The new lay out seems nice but I inherently have a problem with this whole "modernization" non-sense. I say non-sense b/c WHO defines "modern," and what about "modern" means it ought to be that way or mimic what *others* attempt to define it as? When I hear or see "modern" it typically reeks of flash, java and a whole host of other overly complex and unnecessary code aka more things to go wrong, or not load properly, or the worse—compatibility issues... I don't wanna be a downer/pessimist, but please, if you're going to update the site; learn from the racing industry: Form FOLLOWS function. Flash, and all kinds of animations and little window popups = problems and added weight that doesn't aid to getting the info we desire ASAP.
Also a note... the post-options for a new/reply post are horrible, (strike through) no, THE WORST! They never, ever work properly! How many times do we have to say it; FIX THE B/I/U/etc functions. Someone's always retorting "well, her her, it works fer me..." Great for YOU, but for a majority they DO NOT WORK. I'm trying to use these features (right now) and they are NOT working, and haven't ever worked starting from IE6 --> FFox2, 3...
Again "modern" doesn't mean flash and trash etc... "modern" means; light weight + powerful AND... EFFICIENT! Not like todays' cars; heavier than the past and certainly slower per amount of power applied...
Make sure you can fit more than 10 comments per page. I'm sure intel pays by the click, but this is just rediculous. You need less retarded ways to generate revenue. Just put up more ads. Those are easy enough to block.
Early morning time, the mist is dim.Curved river bank, willow obviously elegant like smoke. Far does not see the mountain, nearly does not see the ship, http://www.laptopbatteryclub.comonly">http://www.laptopbatteryclub.comonly a little selects the lights, embellishes in the faintly recognizable mist.
1) Congrats to Greg for winning the ibuypower system. Sounds fantastic.
2) Let me throw in my vote for the current AT logo on it's original blue colored background. I simply do not like the new proposed logo.
3) PLEASE, please, pleeeaaassseee make the site more mobile friendly. Although AT loads relatively quickly on my iPhone 3GS over Wi-Fi, all of the elements on the mainpage take much longer to load over 3G or on my original iPhone. I'm hoping you will do something to optimize the site for mobile users.
With the new design one thing I'd hope it would have is more information above 'the fold'. The new look still only has the main 3 plus the headline of the first in the list viewable on a 1xxx pixel height screen. Seems like the section names and logo are oversized.
Excellent work guys, the new design looks great and the layout looks simple and easy to navigate! The color combination works perfectly in my opinion. I realize others have already mentioned this but it would be great if it was possible to physically widen the site a bit (given all the empty space on left/right sides). Granted I'm running a 24" LCD but still it seems like you would be able to fit far more information into a wider format? What ever the site ends up looking like I'll continue to read on a daily basis!
As far as a website redesign goes, I'll try to keep the points concise. ("You" encompasses AnandTech, not just Anand)
== 'Don't insult your readers.'
I stopped reading Ars, after five or so years, in part because of their recent redesign. You've always chosen and constructed your graphics carefully (even if you get flak for your slide order), so please don't go image-crazy with unrelated stock photography.
== 'Cater to your readers.'
Yes, I am aware you would like to bring in more/new/different readers in addition to keeping your legacies. Who wouldn't? Just remember that your (new) formatting speaks as loudly as your writing.
For example, "What does an auto-rotating image carousel say?" Imho, it says "I do not know what I'm looking for, nor how to navigate categories, and pretty pictures distract me." Does this sound like your userbase? (AMD article comments-aside?)
== 'Spheres and wheels both roll. In different ways.'
When you read a site frequently (yay, ad revenue!), you learn how to navigate it and develop your own rhythm. Indeed, you usually have multiple rhythms for the different sites (and UIs) you visit.
*Nothing* annoys readers during a site re-design more than having to learn a new rhythm without an observable benefit. Even if the change is simply the Powerpoint-effect (design reflects tools) of your chosen technologies, an "Introduction to New AnandTech" article with an explanation might be nice. It's a technology site! We'd love to read that this widget is the way it is because of this errata in the interface between X and Y.
I'm looking forward to putting this system through its paces and seeing how far it can overclock with the liquid cooling (without going too far though, according to the P55 sockets warning). My own Q6600 overclocked to 3.4 GHz with a 4870 512 MB is struggling on a few scenes in the new Call of Duty game, so hopefully the Core i7 with the 4890 1 GB will smooth that out.
I'm also excited to try out the Intel SSD to drastically reduce the hard drive bottleneck effect.
A GIGANTIC THANK YOU goes to Anand and the Anandtech staff for running this contest and to Intel and iBuypower for their generosity in providing such impressive hardware.
Is a selectable database where the reader can select the motherboard, the CPU(s) you've tested with; the Video Card(s) in that configuration you've tested with and on and on and on... cooling systems etc....
Have the database have the prices (at time of build) and pros / cons about the build and other good stuff..
This seems to be what is really missing on all these review sites (no this isn't a negative)... all to many times I've wanted to see card x; with cpu y; on board z; psu whatever; HDD / SSD / Optical drive ...... kind of like a Chinese menu and see how that system compares to some other system from the selection.
Utter'n that... until I can actually play with the site to see how it really behaves.... I won't know if it's soup yet or not :) (Soup's a good thing... better'n dish water anyway! )
I don't like the new logo. It looks amateurish, like something you'd get from cooltext.com or a similar generator. All detail (and character) is removed from the orange swoosh, the angle change and steeper curve removes the stylized application, and the reflection reminds me of Mac OS circa 2001.
There's a lot of space at the top of the page devoted to banner add, nav, and eye candy on the home page. On a netbook this is going to be all someone sees when they land here, and then have to scroll to see any of the content. Add to that the fact that scrolling on a netbook is more painful than usual due to touchpad / slow page rendering and this could be a serious nuisance to your growing audience reading your site from a netbook.
Will it still be mobile phone friendly? I like when I am on the can at work or out and about I can check out anandtech and dailytech for my fix of tech reviews and news.
Absolutely love the site, but my 24" LCD only gets about the center 1/3 used when viewing Anandtech. I would greatly appreciate it if you allow the text area to auto-format as most other sites do when you increase/decrease the size of the viewing pane.
As was already said, I'd like the DT links to stay as well.
I don't need the twitter stuff - after all, everyone who is interested in this, could just follow you (I think that's how it works.. never used it^^), right? No need to spend so much screen estate on it, especially since it would kill the DT links..
Actually, given that killing off the DT links would kill about 99% of the pointless political bickering that goes on here, I think it's a great idea.
I'm sick of watching all the birthers, conspiracy theorists, and other nutjobs turn just about every story into a discussion about how Obama is the antichrist and bent on turning America into a communist utopia, or some other such nonsense.
I gotta say, I am liking the redesign less and less the more I look at it. There's just way too much dead space and padding around everything. The DailyTech news articles on the left definitely need to stay, and Twitter comments should not have their own column on the front page. If you really feel Twitter is necessary, make a click-to-expand section for them, but devoting that much room seems like a poor choice.
1.) Yucky poo on the huge Twitter section, I don't use it, don't want to look at it and see little value in the huge section for it. People want twitter give them a link and leave the rest of us alone.
2.) I hate ads at the very top of web pages, if you must do this please don't do it on the home page.
3.) I like the idea of seeing a snapshot of the most popular threads, should be like the top 10 excluding the random discussion type threads.
4.) Featured articles should be like the three most recent in each categories.
5.) New logo is okay, reminds me of Engadget or a blog of some type. Can we do better?
Please don't sheepishly change the Anandtech logo to make it "omg Web 2.0!"-ish by adding that reflection below it. That's so lame and unoriginal by now, as like 90% or the websites on the Internet copy that style.
Will the new site get rid of the head scratching way you currently introduce stories? You always have a sentence or two that describes the story, but it trails off into an elipse. That's fine, but when you click into the story, that sentence is nowhere to be found.
Congrats to the i7 winner! Have fun with the system and be sure to put it to good use. As for the site redesign, looks good Anand, looking forward to seeing it live. Have a good time in India, be sure to hello to a few Dell CS reps while you are there.
I thought the kindle had built-in wireless Internet? If so then why would someone pay for an anandtech subscription through the Kindle store when they could just point its browser at the website for free?
1) Your name and logo should take precedence over everything at the top masthead. I would lose the 'Leaderboard' banner - place a full banner-sized advertisement to the right of your logo.
2) Pick your top 5 site links and place them underneath the banner advertisement with your search bar. Fix the search, please! It's really, really frustrating. :)
3) Move the article scroll on the front page to the top under the masthead and drop the 'big' site menu below it. For the most part this becomes a scrolling ad banner for your articles and makes up for the loss in size of the top leaderboard banner.
I would hope if an article image clearly displayed 'branding' (in a very subtle way, of course) that a bit of click-thru revenue would be provided.
Even with moving the article scroll under the masthead the site navigation should still be available without any 'page scrolling' --- you could narrow the article scroll a bit if you feel that is a problem.
You could then move the nav menu back under the masthead once you have clicked past the home page.
4) Some consolidation/clarification of the big site menu would be nice. I prefer a 'friendly' mouse-over drop down but understand it may annoy some folks. It might have problems scaling if you are not careful.
It sure would help you clean things up, though, possibly eliminate a bit of redundancy and actually create more detail for navigation in the sub-menus.
5) I like the new Carolina-blue logo ;) You could probably squeeze a DailyTech headline crawler underneath it that would have minimal aesthetic impact on the looks of everything.
6) The top-tier nav menu could stand out a bit more from the second tier nav menu --- I just narrowed it down a bit.
7) You could probably squeeze a tasteful half banner in above the 'Follow Anandtech' column --- maybe drop the skyscraper a bit. I would hope no one would complain if you placed a full banner at the page break underneath the 'Featured Articles' cell and/or a half banner underneath 'More from Anandtech'.
I concur with the previous poster, twitter is a waste of time and space. Don't let the twits drag you down, keep the DailyTech headlines in the right column.
Keeping the category titles in lower case makes them easier to read and takes less space. Don't use PSU(S) instead of PSUs, you have plenty of mixed plurality already, no need for the parentheses. A Netbook is a type of Notebook, no need for Notebooks/Netbooks, just say Notebooks, or Laptops, if you prefer.
I like the old logo, but if you determined to go with the new one, fix the kerning around the letter T. if the A and T are made slightly taller, the space between the letters, including DTE, can be made the same, and the crossbar of the T can hang over the D and E by the same distance as the space between the letters.
The old swash with its more artsy graceful curve looks better, the new swash looks like a plucked eyebrow. The orange swash clashes with the baby blue letters. Stick with white letters, or change the swash color.
It seems most site designs these days employ oversized fonts and excessive white space. Please try not to follow this pattern when finalizing the new design of Anandtech.
I love the improvements that I'm seeing Anand.
I just hope with you looking for more writers, maybe that could mean there will be more Linux articles coming out in the future. :)
By 'modern' I hope you don't mean slow. One of the things I really
like about Anandtech is the pages are fast to load, whereas sites
like toms are painfully, death-inducingly slow, full of script bloat,
ads, etc.
It seems you have a huge amount of real-estate devoted to twitter. Personally. I do not care for twitter; I come here for the news. Maybe you could shrink that or take it out and put back the Daily Tech links. Otherwise good job...
Also, for the comment section, there needs to be a way to highlight new comments based on time elapsed since posting. After I have read through five pages of comments, and I return an hour later to seven pages, I have to scroll through all pages trying to find the new replies, since they are linked to the original comment. If I could just highlight all comments and replies posted in the last hour, it would eliminate much redundant reading and make for an all around better experience...
1. At the top you have three levels of link. The middle one, starting with motherboards and then IT computing, doesn't make sense. I assume IT computing is a link to it.anandtech.com and it doesn't really fit with the others. And why you need to elevate a few of the hardware categories over the others I don't understand.
2. Under the menu links you have a horizontal strip of three articles, and under them you have three more articles with under the title Featured Articles. What is the difference between them, and why do you need both? Seems like a horrible waste of space.
3. The Customize This view link: Is it for the whole site or only for the Featured Articles section? From where it is placed and the way the link is phrased it seems to be only for the Featured Articles section, and that seems pretty useless.
4. The ratings on articles is a horrible idea. Sure, that the authors get some kind of feedback can be nice, but I am not sure a number is very useful for them versus real feedback. As for exposing the rating to everybody, that's a can of worms you do not want to open and will only make your site seem tacky.
5. The Follow Anandtech is too big. This is a feature most people only need once, and spending all that screen real-estate on it is overdone.
6. In the long list of articles you have info on how long ago it was posted, while in the Featured Articles section you have the date on which it was posted. This is inconsistent. Either do one or the other.
7. In the long list of articles you also waste a lot of space on the +Share link. A smaller link and more test about the article would definitely be a better use of the space.
8. On the side you have the More from Anandtech section. That title isn't really clear. It is in the same sidebar as Twitter and the other social and web 2.0 stuff. Is it more Twittery like stuff? If it is more articles then why are these articles more, but the long list of articles to the left of it not more?
9. You have Most Popular as a tab title in the more section, but the Shared tab titles isn't "Most". Does this mean that the Shared isn't a list of the most shared, but ordered by some other mean? This is confusing.
10. What is the contributor tab in the More Anandtech section? Authors, commentators, sponsors? Why is this list interesting? Why does it need exposure?
11. At the bottom you have the Other Discussion section. Other than what? What is different about this discussion? More importantly, what discussion is this?.
As a conclusion I might add that this seems very much like me-too redesign. Just doing what everybody else is doing regardless of whether it is a good or bad idea or whether it fits Anandtech.
Also, I seriously hope that you will make a better commenting system than what you have now.
It would be helpful to have the most recent articles, reviews and analysis on top and listed in descneding order from publish date. Avid readers, like myself, often check the site multiple times a day to see what is new. I would hate to miss an important article because it wasn't displayed on the front page. Perhaps, create a cookie that keeps track of last visits and mark which ones are new, like Dailytech does.
Also, please don't set the big 3 carousel to auto rotate on some predefined timer. Different people have different attention spans and different reading speeds. I hate websites that have a carousel and rotate the top 3 automatically example: jpl.nasa.gov It pisses me off when the page changes before I am finished reading the blurb.
I appreciate the DailyTech headlines in the margin, and would miss them if they were gone. I guess I always assumed that DailyTech was part of the Anand "empire" but perhaps the association is not as strong as I thought.
The first thing I noticed before even looking at anything specific is that there is A LOT of bluegreen/teal color going on. When looking at the full size screenshot, when I'm at the top (sections/3 articles) and the bottom (Other Discussions), it just doesn't look right. I think it reminds me of the default Vista colors too much or something. Or maybe it seems like almost everything is a variation of the same color, making it look kinda stale?
Am I the only one who hates even the concept of featured stories? I want a simple chrono view of stories so that when something new comes out I can easily see it at the top of the list. Yes, new are almost always featured, and yes anand does it right (as opposed to xbit, who seems to think putting a 2 week old story up top AND removing it from the chrono listing is a good idea), but its still a little annoying.
But the rest looks decent enough. No option to keep the current layout?
Totally unrelated to this article, but I thought I should say something about it.
SSD prices are going up for indilinx and samsung drives. Intel prices are going down, but still nowhere near MSRP prices (esp the 160GB G2). Many drives are out of stock. Newegg eliminated a lot of SSD vendors from its site, including SuperTalent and G.Skill. Problems at the 32nm chips. New sata 6Gbps. New Sandforce deal with OCZ.
What's going on?
I would really appreciate a new article addressing the current situation of SSDs and manufacturers for the end of the year, the first few months of the next year, and throughout the whole next year.
This would give us an idea why prices are going up. It would also shed a light to know if we should get it over with and get SSDs soon, or if we are better off waiting the start of next year.
A general article covering all aspects of SSD availability, pricing, new/upcoming technologies and which manufactorurers plan/are committed to update firmwares would be really nice.
The main thing I care about on this site is the content, so I think that is good already. Also I don't really have many complaints about the current site layout, but the new one looks good too.
The main criticism I have about the current site is the comments. It's annoying to try to read through a large number of comments on an article. So that is the area I hope is improved the most. I can't really tell anything from the preview you have, but I hope things are improved on the new site.
The comments section will be improved! You'll get a listing of a certain number of comments at the bottom of every page, but if you click more you'll get a huge listing of them (at least 50 per page) :)
Why dont you zoom in then? Any decent browser will do that for you. Things will become larger and the "wasted" space reduced. If you're using a really good browser, you can even save the setting on a per page basis...
I can zoom in sure, but it does not save per page with the latest version of firefox. In fact if you zoom in it will retain that for every session. So if i visit a site that does scale correctly i have to zoom back out.
Yes, definitely stay away from Flash for menus when CSS and DHTML provide a much more useful design. I often right-click links to open in a new tab so i can continue clearing the page I'm currently reading before moving on to the first link of interest.
Although, I think the Anandtech logo should retain the same font that you use currently. It sort of has a historic significance. I also hope you use more Ajax programming especially for the comments (and maybe the articles as well?).
As for writers, I hope you get a permanent writer to cover Linux related articles.
I don't know if the main bar (the links to motherboard/cpus/etc) is very clear.. at least I believe the "tabbed" design is more obvious to the reader. perhaps a new tabbed design, instead of "hard blocks" would be cool.
BTW, nice colors. Oh, and please be sure to make it compatible with Chrome, I believe more and more people are using it. These textboxes on the comments section, for example, always causes some minor bugs in Chrome.
The "big five" links at the top of the white content box, above the rest of the smaller-sized sections in light blue, doesn't make sense. (e.g., Why would Motherboards be among the "big five" but not "Video"?) So I am assuming that "big five" list is customizable?
Either make it customizable via a per-user setting, or make the "big five" links more logical (i.e. no specific piece of PC hardware should be among the big five, unless you have the five links be Motherboards, CPU, GPU/Video, HDD/SDD, and RAM/Memory, given those are the five primary components within a system.
The mish-mash in the example - three PC hardware items and "Notebooks" and "IT Computing" - is not going to please anyone because there is something there every person doesn't care about and absolutely would not want in the top-five menu. Not to mention it isn't even in a logical order (not even alphabetical order).
I highly recommend rethinking that "menu" setup at the top.
Whatever you do don't take out the lastest news by dailytech. B/c i am sure that if you do so the pageviews will definetly do down. I love the articles on anandtech alot been a anandtech reader since i was 12! I am currently working on getting my own website up right now (: will let you know when i do so
The DailyTech links are nice, but some of the writing is just painful to read. I've found myself clicking on the stories less often and mainly on things that aren't reported elsewhere. But that's not Anandtech's fault of course.
+5 I really really like having the DailyTech links on the right, or at least visible from the main page. I visit AT multiple times daily, and am always checking out, and clicking on, the latest DT stories.
hahah I sort of agree. If i want DailyTech, I'll go there. Anandtech homepage should be about Anandtech, not full of links that just send traffic off-site. That's not helpful.
Also, those asking for articles on one long page - that's highly unlikely as well, given that the point of breaking articles up into pages is to increase click rates and page views for advertising purposes.
Hey Anand the front page looks great, but I'm really hoping the search gets an overhaul as well. I'm always remembering you had an article about something a while ago but when I use the search it's almost impossible to find.
Also, your banner ads here at AT seem to be some of the best I've seen. They almost always are from reputable companies I want to deal with, telling me about products I am actually interested in. I also tend to ignore all ads when I see 10 different spaces on a site, so the 1, 3 at the most, slots is a great way to get (at the least my) attention.
Looking forward to seeing the new site!
It's no doubt difficult because your articles are fairly categorically dense (in a good way!), but I was looking for the explanation of why graphics cards use half nodes (as opposed to cpus on whole nodes) the other day and couldn't find it. Afaicr, it's embedded with another piece.
+1 For making the searches better. I'd like to be able to sort through all of the articles ever, most recent to oldest. More functionality would be better of course, but that's the most useful to me.
Ratings for stories are nice but IMO only two things really matter:
1> Fix the comment system. See reddit.com for an example of near perfection.
2> Allow sorting stories by popularity and the ability to filter by month. That doesn't mean show Top Stories today, this week, this month, all time. It means allowing searches like most popular "last week" "last month", etc.
You have great content regardless of how rounded the corners are. Focus on delivering that content the way people want it. And maybe throw in a few more videos in 2010. Also, animated charts would be nice. Keep up the great work.
Well since you mention customizations, here are some suggestions:
#1 There are 10 items displayed in that screenshot. I think that should be customizable (ex: 25 per page).
#2 I hate the comment section. There are few comments per page and the comments are threaded. Id love to have a quote system with the ability to have a flat view and change the “comments per page” to any desired number (ex 50 per page).
3# Since each page in an article are separately accessible, why not give people the option to customize that? Example: Id love to setup so all 2-3 pages articles are conveniently all on the same page.
4# I do not like the sidebar at the right. I think that space could be better utilized for article space. I seem to find myself writing lots of greasemoney scripts lately to stop these annoying sidebars.
I agree with everything except #4. the dailytech headlines should be visible on the home page but not in articles. I also think the width should be customizable along with the multi page option. I would rather have a custom reading environment then a custom article list, since I spend most of my time on this site reading.
Will the new design take more advantage of width? The current design seems to be fixed and does not contract or expand. Running with a widescreen monitor and a pretty wide browser window, it seems it would be much more efficient to let the main content stretch its legs.
I agree, the fixed width thing on lots of websites annoys me a lot too. I don't get what is so hard about designing sites so they dynamically fit to the resolution of the users screen, it isn't a huge amount of extra effort and just requires using some percentages for various parts.
And to be generous to the original code, fixed width a la the current site does do some nice things. E.g., when shrinking a window the "padding" disappears, but the content remains as long as possible.
im also all for more width in the article space. right now im using exactly half of the total width of my monitor for one article, and while thats all well and good if i want to run two articles side by side, having the site automatically resize the articles to the width of your screen would make it a lot easier for me to read through long articles quickly since it makes speed reading a lot easier. also, please make sure that the new site doesnt use any flash for the primary content if at all possible. i browse anandtech from work on my iphone all the time and having flash content would utterly kill it for me
ooh one thing i forgot. the comments system for these articles is a real pain and it doesnt work very well. some of the sites i go to have a system where there is actually a subsection of the forums that is dedicated to discussion of the articles posted. if the forum were expanded to include a section like this it would clean up the comments system as a whole in one go without any need for additional development beyond adding the related sections and a means of automatically generating threads in the appropriate forum
Looks decent enough. It'll take some time to get used to, although I am very interested in the customization features. Will the new design be any slower to load though? I'm on primitive dial-up internet here and I'd hate for all the new features and eye-candy to slow things down.
I like the new layout (and I'm one who tends to be fairly resistant to change overall when it comes to my news sites) :)
Just curious what screen resolution you're designing the new layout in (while I do have a 24" LCD, I tend to keep the browser window around 1024 pixels wide so that I can keep other windows visible).
You should be able to block those inline ads. I use Opera so to block the stupid popups on DailyTeck, I clicked on Tools > Advanced > Blocked Content, then clicked Add:
http://*us.intellitxt.com/*
click close, refresh the page et voila. Annoying inline ads are gone.
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v12v12 - Monday, November 23, 2009 - link
The new lay out seems nice but I inherently have a problem with this whole "modernization" non-sense. I say non-sense b/c WHO defines "modern," and what about "modern" means it ought to be that way or mimic what *others* attempt to define it as? When I hear or see "modern" it typically reeks of flash, java and a whole host of other overly complex and unnecessary code aka more things to go wrong, or not load properly, or the worse—compatibility issues... I don't wanna be a downer/pessimist, but please, if you're going to update the site; learn from the racing industry: Form FOLLOWS function. Flash, and all kinds of animations and little window popups = problems and added weight that doesn't aid to getting the info we desire ASAP.Also a note... the post-options for a new/reply post are horrible, (strike through) no, THE WORST! They never, ever work properly! How many times do we have to say it; FIX THE B/I/U/etc functions. Someone's always retorting "well, her her, it works fer me..." Great for YOU, but for a majority they DO NOT WORK. I'm trying to use these features (right now) and they are NOT working, and haven't ever worked starting from IE6 --> FFox2, 3...
Again "modern" doesn't mean flash and trash etc... "modern" means; light weight + powerful AND... EFFICIENT! Not like todays' cars; heavier than the past and certainly slower per amount of power applied...
Shadowmaster625 - Friday, November 20, 2009 - link
Make sure you can fit more than 10 comments per page. I'm sure intel pays by the click, but this is just rediculous. You need less retarded ways to generate revenue. Just put up more ads. Those are easy enough to block.laptopbattery - Thursday, November 19, 2009 - link
Early morning time, the mist is dim.Curved river bank, willow obviously elegant like smoke. Far does not see the mountain, nearly does not see the ship, http://www.laptopbatteryclub.comonly">http://www.laptopbatteryclub.comonly a little selects the lights, embellishes in the faintly recognizable mist.KingKuei - Thursday, November 19, 2009 - link
1) Congrats to Greg for winning the ibuypower system. Sounds fantastic.2) Let me throw in my vote for the current AT logo on it's original blue colored background. I simply do not like the new proposed logo.
3) PLEASE, please, pleeeaaassseee make the site more mobile friendly. Although AT loads relatively quickly on my iPhone 3GS over Wi-Fi, all of the elements on the mainpage take much longer to load over 3G or on my original iPhone. I'm hoping you will do something to optimize the site for mobile users.
datarez - Thursday, November 19, 2009 - link
With the new design one thing I'd hope it would have is more information above 'the fold'. The new look still only has the main 3 plus the headline of the first in the list viewable on a 1xxx pixel height screen. Seems like the section names and logo are oversized.Just my opinion, still love the content.
TerminusAvid - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
Excellent work guys, the new design looks great and the layout looks simple and easy to navigate! The color combination works perfectly in my opinion. I realize others have already mentioned this but it would be great if it was possible to physically widen the site a bit (given all the empty space on left/right sides). Granted I'm running a 24" LCD but still it seems like you would be able to fit far more information into a wider format? What ever the site ends up looking like I'll continue to read on a daily basis!freezervv - Monday, November 16, 2009 - link
Congrats to "Mr. i7" Gregory Peng! Enjoy. ;)As far as a website redesign goes, I'll try to keep the points concise. ("You" encompasses AnandTech, not just Anand)
== 'Don't insult your readers.'
I stopped reading Ars, after five or so years, in part because of their recent redesign. You've always chosen and constructed your graphics carefully (even if you get flak for your slide order), so please don't go image-crazy with unrelated stock photography.
== 'Cater to your readers.'
Yes, I am aware you would like to bring in more/new/different readers in addition to keeping your legacies. Who wouldn't? Just remember that your (new) formatting speaks as loudly as your writing.
For example, "What does an auto-rotating image carousel say?" Imho, it says "I do not know what I'm looking for, nor how to navigate categories, and pretty pictures distract me." Does this sound like your userbase? (AMD article comments-aside?)
== 'Spheres and wheels both roll. In different ways.'
When you read a site frequently (yay, ad revenue!), you learn how to navigate it and develop your own rhythm. Indeed, you usually have multiple rhythms for the different sites (and UIs) you visit.
*Nothing* annoys readers during a site re-design more than having to learn a new rhythm without an observable benefit. Even if the change is simply the Powerpoint-effect (design reflects tools) of your chosen technologies, an "Introduction to New AnandTech" article with an explanation might be nice. It's a technology site! We'd love to read that this widget is the way it is because of this errata in the interface between X and Y.
Good luck!
Possum - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 - link
I'm looking forward to putting this system through its paces and seeing how far it can overclock with the liquid cooling (without going too far though, according to the P55 sockets warning). My own Q6600 overclocked to 3.4 GHz with a 4870 512 MB is struggling on a few scenes in the new Call of Duty game, so hopefully the Core i7 with the 4890 1 GB will smooth that out.I'm also excited to try out the Intel SSD to drastically reduce the hard drive bottleneck effect.
A GIGANTIC THANK YOU goes to Anand and the Anandtech staff for running this contest and to Intel and iBuypower for their generosity in providing such impressive hardware.
-Greg
BarneyBadass - Monday, November 16, 2009 - link
Is a selectable database where the reader can select the motherboard, the CPU(s) you've tested with; the Video Card(s) in that configuration you've tested with and on and on and on... cooling systems etc....Have the database have the prices (at time of build) and pros / cons about the build and other good stuff..
This seems to be what is really missing on all these review sites (no this isn't a negative)... all to many times I've wanted to see card x; with cpu y; on board z; psu whatever; HDD / SSD / Optical drive ...... kind of like a Chinese menu and see how that system compares to some other system from the selection.
Utter'n that... until I can actually play with the site to see how it really behaves.... I won't know if it's soup yet or not :) (Soup's a good thing... better'n dish water anyway! )
---Barney
Guspaz - Monday, November 16, 2009 - link
Say it ain't so, Anand! If the pictures of the new layout are to believed, it harkens the death of the classic AnandTech logo!As far as I can tell, the current logo has been with us for at least a decade (http://web.archive.org/web/19991129032934/http:/an...">http://web.archive.org/web/19991129032934/http:/an..., possibly longer.
I don't like the new logo. It looks amateurish, like something you'd get from cooltext.com or a similar generator. All detail (and character) is removed from the orange swoosh, the angle change and steeper curve removes the stylized application, and the reflection reminds me of Mac OS circa 2001.
Please, keep the current classic logo :(
jdparker520 - Monday, November 16, 2009 - link
There's a lot of space at the top of the page devoted to banner add, nav, and eye candy on the home page. On a netbook this is going to be all someone sees when they land here, and then have to scroll to see any of the content. Add to that the fact that scrolling on a netbook is more painful than usual due to touchpad / slow page rendering and this could be a serious nuisance to your growing audience reading your site from a netbook.DJMiggy - Monday, November 16, 2009 - link
Will it still be mobile phone friendly? I like when I am on the can at work or out and about I can check out anandtech and dailytech for my fix of tech reviews and news.Suuave - Monday, November 16, 2009 - link
I haven't seen any posts congratulating our fellow poster. I would like to have won but I'm still happy for the one that did.7Enigma - Monday, November 16, 2009 - link
Anand,Absolutely love the site, but my 24" LCD only gets about the center 1/3 used when viewing Anandtech. I would greatly appreciate it if you allow the text area to auto-format as most other sites do when you increase/decrease the size of the viewing pane.
And rats, I really wanted that i7!
iwodo - Sunday, November 15, 2009 - link
The VB upgrade path has been much longer then expected.JimKiler - Sunday, November 15, 2009 - link
I hope the redesign takes advantage of all the widescreen monitors us readers use.rtector - Sunday, November 15, 2009 - link
I do like the new design. Please don't make the site require the use of JavaScript. I'm all for cool features, so long as there is a fall back.mmatis - Sunday, November 15, 2009 - link
is several months behind, but Anand as well:http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20090427">http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20090427
???
}:-]
Voo - Sunday, November 15, 2009 - link
As was already said, I'd like the DT links to stay as well.I don't need the twitter stuff - after all, everyone who is interested in this, could just follow you (I think that's how it works.. never used it^^), right? No need to spend so much screen estate on it, especially since it would kill the DT links..
rs1 - Sunday, November 15, 2009 - link
Actually, given that killing off the DT links would kill about 99% of the pointless political bickering that goes on here, I think it's a great idea.I'm sick of watching all the birthers, conspiracy theorists, and other nutjobs turn just about every story into a discussion about how Obama is the antichrist and bent on turning America into a communist utopia, or some other such nonsense.
diehlr - Sunday, November 15, 2009 - link
I gotta say, I am liking the redesign less and less the more I look at it. There's just way too much dead space and padding around everything. The DailyTech news articles on the left definitely need to stay, and Twitter comments should not have their own column on the front page. If you really feel Twitter is necessary, make a click-to-expand section for them, but devoting that much room seems like a poor choice.mi1stormilst - Sunday, November 15, 2009 - link
1.) Yucky poo on the huge Twitter section, I don't use it, don't want to look at it and see little value in the huge section for it. People want twitter give them a link and leave the rest of us alone.2.) I hate ads at the very top of web pages, if you must do this please don't do it on the home page.
3.) I like the idea of seeing a snapshot of the most popular threads, should be like the top 10 excluding the random discussion type threads.
4.) Featured articles should be like the three most recent in each categories.
5.) New logo is okay, reminds me of Engadget or a blog of some type. Can we do better?
code255 - Sunday, November 15, 2009 - link
Please don't sheepishly change the Anandtech logo to make it "omg Web 2.0!"-ish by adding that reflection below it. That's so lame and unoriginal by now, as like 90% or the websites on the Internet copy that style.icrf - Sunday, November 15, 2009 - link
Is that the de-facto modern design or something? It looks almost exactly like ArsTechnica.com's most recent redesign.reinkarnation16 - Sunday, November 15, 2009 - link
Thats awesome! :Dstash - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
Will the new site get rid of the head scratching way you currently introduce stories? You always have a sentence or two that describes the story, but it trails off into an elipse. That's fine, but when you click into the story, that sentence is nowhere to be found.It makes no sense.
PyroHoltz - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
Congrats to the i7 winner! Have fun with the system and be sure to put it to good use. As for the site redesign, looks good Anand, looking forward to seeing it live. Have a good time in India, be sure to hello to a few Dell CS reps while you are there.rs1 - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
I thought the kindle had built-in wireless Internet? If so then why would someone pay for an anandtech subscription through the Kindle store when they could just point its browser at the website for free?William Gaatjes - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
I hope there will not be to much flash ads either( I hope none).Or a flash animation when clicking a picture.
JonnyDough - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
I think you meant polishing up, or dusting off?falc0ne - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
looks nice, good and welcomed change!Smell This - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
http://i716.photobucket.com/albums/ww165/Back_at_t...">http://i716.photobucket.com/albums/ww16...s/Anandt...1) Your name and logo should take precedence over everything at the top masthead. I would lose the 'Leaderboard' banner - place a full banner-sized advertisement to the right of your logo.
2) Pick your top 5 site links and place them underneath the banner advertisement with your search bar. Fix the search, please! It's really, really frustrating. :)
3) Move the article scroll on the front page to the top under the masthead and drop the 'big' site menu below it. For the most part this becomes a scrolling ad banner for your articles and makes up for the loss in size of the top leaderboard banner.
I would hope if an article image clearly displayed 'branding' (in a very subtle way, of course) that a bit of click-thru revenue would be provided.
Even with moving the article scroll under the masthead the site navigation should still be available without any 'page scrolling' --- you could narrow the article scroll a bit if you feel that is a problem.
You could then move the nav menu back under the masthead once you have clicked past the home page.
4) Some consolidation/clarification of the big site menu would be nice. I prefer a 'friendly' mouse-over drop down but understand it may annoy some folks. It might have problems scaling if you are not careful.
It sure would help you clean things up, though, possibly eliminate a bit of redundancy and actually create more detail for navigation in the sub-menus.
5) I like the new Carolina-blue logo ;) You could probably squeeze a DailyTech headline crawler underneath it that would have minimal aesthetic impact on the looks of everything.
6) The top-tier nav menu could stand out a bit more from the second tier nav menu --- I just narrowed it down a bit.
7) You could probably squeeze a tasteful half banner in above the 'Follow Anandtech' column --- maybe drop the skyscraper a bit. I would hope no one would complain if you placed a full banner at the page break underneath the 'Featured Articles' cell and/or a half banner underneath 'More from Anandtech'.
Time to blow some leaves -- LOL
morsel - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
I concur with the previous poster, twitter is a waste of time and space. Don't let the twits drag you down, keep the DailyTech headlines in the right column.Keeping the category titles in lower case makes them easier to read and takes less space. Don't use PSU(S) instead of PSUs, you have plenty of mixed plurality already, no need for the parentheses. A Netbook is a type of Notebook, no need for Notebooks/Netbooks, just say Notebooks, or Laptops, if you prefer.
I like the old logo, but if you determined to go with the new one, fix the kerning around the letter T. if the A and T are made slightly taller, the space between the letters, including DTE, can be made the same, and the crossbar of the T can hang over the D and E by the same distance as the space between the letters.
The old swash with its more artsy graceful curve looks better, the new swash looks like a plucked eyebrow. The orange swash clashes with the baby blue letters. Stick with white letters, or change the swash color.
diehlr - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
It seems most site designs these days employ oversized fonts and excessive white space. Please try not to follow this pattern when finalizing the new design of Anandtech.Martimus - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
Anand,The proposed layout looks nice. Can't really see anything I don't like about it.
-Marty
PercocetPenguin - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
I love the improvements that I'm seeing Anand.I just hope with you looking for more writers, maybe that could mean there will be more Linux articles coming out in the future. :)
mapesdhs - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
By 'modern' I hope you don't mean slow. One of the things I really
like about Anandtech is the pages are fast to load, whereas sites
like toms are painfully, death-inducingly slow, full of script bloat,
ads, etc.
Please, don't go over the top with Java, etc.
Ian.
jakesbuddy - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
It seems you have a huge amount of real-estate devoted to twitter. Personally. I do not care for twitter; I come here for the news. Maybe you could shrink that or take it out and put back the Daily Tech links. Otherwise good job...jakesbuddy - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
Also, for the comment section, there needs to be a way to highlight new comments based on time elapsed since posting. After I have read through five pages of comments, and I return an hour later to seven pages, I have to scroll through all pages trying to find the new replies, since they are linked to the original comment. If I could just highlight all comments and replies posted in the last hour, it would eliminate much redundant reading and make for an all around better experience...Murloc - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
but don't put an ad at the top, otherwise you read that before the header.Mr Alpha - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
There are a few things I don't like:1. At the top you have three levels of link. The middle one, starting with motherboards and then IT computing, doesn't make sense. I assume IT computing is a link to it.anandtech.com and it doesn't really fit with the others. And why you need to elevate a few of the hardware categories over the others I don't understand.
2. Under the menu links you have a horizontal strip of three articles, and under them you have three more articles with under the title Featured Articles. What is the difference between them, and why do you need both? Seems like a horrible waste of space.
3. The Customize This view link: Is it for the whole site or only for the Featured Articles section? From where it is placed and the way the link is phrased it seems to be only for the Featured Articles section, and that seems pretty useless.
4. The ratings on articles is a horrible idea. Sure, that the authors get some kind of feedback can be nice, but I am not sure a number is very useful for them versus real feedback. As for exposing the rating to everybody, that's a can of worms you do not want to open and will only make your site seem tacky.
5. The Follow Anandtech is too big. This is a feature most people only need once, and spending all that screen real-estate on it is overdone.
6. In the long list of articles you have info on how long ago it was posted, while in the Featured Articles section you have the date on which it was posted. This is inconsistent. Either do one or the other.
7. In the long list of articles you also waste a lot of space on the +Share link. A smaller link and more test about the article would definitely be a better use of the space.
8. On the side you have the More from Anandtech section. That title isn't really clear. It is in the same sidebar as Twitter and the other social and web 2.0 stuff. Is it more Twittery like stuff? If it is more articles then why are these articles more, but the long list of articles to the left of it not more?
9. You have Most Popular as a tab title in the more section, but the Shared tab titles isn't "Most". Does this mean that the Shared isn't a list of the most shared, but ordered by some other mean? This is confusing.
10. What is the contributor tab in the More Anandtech section? Authors, commentators, sponsors? Why is this list interesting? Why does it need exposure?
11. At the bottom you have the Other Discussion section. Other than what? What is different about this discussion? More importantly, what discussion is this?.
As a conclusion I might add that this seems very much like me-too redesign. Just doing what everybody else is doing regardless of whether it is a good or bad idea or whether it fits Anandtech.
Also, I seriously hope that you will make a better commenting system than what you have now.
SpatulaCity - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
It would be helpful to have the most recent articles, reviews and analysis on top and listed in descneding order from publish date. Avid readers, like myself, often check the site multiple times a day to see what is new. I would hate to miss an important article because it wasn't displayed on the front page. Perhaps, create a cookie that keeps track of last visits and mark which ones are new, like Dailytech does.Also, please don't set the big 3 carousel to auto rotate on some predefined timer. Different people have different attention spans and different reading speeds. I hate websites that have a carousel and rotate the top 3 automatically example: jpl.nasa.gov It pisses me off when the page changes before I am finished reading the blurb.
fiftysixtius - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
I appreciate the DailyTech headlines in the margin, and would miss them if they were gone. I guess I always assumed that DailyTech was part of the Anand "empire" but perhaps the association is not as strong as I thought.Lezmaka - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
The first thing I noticed before even looking at anything specific is that there is A LOT of bluegreen/teal color going on. When looking at the full size screenshot, when I'm at the top (sections/3 articles) and the bottom (Other Discussions), it just doesn't look right. I think it reminds me of the default Vista colors too much or something. Or maybe it seems like almost everything is a variation of the same color, making it look kinda stale?Maybe use more of the blue and orange in the new logo?
Like this (please forgive the shoddy quality of the changes, just made quick changes to get my idea across)
http://www.searchbarpro.com/images/anandtech.jpg">http://www.searchbarpro.com/images/anandtech.jpg
Just my opinion
ilkhan - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
Am I the only one who hates even the concept of featured stories? I want a simple chrono view of stories so that when something new comes out I can easily see it at the top of the list. Yes, new are almost always featured, and yes anand does it right (as opposed to xbit, who seems to think putting a 2 week old story up top AND removing it from the chrono listing is a good idea), but its still a little annoying.But the rest looks decent enough. No option to keep the current layout?
Spivonious - Monday, November 16, 2009 - link
Meh, that's what RSS is for.Mk4ever - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
Totally unrelated to this article, but I thought I should say something about it.SSD prices are going up for indilinx and samsung drives. Intel prices are going down, but still nowhere near MSRP prices (esp the 160GB G2). Many drives are out of stock. Newegg eliminated a lot of SSD vendors from its site, including SuperTalent and G.Skill. Problems at the 32nm chips. New sata 6Gbps. New Sandforce deal with OCZ.
What's going on?
I would really appreciate a new article addressing the current situation of SSDs and manufacturers for the end of the year, the first few months of the next year, and throughout the whole next year.
This would give us an idea why prices are going up. It would also shed a light to know if we should get it over with and get SSDs soon, or if we are better off waiting the start of next year.
A general article covering all aspects of SSD availability, pricing, new/upcoming technologies and which manufactorurers plan/are committed to update firmwares would be really nice.
Thank you for your time.
gss4w - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
The main thing I care about on this site is the content, so I think that is good already. Also I don't really have many complaints about the current site layout, but the new one looks good too.The main criticism I have about the current site is the comments. It's annoying to try to read through a large number of comments on an article. So that is the area I hope is improved the most. I can't really tell anything from the preview you have, but I hope things are improved on the new site.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
The comments section will be improved! You'll get a listing of a certain number of comments at the bottom of every page, but if you click more you'll get a huge listing of them (at least 50 per page) :)Thanks for the feedback guys, keep it coming.
Take care,
Anand
imaheadcase - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
Why is it that even "new" sites don't scale on monitors. Take a look at CNN, its so small i can't even read it..so much wasted screen space.Griswold - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
Why dont you zoom in then? Any decent browser will do that for you. Things will become larger and the "wasted" space reduced. If you're using a really good browser, you can even save the setting on a per page basis...imaheadcase - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
I can zoom in sure, but it does not save per page with the latest version of firefox. In fact if you zoom in it will retain that for every session. So if i visit a site that does scale correctly i have to zoom back out.imaheadcase - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
btw anandtech does that now to. I have 4 inches of screen space on each side of grey.Naton - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
Is the carousel at the top of the page intended to be flash based? I dislike not being able to choose how to open new pages (new tab, new window etc).I don't mind the comments system apart from the fact that it reloads the whole page when you just want to see the next lot of comments.
yacoub - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
Yes, definitely stay away from Flash for menus when CSS and DHTML provide a much more useful design. I often right-click links to open in a new tab so i can continue clearing the page I'm currently reading before moving on to the first link of interest.Trisagion - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
Although, I think the Anandtech logo should retain the same font that you use currently. It sort of has a historic significance. I also hope you use more Ajax programming especially for the comments (and maybe the articles as well?).As for writers, I hope you get a permanent writer to cover Linux related articles.
marc1000 - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
I don't know if the main bar (the links to motherboard/cpus/etc) is very clear.. at least I believe the "tabbed" design is more obvious to the reader. perhaps a new tabbed design, instead of "hard blocks" would be cool.BTW, nice colors. Oh, and please be sure to make it compatible with Chrome, I believe more and more people are using it. These textboxes on the comments section, for example, always causes some minor bugs in Chrome.
regards,
Mauricio
yacoub - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
The "big five" links at the top of the white content box, above the rest of the smaller-sized sections in light blue, doesn't make sense. (e.g., Why would Motherboards be among the "big five" but not "Video"?) So I am assuming that "big five" list is customizable?Either make it customizable via a per-user setting, or make the "big five" links more logical (i.e. no specific piece of PC hardware should be among the big five, unless you have the five links be Motherboards, CPU, GPU/Video, HDD/SDD, and RAM/Memory, given those are the five primary components within a system.
The mish-mash in the example - three PC hardware items and "Notebooks" and "IT Computing" - is not going to please anyone because there is something there every person doesn't care about and absolutely would not want in the top-five menu. Not to mention it isn't even in a logical order (not even alphabetical order).
I highly recommend rethinking that "menu" setup at the top.
Otherwise the comp looks pretty good.
Regards.
nowayout99 - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
+1 the previous post. The "Big 5" aren't logical.I would also MUCH prefer DailyTech headlines to a twitter feed. Srly. Do not sink to the level of pushing a twitter feed on a site like this.
Not convinced the Popular/Shared/Contributors section is necessary. That plugin is the new keyword cloud -- "cute" but mostly useless and redundant.
Overall looks decent.
nowayout99 - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
Reply to myself -- It's fine to have a twitter feed, but I'd move it to the bottom and add a DailyTech feed on top.Harsh3090416 - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
Whatever you do don't take out the lastest news by dailytech. B/c i am sure that if you do so the pageviews will definetly do down. I love the articles on anandtech alot been a anandtech reader since i was 12! I am currently working on getting my own website up right now (: will let you know when i do soLezmaka - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
The DailyTech links are nice, but some of the writing is just painful to read. I've found myself clicking on the stories less often and mainly on things that aren't reported elsewhere. But that's not Anandtech's fault of course.sciwizam - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
+1 for Dailytech, it's what makes me refresh anandtech, even though I know I can directly go to dailytech website.nowayout99 - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
+2 for Dailytech, I like having the headlines down the side!Eeqmcsq - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
+3 that. The DailyTech list is nice to have on the side bar.Devo2007 - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
+4 (how long will this continue). I use those links far more than I visit the DailyTech site directly (even though both are bookmarked).OCNewbie - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
+5 I really really like having the DailyTech links on the right, or at least visible from the main page. I visit AT multiple times daily, and am always checking out, and clicking on, the latest DT stories.Griswold - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
-10Getting rid of DailyMick wouldnt make a difference to me.
yacoub - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
hahah I sort of agree. If i want DailyTech, I'll go there. Anandtech homepage should be about Anandtech, not full of links that just send traffic off-site. That's not helpful.Also, those asking for articles on one long page - that's highly unlikely as well, given that the point of breaking articles up into pages is to increase click rates and page views for advertising purposes.
Transisto - Sunday, November 15, 2009 - link
maybe having a Table of content near the top would also help as I have to find is somewhere between the end of the article and the comments.As for the dailytech ??? I never noticed that, nice, but I visit 50+ site a day I don't see the point in having 2 site in one.
lopri - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
A big thank you for this!PrezWeezy - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
Hey Anand the front page looks great, but I'm really hoping the search gets an overhaul as well. I'm always remembering you had an article about something a while ago but when I use the search it's almost impossible to find.Also, your banner ads here at AT seem to be some of the best I've seen. They almost always are from reputable companies I want to deal with, telling me about products I am actually interested in. I also tend to ignore all ads when I see 10 different spaces on a site, so the 1, 3 at the most, slots is a great way to get (at the least my) attention.
Looking forward to seeing the new site!
freezervv - Monday, November 16, 2009 - link
+2 for better searchesIt's no doubt difficult because your articles are fairly categorically dense (in a good way!), but I was looking for the explanation of why graphics cards use half nodes (as opposed to cpus on whole nodes) the other day and couldn't find it. Afaicr, it's embedded with another piece.
icingdeath88 - Sunday, November 15, 2009 - link
+1 For making the searches better. I'd like to be able to sort through all of the articles ever, most recent to oldest. More functionality would be better of course, but that's the most useful to me.mckirkus - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
Ratings for stories are nice but IMO only two things really matter:1> Fix the comment system. See reddit.com for an example of near perfection.
2> Allow sorting stories by popularity and the ability to filter by month. That doesn't mean show Top Stories today, this week, this month, all time. It means allowing searches like most popular "last week" "last month", etc.
You have great content regardless of how rounded the corners are. Focus on delivering that content the way people want it. And maybe throw in a few more videos in 2010. Also, animated charts would be nice. Keep up the great work.
Transisto - Sunday, November 15, 2009 - link
+1 for Reddit like ability to collapse comment tree, (open source btw)ComputerGuy2006 - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
Well since you mention customizations, here are some suggestions:#1 There are 10 items displayed in that screenshot. I think that should be customizable (ex: 25 per page).
#2 I hate the comment section. There are few comments per page and the comments are threaded. Id love to have a quote system with the ability to have a flat view and change the “comments per page” to any desired number (ex 50 per page).
3# Since each page in an article are separately accessible, why not give people the option to customize that? Example: Id love to setup so all 2-3 pages articles are conveniently all on the same page.
4# I do not like the sidebar at the right. I think that space could be better utilized for article space. I seem to find myself writing lots of greasemoney scripts lately to stop these annoying sidebars.
spunlex - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
I agree with everything except #4. the dailytech headlines should be visible on the home page but not in articles. I also think the width should be customizable along with the multi page option. I would rather have a custom reading environment then a custom article list, since I spend most of my time on this site reading.freezervv - Monday, November 16, 2009 - link
"I would rather have a custom reading environment then a custom article list, since I spend most of my time on this site reading."Well-said.
Sangueffusor - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
Will the new design take more advantage of width? The current design seems to be fixed and does not contract or expand. Running with a widescreen monitor and a pretty wide browser window, it seems it would be much more efficient to let the main content stretch its legs.fxfighter - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
I agree, the fixed width thing on lots of websites annoys me a lot too. I don't get what is so hard about designing sites so they dynamically fit to the resolution of the users screen, it isn't a huge amount of extra effort and just requires using some percentages for various parts.teko - Monday, November 16, 2009 - link
Reading a long paragraph of text on full wide screen is actually annoying. It's harder for the eyes to follow a very long line of text.This is why newspapers and magazines are designed with columns, to make it easier to read.
freezervv - Monday, November 16, 2009 - link
Fair enough.And to be generous to the original code, fixed width a la the current site does do some nice things. E.g., when shrinking a window the "padding" disappears, but the content remains as long as possible.
kmmatney - Monday, November 16, 2009 - link
fixed width is also better when viewing the site on a mobile device (iPhone, Droid, etc,..).faxon - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
im also all for more width in the article space. right now im using exactly half of the total width of my monitor for one article, and while thats all well and good if i want to run two articles side by side, having the site automatically resize the articles to the width of your screen would make it a lot easier for me to read through long articles quickly since it makes speed reading a lot easier. also, please make sure that the new site doesnt use any flash for the primary content if at all possible. i browse anandtech from work on my iphone all the time and having flash content would utterly kill it for mefaxon - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
ooh one thing i forgot. the comments system for these articles is a real pain and it doesnt work very well. some of the sites i go to have a system where there is actually a subsection of the forums that is dedicated to discussion of the articles posted. if the forum were expanded to include a section like this it would clean up the comments system as a whole in one go without any need for additional development beyond adding the related sections and a means of automatically generating threads in the appropriate forumWilliam Gaatjes - Saturday, November 14, 2009 - link
I am for that. Although the new forum is still under development, i see way to many buttons with the same function.RaistlinZ - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
Looks decent enough. It'll take some time to get used to, although I am very interested in the customization features. Will the new design be any slower to load though? I'm on primitive dial-up internet here and I'd hate for all the new features and eye-candy to slow things down.Thanks
7Enigma - Monday, November 16, 2009 - link
Yikes! If you're a firefox user you want to definitely get some of the low-bandwidth plug-in's available.Devo2007 - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
I like the new layout (and I'm one who tends to be fairly resistant to change overall when it comes to my news sites) :)Just curious what screen resolution you're designing the new layout in (while I do have a 24" LCD, I tend to keep the browser window around 1024 pixels wide so that I can keep other windows visible).
Einy0 - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
Looks nice... Please tell me it doesn't have any of those key word ads that pop up on you if you mouse over them... I hate those...niva - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
I also don't care for the current wiki format, some words get highlighted and if you mouse over them you get popups.I also think it' about time you guys started updating your linux section :)
webmastir - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
man those are annoying. glad they won't be implemented!!Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, November 13, 2009 - link
None of those, did away with them on AT a while back :)Take care,
Anand
RattleSnake - Monday, November 16, 2009 - link
Good work. Please remove them from the DailyTech as well!bigkah624 - Thursday, November 19, 2009 - link
You should be able to block those inline ads. I use Opera so to block the stupid popups on DailyTeck, I clicked on Tools > Advanced > Blocked Content, then clicked Add:http://*us.intellitxt.com/*
click close, refresh the page et voila. Annoying inline ads are gone.
Denithor - Monday, November 16, 2009 - link
Happy happy joy joy !!Seriously...