(From xkcd. Click for full-sized Mary Poppins act.)
I continue not to read xkcd, but when it changed the look of its front page this past weekend, I was willing to accept it as part of the April Fool’s joke of the early version of the “Umwelt” comic that day.
When the actual comic (which I’m sure Scott McCloud would have a lot to say about) came out the following Monday, I was willing to accept it as a continuation of the joke and as a way to get the coding needed for the comic to work to work… even if the look had now spread to the archive pages.
Now another comic has been posted. And the new look is still there.
The same cramming of the upper-left links into the corner (making it look less rationalized and formal), the same spacing out of the news space below the title (and cramming of the title itself), the same airy look on the navigation buttons, and worst of all, the same large type on the buttons and permalinks and simplifcation of the formatting on the latter. In short, the same ugly new look that seems to be designed more for your grandparents than anyone else.
Look, my philosophy is, saying “it’s not that big a deal” is a double-edged sword: if it’s not that big a deal, why are you being so stubborn about it? It’s times like these I really don’t like Randall’s propensity never to say much about his comic…