It's so chic

by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 24, 2005 11:47 PM EST
In our usual fashion, we've given AT a minor refresh this Sunday evening before the masses visit tomorrow morning. We've moved away from the beige into something a bit more blue/grey, just trying to stay neutral while updating the look a bit. You'll notice that the tabs up top have a new font and are condensed quite a bit. The new font makes its appearance on the left nav as well.

The comments system has been heavily revamped, here are the changes:

1) First and foremost, anonymous posting is no longer allowed. You can choose not to show your email address but you need to post from an account you've created (registration is free, we won't spam you, etc...)

2) We've moved to a threaded comment system; it's a request we've gotten from quite a few users, so no more typing the # before the post you want to respond to, just respond to that individual post and you'll branch off of it.

3) You can now rate individual posts based on their content, the higher the rating, the better the content. The system works like this:

- You can either post or rate in a thread, not both. We do this to prevent people from changing the direction of a thread by posting a comment and then rating up or down those who agree/disagree with their point.

- If you rate one or more comments and then decide later that you want to post/reply, you may. When you do so, your votes are simply subtracted out.

- Each post/reply starts with a rating of 2. The highest you can rate a post is 5, the lowest is -1. Each vote either increases or decreases the rating of a post by 1 point.

- Everyone gets the same number of votes per thread. For every 10 posts/replies in a thread, each user gets 1 vote. We may change this as time goes on.

The system is inevitably going to need some tweaking, but we've tried our best to work out the major kinks before launching it. We'll be watching the way it's used over time and make the appropriate changes.

So give it a try, give us your feedback and I'll chime in tomorrow morning with the i-RAM piece and an update from the weekend.

Take care.
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  • Cuser - Wednesday, July 27, 2005 - link

    Nice catch, I was just geting ready to bring up the missing name in the "Replying to" section also.
  • notposting - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    Well, I miss the pictures that were in the tabs at the top. Most people are getting BIGGER monitors, not smaller. Even on my old PII laptop with 800x600 resolution, I'm used to things being a little wide possibly.

    The blue is okay I guess. I kind of liked the beige though, it was a bit "warmer".

    Dunno about the comment thing yet, I'll have to see how this works for awhile. Definitely agree with previous posters about 2 things:

    * Not a full width window;
    * Not in a new window;

    Okay, 3 I guess:

    * Options for things like last post first.

    Oh, and the font for the menus look funny, It looks like there's something on top of the capital 'A'.
  • Scrogneugneu - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    I would suggest an option for getting the comments in the old, chronological ordered way.

    This would make everyone happy, as long as the comments get back on the same page as the story, because it seems like a general opinion that a popup window is not funny.


    By the way, this is my first post ever :) Hi everyone
  • S Random - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    i absolutely hate having to open up a new window, pressting the unhide to read comments, then opening up another screen just to write a comment. it takes me 5 times as long to go through. change it back please
  • msva124 - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    I agree. This new comments system was a bad idea.
  • msva124 - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    Upon further usage, I dislike it even more than I did previously. With the old system, when I wanted to see the newest comments, I would just go to the last page and scroll to the bottom. Now I have to go hunting through all the replies to figure out which ones are new. Also, sometimes when I am doing a reply I want to look at several different posts rather than just the one I am immediately replying to. With the new system it is difficult to see any posts besides the one I am immediately replying to. Furthermore, with the old system the login/password were right next to where you typed your reply. Now they are at the top, so I have to scroll up to login, then scroll back down to reply.

    Does anyone know of another hardware website that has industry news, reviews, and a simple comment system like anandtech used to have?
  • Ecmaster76 - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    I was hoping for the I-ram piece today.

    Kind of dissapointed to get a review of a rebadged reference card thats ridiculously expensive anyhow.
  • blckgrffn - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    I agree, where did the Iram piece go?
  • tappertrainman - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    I think you should swap the name and "up/down" votes. It's more difficult to see who is posting each comment now. Before, it was very easy to see which person was posting, especially in a big back-and-forth argument. Just my two cents, I like it, overall.
  • tappertrainman - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    Oops, it should be the "up/down" and reply area. The "up/down" disappears once you comment. :)

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