Welcome to the new site :)

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• Anonymous - Tuesday, July 6, 2004 - link

  Don't like the date/time in the corner.
  
  I like how News is now a seperate page, and I can definately understand that it saves you a lot of bandwidth costs.
  
  "Top Insider Stories" sounds like a subscription service(Think IGN and ESPN)...might want to rethink that title...something like "Anandtech Industy Articles" or something.
  
  I also thought the Product Coverage box was an ad, but I like the idea.

• David - Tuesday, July 6, 2004 - link

  Correction on #8 above: if #5 is corrected, then the addition of the other items should end up with a net change of almost nothing (maybe 1-2k), and the purely additional (not subtracting for the product page) is also adding in the size of the article images in the rather rough estimate.

• David - Tuesday, July 6, 2004 - link

  1) Have to reiterate the comment about the green background showing through. The problem is that the page is often blocked waiting for ads to be served (ad servers being notoriously slow, and even if not, there are a lot of ads being served), or waiting for a lot of content (eg: the real time pricing page). The black text showing up on the dark teal background is impossible to read, and looks sloppy while waiting for things to load. Considering the supposed CSS design, this should only happen very rarely at most (and never if properly designed), when first loading a page when the CSS file has expired from cache. Instead I'm seeing it constantly.
  
  2) 'About' should not be the second item in the LHS menu. That sort of thing should always be at or near the end of a menu list.
  
  3) The 'RSS/Mobile Users' should not be above 'News'. Since the RSS page is meta info on the News page, it should follow the News entry.
  
  4) I personally would place 'News' above 'Forums', considering that the site is billed as a news site, not a web community.
  
  5) The Product Coverage section (aside from the title image not having alt text) is redundant with the tabs at the top of the page. The main sections of Product Coverage are the same as the tabs. I can see this (sort of) if the section is designed for accessibility, but it would be much better suited as quick searches within each main section (which themselves are merely chronological article listings, only moderately useful).
  
  6) I am puzzled by the numerous (as in dozens of) instances of hardcoding styles into the HTML, considering the supposed CSS design. In fact, I think I can trace a few problems (such as #1) back to this (though it's difficult to say for sure). Recommend you not only run the page through the validator (which currently generates ~400 errors, only some of which are typical minor 'missing alt tag' types, and most of which I would consider significant if I were designing or overseeing the page design), but also review the web accessibility guidelines (http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/).
  
  7) Definitely agree that the RHS sidebar should be News first, then picks, then blog. (well, at the very least News should be first)
  
  8) Assuming #5 is corrected, that leaves a lot of empty room at the bottom of the page. Would recommend making use of the suggestions of many others and extend the summary with picture entries in the reviews section to around 4 or 5, and include, say, the last 5-10 news items. I can't see that adding more than 10k to the page size (and that's being generous), which means you should still not be anywhere near the 300k mark you were previously serving.
  
  9) The "Welcome..." is not grammatically correct. It currently says, "Welcome, from United States it's 12:27 PM EDT on July 6, 2004". It would be better written as "Welcome to AnandTech from The United States. It's currently 12:27 PM EDT on July 6, 2004".
  
  9a) For the poster who saw an additional line when he copied/pasted along the lines of "Welcome to AnandTech from California, United States", that's from the alt tag of the little flag image up there. Perfectly normal, although nowhere near accurate (I'm about 1500 miles from California).
  
  
  

• AlfateK - Tuesday, July 6, 2004 - link

  I'm not a negative person but so far this new design sucks...
  
  The Latest news should be in the front page, at least 1 or 2 days old... The articles MUST HAVE the date they were published, even the 'more reviews' ones...
  
  The Anandtech Product Coverage shouldn't be in the main page... It's good to see old reviews, but if i'm searching for a old review i would click the "reviews" link, or something like that...
  
  I repeat, i'm not a negative person and Anandtech is the best tech site for me but this new design is not better looking and has a poorer usability.
  
  just my 0.02€

• Mike Barton - Tuesday, July 6, 2004 - link

  I like the speed. I do miss the home link on the logo & I would like to see recient reviews listed per catagory, like last 3 or < 2 weeks old, something like that for each section, with a pop up summary when you cursor over the title.
  I also liked the News summaries listed one after another, maybe set up a seperate news page like the bottom of the old front page?
  I haven't found the Product Coverage section overly useful yet...
  Keep at it...You'll get the best site to have the best design yet!

• PorBleemo - Tuesday, July 6, 2004 - link

  I agree, the news should be more streamlined. I also think that the Anandtech Product Coverage should be removed and have the articles fill that space. I mean, don't the tabs already serve that purpose?
  
  Oh, to block the ads put these URLs into whatever program (or firewall) you use.
  
  *http://images.anandtech.com/banners/
  *http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/AD_Banner/
  *http://www.anandtech.com/i/pipeboost.gif

• PreacherBoy - Tuesday, July 6, 2004 - link

  The new design is a huge step back in terms of functionality.
  
  Before I would click on the first news story and scroll through the rest. Now I have to click on each one individually? I understand that you might want more hits, but the ease of checking the news is what made me visit this site. So now you're going from 1-3 hits per day to 0.

• PorBleemo - Tuesday, July 6, 2004 - link

  The AdBlock extension in FireFox works wonderfully for "fixing" the main site. No more ads! :)

• Hardtarget - Tuesday, July 6, 2004 - link

  I don't like it. i liked how the news worked before plus there isn't enough recent articles now being displayed.

• Me - Tuesday, July 6, 2004 - link

  I am sorry, I counted wrong. Nine ads. That's a little over the top, no?