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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Barack Obama - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Hi Anand,I was skeptical about the site re-design, but let me be the first (or the seventy-sixth to be exact) to congratuluate you and the whole AT team on a great site re-design. I love how you have improved the comments system.
My only suggestion is to make the left and right arrows for scrolling the latest articles work when you hover over them, as opposed to clicking them each time to scroll. This would be great!
Barack Obama - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Will the Forums be re-skinned to match the main site? They look quite out of whack at the moment!timon37 - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
The animation is evil, if i leave firefox with the main page visible and change the virtual desktop i get a 15% cpu usage spike every time it slides. I've got a core i7 930, linux gentoo 64bit, firefox 3.6.2 and it's the same with chromium 5.0.342.7. There most probably is no way to handle this for you since the browser might not even know it's not visible, so what I'd want is an alternative view without the animation or maybe just a standard list with shorter descriptions, honestly whatever just no js and no animations. I guess I can just forbid scripts with no-script but that creates quite a bit of wasted space and gets rid of the ads.Zkal - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Good job, like it except for the huge banner on top of the page. Can it be moved? It's annoying to have to scroll to see actual content.maloab2009 - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
it seemed to display more info in the same amount of screenspace. also light colors are better than dark colors and the font sizes are too big on the new page. too much scrolling is required. what happened to the ability to print the articles?SilverBack - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
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Matt_M - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
I have only spent minutes with the new design so can't comment extensively. But one feature I don't see that I really liked is the ability to print an article. Not that I actually printed them out, but to me that made reading the article so much more enjoyable. To be able to scroll through the entire article on screen rather than page forward and back, or jump page-to-page. Hope you can add that feature!!!m4nm4n - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Now if you can only get a few more comment moderators to sift out the spammers, I'd be hard pressed to enjoy comments from any other tech site. The commentors here are very knowledgeable. I'd hate for their voices to be drowned out.timon37 - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Also why leave the "Latest from AnandTech" with "DailyTech" and "Twitter" when viewing the article, the contents kinda feels to cramped and too offset to the left, my screen is already to the left since I have a 2 screen setup so I guess it's worse for me than others, but still when viewing an article you probably don't want to distract people from the contents itself, also it might be a good idea to make the top thinner (just when viewing articles) for people with low vertical resolution, since they have to scroll more when switching pages.timon37 - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Hehehe keep in mind most of the people who say "this is could be better i can't clearly see the content, or i have to scroll to see it" are actually praising you for the content you produce;) and just want more of it, so it's not really negative feedback;p