Having recently gone through presenting a major site redesign I am very aware of the fact that initial reaction to such changes is generally negative. The proof is in the comments that come in a month later not a day later.

That said, the redesign that Slate rolled out last night is an unmitigated disaster; at least on the home page. I'm ok with the way individual pages are presented (though the all-cap serif font for the subheadings is an awful choice) but the home page is a mish-mash. The two worst things:

1) The onmouseover menus in the left column. You have to be very careful where you put your mouse cursor while reading or you'll suddenly cover the whole home page with article listings. When I navigate using the back button, about half the time my mouse travels through that menu area on the way to the body of the page to begin scrolling down. Worse, while the pop-up is instant, there is a delay on the pop-off so I have to wait a second for the menu to clear but first I have to move my mouse to the extreme top or right of the page. A usability nightmare (I don't even want to think about how this page looks to a text reader).

2) Second, if you visit the site frequently as I do, the most important thing about the home page is the complete list of articles published. Slate publishes continuously throughout the day and only a small fraction end up listed in the main graphic area at the top of the page. The complete list is now a full two screens below the fold (worse on my widescreen monitor). I prefer long pages over a lot of clicking but this is ridiculous.

I won't even mention that they did a fixed-width design at 1024 pixels wide which forces side-scrolling on about 15% of their readers (if MousePlanet stats are indicative). I know, you'd think 800x600 screen resolutions would all belong to stone-age Neanderthals giggling that they finally got a 1200 baud modem, but it is still surprisingly common.

I actually approved of their redesign a few years ago out of the box so I'd like to think I'm not being knee-jerk about this one. I'm sure I'll get used to it but I do think it is a usability demotion.