How to sit in VK with a new design. How to put a new design in VK

Unfortunately, this article is no longer relevant.

About the new design

This significant moment for the social network coincided with April Fool's Day. Then, instead of the usual and cheerful “Doge” or “Nichoshi”, unsuspecting users were shown an old man with the inscription “Pss, do you want to read about new design In contact with?". The first million users of those who managed to click on the old one and voluntarily activate the new design on the page that opened, received not only the design itself, but also the opportunity to return to the old one if something happened.

The rest of the users were much less fortunate, because those who received the design forcibly can no longer return to the old version, and most active users have not received a new design so far. This is explained by the fact that innovations of such magnitude as the updated interface of a social network are quite a global event; as a rule, they cannot be completely convenient and even correct. Therefore, the innovation is given to users in waves to understand whether the design is convenient and interesting, and even to catch the errors in it.

But a few months have passed since the release of the new design. During this time, the already updated interface has undergone a lot of fixes and innovations. The annual VKontakte festival is already in full swing, which is why the leadership of the social network decided not to wait, but to go further and allow everyone who so wanted a new design to include it voluntarily.

How to enable the new design

In order to become one of the lucky ones and try out for yourself all the beauty and charm of the new VKontakte design, just follow the link: vk.cc/redesign. Immediately after that, you will be redirected to a website with a new design. You will also receive a notification in private messages about the activation of a new design with a direct link to it.

• New design with address new.vk.com.
• Old design with vk.com address.

In case you would like to new interface worked by default and always opened, even when you go to the address vk.com, you can click on the item “Use new version default site" under the left menu of the site.

For the first time since its inception, the popular Vkontakte network has radically changed its design. A team of specialists has been working for more than a year on the new look of this social network. The redesign became available to users in April 2016. In this regard, many people have a question, how to install a modernized interface?

Positive changes in the new VK design

The main goal of the Vkontakte developers was to create a unique design with a comfortable interface and full page recognition on different devices.
After a long-awaited transformation in appearance and functionality social network can "boast" of such innovations:

• There was an adjustment of the font size and page width.
• Changed background color.
• The top bar “lost” most of the tabs, leaving only the logo, the “music” and “notifications” icon, the search engine, and the account owner icon.
• The working windows have increased significantly. Pictures and photos are now displayed in a convenient larger size format.
• The dialog box is divided into two segments: on the left is a chat with correspondence, on the right - favorite categories. A blue dot indicates that the message has not been read.
• On the avatar, instead of the word online, a green dot glows.
• Improved video management. You can correct the playlist directly while listening to media files. Also added additional function"Play next".
• When browsing the news feed, you can select only the information that interests you. On the right there is a block with suggested categories for viewing.
• When viewing a photo, you can add comments in the block on the right, which removed the need to constantly turn the page down.
• The menu with profile settings has moved to the header of the main page.

How to install a new Vkontakte design

Starting from April 2016, Vkontakte users were invited to join the trial version updated Vkontakte. The user automatically enabled the new design by clicking on the "Use the new version as default" label.

Now this method is not available, so you can update the appearance of the page using the following methods:

• Activation using the official Vkontakte blog. To do this, follow the link, scroll to the end of the message and click "Join testing". You will be provided with a link, by clicking on which you can evaluate the new design.

• Contacting support. If a notification about the transition to a new design has not appeared and nothing can be done through the official block, you can write a message to the support service. To do this, go to the "Help" section - "New site view" and click the "This does not solve my problem" block. After that, you can type a message. The text can be up to you. In a new message from the administration, you will find a link to upgrade to the updated version.

If you have not yet had time to update the look of your Vkontakte account, you can safely use one of the proposed methods to activate the new design and test the capabilities of your favorite social network.

Write about the new design? Well finally!

!!! Attention!!! In general, I immediately warn you that I evaluate design not only as a user, but also as a designer (including those related to the web) and I will write a lot not only about the design itself, but also about why there are so many dissatisfied. And there will be many letters!

About why everything is so unusual:

As soon as the new design with limited beta testing became available on April 1 (because of which everyone doubted the seriousness of the update), I immediately went to the VK blog and connected. After that, he began to jump through all the sections and see what and how there. On the first day, I found about five bugs, which I immediately sent to the administration for correction. They didn’t fix only one that is considered logical (the fact that you can’t send an image to a friend, for example, from a community or feed and then save it to an album. The logic is that they say they sent it themselves, so why save), but this thing was in the past design.

After that, I posted in my community with a summary of the redesign and a vote. It became interesting how the first users will react. Most complained about not being able to find some functionality, such as a toggle switch in messages (which is easy to find if you hover the mouse over the edge of the dialog box). Yes, such interface elements are very unusual against the background of everything that has been in RuNet lately. But this is not a problem with the new design. This is the problem of the design thinking that has been formed in Runet in recent years. We very rarely make progressive and good (!) design that becomes more convenient and evolves smoothly and evenly, allowing the user to get used to new elements that are more intuitive and correct in terms of UX (user experience is that part of interface design that is responsible for accessibility user and convenience). Instead, we have sharp jumps in the most progressive developers, which cause a wave of misunderstanding on the part of users. And all this against the backdrop of a huge number of sites with a terrible design, which is inconvenient but just plain familiar. And all because sites are usually made either cheaply or according to the principle "that's how they need it." Those who have the potential and can create progress simply do not work for the money that is offered in RuNet, and go to do good and expensive work for foreign guys. This is all very sad, and that is why the introduction of a new VK design resembles the baptism of Russia. But after a while, users will get used to it, remember where something has changed and understand that everything is not so bad.

About the fact that "mow under Facebook, well, at least the feed without other people's likes!".

The fact is that design is evolving and so far it is considered optimal, which is also called the design of forms and content. It was developed not so long ago by Google and many have picked it up.

Everything in it is based on proportional elements and accents, which makes it very simple and understandable in the skillful hands of the developer. Here are all these panels with a profile leaving from the left in applications, for example, - that's all it is.

Let's remember how the same phones looked 10-15 years ago. Each Nokia model was something completely new: all these slide-out panels, screens that fold out in all directions, the craziest keyboard layouts - it was all very cool. At the same time, I don’t remember complaints about a lack of understanding of new products, because everything was so new, interesting and cool!

But with progress, everything came down to a simple plate with a button on top and two on the side (or three on the back like LGE). Now the product is either like someone else's, or new and not understandable. Now there is no point in reinventing the wheel, especially if it is less convenient than the one that already exists. It's just that now the design of devices and interfaces, web design have come to an optimum and it is becoming increasingly difficult to do better. Large manufacturers are not so stupid that they copy from each other, they are so literate that they accept the rules that determine convenience, and they finally came to a common concept.

The same goes for social media design. Developers are the last thing they want to be told they stole the design. No. No one will judge you if you make a chair like thousands of other chairs. Ikea does just that: they make painfully banal, but simple and good things. Then what is the problem with web design?

Now here is my subjective "think" about the newest VK:

Got better. Here's the truth. old version has changed so little that it already looks more like the old thematic forums from the 2000s than a modern social network. Now mobile version and applications began to have a lot in common with the site. It's wonderful. There is a logical connection between them. In the communities, these ugly multi-story avatars disappeared for half a page with "Subscribe" and so on. Now you can check alerts with a click without leaving the page, it's just likes and replies, not a graph for a separate contemplation. Photos with answers now complement each other when opened, and do not go down to infinity.

About messages: I communicate a lot on VK (5-20 dialogues a day) and this new format makes me very happy. Those who are not satisfied can easily switch to the old format by clicking on the gear at the bottom of the screen and changing the settings. Everyone should be happy, right?

At the same time I agree

Sooner or later, the usual design of the VKontakte website becomes boring and annoying. This greatly affects the perception of the user's information, which makes it more difficult to read and write. Unfortunately, the VKontakte administration has not yet developed such an opportunity as setting a preferred theme.

Despite the lack of an official possibility of installing a new design for VKontakte, it is still possible to do this, and in several ways at once. For this, which is important, you do not need to provide any personal information.

You can change the standard design of VKontakte without much trouble, if you follow a certain chain of actions and use, at the same time, only trusted methods. Note that when we mention a change in design, we mean a change in the design, that is, the colors and partly the location of the elements.

To change the theme you can choose to use:

• special browser;
• browser extensions.

To date, of all possible ways There are only a handful of page customizations that really work. It is these options that you should use, since in this case you are guaranteed to receive:

• data security;
• performance when working with a designed page;
• the ability to choose a design from a huge catalog or create a theme yourself;
• free use.

In some cases, there is a VIP system. In this scenario, installing certain themes will require you to spend money.

In most cases, themes for VKontakte are provided completely free of charge. You only need to choose the way in which you will set these styles.

Method 1: Using the Orbitum Browser

This method of installing themes for VKontakte now has minimal demand among users, as it requires the installation of a whole Orbitum browser, which, moreover, needs to be downloaded. At the same time, a positive factor for lovers of Chrome, Yandex or Opera is that it was created on the basis of Chromium.

In general terms, this Internet browser does not have any performance problems. At the same time, it provides each user with an extensive catalog completely free of charge. various topics design for some social networks, including VKontakte.

To put a topic on VK in this way, you must follow a simple instruction.

You can also create your own theme completely free of charge.

After installing the theme, each time you enter the social network VKontakte through this web browser, you will see the selected design, instead of the standard one.

If for some reason you want to return the standard design of VKontakte in this Internet browser, you also need to do this according to certain instructions.

Method 2: Theme Builder for VKontakte VKMOD

This method of changing the design of VKontakte no longer requires downloading separate browser, since VKMOD is an extension. This add-on is installed exclusively in the Google Chrome Internet browser.

When working with this extension, in most cases, there are no problems. However main disadvantage VKMOD always remains relevant and consists in the fact that only one single web browser is supported, albeit the most popular one.

It is worth noting that this extension was originally developed for the early design of VKontakte. Therefore, themes may appear somewhat incorrectly.

In the future, this extension will most likely be stabilized and adapted to the new design.

Method 3: Get-Style

The Get-Style extension is one of those add-ons that always keep up with the times. This is due to the fact that currently the design of VKontakte is changing dynamically - various new elements appear or existing ones are moved to another place, but high-quality styles are still published on Get-Style.

As for this extension- it supports both old design VK, and absolutely new. At the same time, there are no significant bugs when using the Get-Style add-on.

Due to the radical changes in VKontakte, it is recommended to use the most recent design themes. Thanks to this, your page will look fresh and attractive.

This extension is the best on the entire Internet, as it provides users with:

• integration of the extension into Chrome, Opera, Yandex and Firefox;
• a large catalog of topics;
• own constructor;
• free theme installation.

It is possible to install and use this add-on following the detailed instructions.

After all the steps done, you can proceed to install the extension.

Be sure to refresh the page before installing the theme.

The last thing left to do is change default theme In contact with. This is done extremely simply.

In most cases, the update happens automatically.

This extension, without modesty, is the best among all the add-ons that affect the design style of the social network VKontakte. In this case, you are required to do a minimum of actions.

Sometimes the administration of the resource holds rating drawings. Thus, you can get even more features for free.

When choosing a method for changing the design of VKontakte, it is recommended to take into account all the pros and cons. That is, in some cases, for example, if you only use the system to visit a few social networks, it is best to choose Orbitum. But if you use Yandex, Opera, Firefox or Chrome, not only for social networks, it is best to install the most stable extension.

What you end up choosing is up to you. We wish you good luck when choosing a theme for VK.

Dear friends, let's full review new design of the social network Vkontakte 2016. So, here we will analyze all the features. We will also try to answer popular questions. It is known that work on the new design of VKontakte was carried out for more than a year and a half and was presented to us on April 1, 2016.

So, now we will analyze in more detail what new VK offered us. First, we notice that we have received a design that is unified for all existing internet devices. For many, it is very important that it opened on screens with a resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels.

What exactly has changed?

Improvements have affected almost the entire Vkontakte site! So, it became more convenient for us that the background of the table is much darker, and only elements with information remained white (for example: a wall, a page, an audio section, etc.). And the blue bar at the top of the site now takes up the full width of the screen. So now it has a logo, notifications (bell), music and a user profile button.

Finally increased the fonts

Now, the page itself has become almost full screen. The good thing is that the dialog box is now split in half. So, now you can see your chats on the left, and the dialog you selected is open on the right, in detail. Now it's easy to react to a new message or quickly switch between multiple conversations.

At the same time, your unread messages have become more visible, they are marked with a blue dot that will disappear after reading. And your messages are now marked with neither the last name nor the first name, but simply “You”. Interestingly, a green dot on a friend's avatar indicates that he is online.

Significantly improved notifications

Now, they are under the bell in the blue bar of the site. Here you will find friend requests, likes, information about upcoming events, and so on.

It's great that in communities now you can immediately subscribe to updates so as not to miss important news. You will be reminded of them by the notification bell located next to the red dot.

There have been improvements in the section "Audio recordings"

So, we now have the opportunity to create our own playlists, right in the process of listening to music, using the "Play next" function. We will notice it when hovering over the audio recording. And on the right is a column: my audio recordings, friends updates and other tabs.

The news feed has changed globally

As a result, the pictures became larger in size and more visible. In addition, a right column has appeared in which you can select what is on this moment you are interested in (photos, videos, communities…)

Of course, we notice that the social network VKontakte is very interested in its users: where do we go, what do we comment or “like”. As a result, based on the information collected about us, we can receive a list of communities that we would be interested in. And then, it displays them first.

It should be noted that left menu has become very versatile. Now instead of sections, we now see clear icons. And for our convenience, the most frequently used functions are duplicated in the blue bar of the site.

As for viewing our account, now it has become much more comfortable! So - on the left is the user's fixed information, and on the right, the wall itself scrolls. At any time, the user can view the wall even to the very end, while friends, groups, news will always be at hand ...

P.S. I hope this information is useful to you!

P.S.S. More visual updates Vkontakte 2016 can be seen in this video! I look forward to your feedback!