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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velis - Friday, April 2, 2010 - link
Great design. Although I too would like more of screen used. Right now there's about a quarter unused on the sides on my 1680x1050 widescreen. Also the page header + carousel are so big that I only see the title of the first article. Though I suppose shortening the header would make it less visually appealing. Don't really know.I do have one other tidbit:
The carousel is fantastically slow on firefox. A 2 - 3 FPS slideshow (when sliding to show other article thumbs). While on IE 8 it's perfectly smooth. I haven't gone so far as to check how you made it, but I'm guessing JavaScript + CSS. Could you please take some time to see if you can make it work faster on FireFox? I'm guessing firefox recalculates too much (something like the whole page) with current implementation. Perhaps a different approach that would fool the browser into thinking that nothing much has actually changed in that particular section of the page?
Brucmack - Friday, April 2, 2010 - link
- Please add a "print" feature or some other way to get the entire article on one page. I often read Anandtech on my mobile with Opera Mini and it's annoying and slow to have to navigate between pages.- The RSS feed isn't made available from every page - I have to manually click on the RSS / MOBILE link to get it. This is different from most sites.
- I much prefer sites that aren't fixed-width - if I have a wide screen, why can't the content fill it?
- Bruce
Springfield45 - Friday, April 2, 2010 - link
Please, for the love of all that is good, bring back the print view. Put adverts every few inches if you want, but let me view an entire story on one page.stephenbrooks - Friday, April 2, 2010 - link
Why is the body text a shade of GREY rather than black?! It's horrid on the eyes and almost like you're deliberately trying to make it faint and hard to read.enyceexdanny - Friday, April 2, 2010 - link
I like the fact that it's simple, but just not feeling it.. Sorry... If the design isn't finalized, I wouldn't mind even doing a concept design for you at no charge..enyceexdanny - Friday, April 2, 2010 - link
And I agree with the above poster.. The lightest I would go for the text is #222222... Better yet, just go all out black..fongwen - Friday, April 2, 2010 - link
The new look feels refreshing, got one suggestion, could u keep the widen page / larger font options? Cos it would be more comfortable on a 24' or larger monitors. Thanks guys for the update anyway :)Calabros - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
I dont like the new logo, especially it's font. BTW, why u don try putting the logo at the middle? and....corners of the banner could be roundedwyemarn - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
I was a frequent reader of Anandtech because of excellent contents but this new design with 'Print article' function dropped, looks like I would have to stop coming to this site. Print article functions saves me a lot of time and useful if I want to switch between pages. I wonder why Anand dropped this function. Only a few online sites left with print article function and one of them is Tom's.doratiog - Saturday, April 3, 2010 - link
The possibility of reading the whole article without the tiring exercise of clicking and clicking again like if readers would have been punished and obliged to suffer Tantalus torture is gone. Not a good and rational decision if you wanted to improve your site. Your new design is irrelevant. You have taken the opportunity to make a change in favor of propaganda thinking readers must be stupid.