Stuff website and that goofy animated purple "S"

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#3182932 17-Jan-2024 10:29

Behodar:

There's something amusing about an error that says nothing more than "Stuff keeps stopping"!

Yes, it did make me chuckle a bit.

djtOtago

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#3182933 17-Jan-2024 10:30

quickymart:

I guess the point I'm trying to make is the site was okay as it was. This just seems like change for the sake of change - make-busy work to keep someone in a job, ie, a website redesign that no one asked for.

Its much more than just a Visual design change.

For me the site loads faster, uses less memory and CPU cycles when page rendering and running the client side code. The site is "lighter" on PC and browser resources than the previous site.
I'm guessing there has been a complete rewite of the client side code.

quickymart

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#3182938 17-Jan-2024 11:00

For sure, just a pity it wasn't tested properly and thoroughly before it was rolled out. Couldn't they have made the changes you mentioned above without changing everything? At least it worked before.

Removing sections is a bit stupid though - I used to find some of the Technology articles interesting.

Technofreak

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#3182942 17-Jan-2024 11:09

Stuff is stuffed

Sony Xperia XA2 running Sailfish OS. https://sailfishos.org The true independent open source mobile OS
Samsung Galaxy Tab S6
Dell Inspiron 14z i5

MurrayM

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#3183005 17-Jan-2024 11:44

quickymart:

Not much good if you can't load the page for one thing, or the content you want (ie, the Technology section) isn't even there, though.

The Technology section used to be on the front page, then after a redesign it got removed from the front page and to access it you had to go through the menu. I bet that caused a big drop in visitors to it, so they've probably decided to remove it completely since no one was viewing it!

quickymart

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#3183007 17-Jan-2024 11:56

I must have had Stuff as my homepage for around 10-15 years now, but I think it's time to make a change. Either RNZ or TVNZ. Yes they don't look as "pretty" as Stuff's new homepage (which I guess is a matter of opinion) - but at least both of those pages are functional. There's no point having a homepage you can't even view, and I shouldn't have to load a different browser just to look at it, either - especially due to the fact that it worked perfectly fine before some clown decided to "improve" things.

Comments have been turned back on on that page and while there are a few positive responses it looks like most of the comments are overwhelmingly negative (a few commenting on the choice of colour scheme). Doesn't mean they'll listen, though.

MikeB4

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#3183074 17-Jan-2024 12:57

Safari on my Macs give me a full page solid purple. No text whatsoever. It works if I use Chrome.

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Eva888

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#3183090 17-Jan-2024 13:10

Opened Stuff using my safari browser on iPad and it worked perfectly, no fuzzy pictures and opened straight on to the home page. All very clear BUT, using the Brave browser, got a glimpse of the home page then a purple curtain covered it all within seconds and with a flashing S in the centre. Waited for ages and it continued, so that’s a total fail and won’t be opening it on Brave again.

MikeB4

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#3183096 17-Jan-2024 13:18

Eva888:

Opened Stuff using my safari browser on iPad and it worked perfectly, no fuzzy pictures and opened straight on to the home page. All very clear BUT, using the Brave browser, got a glimpse of the home page then a purple curtain covered it all within seconds and with a flashing S in the centre. Waited for ages and it continued, so that’s a total fail and won’t be opening it on Brave again.

I haven't tried it on my iPad Pro yet I shall give it a try.

boosacnoodle

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#3183111 17-Jan-2024 13:48

The cynic in me says that wanting to get their metrics up for the advertisers is why they force you to watch the S for 5 seconds each time you open your browser.

Simple really - multiply 5 seconds by a million view and thats an extra 5 million seconds of engagement before you bounce.

They can go back out to their ad clients and say we've had such positive engagement with the new website design: "We've seen an extra 5 million seconds of engagement! Please pay more to advertise on our website, thank you very much."

timmmay

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#3183114 17-Jan-2024 13:55

First time I loaded the new site it didn't work. A full reload worked. It's ok.

The new app doesn't load beyond the animated S. I suspect ad blocking dns is blocking an ad serving domain, and because of that the app won't load.

quickymart

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#3183153 17-Jan-2024 16:04

Well looks like they've closed off feedback comments. Apart from "we're working on fixing what's broken" that seems to be sum total of their feedback. Their justification of "we moved to a new tech stack and it was time for a refresh" seems fairly weak and not really much of a reason to give everything a do-over and remove what worked.

Looks like it's going to stay this crappy way forever, so therefore, farewell Stuff as my homepage for the last 15 years.

I wonder what will happen to their traffic levels after these "improvements"?

timmmay

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#3183161 17-Jan-2024 16:37

quickymart:

Looks like it's going to stay this crappy way forever, so therefore, farewell Stuff as my homepage for the last 15 years.

Stuff overhauls the look and feel of their website every few years.

quickymart

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#3183170 17-Jan-2024 17:10

Nothing as major as this though - and the last few times everything still worked.

cyril7

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#3183199 17-Jan-2024 18:34

Yep seems like what they have done is to foil DNS redirect blockers such as Pihole and others, I looked at selectively allowing some add sites blocked by our Piholes but they seem to have scattered the source servers quite wide.

So for me it's by by Stuff, and move off to RNZ news.

Cyril

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