Four months ago we were given an opportunity to preview the new design of MSN.com. I personally gave it the thumbs up because it was my opinion that the new design was modernized in all the right ways. The old design was very "Web 1.0" and I considered it good that it was ditched for something more streamlined and useful.
The new MSN.com design has now been deployed, and here are some of the comments from the linked article above (these are all PCMech readers):
This new MSN.com SUCKS!!!! How do I get the old back? I will never use this.. I will switch and never come back… get me back to the original version….
This new home page was thrust on me without my consent. I am trying to get a new email address so I don’t have to look at this ugly home page
This looks too much like it’s trying to be yahoo. and i have to go to new tabs and pages to see what i could of seen just on one page. i don’t think it’s a matter of people not being able to deal with change. i think it’s a matter of how convenient the old page was, everything i wanted to know was there on one page, most of the time i didn’t even have to scroll down.
With these absolutely horrendous changes I will be going elsewhere. Give me back the blue background where all the important headlines were right there for me to see.
Basically put, everybody hates it.
What are MSN.com’s two biggest mistakes with the new design?
- There is no option to get the site to revert back to how it used to look.
- There are no options to move things where you want them to be.
Yahoo.com for example does have the ability to "go retro". Without any requirement to sign in, on the top right of that site you can click Page Options and then Switch to compact view. In the same menu, you can click Move News on Top.
If the new MSN.com design had similar user options, I don’t think people would be nearly as vocal in their disapproval.
The only way to get an MSN.com looking the way you want now is to go to my.msn.com, login with a Hotmail account and then you get the options that matter. Boxes can be moved anywhere you want, content can be customized easily and it works out quite nicely.
I’m still of the opinion the new design of MSN.com is better than the old.
My question now is this:
Is there anyone out there that thinks the new design of MSN.com doesn’t suck (or is MSN.com now really that bad)?
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My mom has MSN as her homepage and she absolutely hates the new one for all the same reasons the people you quoted above said. I on the other hand, like it better. Honestly, I probably would have streamlined it a bit further. I think some of the sections could have been combined and oriented differently.
It certainly works better in widescreen proportions than the old site did.
It’s alright but I really couldn’t care when Google still exists..
“This looks too much like it’s trying to be Yahoo……”
Hah!
The mediocre emulating the mediocre.
I’ve never used MSN. com for anything.
Msn – never used it.
MMSN apparently thinks they know better than the user. I go to MSN mainly for Bing search, so it is fine with me, but I can see if people use more functions on the site they may be unhappy with it.
I had no idea that there was a new MSN until I happened upon these comments. I did a Google search for “MSN.com” that led me to my first view of the new look.
I did not take time to evaluate it, but it did not look too bad at first glance.
I have MSN Premium through Verizon. I contact the “old” version by way of “http://my.msn.com/default.aspx”
You might try that?
is there any way to get the old site back if so let me know thank you
Msn had a too happy interface for itself and I was between that and yahoo until of course gmail kicked in which shifted me to google. I don’t think it’s too bad yet a quick change does make people unhappy I suppose .
What I didn’t like was Microsoft not leaving an option “to try and use if you like, leave it if you don’t”. I would have liked to continue using the old and upgrade to the new UNDER MY conditions WHEN I wanted to. That was not the way to treat good customers.
I just returned from doing some clean-up work on a relative’s computer.
She complained about a new page coming up when she accessed Internet Explorer.
As mentioned in my previous comment, I did this:
Go to Internet Explorer >Tools>Internet Options>in the box “To create page tabs, type each address on thin line”>
Type “http://my.msn.com”(Do not type the Quotation Marks (“))>
Apply>
OK
The next time Internet Explorer was accessed, the old version of the page appeared.
Reference my previous comment: I have a typing error in
“in the box “To create page tabs, type each address on thin line”>”
“on thin line” should read “on its own line.”
Sorry about that!
what the hell!!! msn is great so just back away aye its not that bad it keeps our kids occupied aye… xx
The new MSN sucks..I don’t like it.
I hate the new MSN page because it is very cluttered and the idiots don’ t show the stock market index, it only shows if it’s up or down. Where’s the common sense……Must have lost it in college!
After months of being tormented by the new MSN.com and their occasional article titles that only lead to web-site searches – I’ve finally decided to set a new homepage for my news. I’m sure MSN.com will change their web-site design soon-enough with more and more people being sick of it and changing their home-page to something else!