I'm in the camp that actually likes the new look. It conveys a modern minimalist view while the extras just get out of your way.

I've been mostly against flat design for a number of reasons but IMO, you've achieved a great design. I really like the minimalism of the hamburger button. Again, everything just gets out of your way.

Perhaps enlarging the font-size of the search result snippets might help with the contrast complaints - personally, I like your use of the grays. Again, it conveys a modern design.

I really hope that there will be an updated iOS app soon too :)

>it conveys a modern design.

That's a terrible reason to pick a design. If you have no justification for a design other than 'lots of other new websites do this', then you have no justification at all... unless your purpose is to blend in and be forgotten.

Actually, my justification was that everything just gets out of your way.

Personally, I find the new design conveys a more relaxing experience although I'd like to see some of the fonts grow a bit. By modern, I refer to a different online world than #000 against #FFF and skeuo approaches. I'm not saying, those days are over completely, but fresher approaches are nice too.

Let's face it - design will continue to morph based upon different philosophies and whims, just as fashion does. Some visions are worse than others but some are implemented in pretty clever ways. I like the way DDG went with theirs.

For a modern web property or search engine competing against the likes of Google, what timdiggerm mentioned in a reply nails it. Sticking with an older design philosophy conveys a negative image for many users.

However, other properties going flat and subdued do not necessarily get my attention just because everyone else is doing it. This one does though because they did a lot of things right. The more I use next.duckduckgo.com the more I appreciate the small details that were thought out.

Ah, but an old design conveys amateur quality, which does not compete well in people's minds with Google, etc.

I don't think that Levi-Strauss is losing market share for not being trendy. A strong, working product trumps fashion, in my book.

Levi-Strauss uses a deliberately retro design language as a core part of its marketing. All those rivets and obvious stitches serve little purpose other than to project an faux-naive olde timey image. I can't see any reason for DDG to follow a similar design approach, unless they want to go for the Steampunk user base.

This is not true. If you are a desk jockey then maybe you don't need rivets, but they (along with all stitching besides the back pocket stitch design) certainly help keep your denim together if you are the least bit hard on them. Ripping off pocket corners or blowing out crotch stitching is something that happens. And I'm pretty sure Levi's also offers denim with non contrast stitching.

pants and search engines have pretty different customer expectations re: aesthetics

Adding my brick to this pile... I like the new design better too. Especially the search results page. The lower contrast is one of the features I like actually, feels a bit less aggressive, but the font changes and the general decrease in aggressive red are particularly pleasing.

Same here, to counterbalance opinions, I really really like the new design.

I also like the new design a lot, though I do agree to some extent about the contrast issue. On a retina monitor it's no worries, but on my external it could probably suffer greater contrast :)

A new iOS app is on the way to complement the redesign.

That'll be cool beans on iOS7. I can't wait.

+1 on the low contrast comment. It's all the rage nowadays, but this one of those trends that I think people will look back on in a few years and say, "How did anyone ever think that was a good idea?"

lower contrast is not bad, I don't want all text to be #000 and #fff, but the contrast on DuckDuckGo is too low. As it says here your text should be as readable as #333 on #fff: http://ia.net/blog/100e2r/

There are also some WCAG guidelines on contrast.

Here are some contrast checkers: http://snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/ http://www.checkmycolours.com/

Most sensible people see that it's a bad idea, and they can see this today (if not yesterday). This isn't the kind of thing that requires hindsight to see that it's a bad idea through and through.

If anything should be questioned in hindsight, it should be why so many managers and executives allowed designers to seriously submit such bad ideas for consideration, never mind allowing such unusable designs to actually be implemented.

Regarding the contrast, this is worth a read: http://contrastrebellion.com

Funny that a page about Web usability features a design that's sufficiently counterintuitive (or just plain annoying to smoothly scroll through) that the designers felt the need to add site-specific navigation controls and "click here or press space to scroll down" help text to the page.

Presumably these are the same designers who feel a "push" sign next to a nonfunctional handle is a good design for the hardware on a door.

That spinning-scrolling effect is really neat.

It doesn't work on Firefox 26/Ubuntu.

And the social widget is broken too.

I use DDG for most searches. The new site looks better but that's not helpful if I can't read it. I'm not 22 with good eyesight. At a minimum, there has to be a button available to fix the contrast issue.

...And the button there is. Did you find it? https://next.duckduckgo.com/settings

No. And I'm willing to bet that at least 99% of search engine users aren't going to look for an unlabeled settings button for a search engine. They'll just use something else.

For something as utilitarian as a search engine, being usable by default, and cool after tweaking is probably better than the reverse. I question the logic of having such a setting at all -- it's not just a matter of preference, having the setting is basically admitting that the default design has a (serious) usability issue -- so logically it shouldn't be the default.

It's kind of funny that we went from black on grey (netscape), via black on white (ie4) to grey on white (by design/via css) -- rather than simply back to black on grey or grey on black ("console" colors) -- as there's been some studies indicating that darker background leads to less power usage -- which actually has a usability benefit in longer battery life -- all the while maintaining a lower contrast.

ha right, I missed it at first because it doesn't work without enabling javascript ...

I agree with the people saying the new look is quite good, but it does need a couple of changes.

Contrast has been mentioned, it's better on your "cards" (top toolbar that appears on some searches) than on the general results. Other than that, I'm not sure your choice of font is very good. It's not quite crisp enough to easily scan and read lots of text at once. I tried switching to Helvetica Neue instead of Proxima and things instantly looked more readable.

Overall a good step in the right direction though.

The links should also be blue so they pop out more. Makes it easier to scan over the results.

I didn't notice the fixed version in the old look, probably because it's not as tall.

In the new version, it's taller, and makes it so I can only see 4 results at a time on my 1366x768 netbook. Makes me want to reach for my "fixedfixer" bookmarklet (sets all position:fixed styles to static), which is not really something I want to do every time I use my search engine. Still, that's more convenient than having to change a setting every time I clear my cookies.

Otherwise, I do like the clean and airy/breathing space in the new look.

Just be mindful of vertical screen estate, it's one of the most precious things to squander, and from a usability point of view, the only thing you can really argue that might need to be there is just the search box.

Personally, what I think is a better solution for that, is one of the older Google layouts, which had a search box at the bottom of a result page as well as at the top. Then you could just scan the first page of results and when you got to the bottom you probably had some ideas as how to refine the query, and there it was, ready for the next search! :)

Personally, I'm okay with the contrast side of things. But I do prefer it when the main content of the page is centered as opposed to left-aligned.

First thing I said was "nooo they've moved it back over". I love(d) the centered results.

PLEASE bring them back!

Thanks for listening!

I actually don't mind the fixed header on the current version because it is much smaller and less obtrusive than the header on the redesign. I dislike fixed headers on news sites like the New York Times, because I want as much vertical space as possible to read the article. On a search engine, there is no issue of losing context, so a tastefully constructed fixed header is acceptable.

I understand why you wanted to add a second toolbar for more options and am not suggesting that you removed completely remove fixed headers for the default landing page. I just think that the second toolbar could easily fit on the same line as the search bar.

I share your dislike of fixed headers for text-heavy pages, and I'm relieved to see other kindred spirits have made similar comments in this discussion. (I was concerned it was just me.) The NY Times' new fixed headers in particular prompted me to try making a bookmarklet. One version converts position:fixed html elements to position:relative. A second version converts them to display:none. I've been using them for the last few months, and it has made me a much happier reader of the NY Times and similar sites. You're most welcome to try it too -- staticding.org .

I see @tripzilch has commented below that he uses a bookmarklet that changes position:fixed elements to position:static. That's probably a better solution than my version which changes them to position:relative. I will have to try that method too.

Wow after reading that comment I was expecting something so.... Bad. Instead, I saw something so.... Good. To me. I'm surprised to hear someone disliked it so much actually. C'est la vie.

Totally agree with the parent. I'd also love it if it took advantage of more than 25% of the width of my 30" desktop display.

And: thanks for listening to your users!

Do you like reading uncomfortably long lines or something?

I don't know; have you stopped beating your wife?

You realize HN comment pages scale pretty well, right? And everyone's happy.

There's no reason a site like DDG shouldn't make better use of larger windows. If someone wants to read long lines across a full-screen window on a 30" display (and I don't), they should be able to. In my case, I'd just like sites to make reasonably good use of a 1280-wide window (half a 30"), which DDG doesn't. That's not unreasonable.

Anyway, here's another good example of a page that scales well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_question

FWIW...and no disrespect meant, but I hope DDG does not follow this advice. Firstly, this is a developer. So he/she is not the key demographic you are targeting. Developers and the like don't understand that John Doe has no idea what "contrast" is or which button turns it down/up. Please note all of the references to "me" and "my" and his perfect color-correct 20/20 vision in his feedback.

If it is hard to read for someone who is young and with perfect vision, how do you expect that someone with less than perfect vision / older / with worse monitors will be able to read it?

There are W3C standards for accessibility for a reason, and widely used sites should follow them.

Because the majority of readers on the internet skim pages and whether subconsciously or not, they are picking up on keywords, headlines, links and the like. If you take the approach to simply "make the text #000 and the page #fff", you are simply making matters worse.

If they can't read your site comfortably than why should they spend more time on your site than it takes to close the tab? See my other comment, the recommendation is usually #333 on #fff, or at least try to follow the WCAG standards: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7704533

When I see a site with such low contrast I think "the owner of this site doesn't really care if people actually read the contents" so I usually just close it. Unless I know from a reliable source that the contents is actually something very very interesting, that I would want to read then I'll take the extra effort and try to read it.

Few things. I like the redesign in a broad, sweeping sense but: 1) Themes don't work (at least, they don't look good. I know this is pre-release and will be fixed) 2) Fixed header is too large and should be smaller by default (as well as toggle-able in settings) 3) The color change and underline for links are jarring on mouse-over.

Keep up the great work!

In regards to the contrast comment, this might be a very useful tool to help you calibrate: http://leaverou.github.io/contrast-ratio/

I think showing only tabs[0] with the fixed header would be better? I'm not sure which part of the header is used more often though. You guys must keep some stats on the usage patterns.

And one more suggestion about this: When I click on the up arrow, focusing on the search bar would be nice. But that may be just me.

[0] Like this: http://cl.ly/VMql

I would more often use the search bar than the tabs, so I'd reverse the choice.

There is a typo in the about page, under "2013 Open-Source Donations", "Crytocat" should be "Cryptocat".

Great work, yegg! I like the direction this is headed. Perhaps for the header, it can collapse/hide the row with "Meanings | Images | Videos | Products" under the search bar until you scroll back to the top to make it a bit less huge? Perhaps you could even shrink it a bit to the height of the bar when it collapses as well.

i agree on contrast other than that i like it better than the old design

I love this design—it convinced me to finally switch from Google to DuckDuckGo as my default search provider.

I have a huge issue with low contrast text due to my eyes. Many sites I will simply not spend time on.

class="result__check" mouseover tooltip isn't visible for the first link.