An update on the redesign
Posted on 20th Apr 2010 at 17:10 by Alex Watson with 152 comments
Yesterday saw the launch of bit-tech's first complete redesign in five years - with new features and a new look. A change in design is always going to be a challenge, especially when it comes after such a long period of time, and for a site like bit-tech that's so important for its community.
However, it was time for a redesign. We felt the old design just wasn't working any more - I went into the reasons in full in my post introducing the redesign, but basically, we were producing too many articles for the old design to handle - it couldn't surface them for long enough - and because we couldn't update the site that frequently, we were tied into producing very long articles.
Add in changing demands of advertisers, the Custom PC integration and our plans for the future and we felt a new design was needed.
Once we'd made that decision, we tried hard to come up with a look that allowed us to surface more content, run MPU ads in a way that minimised intrusion into articles and brought the site up to date without losing its essential bit-techness.
Once we had a design we liked, we took it to a beta test that was open to all registered users of the forum - over 100 readers helped out and the design evolved over the following weeks.
And then we launched it, and we got some feedback! I thought I'd address some of the points that came up:
Don't fix what isn't broken: See above. For us, the site design was becoming a big limiting factor. We needed to improve it.
Fixed width forums: The forums default to a fixed width design, but you can change them to use a variable width (ie the full width of the browser window). You can change your preferences in your user options - scroll down to the very bottom.
Fixed width site: The width of the site is fixed. This is necessary for a modern, content heavy, ad supported website such as bit-tech - fixing the width of the design enables us to control where the text, pictures, adverts and other design elements appear. With a variable width site, you're incredibly limited in terms of how to display information, and as such it's no surprise that the vast, vast majority of the web's leading content sites - BBC, The Guardian etc - all use a fixed width design.
The site is too narrow: The site as a whole is actually wider than it was before. As we've moved to a three column layout on index pages and two columns for articles, the main column has become narrower. Doing this meant we could move adverts out of the main column though, so there are no interruptions to the article - which should make reading easier.
The actual width of the site was decided after we looked at the analytics to see what screen resolutions people used - and you'd be surprised that the percentage of readers on widescreen monitors is low.
Holy wall of text!...is some people's first reaction. However, give it a couple of minutes and you'll see that there is logic at work. We've got the big featured articles that are the most important and interesting pieces of content from the last couple of days. Beneath that, as ever are the latest articles, arranged chronologically, and to the right, the news stories - essentially, the old bit-tech format.
It is busier than the old site, but to some extent that's unavoidable - we're surfacing more content because we're writing more content. We've done our best to make it clear; subtle colour coding, dotted lines to separate the latest articles.
The fonts are horrid! When we launched we were using Helvetica Neue Light; elegant, certainly, but perhaps not as strong on readability as it could have been, so we've switched to Arial throughout.
But it's different! I know. But times change, and we firmly believe the new design is a leap forward for bit-tech.
Where's the mobile version? - We'd love to do a mobile version, or an app for the site/forums. If that's something you'd be interested in, let us know your thoughts in the forums!
However, it was time for a redesign. We felt the old design just wasn't working any more - I went into the reasons in full in my post introducing the redesign, but basically, we were producing too many articles for the old design to handle - it couldn't surface them for long enough - and because we couldn't update the site that frequently, we were tied into producing very long articles.
Add in changing demands of advertisers, the Custom PC integration and our plans for the future and we felt a new design was needed.
Once we'd made that decision, we tried hard to come up with a look that allowed us to surface more content, run MPU ads in a way that minimised intrusion into articles and brought the site up to date without losing its essential bit-techness.
Once we had a design we liked, we took it to a beta test that was open to all registered users of the forum - over 100 readers helped out and the design evolved over the following weeks.
And then we launched it, and we got some feedback! I thought I'd address some of the points that came up:
Don't fix what isn't broken: See above. For us, the site design was becoming a big limiting factor. We needed to improve it.
Fixed width forums: The forums default to a fixed width design, but you can change them to use a variable width (ie the full width of the browser window). You can change your preferences in your user options - scroll down to the very bottom.
Fixed width site: The width of the site is fixed. This is necessary for a modern, content heavy, ad supported website such as bit-tech - fixing the width of the design enables us to control where the text, pictures, adverts and other design elements appear. With a variable width site, you're incredibly limited in terms of how to display information, and as such it's no surprise that the vast, vast majority of the web's leading content sites - BBC, The Guardian etc - all use a fixed width design.
The site is too narrow: The site as a whole is actually wider than it was before. As we've moved to a three column layout on index pages and two columns for articles, the main column has become narrower. Doing this meant we could move adverts out of the main column though, so there are no interruptions to the article - which should make reading easier.
The actual width of the site was decided after we looked at the analytics to see what screen resolutions people used - and you'd be surprised that the percentage of readers on widescreen monitors is low.
Holy wall of text!...is some people's first reaction. However, give it a couple of minutes and you'll see that there is logic at work. We've got the big featured articles that are the most important and interesting pieces of content from the last couple of days. Beneath that, as ever are the latest articles, arranged chronologically, and to the right, the news stories - essentially, the old bit-tech format.
It is busier than the old site, but to some extent that's unavoidable - we're surfacing more content because we're writing more content. We've done our best to make it clear; subtle colour coding, dotted lines to separate the latest articles.
The fonts are horrid! When we launched we were using Helvetica Neue Light; elegant, certainly, but perhaps not as strong on readability as it could have been, so we've switched to Arial throughout.
But it's different! I know. But times change, and we firmly believe the new design is a leap forward for bit-tech.
Where's the mobile version? - We'd love to do a mobile version, or an app for the site/forums. If that's something you'd be interested in, let us know your thoughts in the forums!
152 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyUnfortunately, it's not as simple as that. If we did that, we'd have readers complaining about 'excessive scrolling' (which they are complaining about on the new design, which actually has a shorter page length than the old design).
:p
In all seriousness though, I much prefer this new layout/design. I can remember the last bit-tech redesign; that made the site look a hell of a lot better, and this redesign is going along pretty much the same lines.
The choice of variable/fixed width forums is a real godsend. When I browsed the site with my netbook on the old design, adverts used to obscure part of the text on some forum posts (particularly those with large images, like project logs). This problem is now completely gone!
Hot topics, they can be changed as and when we want.
PS: I like the new site.
Nice redesign though, I like it.
apart from font change, what else has been changed in the last 2 days?
Sam
edit: nevermind, didn't notice you can make the forums varible width. awesome :D
http://imgur.com/ufgOV.png
Moriquendi
Ctrl + it and you'll be fine.
Also +1 for Mobile Android version :)
I think Hugo's just pulling your leg ;)
Image links removed. Please check that your image host does not feel the need to include porn advert banners next time... --Nexxo
Even just an option to turn off/hide/minimise the tag-cloud/recent posts/what we're reading sidebar nonsense would at least widen things up a bit for reading the actual articles.
Just my opinion tho, in general good work!
And a mobile version would be great, though I would stay away from an app, sites are just so much more flexible, I can have loads of tabs open etc.
One (small) thing - would it be possible to make as much of the top bar (where the logo is) that isn't advert a link to the homepage? I used to use that all the time, but it is just a little link on the left now!
edit: wrt the mobile version - I had been used to it on my Touch Diamond but now trying it on me Milestone the main site actually doesn't work badly. It is perfectly usable.
I do view bit-tech a lot on my iPhone though so the idea of a mobile site or an app would be perfect for me. I think an app would be very good, not including the forums but the main site, that would be amazing but understandably wouldn't cater for a large portion of readers. A generalised mobile site would be very good too though; as long as the look were to be kept the same and the functionality were still there.
Websites like msn.com and such like where it is a very basic mobile design can just be annoying and there's often no way to revert to a desktop view. As long as there is the option to return to a normal desktop view and the mobile version is still aesthetically pleasing, I'd love to see a mobile version of the site.
Hope that doesn't sound picky :p I'm sure you guys will get it right!
Removed from bookmarks due to poor design. And this isn't a case of 'oh he must not like change at all' because Anandtech just redesigned their site and I like that. That is a step in the right direction, this however this just looks stupid.
I mean seriously I'm writing a comment to an article that is taking up 30% of the width of the page. I don't know how any of you ever thought this was good. Looks more like a twitter page now with the width of the articles like this one.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out ;)
I do find it a bit on the high-contrast side, if your copying the beeb they have grey text and grey sides. It it better on a widescreen monitor after CTRL + + -ing a few times
However it's really starting to annoy me that the 3rd column takes up so much bloody room when it's showing almost nothing of interest. Everything in the other 2 columns feels a bit squashed and that's where the meat of the content is. Pretty please change this with a cherry on top :)
did a quick count on random paragraph from each website, both have over 90 letters per line, about 90 to 95 for both website.
as the staff have said, it is because people are reviewing what is on the blog post, where the layout of blog posts are different from the actual review/preview articles.
I have the Motorola DROID, by the way...
The site looks great on an iPad btw.
Websites these days are a far cry from the early days of the intarwebs where we had crappy sites with animated gifs all over the place, yellow text on blue backgrounds, background MIDI loops... To see what I mean, just look at the xkcd Geocities tribute. Now imagine looking at loads of websites like that, all day every day - without Google to sift the crap for you.
Honestly, kids today...*grumble, mumble...* ;) :D
RSS?:)
[offtopic]
Opera on Android is quite awesome actually. Except for Facebook which seems to not refresh properly every now and then.
[/offtopic]
Don't call me a kid and don't call me a console gamer. 2 things people seem to think about other people who post here.
Color coding is very useful for the sight impaired.... something for YOU to think about.
This year for some reason many sites have decided to "update' the appearance of their sites. Most of them FAILED with the new formats. I'm sure over time I'll get used to it but I truly did like it the other way.... you don't have to agree but don't bash me for it.
The OP did ask what we thought.... and I opined, thank you.
Thank you very much.
Editing the forums to full width was painless enough, and about the only thing I disliked being restricted width.
I guess I've spent too long around my colleagues to believe in full browser width sites - Especially ad supported sites - so, frankly, I've been expecting something along these lines for a while.
Picked a nice time of year to go with the changes, though :p
One small plea, could you make visited links have a different color? Doesn't have to go to like red or anything, just a subtle change would be great
The "width" issue is probably more an issue of the content beeing sqeezed into the left and middle column.
Mainly on the main page and in the blogs.
In the articles themselves it's fine.
Ah, you noticed :D
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Who's bashing you directly? I can only assume you're talking to me; if I had wanted to specifically address you or your comments, I would have quoted your post (in the same way that I'm doing now).
I was trying to point out that many of the criticisms seem to me to be unwarranted; does the layout, column width, colour scheme, font size or whatever really bother you so much that you would stop reading a site? Isn't the content of the site far more important than how it's presented? Of course, you're more than entitled to your opinion, but I don't see your reasoning as being entirely sound. Substance should be the important part of a tech news site, not the style. If the writing took a complete nosedive, then that should be the reason that readers are lost, not because of some layout changes.
In case the liberal use of smilies didn't help, my "Honestly, kids today..." comment was an obviously failed attempt at humour. My point was that, no matter how bad you think things are now, the web has come a hell of a long way in the last 10-15 years. Some of us do remember the bad days of web design; we are an ever dwindling minority, but that's nobody's fault - we're just getting older. Hell, some of us remember the days before the WWW, when Bulletin Board Systems were the best way of connecting to other people with your computer. Running a site in the old days meant coding the HTML by hand or using very poor tools, uploading files manually by FTP, using frames, not having easy access to scripting or PHP/SQL/ASP... All you have to do these days is open a blogspot account.
Lastly, I believe you are the only person that has used the term "console gamer" in this three-page thread.
EDIT: This is what RSS means.
but i do like the new layout
1. please by defult allow comments to be seen underneath the articles! eg. reading about a piece of harware and then reading the comments you might want to confirm somethin... now its back-->forward-->back and so on!
2. twitter and rss are fine but what is the problem with making a facebook as well? i suppose 90% of us here have FB and i am a Fan of most the sites i read online i can quite often combine talking to friends and reading interesting topics!
what do you guys think?
If you do decide to do any mobile version, please make it opt-in, as my N900 handless full websites really well and enforced mobile-specific pages really annoy me.
Also I view the site on my N97 a lot and the width is perfect in landscape - the 3rd column is cut off but I don't check those much.
Hehe, that's a solution for the third column ;)
I like bewbs and stuff as much as anyone here but maybe my boss wouldn't be too impressed to see me porn-browsing at work.
The moment you posted screenshots with adblock running immediately ruined your credibility with me.
Been coming to this site since you started up you not disappointed me yet...
Bit-tech, and most websites like it, do not get money from clicks, but from how often the ads they serve are viewed. If you block the ads, you're actually hurting the site and in theory, if enough people block the ads, it could lead to people losing their jobs [because we can no longer afford to pay them] or even closing the site completely.
Every page viewed actually costs us a not insignificant amount of money to serve before factoring in salaries for the staff creating the content, the cost of running a test lab, the cost of housing each member of the team (furniture, PC, IT infrastructure, telephone system, etc). You'd be surprised how much it costs to run a website like bit-tech on a monthly basis.
Taking those costs into account, we need to run advertising and our readers need to see that advertising. Alternatively, we could charge for the content, but we'd rather keep it free - paywalls go against the openness of the internet. It doesn't matter if you don't click on the ads (if you see something that interests you, please do click on it, but we are certainly not asking you to click on every ad that you see on your screen), because we're paid per view (well, per 1,000 views).
There's a great article over on Ars Technica about how adblocking is "devastating" the sites you love - it's recommended reading for anyone who blocks ads on every site they visit and thinks what they're doing is harmless: http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love.ars
We have always tried to keep advertising relevant and the team does its best to make sure that intrusive or resource-heavy ads never make it onto the site. It's not perfect, but the more vocal you are about certain ads that don't meet the site's typically high standards, the quicker we can actually action them.
If I could run a website ad-free, I would, but it's simply not possible if you want to build a business and actually draw a salary (journalists aren't particularly well paid, for what it's worth). Bit-tech has and will continue to invest in content as the site grows - that's one thing that hasn't changed since the Dennis acquisition. Dennis believes in great content and continues to invest in it.
With regards to his choice of image hosting, he's probably never seen the invasive and horrible ads that are on that rather poor excuse for an image hosting service and doesn't know any better. If bit-tech's advertising was like that, we'd have a hard time saying "please support the site by not blocking our ads" with a straight face. The fact is that our ads are not intrusive and, certainly where this new design was concerned, we worked hard to not only reduce the number of ad slots, but to also make sure they're not slap bang in the middle of the content (the big square ad is no longer in the middle of articles, right below the drop down menu, for example).
And I still remember the [pretty heated, at least partially] debate about IntelliTXT adverts on BT in which it became pretty clear what BT is all about: Keepin' it real with their community. ;)
For reference:
Original blog post
2nd blog post after they'd been taken down again
That's why BT is great: They DO listen to requests for change!
I never knew that tim, from now on i'm gonna click on everything, life is so much more interesting when you push anything and everything! =D
Thanks for that Tim. That answers a number of questions I've been pondering recently.
+1
That way I would be happy to allow the ads to show, and allow the tracker to let them know i've seen it....
About the site : As with all things, change is a pain, but hey, we'll get used to it.....
Interesting point about colour choices made earlier, and did you know that according to research ( dont ask me for a link, cant find it ) white text on a black background produces less eye strain than black on white? Try it for yourselves. This is because the eye adjusts to make the most of the visable white light on the screen, making it harder to see the small black text; with a black screen the eyes can relax and focus on the white text much more easily. Something to think about if you can implement colour & background colour choices for the main site along with the forums..
Just a thought.
You do know Bit Torrent is used for legitimate reasons as well right.
The same applies to Usenet.
Granted in this case it looks shady, a person isn't guilty until proven so.
You are doing exactly what the B.S.A. wants and feeding the hysteria which leads to software being outlawed. You probably don't remember, but at one time there was talk of banning network testing tools such as port scanners because of people like you said everyone who used them was using them for illegal reasons.
They will at best lose revenue due to cost per view going down.
At worst, they could lose their ad serving contract entirely. Google is particularly draconian about this.
I have no idea why it's that hard to white list sites that you support. I use AdBlock as well but BT is most definitely white-listed.
Happy with the new site apart from that.
Sometimes, in a shop, the reviews can become quite handy in the time of choosing which one. Let it roll please
What's wrong with that? It's a perfectly acceptable use of the term, it doesn't denigrate journalism in any way at all. It's also is quite a common term when it comes to web design and business in general; that's why systems like Drupal, Blogger, etc, are called CMS: Content Management Systems.
I lost ad-blocking functionality when I switched to Chrome last year; I've never thought that bit's ads were particularly intrusive. Just please don't ever use those stupid rollover things!
Good to see you're still trolling your way around Bit-tech Phil. Things don't change, eh?
Also, if you haven't noticed , Bit-tech produces more than just articles these days, there are podcasts and videos as well. Collectively, it's known as content... or, just for you, would you like me to refer to it as news, reviews, previews, features, blogs, analysis, podcasts and videocasts? It's OK, I'm sure those extra few key presses will do me good.
With that said, you probably haven't noticed that we produce more than just news, reviews, previews, features, blogs and analysis articles because you're too busy waiting for the next opportunity to make a clever comment. :(
Jeez Phil, if you get any more anal and you'll be engulfed by a chocolate starfish.
EDIT: Ah, Tim gave a better reply. I gave a personal one. You know, from me.
I hope that all makes sense.
*EDIT - I know that you have highlights of the colours that appear once the mouse is over the topic but I feel that is too discreet. I didn't notice that for a few days and I visit the website many times throughout each day.*
Pssst, it was that way on the o.l.d. website...don't mention it! Besides, colour is out! :D
No, you're right, it would make sense to me too
Why o why is it so sexy to use these tiny fonts ? The only reason i can think of is page-design. For the user it's a nightmare, atleast for me it is and i think i am not alone in this matter.
Yes, i have the zoom option. But you also now that using it srews up the design/layout. So that is not really a option, but a nasty "workaround".
Is it too much too ask for a more readable font, for people like me, who don't have the "hawk-eye" ?
Have you got a screenshot showing the small font?
You make a good point
You might want to go and get those eyes checked. :p
Way to support your readers tbh, you sir are a *fool*, and one of the many reasons why me (and many others) are starting to dislike BT. I hope your not employed for much longer. but its quite obvious your mentallity is that of most of the staff so you probably wont be.
PS - i kinda like the site, not feelin the new content layout tho, it may grow on me tho :)
NickCPC is not employed by Custom PC, bit-tech or, as far as i know, Dennis Publishing.
A clear problem, there is a back to top link in the footer though.
Cheers Jamie, Ive missed that before. should make things a little easier.
Before, on the main page. :)
There you've got mixed (colour coded) topics in the left column but the buttons indicating the corresponding sections are only mouse-over colourcoded.
(at least i think that's what he meant...)
Might I also suggest that the 'Top' link in the footer becomes more of a 'Back To Top' button to partner 'Post Comment'? That would make more sense to me as it would stand out more and be more useful, as would a 'To The Bottom' button to go at the top of the comments section.
We've added a few buttons to help move around the comments page.
As for the colour key, I understand your point Sifter3000 but I feel it's wrong to use a colour code and then not have a key on the main page for easy reference. Even if the text of the topic headers were different colurs then you would have the key in a simple manner without the big blotches of colour you are trying to avoid.
Busy would be an understatement. It just seems that far too much has been shoehorned into the front page, why?? as it is just far too cluttered.
Yes, 344 so far have switched to variable width.
I have also noticed a physical change too. As I tend to open my browser in the centre of my screen, the comments are on the left of the screen as I look at it and after a few minutes I tend to lean to the left to focus on what I am reading... By the time I finish reading an article I actually feel uncomfortable and tend to click to a different site.
Liking it overall more and more each day :D
any update on the colours of this site? They look very washed out !
what colours are washed out? I've just had a quick nosey at the web archive version and they seems pretty much the same as they were to a quick visual check, though I admit I haven't broken out a spectrometer to check if they are the exact same shades.
One thing I've noticed why does the bits page not have a coloured tab bar under the first menu tab bar, like all the other heading pages?
This is the same reason I stopped buying CustomPC...
It wouldn't matter if it was the greatest design in the world.
To be honest, out of all the customers, this isn't many complaining. The real tell will be in hit counts. So no, they may not be listening, yet. Also, just because you state an opinion, or even if they ask for it, it doesn't mean they have to follow it.
I like the Arial font though ;-)
And if you can do it better... go ahead, we'll be here waiting. :p
Really? I tell you what 'I' have noticed, aside from 'your' inability to know when to 'use' quotation marks, is that on page 6 of this thread, 'you', 'myself' (the editor), and Jamie (the developer) have a back-and-forth discussion about colour coding and visual design. 'Your' points are responded to within less than two hours, including a code change to the site to address some of 'your' issues on commenting. In fact, 'you' even professed to like the changes.
But that was at 00:48 on Saturday. By the end of the day, you've decided to post the above foul mouthed rant, and, to be honest, I've got no idea where it comes from or even what you're on about. Throughout this process - and I include the open public beta - the staff have sought and responded to comments from readers. I've written two long and balanced blogs posts explaining our decisions. We've not changed everything people have asked us to, because you simply can't please everyone all the time - I have however, done my best to explain when decision have been made, why they've been made.
But clearly, that's not enough for 'you'.
Nice work besides that though and I'm sure I'll get used to it.
Kbai.
I think I speak for everyone when I say you won't be missed. Have fun over at Tom's Hardware or wherever it is you end up.
Actually there's technically less adverts now since we no longer have skyscrapers making the forums true variable width if you really want them to be. We do have the extra MPU on the front page, but in terms of pixels rendered for adverts, there's less.
But, you know, jump to conclusions and all that.
Hurrah! ;)
You get hugs \o/
A week has passed and I have to say dont like the new look.
Unlike most that complain about the width, I dont mind that since at work I only have a 15" LCD.
My main complain is about screen use.
There are three main columns on the page now.
The firtst uses about 45% of the screen area and offers the new content BitTech produced.
The second uses about 25% of the screen area and is reserved for news.
The third column, about 30%, is just a waste, I just dont care on its content.
PS:
For reference, check XbitLabs site. It only uses the "Content and "News" columns and functions well.
I understand you guys want/need to have some integration with other branches of the group you belong to, but its just a waste of space.
Like it! ;)
We have for today - the featured article boxes are really flexible. For big launches and cool products, we can put more of a focus on one thing - there's a launch tomorrow, so I expect then we might have just the one, or maybe two articles in there, so the pics will be huge :D
Well, it's the third column that pays the bills, and trust me, I think you'd prefer the third column over a little coin slot in the side of your PC that you had to put 10p in every time you loaded bit-tech ;)
I'm still getting lost around places, trying to work out where I'm going and what the hell is going on sometimes, but I love the new look. Looks a tremendous load better than the old one.
Although saying that, my FF bookmark for this site goes straight to the forum, so I don't often visit the main site all that much.
Indeed this is one of the reasons I stick with bit-tech, despite the zillions of other tech sites in existence. There's much more of a sense of community with the bit-tech staff.
Anyway there's a glitch in the "header Bars"
Looks like this (can`t take a picture) imagine the dots gone, space doesn't work for formatting)
HO..HARDWA..MODDI..GAMI..BI..BL
ME..RE............NG........NG......T...OG
..............................................S
Revie..Featu..Previe
ws......res......ws
Also, theres no way to "go to the Forum" from "Comments"
Yes, I did that too!
Can the 'discuss in the forums' button be at the top of the comments please, next to where it says 'reply', instead of having to scroll down to the bottom of the comments to click the link to the forum for that article?
I understand that changes needed to happen and I welcome new fresh designs.
The higher quantity of news articles on the homepage has its advantages by obviously maintaining longer periods of exposure for each recent article. The only negative to that would be that, for regular bit tech visitors, the homepage can look very similar to how it may have looked days before, giving the impression that not much new 'news' has happened. I suppose a visitor could go away for a few weeks, return, and not feel they have missed out on much. Apart from this, and one or two other extremely minor negative points, the new look is great.
http://img34.imageshack.us/i/wshomepage.jpg/
http://img693.imageshack.us/i/wsblog.jpg/
http://img62.imageshack.us/i/wsarticle.jpg/
It should work well at higher resolutions than mine (1680x1050), but as this is all I've got, it's all I can test it on.
There's a reason newspaper/magazines use narrow columns.
I do read it. It's how I have the site set up by default now, and it's a lot less tiring and less work than having to read back and forth again and again. It also means there is much less scrolling to do.
And, contrariwise, there is a reason why books don't use columns. The reason newspapers use columns is so that the page is readable even when folded. That is not an issue with online media, as you don't fold your monitor.
Besides, it's not like I'm forcing this on everyone. If you want it, you can load it into Stylish yourself, and if you don't, you don't have to.
Here's the CSS to paste into Stylish (Give it whatever name you like):
@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml); /* For all pages under www.bit-tech.net... */ @-moz-document domain("www.bit-tech.net") { /* Set things up for 100% width... */ .pageContainer { width: auto !important; } .grid_18 { width: 100% !important; } /* Position the nav container background correctly. */ .navContainer { background-position: top center !important; } /* Give the feature blocks a width. Then the smaller headlines can float to the right */ .singleFeatureBlock, .doubleFeatureBlock, .tripleFeatureBlock { width: 406px !important; margin-right: 10px !important; } .alpha.grid_8.omega { width: auto !important; position: inherit !important; } /* Front page articles list. Set width of each article to 406px and let floating wrap them */ .grid_8 { width: 100% !important; } .grid_8 .listBlock { width: 100% !important; } .grid_8 ul.articles { width: 100% !important; } .grid_8 ul.articles li { width: 406px !important; float: left !important; clear: none !important; padding-right: 5px; } /* Headers for lists are 100% wide and breaking - causing a hard break */ .listBlock h2 { float: none !important; clear: left !important; } /* Set up the frontpage columns. */ /* If you want column 2 to be only 1 story wide, (for narrower screens): #column_1.grid_8 { width: auto !important; margin-right: 515px !important; } #column_2.grid_4 { margin-left: -505px !important; width: 200px !important; } As it is, however, this works well for 1680x1050, at the very least. */ #column_1.grid_8 { width: auto !important; margin-right: 715px !important; } #column_2.grid_4 { margin-left: -705px !important; width: 400px !important; } #column_2.grid_4 .listBlock li { width: 185px !important; float: left !important; clear: none !important; margin: 4px 0px !important; padding-left: 10px !important; } #column_2.grid_4 ul { width: 100% !important; } #column_3 { margin-left: -302px !important; } /* Set up the article page columns */ #column_1.grid_12 { width: auto !important; margin-right: 305px !important; } #column_2.grid_6 { position: absolute !important; right: 0px !important; } /* Purely cosmetic. For some reason on FF, this is a little too wide, so narrow it. */ .search input { width: 150px !important; } }I'm amazed you found it so bad that you went to the effort tbh.
Got to say, I'm not a fan (you shouldn't expect me to be, given that I played a fairly big part in the redesign); super wide sites just aren't good. *However*, I think the fact you've made the code available for people to try is pretty cool :)
@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml); /* For all pages under www.bit-tech.net... */ @-moz-document domain("www.bit-tech.net") { /* Set things up for 100% width... */ .pageContainer { width: auto !important; } .grid_18 { width: 100% !important; } /* Position the nav container background correctly. */ .navContainer { background-position: top center !important; } /* Give the feature blocks a width. Then the smaller headlines can float to the right */ .singleFeatureBlock, .doubleFeatureBlock, .tripleFeatureBlock { width: 406px !important; margin-right: 10px !important; } .alpha.grid_8.omega { width: auto !important; position: inherit !important; } /* Front page articles list. Set width of each article to 406px and let floating wrap them */ .grid_8 {width: 100% !important; } .grid_8 .listBlock { width: 100% !important; } .grid_8 ul.articles { width: 100% !important; } .grid_8 ul.articles li { width: 406px !important; float: left !important; clear: none !important; padding-right: 5px; } /* Headers for lists are 100% wide and breaking - causing a hard break */ .listBlock h2 { float: none !important; clear: left !important; } /* Set up the frontpage columns. */ /* If you want column 2 to be only 1 story wide, (for narrower screens): #column_1.grid_8 { width: auto !important; margin-right: 515px !important; } #column_2.grid_4 { margin-left: -505px !important; width: 200px !important; } As it is, however, this works well for 1680x1050, at the very least. */ #column_1.grid_8 { width: auto !important; margin-right: 715px !important; } #column_2.grid_4 { margin-left: -705px !important; width: 400px !important; } #column_2.grid_4 .listBlock li { width: 185px !important; float: left !important; clear: none !important; margin: 4px 0px !important; padding-left: 10px !important; } #column_2.grid_4 ul { width: 100% !important; } #column_3 { margin-left: -302px !important; } /* Set up the article page columns */ #column_1.grid_12 { width: auto !important; margin-right: 305px !important; } #column_2.grid_6 { position: absolute !important; right: 0px !important; } /* Purely cosmetic. For some reason on FF, this is a little too wide, so narrow it. */ .search input { width: 150px !important; } /* Some people wanted columns. Can do! */ .articleCopy { -moz-column-count: 2; -webkit-column-count: 2; } }That will put the text into 2 columns for you. (The only thing that's different to the last version is the ".articleCopy" definition at the bottom there.) Still works (And looks) great @ 1680x1050.