Lie-Nielsen's new website- I finally found the tools on it.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

This thread is actually a rewrite of what I started originally to post, because what I originally started was after much frustration after clicking around their site over and over just trying to BUY something! I started to imagine Tom Lie-Nielsen standing there laughing at me in an evil voice. Of course nothing could be further from the truth, and I actually feel sorry for the guy because he has to be losing business over this. I am glad to see the is specific to iOS and not all formats.

[dan sherman]

I want them to figure out that while some will be happy with A2, there are still many of us, particularly in certain tool patterns (for me its their 0-1 bevel edge chisels), will prefer 0-1. LN (if you happen upon this), its good to have options please!

unfortunately capitalism doesn't work that way. If 90% (picked out of the air) of the orders are for A2, they will probably drop O-1 for cost reasons.


about the site:
I did some quick checking, and the issue people are having on touch/mobile devises is definitely because the tried to make the site responsive, and if I had to guess they either did it in a hurry, outsourced it, or had some inexperienced developers. I don't see many major issue, just a lot of little stuff that can add up, most of which would probably bore people to death if I pointed them out.

[Robert Rada]

Glad I'm not alone. :0

I e-mailed Lie Nielsen last...weekish... explaining the site worked fine on a desktop but was
absent of a navigation bar on iOS. A nice employee immediately pointed out the menu icon hiding in the corner .

I like the new font.

[Robert Rada]

they changed it again. there's a navigation bar with words on it at the top.
holy public beta testing or holy a company that listens to it's customers, batman.
half empty / half full.

Glad I'm not alone. :0

I e-mailed Lie Nielsen last...weekish... explaining the site worked fine on a desktop but was
absent of a navigation bar on iOS. A nice employee immediately pointed out the menu icon hiding in the corner .

I like the new font.

[John Coloccia]

These sorts of menus were designed by software people. The problem with software people (trust me on this...I are one) is that we generally do all of our designs around 3 numbers....0, 1 and infinity. In other words:

- it can't happen
- it happens exactly once
- it can happen any number of times

So these menus are nice in that you can keep adding and adding and adding, and you don't actually have to design anything intelligently. You just keep adding menus and submenus until you've found a place to stick everything. It makes the software guy happy because it's expandable to infinity! The user trying to use it, on the other hand, gets very annoyed because they have to dig for what they want, and if their aim is off just a little bit, all of the menus disappear and they have to start over.

Anyhow, I hope they figure it out because I find the site is a bit annoying as well. A lot of sites are like this now, actually. Lee Valley has orders of magnitude more items, a primitive organization, but yet it's easier and more pleasant to navigate IMHO. On the other hand, if I want a LN tool, I doubt I'd let the website be an impediment.

[dan sherman]

These sorts of menus were designed by software people. The problem with software people (trust me on this...I are one) is that we generally do all of our designs around 3 numbers....0, 1 and infinity. In other words:

- it can't happen
- it happens exactly once
- it can happen any number of times

So these menus are nice in that you can keep adding and adding and adding, and you don't actually have to design anything intelligently. You just keep adding menus and submenus until you've found a place to stick everything. It makes the software guy happy because it's expandable to infinity! The user trying to use it, on the other hand, gets very annoyed because they have to dig for what they want, and if their aim is off just a little bit, all of the menus disappear and they have to start over.

This design is crappy though, even from a developer stand point. It's using hover to trigger the drop down, so it's next to useless on touch devises. And like you said you have to perfect with the mouse, because the devloper(s) wasn't smart enough to use something like jQuerys hover intent plugin.

It blows my mind that a company this dependent on its website to generate revenue would let something this bad go live.

[Robert Rada]

I spoke too soon. They went back to the new design again (drop down corner menu thing).
There's a positive to this, I keep visiting their website, every day, just to check out the current
condition their website condition is in. That's a lot of user interaction/impressions/yadda marketing speak.

[Robert Rada]

i find it hard to believe that most modern web designers know html, let alone ones and zeroes and logic gates!

These sorts of menus were designed by software people. The problem with software people (trust me on this...I are one) is that we generally do all of our designs around 3 numbers....0, 1 and infinity. In other words:

- it can't happen
- it happens exactly once
- it can happen any number of times

So these menus are nice in that you can keep adding and adding and adding, and you don't actually have to design anything intelligently. You just keep adding menus and submenus until you've found a place to stick everything. It makes the software guy happy because it's expandable to infinity! The user trying to use it, on the other hand, gets very annoyed because they have to dig for what they want, and if their aim is off just a little bit, all of the menus disappear and they have to start over.

Anyhow, I hope they figure it out because I find the site is a bit annoying as well. A lot of sites are like this now, actually. Lee Valley has orders of magnitude more items, a primitive organization, but yet it's easier and more pleasant to navigate IMHO. On the other hand, if I want a LN tool, I doubt I'd let the website be an impediment.

[dan sherman]

i find it hard to believe that most modern web designers know html, let alone ones and zeroes and logic gates!

That's the problem right there, no one that's actually a good developer would ever call themselves a "designer".

[Simon MacGowen]

Anyhow, I hope they figure it out because I find the site is a bit annoying as well. A lot of sites are like this now, actually. Lee Valley has orders of magnitude more items, a primitive organization, but yet it's easier and more pleasant to navigate IMHO. On the other hand, if I want a LN tool, I doubt I'd let the website be an impediment.

Websites can make or break many business opportunities. The search function is #1 for many users and business owners, too. Because if you can't find it, you can't buy it. I have given up many times on some sites when their search tools are good for nothing. Websites are more important as a sales front than ever for companies like LN which doesn't have any physical stores (most woodworkers don't go tradeshows). Even Walmart has brought lots of items onto its website to sell (often free shipping), not to mention digital retail giant Amazon.com.

Simon

[Robert Rada]

It's back to the navigation bar and and without the pop out thingy.

[Robert Rada]

I find it hard to believe that most modern web developers know html, let alone ones and zeroes and logic gates.

That's the problem right there, no one that's actually a good developer would ever call themselves a "designer".

[dan sherman]

I find it hard to believe that most modern web developers know html, let alone ones and zeroes and logic gates.

This one does, along with a bunch of other stuff.

[David Weaver]

Lee Valley has orders of magnitude more items, a primitive organization, but yet it's easier and more pleasant to navigate IMHO. On the other hand, if I want a LN tool, I doubt I'd let the website be an impediment.

I much prefer the LV site. Everything lately has been going to tiles or menus, but if you're actually looking at a site for content, it's easier when the information is on the page directly and you can go from there.

When I looked at the LN page last week, they must've used some sort of automated ordering for the bench planes. For some reason, the page that had all of them listed had a whole bunch of planes, no iron no 4 and after a bunch of pages of frogs and stuff, the iron no 4 was stuffed at the very end on page 3 or 4 (whatever it was). A page without all of the intensive menus and/or tiles would've just had a link that said "planes --> smooth planes - > No 4 bench planes -> Iron no 4

This seems to be a disease going on with all websites. Especially news and sports, which used to be pages with a table of links, but now they're a bunch of tiles and since they don't seem to be organized in any logical fashion, you click on some and get sent to some video that doesn't work for one reason or another, or you click on another and you hit a totally worthless opinion piece when you're trying to get actual news, and they're all lined up in a row.

I know that someone has decided that this format gets more clicks and thus more revenue, but it actually leads me not to go to such sites at all. I go to a lower-tier competitor's website that still has the old fashioned organized links where you start at broad topics and narrow down through click throughs.

[John Coloccia]

The end result is that it might not keep me from buying something, but sometimes I do go out and browse through LV, just to see what they have. I doubt I'd ever do that on the LN site because it's a bit annoying. There are other websites I browse too. I think Mcmaster Carr has a decent site, considering all the items they have. Small Parts isn't bad, though I think it was better before Amazon bought them, if I remember right. I pretty much can't stand Woodcraft's site and I never spend any time there, even though I used to work at Woodcraft and I like them otherwise just fine. Glad I have a nearby Woodcraft!