[Ads-l] A quick review of the new OED.com

[Beth Young]

For me, the worst thing about this update is that my online instructional
materials are based on the old site. It will be tons of work to update
everything. And I prefer a more condensed layout. And I am now officially
"lost for words"--no more "lost for words" button.  :(  I guess the word of
the day will have to be enough.

However, I think that my students who are new to the OED will like the new
design.

   - variant forms are more spread out and labeled more clearly (I mean, I
   understood the labels, but students found them cryptic).
   - pronunciation keys are right underneath the pronunciations. Now all I
   have to do is explain what a "key" is, lol
   - etymology will probably still confuse them, but there's a summary
   along with the traditional < etymology (this was starting to appear in the
   old interface too)--and the notes are visually disentangled from the
   etymology
   - frequency provides more info, such as graphs, clearly explained
   - compounds & derived words are probably easier for students to notice
   in a separate tab; they rarely scrolled to the bottom of the old entry
   - advanced search criteria are set up in a more familiar way, down the
   left margin with little triangles instead of little plus signs; also it
   provides more info about what lies underneath the criteria. For example, if
   I search for entries with first use in 2005, looking down the left margin
   it's easy to see how many of the results are acronyms, how many are slang,
   how many are from North American English, how many relate to technology,
   etc.
   - advanced search provides more options--e.g., I can look for quotations
   from Johnson's Dictionary, specifically! And see how many quotations from a
   given author/title without even running the search
   - students are always asking for instructional videos and this site has
   them in an easy-to-find location; other help info is also easier to find

My students who were familiar with the old site are complaining, just like
some of us are, but I predict that my students in the fall will find this
new layout easier to understand. And once I have finished shaking my fist
at the sky and updating all my online materials, maybe I will like it too.

One thing I couldn't figure out is how to view a timeline of search results
(looks like a bar graph). Does anyone know if there is a way to do this on
the new site?

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org