New Interface

I use space bar to scroll and this interrupts me. A site should not set a browser shortcut to do something else. It also seems counter to intuition that the esc key does not exit the menu.

The menu looks nice but I prefer drop-down menus. Hiding options from users -- especially newer users -- detracts from their experience. There is a mobile app that looks great. Users with small screens or suffering from clutter can use that.

okay, i ended a game. How do I start quickly a new one without clicking clicking clicking?

The many ways to start a lichess game!:
Old Way:
Hit play in top left, hit start a game, then seek (3 clicks)
New way:
Hit space, hit real-time game, seek a game (3 clicks)
click lichess logo, hit start a game, then seek (3 clicks)

I DON'T SEE THE PROBLEM GUYS.

i dont have a play in the left corner anymore after analyses (i have for .pgn dowload to enter first).

Full disclosure: I'm not a web designer, but I have served as web director for multiple organizations over the years and have therefore done quite a bit of reading into design philosophy, W3C standards, and the like and have quite a bit of practical experience when it comes to the decision-making process of how to lay out a website to accomplish the goals it needs to meet.

To all the people in this thread who are insisting that the old design was "better" have an odd definition of better. It may have been easier for you because you got used to it, but speaking as someone who casually used this site for many years and only officially joined it as an active member about a year ago, I can equally insist that the old design was horribly difficult to navigate, considering it took me until only a month ago to find all the features buried beneath other pages that are now right before my eyes with just a single spacebar press or mouse click.

In terms of the design itself, while I generally prefer a combination of roll-over menus and panel menus, I feel for a site like lichess.org which has such a large amount of features (and more coming daily), the full-screen menu overlay truly is the right decision. It's simpler to keep clean, organized, complete, and up to date. The layout Clarkey posted is not a good alternative. It's not 2005 anymore, it's 2015 and website designers need to take advantage of it. The new interface does exactly that.

I can honestly say with confidence that out of all the "issues" presented in this thread and in that other nonsense thread started by Isaiah, I only find two that are legitimately issues. The first is that the spacebar shortcut might interfere with a user's already established shortcuts. As such there simply must be a simple-to-find option to disable it. The second is the removal of the Games page. My proposed solution to that is to expand lichess TV to a channel system with multiple clocks and variants to observe, which is something I believe was already discussed awhile back. From the channels page, there could be "more games" overlay of an updated version of the central frame of the Games page in which all games of that variant/clock are being played.

Aside from these two easily solved issues, I can't honestly say there are any legitimate design problems here. It's a matter of taste, and as Thibault said, users are going to resist change no matter what you do. It was said jokingly, but there is a bit of legitimacy to what he said in regard to that fact of coding and design projects: eventually you have to just do what needs done and ignore the negative user reaction. I can say with 100% certainty that the vocal minority here in the forums doesn't represent the silent majority here who don't find any problem with the new navigation interface or even prefer it. I can also say with 100% certainty that new users to the site will find it a much simpler experience than all the users who are adapting to it now after a long period of time using the old, poorly-planned nagivation menus.

I swear I feel in forums no one will undertand you unless you take the time to write a huge paragraph. I completely agree with what static says above. Thank you for taking the time to write that. I mean when I joined lichess I had no clue about the import game faeture or opening trainer. I bet a new user could not find the video library without having assitance from a knowedgeable person on thesite. All against the new designa have grown accustomed to the old design and are simply afraid of change. +1 to static for laying that out clearly and +1 to lichess devs especially Thibault for creating such a beautiful site and making it more functional and useful by the days. I see Thibault going around popular streams like Blitzstream and ZugAddict and asking them if they like the feature he adds regulary

"Change is inherent in all things,
Time, space, light and dark,

Even he who seeks a partial answer,
even he who ask s a simple question,
shall soon face a world governed by chaos
a reality contingent upon contradiction,

One thing begins, another ends.
A pursuit of truth...but truth is ever-changing"

Sorry for any spelling mistakes >_>

I always thought the old design was very simple and intuitive.

I mean look how beautiful it looks on my laptop running windows 10 :D

#78 simple, yes. Intuitive, not so much. You had to go to the Games page to find the board editor. When the analysis board was introduced, I had absolutely no idea until a few days ago that you could even access it without being in a correspondence game that was in progress. To find the Q&A section you had to scroll all the way to the bottom of a page. Like bbyd said - I've been using this site regularly as a registered user for a year and I didn't even KNOW there was an import game page. To access the opening and coordinate training I believe I had to go to the main training page first? Likewise the advanced search was under Games, which meant loading up that entire page before searching. Basically, unless you had certain pages bookmarked, the design was a complete MESS. This is an objective fact, it is not opinion. The old design became objectively BAD.

Just because users were able to adapt to it over time to get into a rhythm for their daily usage habits does not make something "intuitive" nor does it make it "better" it simply makes it something users can adapt to. This new overlay navigation system is objectively better. It simply cannot be argued otherwise. Is it the absolute best thing that could have been implemented? Who knows. Can it be improved? Absolutely. But to argue that the old nagivation was better is simply stubborn and I dare say even a bit arrogant.