Im not saying the new design is best i have seen, but it maximizes screen for desktops/laptops/ and altough it is different and new to even my eyes I can say it is not bad.

I feel as a whole it looks like with some tweaks and minor adjustments it could be a great site.

To the ones who say its bad: Most likely you browsed the web a lot in the early 90's, I am sorry for that.

First, the site looks great. I can definitely notice the drop down menus and the cleaner bottom half of the page.

The only thing that I have left to comment on is the fact that the most popular links are only distinguishable by font size, making the section look kind of jumbled depending on the links it contains.

Hello, Not a bad site. I like it. That sad, I will say one thing I don't care for: I REALLY don't like how "undergraduate" is bigger text than "graduate," and so forth. A few reasons:

1) From a design and formatting perspective, it looks extremely elementary;
2) It makes me wonder whether Ohio State values undergrads more than their grads. I know that sounds trite, but considering the large amount of people who will visit this site daily, I don't think it's too far out there to say that.

I hope that the strange font size is just a bizarre error on my browser, because it's neither navigational nor tactful.

Thanks for all the hard work you do!

I like the clearly organized new site; however, I wish the new site would maintain the "current student" sections ease of facilitation. When I checked out the new site's "current student" section, it was jumbled, and the "most popular link" section was the only place I was able to find the commonly used links such as: view grades, class schedule, etc; they all were not there, however.

I think it is very bland. I think this website is well organized. I had a hard time of looking at everything and trying to navigate around the site. I do not see any color which hurts my eyes. The pre-web page almost blinds me because it is so white.

From what I saw of the new site... which wasn't much, the front page was extremely scattered. I couldn't tell what link belonged to which type of function and what department it would lead me to. I hope that the scattered links is a temporary thing. The current OSU site is confusing enough. Considering the previous sentence, please consider this, I AM A SENIOR at OSU-Newark who has used OSU.EDU for EVERYTHING. I really dislike Newark's page because it is MORE confusing. PLEASE do not make OSU.EDU more confusing than it currently is. Please compartmentalize as much as possible. Please pay attention to these comments, they will help so much in compiling what should go where. Thanks for all that you're doing!

Just try it out for awhile and see what comments you get. I'm betting that it will make the site "pop" with OSU glory. And if not, I'm sure we will let you know. Also, on the new homepage there is this random light gray space between the boxes. I would advise making that uniform and all white, instead of an odd shape. I like how a bit more scarlet has been added when we roll over the links, but I don't think it is enough. Like I said, a nice scarlet background, or even a border would do!

I was just commenting on the new OSU web layout and I love it. I especially like the "Vistors" part, since it includes a great tour of the campus. Beautiful photos!

I did notice, however, that photo #6 is mismarked. It is of Morritz, yet the caption says "Orton Hall Detail". You might want to fix that! :-)

Again, great layout!

my overall opinion of the new site is..."meh". i don't like it, but i don't wholly dislike it either. that being said, i think its harder to navigate through that the regular site now. the fonts look silly with some being larger than other, and it looks sloppy. nice job though, its nice to see people changing it up once in awhile.

Needs more work on the table subtitles and greater color contrast overall.

I appreciate the cleaner look, but it looks so bland and boring. It serves a very functional purpose, but I think I will be less likely to check out Ohio State news because nothing is attracting me do so.

I agree with someone earlier.. I know that many websites use the differentiated text size in its most popular links, but I dislike that...a lot. As a web designer myself, I think it looks tacky and there are better ways to present those. At the very least, just make each phrase the same font.

For the headlines, such as the current..."Achoo", "Buckeyes in Beijing", and the "How I got to OSU", there is a gray title bar, which is below the picture... i think it would be better suited if that title bar was above the picture... it would make it easier to understand what those are meant to be. It does help to separate the top half from the bottom half of osu.edu. Suggestion- put the other two lesser-main headlines in the same position beside the news and events boxes. Then slide the Most Popular Links.

I do like the drop down menu's. Very nice.

I think the "On Campus" "Across the State" "Image of the Day" and "O-H-I-O" should be separated with the small slivers of gray like it is above the fold.

Overall, this site is great and is much easier to use than the current osu.edu

Well... Welcome to the 21st century with those pull-downs. Other than that, I think you must have spent countless hours trying to make an already horrible webpage that much worse. When I first got to OSU in 2004 I thought that one of my dormmate's was playing a joke on me when I pulled up ose.edu. It is not easy to navigate, nothing is organized or compartmentalized. Much more effort is put into advertising for the University then helping current students get the information they need in a quick and effecient manner. And now it is worse. Anyone who is looking at the preview needs to look at the current students preview because that is an absolute disaster. OSU gets an A+ for maintaining consistency, however. Once you get accepted, they make it very clear that you are on your own, and they are only going to make the ardous task of completing a college education more difficult and time consuming.

I commented last time, and this time I have to say you're moving in the right direction. But there are still a few things.

The new norm in Web 2.0 is that websites are resizable, not fixed size.

The drop-down menus are great.

The advertisement needs to be smaller or non-existant.

More color - I know the new norm is to keep things from being to bright and too hard on the eyes, but this website shows NO buckeye spirit. Just what it means to advertise for the school. I disagree with others when they say to make the background scarlet. That would be a disaster. Perhaps an 65-70% transparent diagonal scarlet and gray stripes are in order. Going from the top left to bottom right, left of the screen to top. Probably at about a 45 degree angle.

Most popular links still has to go. Make it a numbered ul with the same font size or just get rid of it.

I think that due to other individuals possibly having your e-mail password there should be a "last login" date and time that appears on the e-mail page once you login. This would help with security issues and private information would not be displayed to untrustworthy individuals. Its just another way to keep private information private and to manage your account more accurately.

I understand you're trying something new with the text size for the most searched terms, but I agree with those before me - it doesn't work.

The different font sizes leave the page looking unprofessional and confusing. For the sake of the university's image (not to mention ease of use), I highly recommend revising this feature.

Also, I would recommend a border or more color. The page is just too white & boring!

I guess I'm missing the "The Ohio State University" homepage link on the top left-hand corner in the scarlet background and the Webmail, Find people, Campus map, and Help tabs in the right-hand corner in grey.

Apart from that it seems like a sensible progression, even though the old site is familiar and has been around for a while. Good work! Please change or update the new site often (maybe yearly) so that we do not get attached to the older one!

I think the new idea for osu.edu is boring to look at. The current homepage has lots of SCARLET and GREY, which is very important part to our tradition. I do not find the current osu.edu hard to navigate so to change it around a lot would make it difficult for those of us that are used to it now.

...and then there will be no need to clutter up the home page as you have done.

For example...improve the pull-down menu under "Academics." A student or prospective student should be able to link directly to Colleges & Schools (find the English Department, for example) without having to click academics and then search for colleges and schools, OR scroll down a page full of mess to find the link. PUT IT UP TOP where it's EASY to find.

It's better than what exists now, but there is still room for improvement. Some suggestions:

1) Add more color either to the background or the tabs
2) Make the navigation more user-friendly.
2a) Establish information in ONE place only. I've noticed that the same info can be found in multiple places (tabs, links, pages. Compartmentalize everything - clearly.
2b) Use less text and more icons and/or bulleted info. (Example that is very user-friendly is the "Faculty/Staff" --> "Benefits" page).
3) Highlight more relevant information. For example, as a new school year is approaching, info for incoming students and new instructors/staff should be more prominent - rather than an article, research study, etc. that has less appeal to the greater audience.
4) Is it possible to make the entire website look more like the bottom half? that is much more visually appealing and clearly categorized than the top half.
Glad to see there are updates being made. Hope it will continue to evolve in future phases to make it even better.

I think the new website is a more organized. I love the design and I can see everything easier, along with many other parents and students. =)

VERY NICE!

Apparently everyone's a designer. I think the redesign is great and shows a definite improvement over the previous version. Trying to craft a home page for a university site that holds a ton of content and serves numerous audiences is a huge challenge. The (harsh) comments on this blog just offer more proof that you can't please everyone and change is often feared. Most of the people who like the redesign probably don't take the time to comment, so it's hard to gauge the positives.

The beauty of the Web is that it's a constant work in progress and I'm glad to see some are offering constructive feedback. It takes advantage of larger screen resolutions and has a cleaner look and feel. I like the tag clouds - might try that myself (though I understand the confusion about it).

Keep up the great work!

Hmm...good effort and direction, but it does look a bit bland. There seems to be a lot of very plain text scattered about. I really don't like the "popular links" section (the different font sizes in particular) and don't really find it too useful to begin with. It needs much, much more color. There's too much white, the pictures are all small, and the text itself is a bit bland. It needs to be simplified a bit more. There needs to be much less text and more visually appealing items (with lots of color). The navigation needs to be simplified as well. There's just so much information and words on the first page that it's overwhelming.

Not a huge fan- it will definitely take some getting used to. Do not like the "Most Popular Links" section at all. Why are all the links different in text size? Everything needs more consistency in organization, link order, and format.

The font seems a lot smaller and harder to read. The organization of the categories seems really bunched up. It will definately be a lot harder to find links in my opinion with the different font size.

Too graphical. All the varying font sizes make basic things harder to find. The older one at least had everything categorized in one place, in the same font/size, and not to mention showed up well on smaller screen-resolutions. I'm sure there will be a few people getting those EEE PCs who would appreciate not having to side-scroll to find things.

No need to link to social networking sites and Wikipedia. Social networking sites imply they are being used for advertisements, and who likes advertisers anymore? Wikipedia doesn't appreciate people or organizations making/editing pages about themselves, and they certainly wouldn't appreciate a bunch of people sticking biased (promotional) comments on their page after following links from institution's said home page.

I like the page overall, but I DO think it could use a little more Ohio State scarlet...

I do not like the new style. There are two many words and less graphics. The entire purpose of a website is for quick travel from page to page and not to slow down progress by getting lost in the detail of a website.

wow..now its looking like some professional site. Great design.