New look Zingzing
Thursday, July 21st, 2011
Zingzing Users,
You may of noticed, Zingzing has received a face lift. I hope the new interface will be quicker, more intuitive to use and less intrusive. Gone away is the detailed view and in it’s place is a vertical (newspaper style) view that should tickle a lot of people that are used to viewing their listings in that format. I have put the genre filters behind a new “advanced” tab as these weren’t getting used a huge amount to clear up some room in the interface and allow the site to work on netbook screens, no problem.
Did I mention you can use the site on an iPad now?? Oops 
But..
Now I know how Facebook felt when they updated their site a while back!! You either love it or you hate it. The same holds true for the new look Zingzing. I had my reservations at first about the change (and it’s my site!!) but after staring at old and new side by site, and A LOT of testing, and a lot of feedback, a few designers later.. I think the change was the right thing to do.
I tried to keep the colours in as much as I could and will probably try to worm them back in a bit more as the design evolves..but text on coloured backgrounds caused problems for some visitors and was probably a design mistake that became de facto for many other users.
Hope you like the changes and let me know what you think (good and bad) so I can make it even better!!
Marco from Zingzing
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Like the new scheme and options. But…you need to alter [or allow customisation of] the screen position of the programme description. It’s currently fixed in the bottom left corner whichever programme is moused-over. This means you can never see the programme title at the bottom of the list [without dragging the whole screen out from behind the description]!! This is a marked regression in usability. Previously, the prog info was displayed next to the prog title itself on screen – a better idea…
Yes great new look, nice work. But agree that the only downside is that the programme box is now fixed in the bottom left. Preferred it when it appeared next to the programme concerned.
I agree with the other comments… the description box shouldn’t have changed. Otherwise, the other changes are great. Keep up the good work!
Edit: just seen it’s been changed. Excellent work!!
Agreed – thanks – now perfect!
I wish the channels weren’t so wide now in the grid view. You get fewer channels per vertical page than before, but don’t seemed to have gained much in terms of information in each programme cell.
Dave,
On a standard sized screen, you actually get the same number of channels as the previous design in the vertical axis without scrolling. This was achieved by a massive shrinking of the header, moving the search options into the “advanced” menu and the removal af the “fat” margins in the grid.
Regards,
Marco from Zingzing
I stand corrected. Are you going to use the extra cell space for something in future?
Dave,
Yes indeed! As of today’s update of the site, short programs with longrer tiles now wrap onto a new line in grid view. This will hopefully decrease the amour of “..” used.
Marco from Zingzing
I’ve heard a rumour that your are going to have a favourites list, just like the old Radio Times. Is this true? and how soon before it is available.
Alastair,
I would like to think I could do it better than the old Radio Times site, not just like
I largely have it working.. it’s a bit ugly.. and the sign-in / sign-out facility is non existant at the moment so everything is stored in cookies. I could go live without that but I think there may be complaints!! I wouldn’t like to comment on how long it would take me to complete this
Marco from Zingzing
Marco, thanks for the quick response. I have had Freeview and BT Vision for several years. When STV decided to stop showing most of the programmes I actually wanted to watch, some of which I could get on Vision Replay, but not all as ITV didn’t seem to have the rights to show some of them on Replay or ITV Viewer, so I was persuaded by my better half to invest in SKY+ as well (how sad), BT Vision and SKY are costing me a considerable amount of money every month.
I found that the old Radio Times suited me quite well as using their favourites I could quickly find any programmes that I wanted to watch, and relied on the fact that they could list multiple regions. I admit I have a great deal of loyalty to them for that. Their new site just doesn’t compete so I now find Zingzing suits me much better in that respect. The only ‘icing on the cake’ now would be a favourites list which I look forward to in anticipation.
People forget that it takes a long time to build a loyal following which can be blown in a few minutes.