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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maxfisher05 - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Change is good. It will take some getting used to but I like it so far!Pirks - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Trolls use this system to downrate valid opinions, that's not fair. Without such an idiotic troll-friendly system dailytech would be much better place..fixxxer0 - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
SUCK!especially since they lock up a remote desktop browser in the animation loops 9 our of 10 times.
madoc1 - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
As I sometimes don't get to the site every day, or have an RSS feed to the site, it was very handy to have the articles on the left-hand "Latest from AnandTech" column to be broken up by date posted. Please consider adding this to the final format for the site.LongtimeReader11 - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Dear Anand, long time reader (5 years), best reviews on the web. This is my first message, but I have to say I do not like your new design at all. IMAGES at the top are way to big, that it distracts from reading the words. all DIV spacing are massively oversized. Takes 20 seconds to scroll down the page, while only seeing one article at a time on the screen. The whole site now looks like a cheesy Word Press article.As a reader I want to see everything quick in one go and with all the information on the screen with out causing eye strain. TOM’s hardware did the same thing a couple of years ago, complete redesign and the end result was terrible I never read another article, so hard to find things and hard on the eyes, same problem here, I never went back to TOMS hardware. But time will tell on this site, say after 1 month you do notice a drop in traffic; would you consider putting back the old design? Thanks
burkeen - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
I hate the new design. Sorry to be blunt, I'm sure you worked hard on it, but when I go to a site I want to know it's content. Content as in articles, words, information. Big glossy space-wasting graphics don't provide any information. This site has been part of my daily Web surfing routine for over a decade, because I could pop it up, glance over the headers and see if there was anything I wanted to read. (Key word: "read".) Now instead of glancing at the home page I have to click through some stupid carousel or scroll down pages of space. Why would you make your readers work harder to get to the articles that interest them?SergeC - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
I strongly agree with this post. The new layout is very attractive, but impractical. The old one made it possible to quickly scant he page to find new items of interest. The new one requires searching around, and will result in people leaving for sites that allow them to quickly find new items of interest.gseguin - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Great work! Here's a couple of request for the technical crowd:- Would it be possible to have a "wider" layout on a click of a button? My personal resolution is 1920* and would appreciate a 1200 or 1400 px wide view of the page... according to wiki, 76% of users have > 1024* res. Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_resolution
Could we get a link to browser/OS stats for your readers? You often have articles on browsers and oses, could be good to know what the browser % is from a technical site.
SilthDraeth - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Well, The site doesn't really appear any wider for me, as I have 4 inch gray bars on the side, that have nothing in them at all. Will this change? Sure I can zoom in on the site but then everything is super huge.bsantini - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
I liked the old page way better. This new page takes longer to load and has less information available on one screen. The old was much more compact and efficient. I don't get why all these sites feel the need to change their homepages, first Yahoo, then Tom's, ect. It's like there is a bunch of IT guys with nothing better to do trying to justify their jobs. Please, if it ain't broke, don't fix it !!!