The statement in yesterday’s paper wasn’t very well written. I (and some of my friends) had to read bits of it more than once to fully understand it.
Also, pity that you can’t get articles from eighteen months back without paying the full whack for the digital archive.
On the whole, though, it’s a welcome move and should have happened a long, long time ago.

Hi,

Just logged in so I’m giving a qualified opinion….I thought that the old site was easier to navigate and easier to find your favourite sections – specific columnists, letters, price watch, archive etc – on tabs at the top (which no longer seem to be there)

However, I’ll try this out for a few days and then post again…I’m a creature of habit so it’ll take a bit of getting used to.

Doing away with the subscription is a good thing thing – even if it was a long time coming! I also see that the Tribune has a new site, so it seems that Irish papers are finally realising that online versions deserve investment…

My favourite new feature is very un-newsy….the simplex crossword has finally made it online!

Something to consider would be reader feedback on stories…

Best of luck with it,

Colette

Living in New Zealand I think the Irish Times has made a great move.

For years I’ve only been able to read the selected “free” articles on ireland.com. That left me with no option but to continue onto the Irish Independent’s free website to get my feed of home news, albeit in a tabloid style of reporting.

Could the tide turning in Rip off Ireland?!

Well Done Irish Times.

What have they done to your blog? It’s unreadable – tiny text – no blog roll and the categories are impossible to read?? That’s just for starters!

Congratulations. Wonderful – the beat newspaper site on the web.

Looks nice so far, seems to be a few little bits that need work, like the tiny, tiny text. It’s feels really like some of those american websites, if that makes sense.
All in all I think I like it so far, well done.

Hi, I think the old site was easier to use and more appealing than the mundane, tiny text site that you have now. I’m glad that it is now free for everyone but what about the value some people who paid are missing out on?

I miss the old site!

Also I tried to read some articales which have gone “missing” this only adds to my disliking of the website.

Appreciate the move. Great to have a quality Irish news site at last. I’ve been depending on RTE and the Examiner which, to say the least, left a lot to be desired!

As a subscriber to ireland.com, my initial reaction is disappointment to the new site. Navigation and usability are not intuitive.

I found the letter’s section frustrating. Whereas previously, when you selected letters, they were all displayed together, now you have to click on each subject separately which takes from the flow of reading. I know that usability design dictates that users should not have to scroll down the screen to read text, but I do not feel that this should apply when reading a newspaper such as The Irish Times on-line.

I liked the old navigation system much better where you clicked on the tab at the top to see each section separately. Seeing all the articles’ headings listed on a single page feels too much like information overload and does not inspire one to read further.

Why change the site? It was fine the way it was

Wonderful website – clear, interesting, attractive. Just great all round.

At last, I read many foreign papers online and to have to subscribe to each one would be too expensive at last the only high quality Irish newspaper has decided to be free of charge.Thank you so much.P.S. I still buy the daily paper edition.

Belated but welcome: the Irish Times website was one of the best news sites in the world in 1997 and until last week had become one of the worst. This is a great improvement and hopefully it will continue to improve. You should display the name of columnists on the Comment page, not just the title of their piece. Navigation could also be improved, as noted by others. But there are still far too many typos and grammatical errors, especially with commas. Can’t the Irish Times someone improve the quality of its writing, or at least copyediting?

On a whole, it looks great.

If I were to nit-pick, bread crumbs and a Facebook share option would be most welcome.

I am delighted that you have opened up the site from behind the paywall. I think that the Irish Times should be competing with Comment is Free on the Guardian. There should be more blogs either by journalists or by inviting some bloggers into the fold. I think you need to do a lot more to put this site up on the top level with the Guardian.

The layout of the new site is driving me a bit crazy. I find myself continually editing hyperlinks to get to where I want to go. For instance blogs. Or, specifically the pricewatch blog. If you go to http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs/ you can see all the recent posts to blogs and click on a link to a single post. But, to get to the “main” page of the blog, you have to edit the hyperlink in the address bar because the “Pricewatch” in the right hand column is plain text, not a hyperlink. Worse than that, on the http://www.irishtimes.com/blogs page itself, the right hand side does not list blogs that you can click straight through to. God help anyone who isn’t comfortable editing hyperlinks themselves.

glad to finally have the free access, and yes, when in Ireland I still get the daily paper but its terrific to get the news in the early hours of the morning.

good site. Very useful to trade info between consumers. Well done and also for the Times foc on web. My Tullamore friend in China reads it every day….and he still feels weve outpaced Africa and Asia for corruption in high places.