The old interface was marginal, but I was able to handle it.

The new interface completely sucks ... the company that designed this should be fired on the spot.

Of course, I noticed this because I was going to that page several times a day reading most of the new comments. However, since the new system gave all the existing comments the exact same post date, there is no way to sort them or to determine ... well anything useful.

With the new page, that task is now significantly harder.

• You can no longer specify how many posts are displayed per page - you get 25, period
• You have an extra click and an extra (fairly long) wait for a new page to open before you can click on a comment (and you still have to click on the dialog box acknowledging that when you clicked on PDF you knew that that meant PDF)
• Attempts to link to the results I want apparently don't work - instead I have to manually enter the docket number every time I want to check it. But just to keep it fun, when I paste the value, the software covers the Search button so it can not be clicked.
• Slow ... this new page is unbelievably slow - more than 2 minutes for the home page to open? Come on.
• You can't resize the text. Hey, I need a slightly larger text size. Unfortunately, the new site stacks the letters on top of each other making it impossible to change the text size. I think that this actually violates the government web standards. (In IE, hold down the control key and roll the mouse wheel. You might have to use Tools / Internet Options... / General / Accessibility and set Ignore font sizes specified on web pages for this to work.)
• Copy is disabled - if you see something you like, you get to type it in yourself
• Search for date sometimes works, but usually doesn't - totally unpredictable (actually, it appears that they simply reset the dates on all the existing posts again)

It appears that they plan to reset the dates every day so that there will never be a way to see what is new and what is old.

And the background ... why, it looks like an open book. Wow, I feel good !?!

Oh, and there is a pretty picture. I am sure that will help me ...

What a bunch of crap. Maybe on facebook or a personal web site. But this stuff looks more like an activist site than a site where I expect sound judgement to occur.

(In fact, this looks a lot like an activist site. Maybe that is why I find it so offensive. And the multi-national, multi-racial, multi-gender image ... I don't think that propaganda is too strong a word.)

• At a minimum, the FAQ should say something about the new site and provide help (guidance) for people figuring out how to use it.
• When I enter something in the search box, the stupid software should NOT cover the Search button so that it can not be clicked.
• Please remove the eye candy - it is so very non-professional.

On the other hand, it is possible that these people know exactly what they are doing ... and driving people way from an openly user hostile site may be the objective. (I know that sounds a bit paranoid ... but take a good look at the site.)

The new site design is terrible. The old design was user friendly and intuitive. The old site showed how many requests were posted in the last x-days. That information is no longer available. Now I have to use that slow javascript calendar. The old system indicated which day an item was posted, that information is now gone. The old system allowed me to set how many items to display per page, not the new system. This is a problem because the queries are so very very slow. To read an item, I now have to open another page first. Again, the queries are very slow. As a result, this system is several times slower to use than the old system. When you modify the search criteria, the browser back arrow does not work. Instead it takes me back to the previous site. That is totally user hostile. It is the main reason sites quit using ajax. Links to specific reports no longer work. Many thousands of people have (had) sites that linked directly to information on your site, and now all those links are broken. (The worse virus known would have done less damage than this new design.) Half the time the site is non-functional, clicking on "search" produces just a title. Then it quits downloading. I could go on and on. This site is a joke. PLEASE return the old site.

Add this to my previous comments - Help Desk Tracking Number: 223 All history of "when" items were posted has been lost. Everything is listed as being posted 7/27/09. Therefore, there is no way for me to continue my research into anything without rereading "everything" posted to your site. All history is lost. In the case of one specific docket, this is over 7,000 comments that indicate that they were posted yesterday. To be clear, this is a complete disaster and shows extreme incompetence on the part of who ever did this.

Apparently, a prototype of the new site was running for a few weeks before it went live. Funny how, even though I was using the old site several times a day, that message was never presented to me.

The article also brags about how it is now possible to search for posts by date. Yet, as of August 5th, that feature still does not work. That is right, the claim is nothing but a lie. The person who wrote the "article" probably never used either system. To quote

Enhancements to regulations.gov include improved search capabilities

Visitors to regulations.gov can now streamline search results with date ranges

Other changes include interactive icons

The Web site also provides quick access

and additional information sharing, such as social bookmarking

These enhancements were previewed publicly on Regulations.gov Exchange, an online forum featured in the White House Open Government Initiative. From May 21 to July 21, 2009, the public was able to explore proposed new designs and features, provide comments, and engage with other site visitors and the eRulemaking Program staff.

From what I've read, the EPA is responsible for operating the site for the entire federal government. This is a black eye they really didn't need.

• Bureaucratic Unrest Surrounds New Regulations.gov Site 07-31-09 - "Department of Transportation officials are unhappy with the new version of Regulations.gov"

• Washington Post 07-31-09 - Over the weekend, the site was redesigned, without any warning, and even the feds were dismayed.

Entered on 08/27/2009 at 14:15:27 The eRulemaking Team has released a new version of the Regulations.gov Web site which incorporates suggested enhancements from users like you. Among other changes, several changes were made to account for the way various browsers handle a click of the back button, a date posted column has been incorporated to the search results table, and all column headings are now sortable by clicking on the column title.

• There is now an option to select 10, 25, or 50 items per page. (Default is 10)
• On the Docket Folder Summary page, you can select 10, 25, 50, 100, or 250 items per page. (Default is 10)
• Every entry has the close date associated with it (Why ??? This is a total waste of bandwidth)
• The back button is still broken (Yeh, I know they claimed it was better ... they are wrong)
• The date posted is displayed, sortable, and searchable - at last, a real improvement
• The system does not remember how many records I want displayed per page, and there is no obvious way to add that value to the URI
• Sorting by ID is worthless - it performs an ASCII sort instead of a numeric sort - ie 12,000 comes after 9,999
• Slow ... did I mention they have made this slower ... slower than last week?

URL: http:// questionable-science.com / Global_Warming / EPA_Comments / New_web_site.html