Petopia's new skinFollow

So if anyone has gone to petopia lately, they've probably noticed that it looks completely different. I've been holding back on asking about what everyone here thinks, because the owner of the site has a blog asking for suggestions, and I was hoping that she would make some changes based on the feedback.

Well, she hasn't done much, so now I'm wondering what everyone here thinks of the new site?

I'm really not a big fan of the new navigation. It seems as though she's putting way to much emphasis on the wrong things, and sort of hiding the links to get to the individual pet families by putting them into a drop down menu. Most of the time, when I'm at petopia, the list of pet families was my primary navigations, since I was usually dropping by to see what skills they could learn, and what pet had the highest rank.

As an information architect (web designer whose primary job is to think about a website's layout so you don't have to), I just think that she's requiring us to think too much about how to get to a list of pets. Don't get me wrong- thinking is a good thing in life, and none of us are too stupid to figure out where those links are. It's just that statistics show that if a user has to think about how to find something for more than just a few seconds, they're likely to go find another site. Sad, yes. True- very.

And as boring of a design the old petopia was- it just worked. It was easy to navigate and the information was clear as day.

Edited, Apr 19th 2008 3:03pm by ProjectMidnight

Well I started using Petopia very recently, so I didnt experience the former lay-out, I havent had any problems navigating through pet families or something tho. Worked fine for me.

I find the color scheme a little easier on the eyes.

It almost looks like the majority of the content has simply been set to a new CSS (Cascading Style Sheet).

Navigation is a little less intuitive.

I commend her for the update. The site has been an invaluable resource to me, as a hunter, since the day I first found it. It definitely looks fresher than it did before and more professional.

I guess I like the new look and will get used to the navigation in time.

I dont like the tigers and the colour is more of a hospital green, but the site works waaaaaay better now so i can live with it :)

I liked the old color scheme and artwork much better. I detest the current 'hospital green' theme. However the revamped menus are better.