Welcome to the 2010 AnandTech Beta
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 29, 2010 11:52 PM EST- Posted in
- Guides
That old design lasted us a long time, didn't it? :) Welcome to the 2010 AnandTech Beta. We've done a lot of updating behind the scenes as well as (obviously) on the front end.
Most obvious is the brand new look and feel. For a site that reviews the latest and greatest tech, we can't get by looking like we're still living in 2004. Now when the 80s make a comeback we'll be on top of that, you've got my word.
We've ditched the left hand column, streamlined some of the ads and widened the content column. While each article will still give you a preview of 10 comments, we finally have an option to view all comments on each review page. Right now we've got this set to 50 comments per page but we'll be tweaking as need be. We're also cutting down on the number of page loads you'll encounter. In view all comments mode there's no page refreshing between comment pages. We'll be bringing this feature to more parts of the site in the future. User friendliness is our drug :)
The front page allows for both linking to our superlong articles as well as shorter stories that can just appear on the front page for quick scanning. By default the latest 5 articles will appear in the rotating carousel up top, but if something super interesting comes up we'll promote it up there (similar to what did on the old site). The expanded summaries on the front page will give you more insight into what it is we're talking about in the article before you ever click anything.
Tags are enabled but not in full effect just yet. We'll be beefing up search, comments (the return of ratings!), galleries, Bench, user profiles and site layout/color customization over the coming weeks. We're planning on this being a regularly updated thing so if you see anything that warrants our attention let us know.
It's not all about a pretty face though, we're still going to be publishing the content that you demand from us. If you haven't seen it, be sure to read Ryan's GeForce GTX 480 & GTX 470 Review. And I'm commemorating today with a new SSD article addressing one of the longest running questions you've been asking: how do SSDs perform in RAID?
As always, thank you for your support over the years and for reading the site. It's been a pleasure to be able to write for you all over the past 13 years. Thank you guys for giving me and all of us the opportunity to do just that. If you haven't been able to tell by now, I love writing this stuff - and you all make it possible.
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SunSamurai - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
1. The ad at the absolute top of the page looks off. Should be lowered, at least under your logo. Possibly to the right under HOME | ABOUT | ECT2. The CPU -> IT COMPUTING and Smartphones -> Guides tiling is too thick. Make the stuff a bit thinner. Im thinking anywhere from 40-80 pixels. It should look more streamlined.
3. The right side looks good,though the Follow Anandtech could be polished a bit. Looks tossed in there.
4. When a user is in an article, have a readability mode. Allow us to the over the right panel and re-show it again with a button click, and possibly further than that allow us to utilize our full screen width.
5. Colors could use some work (a bit more pale possibly, some colors are too vibrant, takes away from the logo and content imho)
Please ignore whatever Im missing, and thanks for the improvement, long time reader.
teko - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
...if it works...teko - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
And yes it does =)ptrinh1979 - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Love the site!1) Nice change in layout. Clean lines, good fonts used - striking new anandtech logo on upper left. Solid colors in navigation bars.
2) I like the left-right scrolling of headlines, allows me to spend a minute viewing the article features - or I can just scroll down and skim them instead.
3) Good placement of ads, the site loaded faster for me where it counts, i did not have to wait for the ads to load in order to view the first "page" on my screen. Allows me to check the site in 5 seconds.
I am going to refrain from the dislikes because I realize this is a beta site, and that any that any of my "cons" would be in reference to my mindset of the old layout. I want to see how this evolves, because the new site clearly triggers a new mindset for me to view.
Keep up the great work, and great articles, Anandtech crew!!
-Peter Trinh
uibo - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
The new design reminds me of NASA. I don't know why and I am not saying it is bad. Though the upper part is too "empty" - big buttons, big spaces = wasted area. On my 1024x1280 monitor the menus use about 1 third of the visible area. the second third is used up by the preview gallery on the front page. You could make parts of the front-page customizable - but that would probably come at conformance cost too big...TheFlyingSquirrel - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
I like the changeEverything is easier to look at and the new layout is easier to find stuff
thumbs up from me
JoeOnRoute66 - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Anand,The new design looks great although takes quite a bit more screen space. One thing missing, I usually springboard from your site to Dailytech. Could you bring back a direct link to Dailytech on the right side?
jmccrary - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
I love the changes! Very sophisticated.fledgling - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
I appreciate the idea of more white-space and the such and love the idea of enhancing the websites performance although only through an impersonal approach as personally I don't ever have any performance issues. However I'm forced to say that in general I greatly prefer the old layout to the new layout. It just doesn't seem right for some reason, and it reminds me of the switch tomshardware went through right before they started going down big-time as far as the quality/interest of their articles... not that I'm saying the same thing is happening to anandtech but just as a comparison.As far the scroll bar thing goes... It does move too slow when you click it and unless you're crazy fast it's hard to tell if there's any new articles by looking at it since it moves so fast... unfortunately I think the old method dealt with this better, maybe making the scroll bar remain stationary and letting the user click through it would work better?. The layout as far as the main links and everything up top looks confusing (although easier to figure out for new visitors) and unconnected to the rest of the site.
Also the logo needs some work, at this point I'm still considering the old logo to look better, both to old and new visitors, the first few letters look good but then the rest looks like it was make with office's word-art. Ah, and the links to the right of the article seems to take up too much room, maybe shrink that column and enlarge the articles column?
Sorry about being so negative... I hope you can get it to the point that even I can agree that transition to the new site is a 100% positive event : ).
fledgling - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Looks like the speed of the scrolling got adjusted as I typed my previous comment... I still think the pause before it starts to scroll should be a little longer or perhaps it shouldn't automatically scroll... as it's a little distracting to me personally,... but it's an improvement : ).