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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  • Captante - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    Yes & it seemed to fix the problems I had with Opera, but FF v106 still looks horrible
    on my PC ... No idea why.
  • MAME - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    looks like crap in ff
  • Captante - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    As was mentioned earlier, try holding "shift" & refreshing the page, fixed FF for me.
  • mariush - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    Anand, perhaps it would be a good ideea to show below a news item a small preview of a number of comments (for ex. one line per comment), it's weird to have to click each time just to see the comments.

    People would also be stimulated to express their feelings, opinions and so on...
  • jimmy43 - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    First of all, the small layout and design changes have added a nice professional touch to the whole website, it makes everything looks very consistent. And second of all, you guys are geniuses! The new comment system is a work of art, seriosly. Thank you so much, your site just keeps on getting better! Keep it up!
  • nowayout99 - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    The refresh of the colors/layout makes the site look more open. Less cluttered and more relaxing and enjoyable. I like it a lot.

    The new comment system, though, seems to counter that. Very busy and cluttered. I think it's because it takes up the entire width of a wide window. Most of the messages look like they're only two lines long, which makes them easier to pass over. Shorter lines would make it look less cluttered, and would be much easier on the eyes.

    Would you consider condensing the width?

    (FYI, I have tried to post this several times but kept getting errors. If there are double posts, blame the server.) ;)
  • xelpmoc - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    The new tabs look a bit rough for some reason, but overall the site looks pretty good. Comments are much improved!
  • xelpmoc - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    Hmmm, but the new window thing is no good. If the comments were displayed by default under news stories like they used to be, it would be just right.
  • slashbinslashbash - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    Comments shouldn't be in their own window.
  • CheesePoofs - Monday, July 25, 2005 - link

    I like how the new font and color scheme works, but it'd be nice if in the news section the comments could be opened up on the same page as the news article (like how it was before). Its a pain to have to switch back and forth. Or is there a way to do it that I'm just missing?

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