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Omni Group’s new website design

Posted by Linda Sharps on 03.03.10 @ 10:34 AM File Under: MISC

If you're not reading this via RSS, you may notice that things look a bit . . . different around here. It's not just the blog that got a facelift—after many many years of the same website design, we have finally made some big changes to good old www.omnigroup.com.

Our main goal was to re-engineer the site so that even us non-technical folks could update it, and if you're interested in the behind the scenes stuff, it's running on Expression Engine. The secondary goal was to spruce up the content and make everything, you know, shinier. A big public thank you needs to go out to our graphics guru, Grayson West, and web-ninjas-for-hire, Blue Flavor, for working through endless revisions and not throttling anyone during the process.

We have plenty of things we plan to add to the site, and we're still working on updating our online store, but we're pretty happy with the new look and feel. We hope you like it too.

  1. Kenny Meyers

    03.03.10 12:32 PM

    Congratulations on the launch! Was a pleasure working with everyone and a lot of the touches Grayson added are fantastic.

    Cheers,
    Kenny

  2. ginsbu

    03.03.10 1:20 PM

    Looks good overall. One criticism though, it looks to me like the type weights are off with your mixed caps: the full caps seems to be heavier and leave the small caps looking too light. It’s just like what you’d see from MS Word’s fake small caps. If the typeface you’re using doesn’t come with true small caps glyphs, I’d either switch to one that does or ditch using mixed caps altogether.

  3. Dana Spiegel

    03.03.10 1:40 PM

    I wish you guys the best with your new website, but you’ve got quite a lot of CSS bugs to fix. I can send you a couple screenshots, but I can’t believe that you don’t already know the site looks terrible in Safari.

  4. Tobias

    03.03.10 2:21 PM

    I love what you have done with the design! Five stars! Does this mean that even programs like OmniFocus will get a new look?

  5. Andy L

    03.03.10 2:36 PM

    The contrast is not nearly enough.  Characters should be darker. The worse ones are the sidebar’s.

    Apart from that *major* problem, it’s a nice clean interface.

  6. Andy L

    03.03.10 2:49 PM

    Same contrast problem with the menu – I almost can’t see the words.

  7. Ian

    03.03.10 4:44 PM

    Let me just jump in here and say: Well Done! It’s a clean, effective interface, and it’s a nice step a bold new direction.

    And… it’s awesome that so many creative and talented OmniFans have very relevant suggestions for improvement. Keep up the great work.

  8. Gianni D

    03.04.10 9:01 AM

    It is clean and effective but it’s all so BIG!

    I’m using 1600x1200 resolution and still I need to move back from the screen to take it all in and then do a lot of scrolling to see not much content.

  9. Josh

    03.04.10 10:08 AM

    One small concern: I miss having the blog entries show who posted them.

  10. Mike

    03.04.10 10:42 AM

    Great looking web design. I hope this means that you will bring OF and OO out of the 90s and into the 2010’s as well.

  11. Dennis Yarborough

    03.04.10 11:43 AM

    Awesome job on your new redesigned web site! It’s clean, well organized and does an excellent job presenting your company and products.

  12. Jochen

    03.04.10 12:49 PM

    Nice, I like it. Actually I’m currently evaluating Expression Engine against Drupal. In case any Omni ninja or guru reads this: I would be interested why you’ve chosen Expression Engine.

  13. Fynn

    03.04.10 3:42 PM

    Looks great! Please, please start to redesign OmniFocus too :)

  14. Drazick

    03.05.10 4:36 AM

    Looks great.
    The only thing missing is a place for release notes for each product.
    Or at least I couldn’t find it.

  15. Pawel

    03.05.10 5:24 AM

    Hi,
    just read this post via RSS and was curious enough to visit your website to see what changed. I must say: Well done. Look really great and it’s so much better than the old design.

    cu
    Pawel

  16. BDSawicki

    03.05.10 5:51 AM

    Please could you consider creating an online version of OmniFocus - in a similar way Evernote is available on Mac and iPhone (and some other platforms), but also on the web.

    This would greatly facilitate the use of the app when away from your Mac (iPhone helps a lot, but a big screen makes a difference).

    Borys

  17. Troy

    03.05.10 10:29 AM

    Drazick: Release notes are available on the downloads page. (and past release notes are linked there)

    Current release notes:
    http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraffle/download/

    Past Releases:
    http://www.omnigroup.com/products/omnigraffle/download/releasenotes/

  18. sphta

    03.05.10 4:27 PM

    I’m amazed by this design! So clean! Lovely! Never before have I seen something so sleek! Very well done, it makes me want to linger, which is more than you can say about just any other website there is. Beautiful graphics work, too!

  19. Joshua Rowlands

    03.06.10 6:59 AM

    Really good design, for those that never been here would be nice to have a before/after image :D

  20. Marc Balmer

    03.06.10 9:00 AM

    I’m shocked…  totally… really.  Liked the old design way better.

  21. Ramon Van Meer

    03.07.10 3:46 PM

    I love the new feel of the site

  22. Hugo

    03.08.10 4:22 AM

    The new design looks great! Much clearer, shiny, I like websites to look as good as the Mac apps I use. Good job!

  23. NightLion

    03.10.10 3:12 PM

    If only OmniFocus looked this good!

  24. David Huber

    03.10.10 7:29 PM

    I like it a lot—very clean and easy to browse. A perfect fit with Omni’s products.

  25. Guest

    03.12.10 7:35 PM

    Very pretty, but I don’t like it.

    It takes more time and more clicks to find and navigate where you need to go.

    Important links (Download/etc) are buried in an obscure sidebar halfway down the page.

    Three or four pages to get to page to see the Current Version number? wtf

    bad, omni, bad

  26. Guest

    03.13.10 12:30 PM

    on the old site, the home page provided useful information and clear navigation

    on the new site, the useless masthead wastes most of the real estate on screen.

    even on a 15-inch macbook, which has plenty of space, the experience is rather painful.

    omni is known for good design and productivity-enhancement, and a keen sense of Mac principles

    the new website tells customers that your company is vain, not concerned with user experience, less concerned with delivering useful information quickly and easily to returning visitors, and uncaring about website navigation

    the majority of webpages have no useful information until the user scrolls down to view more detailed information.


    fail

  27. Chad

    03.13.10 7:30 PM

    Very slick!  I like it.

    Wait…who cares how the site looks in Safari?  Use OmniWeb! :)

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