 4 seconds before the content appears). The old site is much faster, with the content up in less than a second.

Its hideous,

Its slow, has way to much white space, and the menu on the left just sucks up space,

it makes stuff.co.nz look amazing.....

Its just so inefficient as a new site, I mean currently if I go to it on a desktop machine ,  I can only see 5 or 6 stories without scrolling , On stuff I can see 5 or 6 stores, + 6 headlines with links, a similar number or "editors picks" and another 8-10 "most popular"

So NZ herald gives me 6 stories/links to tempt me to read further  Stuff gives me around 30.... workout which is the quickest page to browse when looking for a quick overview...

Since I never read the Herald I won't bother looking.

Utterly hideous. More issues on both desktop and mobile than I care to type about. The one thing I'll mention is auto-playing videos on the desktop version. GET OUT! 

Journeyman:

 

Utterly hideous. More issues on both desktop and mobile than I care to type about. The one thing I'll mention is auto-playing videos on the desktop version. GET OUT! 

 

It also cant format widescreen lol. Stuck in 4:3 with 1/3 of that taken up by the side bar.

Ugh, no 'Never Autoplay Video' option.

SaltyNZ:

 

Ugh, no 'Never Autoplay Video' option.

 

Argh, This is becoming annoying, especially when I tether via my phone whilst travelling.

 It's pretty hideous, particularly the huge black bar down the side.

However, the biggest problem remains the absence of actual news/journalism. No amount of website redesign can fix that.

SaltyNZ:

 

Ugh, no 'Never Autoplay Video' option.

 

That's annoying.

I had adblocker turned off as I try to play nice with bona fide New Zealand sites, as long as they treat users decently in return.

Herald is now joining Stuff.co.nz on the adblocker/flash blocker/ HTML5 blocker enabled lists on my PC.

Yep, despite auto play not being enabled every video auto plays. It's very intrusive.

The Herald probably thinks it's a smart thing to do.

I've got news for them, though in this case it's unlikely they'd publish it.

it's awful, because i use an ad blocker i dont see the adds but that doesn't stop having  big blank gaps with the word advertisement on it throughout the article,annoying, and why do you tell me how long the article will take to read , i dont care . Is it because you think i have the attention span of a gnat and wont read anything if its going to take to long.

Looks poor on a big desktop screen, with the big black left sidebar. Seems to be made more for mobile devices. Normally with modern websites, this would convert to a top menu bar on a desktop. Also it doesn't seem to want to complete loading

I am guessing they are getting ready for the paywall? Although apparently these news sites already have paywall systems in place to switch on at anytime. It just becomes matter of who blinks first. Although if the herald and stuff merge, I suspect one will be behind a paywall, and one not. Or it will be a freemium model, where you get a few free stories a day, and if you want more, you have to pay.