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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wwwcd - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Link to the old stile? I like its him! The new form not presented of Anandtech face in traditions with which we are accustomed.EdwinOlson - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Two requests:* Please restore option for printing an entire article.
* An option to show comments *only* on first/last page would be nice. Otherwise, it's too easy to overshoot the navigation popup between the articles and the comments.
jamyryals - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
I like the new design. Clean and fast. Loads well on my mobile phone as well, big plus!imaheadcase - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
It would be nice if you got with the other sites that started this years ago, and actually detected size and adjusted in accordingly.Nothing like 6 inches of wasted space on each side and small text..
Sabbathian - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
First surprise in the early morning... new anandtech design :)I must say I got really used to the old one and I usually don`t like redesigns... if you ask me, you could go with the old one forever :) But, changes are needed, and here they are .... I must say that complete site haven`t lost any of its simplicity and easy to find anything design... I`m already used to it...
I have only one little remark ... top flash theme scroller is a bit slow when clicking on the arrows on the sides, nothing else:)
Thumbs up from me ;)
tnt118 - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
I think the redesign looks fantastic. It has a very modern feel, without the clutter or "'visual soup" so many other recent website redesigns have gone through. There's no confusion, and no sense of "where do I look?".The only thing I noticed is the "top stories" scrolling bar moves very, VERY slowly for me (Firefox 3.6) and the forums now look decidedly dated. My personal option is that the top stores shouldn't be a rotation of recent stories (those are always a very short scroll away anyways) but a promotion of the three most important stories of the last few days/weeks -- IMO, that's where AnandTech should highlight the three (and three only, no scrolling) most important/relevant stories of the entire week.
gescom - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Awesome! Applause to your designer.ViviTheMage - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
I am not feeling the text for the new navigation area....and fixed width is sooo 2000.I like the new favicon! Maybe attach the favicon to the new boards as well.
mataichi - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
The site definitely needed an update. The colors and style is much improved over the old design. I agree with many that, while I do like things to be spaced and padded, there seems to be too much of it and alot of wasted real estate both vertical and horizontal.The vertical scrolling to get to articles does not bother me. This seems to be the way many sites are moving these days (engadget, joystiq, etc). Besides, probably 95% of users check this site regularly, so the articles that are farther down the page should not need to be accessed on a regular basis as they will already have been read. If they do, use the search box to find it.
Good work guys, this is much improvement, but could still use some tweaking to make it outstanding.
I realize you have to pay the bills, but obviously the ads get in the way of an ideal layout.
assemblage - Tuesday, March 30, 2010 - link
Lots of wasted space in the menu bars. Everything seems way to large.. But I guess you're optimizing it for a higher resolution than 1280x1024. I have to scroll down two big mouse wheel rolls to get to news and articles. I'll probably stop coming here as much with this design.