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Re: Slate V = V. Bad
by agoodspellr

My problems are more basic: I have a hard time reading it:

1. The cutesy titles are of no use (beyond atmosphere) compared to the short descriptions on regular Slate. Here the short descriptions are gone, so it's nearly impossible to tell what any video is about at a glance.

2. Hovering over the videos gives the short description, which is very tedious because I have to hover over each image, wait for the popup, and then read. It makes it impossible to scan for keywords that catch my interest, like I do on every other site. (Other sites get away with it, but they have descriptive headlines instead of cutesy ones. Slate has changed the purpose of the headline but not obviated the need for the information it traditionally provided. The atmosphere of cutesy headlines is nice and adds a cheeky atmosphere, but I rarely read them because they don't help me choose which articles to go to.)

3. The descriptions are in the smallest font possible (at least in Firefox). I have 25:20 vision (better than normal) and I'm straining to read them. I originally switched to RSS because the descriptions had become so small on Slate, and now they're even smaller. Sleek design is cool but unfortunately here it's not very functional. Gotta have the necessities before the frills.

4. RSS, please! I'm betting a large chunk of your readers use RSS because this is not their only news source. I just don't check sites that don't have RSS anymore. Some people do both, but adding RSS these days gives you access to a chunk of readers that you won't have otherwise. I'm guessing you just don't have it set up yet... hoping it's not a design decision.

5. Playing through to the next video is very handy so you don't have to constantly attend the computer. It would be nice if there were a button on the video player to skip to next so that you don't have to search through the videos on the right if you don't like a particular one.

I think you've tapped a great potential market here.

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