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A little while ago, we started a conversation about evolving the look and feel of Stack Overflow. Your feedback was clear: you wanted less marketing and more product. You were right. We're sorry we missed the mark, and we're here today with a different approach.

We want to share a first look at the design changes we’re considering, but first, we want to be transparent about why we're doing this now.

The "Why": Responding to Feedback and Preparing for the Future

This is more than a simple cosmetic update. It's a response to direct community feedback and a necessary step to modernize our platform.

1. You've been telling us the design needs an update.

We've been tracking your feedback on what you'd most like to improve about Stack Overflow. "Site usability"—which includes visual design—has been steadily climbing that list. It went from being ranked 12th in January 2024 to being ranked as high as 2nd this past July in the Site Satisfaction Survey. We've read every piece of feedback, including comments like:

  • “The site looks poorly designed on most modern work displays.” (Site Satisfaction Survey, June 2024)
  • “The UI is pretty full of junk, could reduce the visual noise a bit.” (SO Improvement Survey, 2024)
  • “The visual can improve, despite being very well organized; longer code examples and bigger code boxes would be welcome.” (Site Satisfaction Survey, Aug 2025)

Your feedback is the primary reason we are working on this project.

2. We need to increase our technical agility.

Parts of our front-end codebase are outdated, which makes it slow and difficult to ship improvements and fix bugs. This initiative includes modernizing our codebase and updating our design system to make it easier for us to respond quickly. For you, this means a more consistent experience across the site and a faster turnaround for future feature development and bug fixes.

3. We need to adapt while reinforcing what makes this community valuable.

The world of technology is changing, but our role as a community of humans helping other humans is more critical than ever. This redesign is an opportunity to lean into that by improving clarity and reducing friction, ensuring the focus remains on high-quality knowledge. It is also an opportunity to meet the needs of both tenured and new users.

What's in Scope?

To achieve these goals, we're planning a widespread update. Here are the key areas we’re focusing on for this initial phase:

  • An updated Design System: We're updating our library of reusable UI components (buttons, forms, etc.), introducing a new color palette, a new typography system, and refreshed icons.
  • A wider layout: We know many of you use wide monitors. We're increasing the width of the site to make better use of your screen real estate while still maintaining our responsive layout.
  • Updated core navigation: We're simplifying the top bar and side navigation to make it easier to find what you're looking for. This also includes an update to our filtering capabilities.
  • Refreshed User Profiles: We're rethinking the user profile page to better empower you to showcase your expertise and contributions within the community. We're even exploring things like a free-form text field and the ability to link to external projects.

However, this update will not hit the whole network at once. We will start with Stack Overflow, focusing on the homepage, questions, AI Assist, and profile. As mentioned before, Stack Exchange sites will continue to exist, but under the Stack Overflow name and brand. This change will not be effective for about ~14 months.

A Series of Conversations

This post is the first in a series where we’ll share our progress and ask for your feedback on specific parts of the redesign. As we’re sharing these designs early in our process, you may find that they look rough in places, especially with placeholder icons. We believe getting your feedback now is more important than waiting for a perfectly polished version.

To make sure we get each piece right, we’ve broken the conversation down into following dedicated posts. We invite you to read through them and share your feedback in each post.

What’s Next?

This is a massive project, and we are committed to working with you. Your feedback on each of these posts will influence the next iteration of these designs. We will read every comment and will post updates to keep you informed of our progress.

Thank you for your time and your continued dedication to this community. We’re looking forward to your thoughts.

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    As the design system is changed, how will this impact other projects that use Stacks, such as the accessibility dashboard? Commented Oct 6 at 18:08
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    @cocomac They will remain intact Commented Oct 6 at 20:39
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    "our role as a community of humans helping other humans is more critical than ever" Sounds good but I wonder if that's really true. Why should it have been less critical in the past? Commented Oct 6 at 21:20
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    "ranked 12th in January 2024 to being ranked as high as 2nd this past July" That is a strong jump within 1.5 years. The site must have aged significantly in between. Just out of curiosity what was 2nd in January 2024? Commented Oct 6 at 21:26
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    “The UI is pretty full of junk, could reduce the visual noise a bit.” – I am glad you will be getting rid of obnoxious adverts and cookie pop-ups. Because you will, right? Commented Oct 8 at 10:50
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    A redesigned cookie pop-up will definitely need to happen. They are unfortunately a requirement now. Any thoughts on making it less obnoxious? @user3840170 Commented Oct 8 at 14:16
  • @Piper Just make it small enough to not cover up anything important, so it is possible to use the site without dealing with it. Commented Oct 9 at 9:39
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    @PiotrSiupa unfortunately, if you try to interact with the site without dealing with the cookie popup, that will now be treated as having given full consent. Commented Oct 9 at 16:56
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    @bobble How can they assume that one has given consent if one hasn't? They could probably make the site unable to use until the popup is decided one way or another. Isn't it a modal popup? Commented Oct 9 at 18:13
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    @NoDataDumpNoContribution because "By continuing to use this website, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies" - don't shoot the messenger. Commented Oct 9 at 18:14
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    @NoDataDumpNoContribution It’s called "automatically opted in"; very helpful to save people the hassle, isn’t it? In other words, they simply don’t care about consent anymore and aren’t afraid to publicly say so. Commented Oct 9 at 18:35
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    @Piper [Cookie pop-ups] are unfortunately a requirement now. They aren't. If you don't do any user tracking, then you don't need any pop-ups. And tracking users is not a requirement. Commented Oct 10 at 19:48
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    "Parts of our front-end codebase are outdated, which makes it slow and difficult to ship improvements and fix bugs" If changes in code make it more difficult to understand and hence slow down work, then you may need better coding standards. Commented Oct 12 at 5:50
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    "This change will not be effective for about ~14 months." — This sentence confuses me; what specifically is it attempting to convey? Commented Oct 15 at 22:39
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    This is a sham. The decision has obviously already been made. Why look for "feedback" and waste all our time? Commented Oct 21 at 14:25

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Stack Exchange sites will continue to exist, but under the Stack Overflow name and brand.

So - this is a problem for a lot of us. Historically, the Stack Exchange Sites - whether the bigger ones with our own branding like Super User, Server Fault or Ask Ubuntu, or the smaller foo.stackexchange.com sites have been neglected, and treated as, well third class citizens.

The company already operates as Stack Overflow for most part, and getting pushed under that banner... doesn't really do us much good. As we've said before - we don't have the baggage SO has, and many of our sites have scopes that have nothing to do with programming.

So - what do we need to do to protect our identity? Way back when there was a campaign to preserve the Mascots of world building - Pandora and Slartibotfast, 'cause the company literally failed to understand that even with interconnected sites, our identities were important. As much as keeping the 'bodies' of the sites running, keeping their 'souls' healthy is important as well, and our site identities matter.

Over time - it's also the one thing that distinguishes smaller sites from the massive monolith that Stack Overflow was. A lot of per site branding has been on the backburner over time and while I get the desire to redesign the big site, it's worth remembering that we might benefit from our own site designs and branding, and our own distinctiveness. As a pets mod, what do canines have to do with C, or Rabbits with Rust? It also means potentially site promotion, should it be a thing will entirely be focused on Stack Overflow, over smaller sites, simply cause that's the only brand that matters. Maybe its been the case for too long, but that cements it.

And historically we've had more people confused that non programming sites exist (or asking programming questions on an inappropriate site).

The rest might have value, but I feel like pushing us under Stack Overflow's branding and name will do more harm, and cause more confusion.

There's been significant feedback about this through every single stage of consultation - pointing out issues with this, so I'd ask you take these into consideration.

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    I completely understand your frustration and I am doing everything in my power to ensure you can keep what makes your site special. Now, not everything lies within my power, but I will continue to represent our users (ALL users) to the best of my ability. And to be clear, I do not have an answer right now. We are doing research on what users want and what this might look like in the future, but there are product decisions that will need to happen as well that haven't happened yet. Commented Oct 6 at 16:53
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    The company's track record with the needs of the smaller sites has been pretty abysmal over the years - we have a few bright spots and things get back to the status quo. From where I am, as a regular user with some experience on meta - I'm really going to have to speak out because I don't really trust the company to understand. A lot of decision makers don't really seem to have the context on the ground - so hopefully you can pass this up to them if it isn't your decision. Commented Oct 6 at 16:59
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    "I am doing everything in my power...." That's odd wording. When Stack Overflow makes any random decision, does it matter to users whether any particular employee was for or against it? I don't understand. Commented Oct 6 at 19:56
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    Well hence me asking what do we need to do? It feels that the decision is made and locked in . My options are organising a moderation strike (which honestly is terrible for everyone involved, and I'm not good at these things), or claiming this is a major decision made without moderator input, triggering that process... which is also not good for everyone involved, or somehow hoping (with no evidence to that) someone in the company can and will put the brakes on that. I think we can make the latter work and there's time to organise but I'd rather not open up the nuclear option. Commented Oct 7 at 0:12
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    @Piper This is not a request to you as an individual. This is a request to the company as a whole. When the response from the companies agent is 'not in my power', that implicitly means 'the company is not interested in consulting the community on this matter'. Its definitely within the companies power. If its not yours, then whoever holds that power is should be taking this feedback into account. If they do not, then well, that is ignoring community feedback and as Journeyman Geek said, a direct violation of the agreement after the strike. Commented Oct 7 at 1:37
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    @Piper - RE: "[you are] doing everything...to ensure you can keep what makes [our] site special." -- You (the company) have a talented pool of people who do volunteer work to look after their communities. The best step towards this goal would be to give us the tools to manage & style our own sites, without worrying about trying to shove us under some product structure. The extent of your (the company's) "product decision" should be the styling of the top bar, the logo on the left, and the links in the footer. Everything else should be "community space". Commented Oct 7 at 9:54
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    @Piper You created the starting post (or "question") mentioning "we" several times, implying you're communicating on behalf of the company. Then in the responses, you switch to "I" and point out things are not in your (individual) power. So which one is it? Is this post made by you as an individual or as a company representative? Clarifying the intent of this announcement would be quite helpful. That aside, what is the point of this post you made to solicit community feedback if it will be ignored and you (company) will do your own thing anyway? Commented Oct 7 at 11:51
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    @MaskedMan That's probably because my team helped me create the original post, and I've answered all of these without any Community team or anyone else's oversight. If you start hearing me say "we" in the comments, then I either spoke with someone about a particular answer or I got in trouble with Philippe—hi Philippe! o/ Commented Oct 7 at 14:26
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    @Piper Thank you for the background on how the post was created though that's not really relevant to the topic. The question here is, does the post made here represent the company, or you as an individual? And if it is the former, can we have the company response to the community feedback, not what you (individually) can or cannot do? If it means it needs oversight from this "community team", then let us have that please. It's also not clear why the company has come back again with the same topic where the community already gave feedback, and the feedback was they don't want this change. Commented Oct 7 at 15:29
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    @Piper If it needed multiple people to write the original post, why is it only you responding? Or does the company only care about asking for feedback, not actually listening to it, so that is delegated to someone without the power to act on that feedback? Why are no one with the power to actually influence the decisions being given this feedback? Commented Oct 18 at 23:30
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I have to say that I really don't understand the logic behind rebranding everything behind Stack Overflow name and I am mostly Stack Overflow user. For me Stack Exchange was very logical brand name encompassing whole network including Stack Overflow.

For non technical sites, Stack Overflow is meaningless. For technical sites, pushing Stack Overflow brand means that more users will be confused and instead of asking question on smaller, more appropriate site, they will end up asking off topic question on Stack Overflow.

When it comes to the actual sites redesign, I hope that you will not be using that dreadful colors and style you have shown us at your introductory post. Those are really hard on the eyes. Some of us will be able to use various user scripts to make it more usable, but we are only a fraction of your user base. Horrible design choices will not make sites more popular.

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    The name changes are not in my purview. However, this post series does explore how we (product design) took the marketing assets and imagined them for our products. I'd recommend you check out those posts. Commented Oct 6 at 18:39
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    I note that many of us have spent the last 10+ years promoting "Stack Exchange" sites all over the Internet; those links are still functional, so hopefully they don't break. There are also issues with Meta.SE and Meta.SO being different things (and likewise with Math.SE and MathOverflow). Commented Oct 6 at 22:11
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    @Piper we keep hearing that. I'm going to "can we speak to the manager" here and maybe get the person whose purview its under to either post here on why its so massively important to do this, sit down with folks and try to find a solution that works better for the communities involved? We have a SO mod, and a SE/Network mod both pointing out this is a problem - so if you can't do anything, please get someone who can do something come out. Considering we represent affected communities, and are speaking on behalf of them, who would the rebranding be for then? Commented Oct 7 at 0:59
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    @Piper Our attempts to engage the company about the rebranding of the network sites to "Stack Overflow" have been repeatedly ignored and deflected. Every time we even ask if it's decided or final or still just a concept, we can't get an answer, even in private moderator spaces. When people can't get answers from the people who are supposed to answer those questions - they start asking everyone even remotely associated. The silence on this is so loud, it's difficult to hear anything other than "Yes, it's final, they just have no spines to be honest with you yet." Commented Oct 7 at 15:23
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    If I can play "devils advocate" for a second, I think moving everything under StackOverflow makes sense from a purely marketing/branding perspective. It's kind of similar to DRY principles in coding. Maintaining the marketing for every community is a huge waste of effort. Moving everything under one site and one brand may even help grow lesser known sites. Also, saying StackOverflow is confusing for non-tech sites is like saying Coca-cola is confusing to cocaine addicts. It's technically true, but no one actually thinks about brand names. Commented Oct 10 at 14:55
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    @twiz It might make sense from the marketing perspective, but not from the usability perspective when someone starts using the sites. Even in coding naming matters and you don't use same names for different things. And when you mention DRY it is about preventing duplication of the same functionality (code) and not about naming. Commented Oct 10 at 18:40
  • @ResistanceIsFutile Maybe I am giving them too much credit, but I assume when they talk about putting everything under Stackoverflow, that doesn't mean they're going to jumble everything into a single godawful mess. For example, I don't think they just going to add a tag called "ServerFault". I imagine it would be a little like how Reddit has subreddits. The basic idea being that when you want Q&A, you go to stackoverflow, not various random sites. Regardless of how they decide to organize everything, it would defeat the purpose if users can't find what they're looking for. Commented Oct 11 at 0:53
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    @twiz even if they don't do it, the problem will be that users will be confused. We already have people asking off topic questions on Stack Overflow. Marketing everything as Stack Overflow will only increase that confusion. If the attempt is bringing in new users, then those will be the ones that are not familiar with the sites. They will land on Stack Overflow, ask off topic question and then be annoyed when the question gets downvoted and closed. This is not a good marketing strategy. Commented Oct 11 at 6:51
  • @ResistanceIsFutile Sure, it COULD be designed in a confusing way, but my point is that it doesn't have to be. I think you're still imagining the current StackOverflow site with everything else crammed into it. I assume StackOverflow as we currently know it might become something like stackoverflow.com/programming. Is a separate logo and domain name the only thing keeping you from asking astronomy questions on the current StackOverflow? Commented Oct 11 at 11:25
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    @twiz No, I am not imagining everything crammed into single site. What I am trying to tell you that even today people come to Stack Overflow and post completely inappropriate questions. If all other sites get marketed under Stack Overflow name, then there will be even more people who will miss the fact that there are multiple sites and that Stack Overflow is only for programming questions, not for other kinds. Commented Oct 11 at 11:34
  • @ResistanceIsFutile But this entire conversation is about how StackOverflow will no longer be only for programming. StackOverflow as we currently know it (programming q&a) would presumably no longer be known as StackOverflow. It would just be the programming section underneath StackOverflow (or however they decide to organize things). Commented Oct 11 at 11:54
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    @twiz All of which you describe as the ideal and then some could just be solved by naming everything… StackExchange. Seriously, they already have one name for everything, and they have one name for the "flagship" site. What you describe would at best not change anything about this, assuming everyone is on bord with names established for decades suddenly meaning different things. At least the network name they have right now isn’t the one that half the internet associate with a toxic dumpster fire. Commented Oct 12 at 12:14
  • @MisterMiyagi Technically you are factually correct, but I imagine half the users of StackOverflow have never even heard the name "StackExchange". It is obvious that StackOverflow has significantly better brand recognition, which brings me back to my original point, that this is nothing more than a rather unremarkable marketing decision. StackOverflow is the more valuable brand, so they are sticking with that. 🤷‍♂️ Commented Oct 12 at 18:48
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    @twiz StackOverflow (the brand) has brand recognition for StackOverflow (the site). Taking away StackOverflow (the brand) from StackOverflow (the site) because they want it for the network instead, or similarly diluting StackOverflow (the brand) because it will apply to every single site seems far from unremarkable. There is a reason why the well-scoped site is a better recognised brand than the broadly scoped network. Commented Oct 12 at 20:12
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    @twiz Sorry, we're just talking past each other. I'm not questioning brand recognition of SO. In fact, I very much acknowledged that the well-scoped site (i.e. SO) has better recognition than the broadly scoped network (i.e. SE). I'm questioning that this is just a rather unremarkable marketing decision. Commented Oct 12 at 21:11
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I really think the "Renaming everything to Stack Overflow" is the hugest change here, and it really deserves more attention. And it feels like you're glossing over it with having 5 entire posts about different aspects of this overhaul, without really dedicating focused effort into it. You talk about "The Why" and none of the reasons motivate that change. You talk about "What's in scope?" and you don't mention that change. This is like if I was buying a car, signing 30 pages of paperwork, and halfway down page 23 it said "by the way you agree that we now own your dog".

So I really think we need some answers about what's going on with this name change. I'll try to make the different aspects of this direct and explicit.

  1. Is this change locked-in? Is it definitely happening, or is it a concept you're playing with? Most of the other changes in this overhaul are mockups, concepts, baseline ideas, but still open to shifting. Does that apply to this one?

  2. Has community feedback ever been sought for this change? Have users been asked "would you support renaming the network"? If not, why is this so at odds with all the other aspects which do solicit feedback?

  3. Right now, we have Stack Overflow as the main, programming-oriented site, and Stack Exchange for all the spinoffs. When the spinoffs are called Stack Overflow, what is the intended branding for the big site? Right now I ask my space exploration questions on Space Stack Exchange, and my C programming on Stack Overflow. In the future, do I ask space on Space Stack Overflow and C on "The real actual original Stack Overflow"? I don't see how you can refer to that site post-rebrand in a non-clumsy way.

  4. It's concerning seeing the internal fragmentation that seems to be happening here. I don't see why @Piper can make a post announcing that the name change is continuing forward, and then respond to comments on this saying "The name changes are not in my purview". When a post like this is made about the future of the site, then from a user perspective, we are hearing from, and talking to, the whole site. All the employees, the company, as a whole. If I open a box of crackers and find a dead mouse inside, I call the cracker company. I get a receptionist, and say "Hi I found a dead mouse". The receptionist then does not say "Well I don't work the production line, I didn't put it there". The receptionist directs me to quality control. That receptionist is my interface to the company as a whole, and in the same way, this kind of post is an interface to SE/SO as a whole.

If you can't speak about the name changing, then we really need to hear from who can, and figure out what is actually happening and what the actual reasons for the change might be.

Webpage layouts can be changed, reverted, and adjusted at will. I don't think anyone involved in this redesign expects the site to stay on this design for 20 years - it will get re-changed as needed to continue improving, hopefully. But a name change? Those are few and far between. It's a big deal, and really deserves its own post and discussion. This deserves as much community consideration as the question of whether votes go to the right or left of questions in the feed. We should know where this is coming from and the reasoning, with a breakdown of the benefits and acknowledgement of the downsides, and how the conclusion decides the benefits win out.

Ever heard of bikeshedding? This solicitation for feedback on visuals feels like a forced instance of bikeshedding. Changing the name and changing the appearance are two orthogonal modifications and should get separate feedback. Otherwise this feels like a tactic to sneak the big change in with a bunch of ultimately inconsequential ones.

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    The re-branding was announced previously: Will you help build our new visual identity?. I don't know how much, if any, influence we have on that. Commented Oct 7 at 13:34
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    Yes @VLAZ to be clear, that was why I used the wording that they "[made] a post announcing that the name change is continuing forward". With the backlash to the previous post it was unclear whether they would roll that back (like they rolled back the garish, tile-based concepts), and now this post is announcing that the name change is continuing forward. Commented Oct 7 at 13:58
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An updated Design System: We're updating our library of reusable UI components (buttons, forms, etc.), introducing a new color palette, a new typography system, and refreshed icons.

Do you intend to address the technical design flaws that result in you consistently producing inaccessible UI components? A lot of problems are solved by semantic HTML (including semantic use of classes), and the CSS cascade: the current implementation of Stacks unsolves those problems, and the company lacks the resources or skill to re-solve all of those problems on a case-by-case basis.

If you're updating the Design System, this would be a good opportunity to reimplement your component library according to sound web principles. If you don't know how to do that, this would be a good opportunity to contribute some excellent questions to Stack Overflow (or other Stack Exchange sites, depending on exactly which parts you don't yet know how to do).

"Site usability"—which includes visual design—has been steadily climbing that list.

A large part of this is because you've been reducing site usability, thus making it a more urgent problem. Unless you reflect on why that is, you're not going to successfully make things better.

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    Destroying Stacks and starting over would be a big win. Commented Oct 6 at 18:28
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    "If you don't know how to do that, this would be a good opportunity to contribute some excellent questions to Stack Overflow" Or, hire someone with that expertise. And, ideally not someone who just handles everything HTML/CSS-wise through JS frameworks/components, either. Commented Oct 6 at 18:29
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    @TylerH Hiring someone new would not be sufficient (since internal politics could scupper that), and it would not be necessary (since I believe the current designers and developers are perfectly capable of learning the "new technology" of the Lost Arts of HTML/CSS). It might help, but only once they know enough to know how to distinguish someone with that expertise from someone without it. Commented Oct 6 at 18:46
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    Do you have any specifics on how Stacks doesn't use semantic HTML or what exactly isn't accessible about Stacks specifically? We realize it does have some issues, but it is how we lead improving accessibility here at Stack Overflow since every developer uses when building UI. Commented Oct 6 at 20:21
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    @Piper What is the semantic meaning of <div class="d-flex fd-column jc-space-between pb4 mb16 ml8">? Commented Oct 6 at 20:58
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    And… it's hard to explain exactly what isn't accessible, but imagine trying to re-colour something using these classes in a userstyle! You could consult the second half of this previous answer, especially the Codeless Code references, for further explanation, although I find it hard to explain how things are bad (except by comparing them to the better approaches). Commented Oct 6 at 21:03
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    If they rewrote Stacks to use meaningful classes like the long abandoned Semantic UI project I would be sooo happy Commented Oct 6 at 21:17
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    @GammaGames HTML classes aren't about styles. Sure, clear CSS is good and useful, but the misnamed "Semantic UI" project still uses classes primarily for styling. <a class="ui black pointing below ignored label">Run Code</a> is not good HTML, for reasons too numerous to list here. Commented Oct 6 at 21:44
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    @GammaGames reading that something has a yellow background because it has the style bg-yellow is just style="bakground-color: yellow" but more compressed. It doesn't explain why it is yellow. For example if one bookmark has a yellow background - why is it different to others? In one usersciript I had to colour elements by adding fc-red-500 to match it to existing styles. After a redesign, I had to go update my code to a different class. Instead of, you know, having the class flag-cast and that having the correct colour for a flag that was cast Commented Oct 6 at 22:02
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    @Piper See VLAZ's most recent comment for a good description of an accessibility issue caused by unsemantic HTML. (I know this is a power user thing, not an ordinary user thing, but the issues faced by non-power-users are effectively the same as this, just with various layers of browser configuration and assistive tech as an intermediary.) I can imagine writing an NVDA plugin to expose class="recently-active" to the user, but .bg-yellow-050 could mean too many different things, and isn't stable enough to colour scheme changes, to be useful. Commented Oct 6 at 22:08
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    Okay. After some back and forth with the devs I understand the situation a bit better. We use atomic classes which is one industry standard. It sounds like you would like us to use semantic classes to be able to target these to customize the site to your needs. Our devs feel like data elements in attributes would be better suited for this and ideally, you wouldn't need to rely on CSS classes. However, that does not mean we will be able to include this in scope. But we have noted it so you never know! Commented Oct 7 at 17:38
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    @Piper I agree that data elements are often a more appropriate way to convey semantics than shoving everything in the class attribute. I would encourage them to use that approach where it's obviously better (and I do appreciate where they're already doing that). However, just because something's an "industry standard" does not make it correct: "Atomic CSS" is a wrong approach, CSS was invented to get away from it, and if you have a component library it provides very few devex advantages (especially vs the many bugs). (Btw, thanks for telling me the name: I didn't know it had one!) Commented Oct 7 at 17:44
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    I've had a look at Atomic CSS resources, such as Rethinking CSS, and they mostly demonstrate a lack of understanding. The accessibility and semantics sections of this slideshow are especially egregious, but representative: it presents the straw position that semantics are all about class names (despite quoting from sources that don't), quotes someone suggesting to use "(ARIA, etc.) to describe content", and then dismisses further criticism as "Some People Really Really Just Do Not Like It". Commented Oct 7 at 19:24
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    @wizzwizz4 FWIW, I've found that almost all attempts to "rethink CSS" stem from complete misunderstanding what it is. I've seen it with developers who are completely new (I remember one trying to figure out how to make a loop in CSS because he wanted to apply a style to multiple elements) and even more advanced users seem to misapply CSS then come up with a "solution" which is, shockingly, not "use it correctly". I mean, not that CSS hasn't problems but various "solutions" usually either miss them or skim the surface. Commented Oct 7 at 19:29
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    @wizzwizz4 Don't forget data-selected-classes and data-unselected-classes – having to reimplement semantic CSS classes in JavaScript instead of using CSS classes like they were supposed to in the first place. Commented Oct 8 at 10:47
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Reminder: in addition to wide layouts, test on narrow layouts. Many of us are using cell phones as browsers.

Pet peeve that I hope you can address: the pop-up menu that appears when text has been selected sometimes obscures the function bar at the top of the text entry box. This makes selecting text and then applying an operation to it, such as bold or hyperlink or quote, significantly more difficult than it has to be. I can work around by entering the markup manually, but this strikes me as something that could be done better.

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    I'd pretty much say 720p (or lower) and UHD/4k or 5K on the high end would be good places to ensure good support. Commented Oct 6 at 16:33
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    Also, portrait or vertical monitors, or just windows that are taller than wide. Commented Oct 7 at 2:28
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    If narrow layouts work, you can have two windows open on the same monitor, and don't have to waste a whole one to look at your code and SO at the same time. Commented Oct 7 at 11:47
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    I understand your concern, but I rather think the opposite is true for guys like me who never surf the net with a cell phone (age 62). On my laptop screen the window where I look at this thread is 60 percent whitespace. Not a huge issue here, but the waste annoys the hell out of me on those occasions when I need to scroll down 2-3 times as much as I used to. Anyway, I think the 16x9 view is not optimal because the designers made it too vertical. Commented Oct 14 at 18:07
  • I'm a firm believer in fully adaptive page styling. Then again, I worked on a rule-driven UIMS at one point, and I remain frustrated that html's evolution has insisted on entangling style and content... Commented Oct 14 at 18:41
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The announcement sounds self-contradicting in many places.

On the one hand it says the following:

Your feedback was clear: you wanted less marketing and more product.

It's a response to direct community feedback ...

We need to adapt while reinforcing what makes this community valuable.

On the other hand, it also says:

As mentioned before, Stack Exchange sites will continue to exist, but under the Stack Overflow name and brand.

So, which one is it? Do you (the company) care about the community feedback, or no? And if you do care about the community feedback, could the community expect to see it in your (the company's) actions, and not just words?

The announcement also says:

... we want to be transparent about why we're doing this now.

Except that you (the company) is not really transparent about why you're doing this. The technical changes proposed are alright, but there is no transparency about why you're shoving the unwanted Stack Overflow baggage down the throats of every other community. After the community has told you they don't want it. Repeatedly.

The announcement further mentions:

Your feedback is the primary reason we are working on this project.

As well, you (the company) has surreptitiously included a management's decision into community feedback. Which the community has unequivocally opposed. Repeatedly.

... our role as a community of humans helping other humans is more critical than ever.

You (the company) would do well to remind yourself and your shareholders that the community of humans is at the core of your business. Without their contributions, you have no business and no shareholding.

... we are committed to working with you.

The manner in which you (the company) has been running the show for the past several years suggests otherwise though. From the outside, it even appears as if the company thinks things would work much better if they didn't have to deal with this community feedback every now and then.

It is perhaps worth consideration if you (the company) could drop the act of caring about the community feedback, and just come clean with what you really want, which is to increase profit for the shareholders.

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    "Your feedback is the primary reason we are working on this project." I also stumbled about that sentence. Most of the things they experimented on in the last time, the community actually didn't want them to work on. The community was very clear about that. At the very least they are very selective about when to follow community feedback and when not and I'm not sure where the total balance would stand. Commented Oct 7 at 20:46
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    OF COURSE, the goal is increased profit. It's an integral part of the corporate charter. Any discussion that does not recognize that fact is just background noise. Commented Oct 13 at 2:10
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An updated Design System: We're updating our library of reusable UI components (buttons, forms, etc.), introducing a new color palette, a new typography system, and refreshed icons.

It seems to be a trend these days to redesign sites à la Material Design. You suddenly see huge titles, big icons, lots of space between everything, lists and menu with double spacing. It seems the aim is to fill as much space as possible with as little information as possible.

So please, if you redesign the web site, make sure you go for a compact mode that favors content over good looks.

For a graphic designer, it looks like the way to go, because the less information there is on a page the cleaner the design will look. But then, when you use the site, you find yourself scrolling all the time to see the information bit by bit.

I want to navigate the page with my eyes, not with my scroll wheel.

A wider layout: We know many of you use wide monitors. We're increasing the width of the site to make better use of your screen real estate while still maintaining our responsive layout.

I guess that is exactly my point. If you mean by this that you are going to make everything bigger and more spacey, you are wasting my (not so big) monitor. People buy wide monitors to be able to display more, not to see sites with bigger fonts.

The irony is that the developers who design these sites speak of cognitive load to justify why the design needs to be so airy. Buy they use tools like VSCode or Eclipse, with pretty compact UI designs that leave no space unused. And they don't feel it is a problem.

Sorry if It sounds like a rant, but I have seen it so many time, it makes me cry every time.

PS: In the meantime I saw what was actually proposed. I definitely want to be able to see more than 3 questions on my desktop monitor.

enter image description here

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    partially repeating myself and others from elsewhere, ideally the user has some easy-enough way to pick what they want in spacing- maybe not of everything (choice overload isn't good in my experience), but between compact, spacious, something in the middle. some apps offer the user a choice like that (ex. gmail, discord). for each user, it may be a preference, or a real need, and each person's preference or need holds validity. Commented Oct 10 at 19:29
  • I'm also a small screen user, and a VS Code user. maybe relevant factoid- VS Code's most compact workbench configuration(s) aren't the default, but it's true that it's relatively more space efficient than other tools in the space (*glances at jetbrains), which I personally appreciate. Commented Oct 10 at 19:29
  • On the landing page, watched tags are given a tiny little box with a "see all" overflow. What is the utility of that? Design needs to be eliminated as a profession. Commented Oct 18 at 16:02
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Something I've noticed looking through all the posts is that there seems to be a lack of contrast/separators between different elements. For example, the title of a question, who posted it, and its body

homepage view, specifically of a question preview

or where the user ends, the question starts/ends, and where the comments begin

what a question looks like

etc.

The current design is very clearly segmented and laid out, for the most part, and it's pretty easy to see what specific content is, at a glance. In the proposed design, we lose all of that. At a glance, I have no idea what is and isn't important, or whether something is a title or part of the question, etc.

Please, please, make it really easy to distinguish between different elements of a page.

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We didn't ask for these changes

Please clarify the reasoning behind the first point; 'You've been telling us the design needs an update.'

“The site looks poorly designed on most modern work displays.” (Site Satisfaction Survey, June 2024)

  • How does the new design fixes this?

“The UI is pretty full of junk, could reduce the visual noise a bit.” (SO Improvement Survey, 2024)

“The visual can improve, despite being very well organized; longer code examples and bigger code boxes would be welcome.” (Site Satisfaction Survey, Aug 2025)

As a general thought, some points are welcome and will improve the overall experience here. Unfortunately the scope is way to large, there is no need for a complete redesign while there are yet a lot of more important issues that needs to be resolved.

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  • We all know that single quotes are a bad way to make compelling arguments. You could probably go to some threads discussing the upcoming changes, get some quotes of users with negative feelings about the company and reason that the whole community wants for the company to go to hell just because of that. Commented Oct 7 at 20:51
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I stumble over this page again. I still don't understand.

... As mentioned before, Stack Exchange sites will continue to exist, but under the Stack Overflow name and brand. ...

Just one question: Why?

It seems pretty established that StackExchange is a collection of Q&A sites, and StackOverflow is the one for "professional and enthusiast programmers". Why does it need a change?

The common feature of all these Q&A communities is the "exchange". "Stack Exchange", a play of words on "stock exchange", suggests the idea of a dynamic market where many people join in and exchange ideas. StackOverflow suggests only computer issues.

I could understand if you said StackOverflow will detach from the StackExchange galaxy and become its own independent brand, but putting all sites under StackOverflow is nonsensical to me.

Will StackOverflow now be both the collection of communities and the specific IT-oriented one? How will it work? How will you make the distinction between StackExchange that became StackOverflow and the current StackOverflow? For instance, will you merge https://meta.stackexchange.com and https://meta.stackoverflow.com?

I don't see any reason why this change is even considered.

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..Stack Exchange sites will continue to exist..

But maybe not thrive very much. I can't get rid of the feeling that they don't get any priority at all. The missing attention is, correct me if I'm wrong, almost palpable. It might kill them to some extent.

I will continue to speak of them as exchanges and not StackOverflow public platform sites, because that is much easier and better. You are missing out on a big opportunity there by not pushing non programming/technical content the same way. It's all knowledge.

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Is this actually going to be a full redesign, where we go, on day one, from what we have to a new design? or is this going to be more of a slow, over time roll out where now instead of two to three different UI ideas being maintained/in use across the site it's three to four?

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    an xkcd 927 situation? Commented Oct 6 at 16:35
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    "We're gonna solve our tech debt issue by replacing the existing 2-3 not entirely rolled out site redesigns with a new redesign!" yea, exactly. We have the home page, which is entirely different from the rest of the site, we have the staging ground which was built at an earlier site design phase, we have articles which was built at yet another design phase, and... review queues... a partial in progress chat redesign kinda? Commented Oct 6 at 16:38
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    It won't be a full replacement on day one. My hope is that we can do a simple design system swap across the board and then the changes that live outside the design system will happen more slowly. Devs just finished discovery on how we might approach this so we are simply too early for me to say exactly how much will change with that initial push. Commented Oct 6 at 16:55
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    @Piper I'd be interested to hear about the results of that discovery: I'm all but certain they've missed some fundamentals, which any of a few members of the community could fill in for them. (And perhaps I'd be pleasantly surprised.) Commented Oct 6 at 17:13
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Will users have the ability to opt for legacy layout/design once the redesign goes live?

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    In the experiment phase, probably? I don’t think it's likely at full release though. Commented Oct 6 at 20:35
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    People always ask this when any site gets redesigned, and the answer is nearly always "no", for a very good reason. The problem is that you can't just "leave the old design there"; the site will need change - new features will be added, bugs found, browser features added and removed, etc. Either every single change has to be tested on 2 (or 3, or...) different designs, meaning longer lead times and resistance to change; or bugs against the "legacy" design have to be marked "wontfix", meaning a gradually worse experience for those using that design. Commented Oct 8 at 14:07
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    @IMSoP Except well-designed design systems, like Wikipedia's or Wordpress's, support designs going back decades. There are reasons we can't always do that in an existing codebase, but there's no real reason that it couldn't be done going forwards – the next design SO pushes could be the first "permanently available" design, if they wanted. Commented Oct 9 at 20:12
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    @wizzwizz4 Certainly, it is possible, but note that both of the systems you mention are platforms used by many different sites. In the case of WordPress, theming is a core feature of the product, and other features have to be designed carefully not to break the ecosystem of existing themes. In the case of MediaWiki, there is a smaller set of popular skins, and only 5 that are officially supported by the core product: 1 mobile, 1 responsive, 2 minor variants of the current default, and 1 previous default, probably maintained mostly by those who use it on other sites. Commented Oct 9 at 20:55
  • @wizzwizz4 It would absolutely be possible for Stack Exchange to be built with pluggable theme/skin support, and for multiple themes/skins to be maintained indefinitely. It would be possible for there to be five thousand themes to choose from. It's just incredibly unlikely that for a closed-source platform, there will be any incentive to spend engineering effort on that, just because a few users say they like how it looked in 2024 or 2022 slightly better than how it looks in 2026 or 2028. There is a common misconception is that it would be free, because it's already built. It would not. Commented Oct 9 at 20:58
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    @IMSoP MediaWiki and WordPress both need to support near-arbitrary templates, boxes, gizmos and widgets. Stack Exchange has questions, and answers, restricted to basically the same set of HTML elements as 5 years ago, and with no styling. Making SE easy to theme is much easier than the examples I gave: that they managed it suggests SE can manage it. (And I'm not saying they'd need to spend engineering effort on it: there are things that they could do to make it very easy for community members to maintain themes, which I believe would also make their own lives easier.) Commented Oct 9 at 21:24
  • @wizzwizz4 If this was just about changing the CSS to have different colours and fonts, I might agree; making those easily configurable is definitely part of the "design systems" they often talk about. But my understanding is that they are talking about much deeper changes: to the front-end framework itself, to the data and functionality on some of the pages, and so forth. Even if the new system supported themes, you'd have to write something that mimicked the current style on top of those changes, you couldn't just "switch back", unless they maintained all that old code. Commented Oct 9 at 22:02
  • @IMSoP Since the current design system is fairly well documented, it would not be hard to mimic the current design on top of a new design system, if that design system supported theming. I agree that it'd be extremely difficult to continue to support the current design as-is – but that's because of particular details of how it's currently implemented, not because that's an essential property of redesigns in general. Commented Oct 9 at 22:05
  • @wizzwizz4 Again, yes, a user-themable system would be perfectly possible. But again, not free, and not likely to be something they consider a worthwhile investment, since their aims are better served by us all associating the same visual identity with the site and the brand. Commented Oct 9 at 22:08
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As mentioned before, Stack Exchange sites will continue to exist, but under the Stack Overflow name and brand.

Does this represent a change from previous iterations of this plan toward keeping more per-site identity?

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Speaking of changes: it would be great if you could introduce "change bars", or a color change similar to the diff view, to make the most recent change immediately visibly obvious. If you want us to sanity-check or respond to changes, we shouldn't have to hunt for them or take an additional action to see what was fixed or added.

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Where is my dark theme? Across all sites, not just SO.

So many of us want one, it won't change anything for others, and it will probably take less time to make than this 5-part discussion.

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I think you're missing the point. There are problems with the user experience, but it's not going to be solved by changing colors and fonts. That's not going to bring back the users who are deserting the site. They don't leave because the colors and fonts are wrong, they leave because they don't get results by coming here, and the primary reason they don't get results is because whenever they ask a question, it immediately gets closed as a duplicate of something that doesn't actually solve their problem, even if it's in the same general topic area.

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