The social network "VKontakte" has carried out a large-scale redesign.

07.08.2019 News

After the first day of using the new design of VKontakte, I came up with some thoughts about the current convenience and usability of this service. I can not say that everything is so terrible, as can be judged by the rising wave of indignation. In principle, a normal modern design. But some moments make you think. Yes, the design is made in line with modern trends for social networks, yes, the need for a redesign for Vkontakte seems to be overdue. But the new design of VKontakte has become very similar to its relatives - Mail, Odnoklassniki, Facebook. My opinion is that it was possible to take a more careful attitude to the lamp-like and atmosphere of this service and try to preserve the original uniqueness of VKontakte, and not make another clone of secondary freshness. About any element, you can say "It's like in ..." and substitute the name of any of the above networks. I did not find any revolutionary, unique Vkontaktov chips. So, I have the following complaints about the new VK design.

1. Round avatars
It is clear that round avatars are a tribute to fashion. But to what extent this is justified in this case, I do not know. After the appearance of round avatars, I could not even recognize some friends in circles and I even had to go to their page to figure it out. The image is very small for perception. This is the first.

And the second. Many groups use avatars as a source of useful information, such as the brand, industry, and even phone numbers. Now the rounded corners have eaten up the entire useful area and left room for actually only one word. So the proximity of the visual and the text has become extremely difficult.

2. Marking unread messages with a dot
Replacing the old option of marking an unread message in gray with a blue dot on the right seems very wrong to me. Now you have to look for such messages with your eyes, while previously a cursory glance was enough to fix the state of affairs.

3. Fixing elements on the side when scrolling
In this case, I also do not understand the meaning of defocusing the gaze with several objects. Whereas before, the gaze was focused only on the content being viewed. Now unnecessary, in this case, blocks of information are hanging on the periphery of the gaze.

4. Double headlines for reposts
A very inefficient use of space, in my opinion. Two almost equivalent circles pull apart attention. Plus, not so necessary information about the time of publication in the most prominent place. While the place of this auxiliary time information is under the post, as it was before.

5. Low and narrow message box
Now the message box is pressed to the bottom of the screen, which is very inconvenient. And plus there is a strong desire to stretch this dialog box to a larger size. And now everything is very clamped and non-functional.

6. Comments on the photo on the right
Another dubious innovation. The focus of the gaze shifted from the photo a little to the right. Of course, it's good when photos have a lot of comments, but for groups with a huge archive of photos, this is irrelevant. And it turns out, again, inefficient use of empty space and a shift in visual accents.

7. Large picture thumbnails
The appearance of miniatures has changed significantly. Previously, they were smaller and square. What stimulated to click on them and flip through the pictures. Now, due to the considerable size, it was enough for me to simply run my eyes over the pictures without the desire to click on it.

Well, as they say, the taste and color, but I personally do not particularly like the different sizes of preview images, according to horizontal or vertical orientation and sizes. I think it creates a sense of chaos. The innovation seems to be both necessary and trendy, but in this case it is controversial.

8. Online user status dot
I don’t know how anyone, but I like the option when the user’s status was written with the word Online under the thumbnail of the avatar. Although this, in principle, is not critical and you can get used to it. But the abundance of dots, together with point 2, dazzles the eyes.

9. Broken group design
This item causes my greatest indignation, since my activities are related to group design. Why did the developers not take care of the owners of the groups who paid money for the design, where the main feature was the unity of the fixed banner and avatar. It was possible to easily move the banner up due to the space given for the title of the entry and a slight shift in the avatar.

Now, in most cases, everything will have to be redone. And since it is not possible to edit the old entry, you will have to make a new entry and all the indicators of likes and reposts will also not be visible and will go far down the feed.

10. Duplicate digits of the statistics block
This block looks rather strange. First, why is it so big. Secondly, information about friends is duplicated in the friends block, information about photos - in my photos, videos - in videos. And the number of subscribers and gifts is not such important information as to be brought to the front.

11. Small search bar
Why is the search bar so tight? Why not make it at least much wider? I understand that the developers had in mind only the search for personalities and groups from the drop-down list. There is a separate news search, but for some reason it is hidden deep into the pages.

12. Manage notifications via the bell icon
The item My Answers was removed, but the bell icon appeared. So far, I'm not very inspired by bell pop-up notifications. The feeling that you manage notifications through a keyhole, and not through an open door. Although I don't know, maybe I'll get used to it.

13. Modified menu list
The usual order of menu items on the left has also changed. In principle, it is not critical, but so far unusual. We also replaced the word My with the corresponding icons - there are a lot of icons. Oh, these trends! And this block is made on a gray background. Maybe you should still make it with a white background?

14. Changed logo
As for the previous logo, it seemed to me more self-sufficient and convincing for identifying the network. Now sometimes the question arises: “Where am I at all?”. Maybe you shouldn't have abandoned the old logo?

15. The absence of a field in the block What's new with you
Well, one more innovation is the replacement of a limited field with a call to Write a message to a block with the inscription What's new with you?, which you need to click on to activate. Also not particularly critical, but still unusual.

Millions of users can no longer imagine the beginning of their working day or weekend without checking their VKontakte account. The demand for the most popular Runet network encourages developers to improve its capabilities at short intervals. Although these innovations are not always enthusiastically perceived by users, nevertheless, we are always quite interested and enthusiastic about the news about updates to VKontakte parameters. What awaits us this time?

As a result of a meeting of several representatives of the social network with journalists, the upcoming conceptual plans of the developers became known to the public. In general, rumors about the need for updates, redesign and radical changes to VKontakte have been around for a long time. During the interview, Andrey Rogozin, head of the development department, confirmed this,

One of the main expectations of representatives of VKontakte was the possibility of improving commercial relations with Apple. As a result of some violations by the Russian social network, the AppStore application store had to remove the official VKontakte client. Needless to say, this was very encouraging for the users. Therefore, it is clear that the recent return of the network to the "web store" was a necessary action.

One of the developers of VKontakte, Oleg Illarionov, drew the attention of journalists to the fact that most users, due to quick availability, prefer to communicate online from their mobile device. Therefore, strategic changes are planned in this direction. Today, the promotion of updates of this kind is quite rightly compared to the strategy of changes in the mobile segment by the developers of Facebook. This means that we will soon be releasing 3 new targeted applications for tablets and smartphones. Certain functions in them will still intersect. These applications are expected to be used for listening to music, chatting, editing photos and videos. Thus, the company has the potential to increase its user audience by several times. Representatives of the company kept silent about the timing of the release of new applications.

It should be noted the main distinguishing feature of the VKontakte policy. The key feature will be the naturalness and non-forced transition from the main client to specialized applications.

Not surprisingly, journalists were not without questions about the founder of VKontakte, Pavel Durov, and his dismissal. Yuri Kachuro, a representative of the investment fund, hastened to remind the media about the fact that Durov artificially removed the secure Telegram messenger from the social network, which was developed precisely by VKontakte employees. Actually, this was the official reason for the well-known conflict.

I would like to believe that the developers of VKontakte will indeed soon please us with convenient and useful updates.

Does the new design look like Facebook's? Yes, it does. This is good because the management of the social network nevertheless decided to change the interface, which was already boring - it was simply losing popularity. And it’s bad because the design was really “stupidly copied” (although, in terms of convenience, it turned out much better than in the case of Facebook). It would be much more interesting to see something radically new, and not just redone from another site.

News section

It is clear that the design of the news feed is completely new, but, as for me, here, first of all, it is worth paying attention to a new feature called "Show interesting news first." This is the same "smart" tape, about which Yulia is in one of the latest digests. The algorithm itself determines which news is most important to you and shows them first. You can return to the usual list simply by moving the corresponding slider on the right side of the screen.

As for the lists, they have been moved from the top to the right. In principle, it’s somehow done in FB, it’s just that there are different parameters. In general, this approach seems quite logical, because the entries in the tape have become more visible.

Photo View Mode

The photo view mode has also been completely redesigned. Now it is horizontal, and to the right of the image is a block with comments. VK called it magazine layout, but it all reminds us of the photo viewer in Odnoklassniki (don't even ask how we know this). But in fact, this is quite convenient, because now you can scroll through the comments while holding the image itself in front of your eyes.

Why was this particular format (horizontal) chosen? Most likely, to better display on widescreen monitors, which are now the majority.

Notification display

In the header, next to the search bar, there is now a special icon that opens a pop-up window with all notifications. Made quite convenient, because now you can simultaneously watch notifications about new likes, friend requests, birthdays and other things while on the desired page. It is not necessary to switch to a separate window.

On individual pages (your friends, for example), you can subscribe to receive notifications - as soon as they have a new post or photo. When there are new notifications, a special red indicator will appear next to the bell-shaped label.

New dialogue work

As for the dialogue section, it was completely rewritten from scratch (well, at least that's what they say on the company's blog). The main thing is that now a list of all chats is placed in one window, as well as an open dialogue. Purely in theory, this should allow you to respond faster to new messages. If these same messages are not read, then they are marked with a blue dot.

All in all, it looks pretty good on the outside. I really want to use such a “VKontakte”. Most likely, this is due to the fact that the previous design has become boring, but here is already something new.

Minor changes in other categories

Of course, the design has been changed everywhere (even in the settings), but it is also worth noting that the font and page width have been increased. Now (in theory that's right) the site should look more attractive on widescreen monitors. Also, the sections in the left column were swapped. The first three places are occupied by "My Page", "News" and "Messages". And most importantly - now there is no link to the page of Pavel Durov from below ...

We are waiting for all this to reach the final level, because today all this does not work in the best way (smoothness leaves much to be desired). Have you tried out the new VKontakte design yet? If so, be sure to share your opinion in the comments!

If you find an error, please highlight a piece of text and click Ctrl+Enter.

In the largest Russian-language social network “ In contact with” has already developed a tradition: to present its users with monthly updates to sections and appearance. The previous month of March was no exception to this, and 7 changes were developed and introduced during the month.

1. The news section has been transformed and it has the ability to search. Now it is not difficult to read the news of a certain person from the list of friends.

2. The most noticeable change was the introduction of "Dialogues", which allows you to quickly find and resume recently created topics when communicating with friends. For the month of March, this section was transformed: it has the ability to delete messages, attach your photos to them, and it has also become possible to change the height of the dialog box.

3. For group owners, administrators “ In contact with” prepared a special surprise: now every owner can get a short sounding address of the form http://vkontakte.ru/group_name.

4. The application section has been improved: a new design has been developed and implemented for the section, and application developers have been able to get a short letter address for their application for free. The list of applications has become similar to the list of friends and the activity of using a particular application determines its position in the list.

5. Bookmarks in Vkontakte now have their own search, thanks to which it is easy to find any links and materials that the page owner has ever liked.

6. The speed of opening materials in the notes section has increased.

7. In the settings section, tooltips began to appear, the blacklist was converted and the privacy settings were modernized. However, .you can now change the address of your page in contact at any convenient time

Although the changes are minor, the administrators of the social network and its management are confident that such a development trend is necessary and only increases the usability of the contact, and users can eventually get used to any change.

Instruction

Internet Explorer To change the external page of the Vkontakte social network, find a topic of interest to you with the “.css” extension and save its contents to notepad and clipboard. Then click "Save As" and name the file as you need and write the extension ".css" to it. It is this file that will be responsible for customizing the appearance of your page. Next, in the Internet Explorer browser, go to: "Service" (Tools), then "Internet options" (Internet options), "General" (General) and "Design" (Accesibility). Then check the box next to "Format documents using my style sheet". Click "Browse" and open the saved file. Now your Vkontakte social network page will look like the theme you have chosen. To turn off the theme, uncheck the Format documents using my style sheet box.

OperaTo change the external page of the Vkontakte social network through the Opera Internet browser, go to: "Tools" / "Settings" / "Advanced" / "Content" / "Style Options" (Customize Styles) / "View Modes" (Display Modes). Check the box next to "My Stylesheet". Then copy the text of the cascading table into notepad or another text editor. Click "Save As" and name the file as you need and write the extension ".css" to it. Right-click anywhere on the Vkontakte page and select "Change site settings" (Settings for the site) from the menu that opens. In the "Display" (View) tab, click "Browse" and select the location where you saved the file with the ".css" extension. Now your page looks different. To turn off the theme on the "Display" (View) tab, simply delete the file path and click "OK".

Mozilla Firefox Install additional settings on your browser by going to http://addons.mozilla.org/en/firefox/addon/2108 and restart Firefox. In the lower right corner of the browser, find and click the Stylish icon, select "Create Style", and then "For Vkontakte.ru". Next, in the "View" menu, check the box next to the "Status Bar" item. In the window that appears, in the "Description" field, enter any name. Then, in the lower box between brackets ( ), paste the text of the cascading table and save.