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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Visual - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
You used to have a cool print article functionality that displayed the whole article on one page, making it very convenient to read. Is that gone for good now? True that it did bug out sometimes, like not displaying galleries but {{galleryblahblah}} or something, yet I will miss it.I'll probably end up making some greasemonkey script to fetch the other pages and append them to the first, but why do you want to make me go this extra trouble at all?
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Nope, not gone for good :) It's a work in progress and the print function is coming back very soon :)Take care,
Anand
DBissett - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
On the article category banner....CPUs, Motherboards, etc.....why change the appearance of the second line, i.e. different type sizes and colors? This adds to the graphical clutter and messiness that are all too common. Since both lines are the same content (same level categories), how about one type size and one color? Also, why rotate 5 main article graphics? Its pointless to not allow the reader to see all five at once, unless someone just wants to demonstrate that they can do this, and it makes the reader work to see all of them by clicking the arrows. A reader can scan all 5 in 2-3 seconds and shouldn't be made to either wait or have to do something to read all of them. Like the category banner issue, the rotation just adds to graphical messiness and distraction.Dave
Moricon - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
First reactions.Where am I , oh its Anand...looks great, hey this is way better..
Well done and thank you.. Really very nicely done.
And for those with advert problems, Anandtech need adverts, its revenue and its as simple as that, we don't pay Anandtech for their hard work bringing us great reviews and content, the adverts do! If you don't like them get an ad blocker installed. I do like the Ads and have even benefited from them!
Once again, Well Done!
hindustani8 - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
A good surprise to start the morning! Good work from AnandTech Team!!!cactusdog - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
I really like it. It looks clean, professional and modern. It feels faster Too!!Jebzilla - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
where's the option to print the article? I have limited access at work and I like to print the articles so I can read them on break/at lunch. Love the look....it's clean and fresh.Gatos7 - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
I was quite used to it after all this years. The new one one looks clean though. It will take some time to get used to it but I'm sure I'm going to love it :)wharris1 - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Are we still able to format the articles into a printer friendly format?holywarrior007 - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Great job!!. I really like the new website. It's looks cool and it is much snappier than the older one. It's is now more pleasure to read tech related articles here.