I had a few requests for the people developing the next iteration of Kinja (called 'Tiger' internally) before I agreed this site over to it, based on a mix of my own experiences and on your responses to Nick Denton's product posts. I'm happy enough with the results to probably flip the switch tomorrow morning.
If you haven't experimented with the design in the last day or so, you've probably missed the most important tweaks, which you can see by clicking this link.
The 'Tiger' portion of the change is fairly minor and involves mostly small improvements to the layout and moving the site to a white background. The bigger changes are in the discussions (which we're calling 'webchats'). We've moved everything back to full-width and the threads are now separated in ways that are more immediately obvious.
As Nick has explained and discussed already, there are philosophical underpinnings to Kinja webchats, but the ultimate goal is to create an environment that fosters the high quality conversation and collaboration we all cherish when we find it on Jalopnik.
Not everything is perfect, but I'm confident we've gotten the most obvious issues out of the way and that it's going to take a larger use of users to identify the areas that still need improvement. If you want to see an example of how it can change a thread, look at the Jerry Seinfeld discussion with webchats on and then with webchats off.
Nick has promised to drop in here to answer questions and I'll be around. You can assume our product developers will also be viewing this conversation. As always, this is subject to change as we could still notice something that needs fixing and the decision to switchover is entirely my call.
Before you ask: No, this will not affect subdomains like Oppo or Truck Yeah! yet.
Photo: Getty Images
I'll Probably Switch The Site Over To The New Design Tomorrow