Download.com changes (for worse)

It’s old news that Download.com changed their site layout, but I hadn’t actually been to the site for anything in a while, so it didn’t really affect me until now.

I’ve been looking for various cd ripping utilites, photo editing utilites, and various odd-job apps that used to show up on download.com — that’s why it was such a great site.

Unfortunately, the new design is horrible. Searching categories no longer make as much sense (you can’t simply select “search in mac software” from the homepage search box anymore), and the results listings are as uninformative as they are ugly.

The program is no longer categorized as “freeware” or “shareware” on the search results page—I have to either click the expand button (and there is some sort of cool html type of coding for this effect, so they could be showing off—but it’s still an extra click) or click through the description to find out if I’m looking at something I’ll need to purchase. They’re probably doing this for the page views count, which is what most advertisers use as a basis for how much ads should cost.

Still, I give Download.com a big fat thumbs down. They’ve taken an excellent service and made it quite a but more clunky and annoying—which in the world of the internet means a lot. Remember how everyone jumped ship on Technorati? All it takes is a good alternative.