Welcome to AnandTech's 2013 Redesign
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 9, 2013 1:16 PM EST- Posted in
- Site Updates
In 2010 we went through the single largest redesign in AnandTech history. We modernized the site, finally moved to a tag based architecture and made a number of other tweaks. The web moves a lot quicker than it did even just 3 years ago, so last year we started working on another significant redesign. Today marks the debut of that design.
Going into the redesign we wanted to accomplish three major goals. First, we wanted to have a design that put our smartphone and tablet coverage on equal footing with our traditional PC roots. The redesign consolidates our coverage areas into four major categories: PC Components, Smartphones & Tablets, Desktops & Notebooks and finally Enterprise. The super categories are largely self explanatory and you can drill down into each one of them for more specific navigation.
It's important that our site design reflects our internal focuses. We are as committed as ever to our PC component coverage, but we also devote an equal amount of time to what we're doing in the new mobile space. From my perspective, whether it's a smartphone or a server, we're still talking about some form of computer - just in a different case.
Our second major goal with the redesign was to more prominently feature Pipeline, our short form content section. We launched Pipeline in late 2011 as a way of dealing with content that either didn't demand our full review treatment or that we didn't have time to dedicate deep analysis to. Since then Pipeline has become a very important part of the site, and we wanted to elevate its position on the front page as a result. Pipeline stories on the right are ordered from newest to oldest, with even older pipeline stories appearing under the 2x2 grid of featured articles.
Finally, we wanted a design that would be more accessible and speak to the broader nature of our audience. While you all know why you come to AnandTech, it's very important to our continued success and ability to remain independent that the site accurately reflects the diverse audience. Whether you're coming to us for motherboard reviews, analysis of the latest microprocessor architectures or to figure out which smartphone or tablet to buy, you're likely a person relied on by dozens of others for recommendations. We remain an independent website, which comes with its own challenges when it comes to proving our worth to the agencies and marketing organizations that help keep us operational. Looking the part is just as important as having the content to back it up.
We made sure not to take away any features with the redesign. We still include our well used Print View on all articles, but now allow you to use it both for single page reading as well as for actual printing. The previous Print View didn't have all of the styling of our article pages since it was purely optimized for printing, now we have both modes.
Other features have been enhanced as well. The View All Comments button now actually lets you view all comments on a single page, rather than just showing you 50 comments per page. You can also now permalink to individual comments. I'm always humbled by just how awesome your comments are, now we can finally link directly to individual ones.
We now support larger images inline (we will be adding site-wide retina/hi-DPI support soon!) and our graph style has been updated as well, which you'll start seeing us take advantage of with all new content going forward. The review body text is also larger and hopefully easier to read, which should help when we post some of our ultra long form content.
The Podcast now has a permanent link at the top of the page as well - thanks to all you who have been asking for that.
The Twitter feed on the front page now includes tweets from a number of staff members including Brian, Ganesh, Jarred and myself. We've also made it easier to follow us on Twitter and Facebook with direct links in our header (hint: it helps us tremendously if you do). Our most recommended content on Facebook is also nicely streamed in to the right of the site as well.
There are more functional changes that we'll be introducing throughout the new year. We just had to get the redesign out of the way first so we could start building on it.
I hope you all enjoy the site redesign. I know big changes aren't always easy to get used to, and as always you have my commitment to fix/improve anything that truly needs it. I'd love to hear your feedback on the design in the comments below.
I'd like to close with a thanks to all of you for continuing to read and support the site. I've always said that AnandTech is your site and I do firmly believe that. We are here to serve you and you are what make this site possible. Thank you for reading, and thanks for making the past 16 years possible. If you are a relative newcomer, please be sure to check out our About page that helps explain the philosophies that drive us.
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htnawsaj - Saturday, March 9, 2013 - link
Same feedback as on twitter,Twitter and Facebook feeds take much space in a post with out comments,Also the Link Contact etc at the bottom are too bright.Orange color would have been better than the Red.
Also the pages looks cluttered, like more info compressed into a single page.
akedia - Saturday, March 9, 2013 - link
It's very visually noisy now, very unpleasant. Is there any chance you can put in a button to bring back the old view like Ars Technica did when they, too, opted for the cluttered look?3ogdy - Saturday, March 9, 2013 - link
Great idea!p05esto - Saturday, March 9, 2013 - link
Some good things for sure. Just get rid of the Facebook and Twitter feeds (my god, how oldschool is that crap these days)..... and I don't really think cell phones belong here, but I can life with that. Just keep the Apple garbage off the site and I'll stick around.The size of the site is good, I hate sites that break the 1024 resolution. I open windows, never full screen. I think the contrast is abit too much, but maybe I'll get used to it.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, March 9, 2013 - link
The FB and Twitter feeds are a necessary part of things now - promoting sharing/following is something we all have to do in order to expand the reach of our content.Is your contrast complaint primarily about the margin color, comment background color or something else?
Take care,
Anand
Stahn Aileron - Saturday, March 9, 2013 - link
This kinda feels like the Ars Technica redign all over for me again. The main page feels cluttered. I actually starting ignoring the Ars main page because of the cluttered feeling. The articles themselves are less cluttered. (Less sidebar items on the right.) Actually, I just took a quick look at the AnandTech mainpage. Yes, this definitely feels like Ars redesign all over for me... I mainly use direct RSS/ATOM links to get to an article, rather than using the main page. Any chance the articles/posts can be cleaned up a little? The right side really feels crowded. (I use neither FB or Twitter, so those sidebar plugins are a distraction and waste of space to me. Thogh I do understand the need to integrate them in this day and age.)I also prefer a slightly darker design. I'm willing to live with this, but I think the rest of the site kind of contradicts the design of the site banner/logo in terms of color scheme.
bernstein - Saturday, March 9, 2013 - link
hey exactly my thoughts, completely abandonend arstechnica then, then found the featured articles rss feed and switched to reading those via google reader... kinda sad but if they want to loose the quality minded readers fine with me, more time to read nature/science...3ogdy - Saturday, March 9, 2013 - link
I share the same opinion. I'll end up reading anandtech through RSS so that I no longer have to see this awful page.Anand Lal Shimpi - Saturday, March 9, 2013 - link
In your opinion what's the cause of the clutter? Is it the 2x2 article area below the featured review that you're not happy with or something else?We specifically went for greater information density on the front page but wanted to make the review pages easier to read, at least on the latter part it seems like you're happy with that but there's concern about the FP being too cluttered. Do you believe the tag homepages are also too cluttered (e.g. anandtech.com/tag/smartphones)?
Take care,
Anand
1d107 - Sunday, March 10, 2013 - link
I share the sentiment about Ars Technica.The new metro-based, tiled design has large pictures and very small amout of text rendered in small grey font. This makes the most important part of each item, the one that conveys the actual information, it makes it very insignificant part of the design.
How can you say that the information density on the front page has increased when the text accounts for may be 15 - 20%. While pictures, that frequently don't convey any info, occupy about 50% of each articles tile? As a result, I don't get enough info from the front page to decide if I need to read the entire article to not.
Look at this: "Apple has the luxury of not competing at lower price points for its Macs, which makes dropping hard drives an easier thing to accomplish. Even so, out of the..."
What does it tell me? Nothing, and the picture to the left of it? I am a visual guy and like graphs and all kinds of pictures that help to understand the topic. But the one to the left of "A month with Apple fusion drive" hardly adds more information. The last five words of text? Nothing. Out of the entire text and the entire tile, it may be 5 words in the middle that carry only a couple bits of information.
Compare this to Slashdot. There you actually get more information from the front page.
Anand, I admire Anandtech and people who work and write excellent in-depth articles. It is the site that is the authority on many topics and there is very little that can be done to prevent me from returning here. But let's just make things easier for people who comes here for information.