Ohhh .. nice background slider on the home page. Scroll the page and see how background image blends into another. Never seen this done before.
But an overall impression is that they have added way too much visual noise. Bigger font and more colors doesn't necessarily mean a better user experience. In fact, sticky fancy background (as nice as it is) only contributes to the problem.
In short, it was better before. And they should've really run this interface through a public beta first to gather a feedback.
Actually, there are two background layers that are constantly visible. The top one is transparent and has light and dark images on it, and the bottom one is a gradient with the same light and dark end colours.
The top layer is fixed, the bottom layer absolutely positioned, so that the latter moves under the former as you scroll the page.
Not exactly rocket science, and I guess we've never seen this before because it is way too distracting.
Really? I don't think there's any more stuff on there than before, particularly looking at the screenshots they show. Looks like they just freshened things up a bit.
Blame all you want, but it's been invaluable to us. We have a Help link on every page, which goes to Contact Us (i.e. an extra step), but for whatever reason, the signal on UserVoice feedback is much higher than messages sent via our Contact Us form.
Sorry, its probably just my setup, but those tabs really distract me on a lot of websites. I am however glad they helped you... I just wish they didnt stand out so much, though that would probably defeat the purpose.
Now all they have to do is get some new interesting products!
I've been shopping Thinkgeek (mostly t-shirts, but sometimes other things) since 1999, and it's been a while since I've seen any new, interesting shirts.
I don't have time to have a look at their code right now, but I would love to know how they did their background (The scroll transitions). Neat effect.
The main background is a PNG with the robots and zombies. It has black objects, gray objects and the rest is transparent. Beneath that PNG, there is a JPG gradient that goes from gray to black. The PNG is fixed to the bottom, while the gradient isn't, so as you're scrolling, the gradient makes the background of the PNG appear different, revealing different objects.
But an overall impression is that they have added way too much visual noise. Bigger font and more colors doesn't necessarily mean a better user experience. In fact, sticky fancy background (as nice as it is) only contributes to the problem.
In short, it was better before. And they should've really run this interface through a public beta first to gather a feedback.