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Welcome to a fresh bit-tech!
Author: Tim SmalleyPublished: 11th May 2007
We've rolled out some tweaks to bit-tech's design this morning.
Probably the biggest layout change we've made is to the News Index, which has been completely overhauled -- yes, there's now a news archive too!
We've made more efficient use of the space on the page in order to make more news visible for you to read.
The content indexes have also had a slight tweak and we've also pushed the discussion bubble onto both the front page and the content indexes.
For the time being, this is only for our articles and not for news -- we're testing the water to see how it goes. We're hoping that it will drive more discussion into the article discussion forum.
Inside our articles and reviews, we have integrated the bit-tech Shopping Channel to give you access to direct price comparisons from the various retailers in the UK and US. We've also added more relevant Related Articles to all of our content, too.
If you spot any bugs on the site, please let us know in this discussion thread. We hope you like the new design!
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Good stuff!
(still not %100 about the keyboard for the forums, but it's still growing on me :D)
I know we are expecting changes, but can't see anything...
:o
Hm, news page is very different!
Personally, I think the new keyboard thing is because they're using vBulliten
It's 99% the same as the old one. The background colour is different (and technically the keyboard is a MacBook rather than a PC notebook) but otherwise it's the same
Any idea whats going on?
http://img525.imageshack.us/my.php?image=strangewz3.jpg
Though yeah, I like the change ;)
The homepage looks very... cramped...
Careful, RTT is hiding in that corner, the whole changeover made him go mad
The brightness of the surrounding boxes/headers on the main page also could do with a slight tweak, imo they are slightly too washed out which isn't easy on the eyes (I frequently have problems reading black on white) and I'm finding it pretty hard to read as it is currently but that's more of a personal thing I guess.
http://museandamuse.selfip.com/bittech.jpg
Looks a bit like "Wodding" when i read it quickly and makes me do a double take! If its meant to be like that then i think it looks a little weird but it may grow on me.
http://img228.imageshack.us/my.php?image=untitled1kh3.jpg
Due to the double banners on the right (didn't there used to be only one?) it leaves huge amounts of spacing beneath an article which imo is kinda.. messy.
We are discussing this issue, it's not something we had thought about before.
Because he doesn't exist.
We've always done this - this hasn't changed at all :D
He's sales staff, not editorial. Jamie and myself shouldn't really be on there either tbh
We've always done this. A few of us wanted it changed (drop the bottom sky on news) but the powers that be wouldn't let us
This is what it used to look like
http://h4x.co.uk/old-modding.gif
Nice to see some macbook pro pron on the bit-tech forums :D
Ahh well, thought it was worth a mention in case it was a bug :)
The forum Caching thing seems to have stopped, may well have been my firefox. Weird!
Shhh!
Though, are the times that the articles were posted new? Cuase I really like that.
Yes there was an issue with the RSS but I think I've fixed that now.
Ignore.
Hmmmmmm
OK, my thoughts...
The new lighter colours are nice, but the distinction between everything on the homepage isn't strong enough. Especially the news.
From what I remember there was a black bar that was at the bottom of every main article with the published date and other info. That was a good way of separating the news, but I know why you removed it, but there does need to be something that distinguishes where one article ends and the other begins. I'd actually suggest something as simple as some more padding. In fact, the whole box needs some more padding. The text is too close to the borders. I'd also make the news images a little smaller, give them a border or round their corners and then give them 5 - 10 px of padding all round.
The news on the right just needs some more padding on the bottom.
Just my thoughts.
I do like the way its heading though. Fresh! :D
[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] .. [247] [>]
However clicking on 247 gives: The requested page was not found on the server.
It turns out the archive only goes up to 95 which is the number that replaces 247 when you go to a page other than 1.
Hope that makes sense.
Known bug, we forgot to fix it :D Thanks ;)
I don't like the news links not chaning color after having clicked them.
And I don't really understand the use of the 'discuss' bubble on the front page. I mean: Why'd you want to discuss an article you haven't even read? And after reading it (the time I think most people would like to discuss it) there have always been 1 or 2 links anyways.
All in all the visible tweaks are small but making for a more professional look in my opinion. Well done. :)
Obviously, articles with lots of comments may draw more people into the forums to read the comments and then maybe post.
ROFLMAO! New MSN pic sorted
We just went all out with this one ;) Much better now :D
Ooooh sneaky :D
It would good if the forum one was the b and t keys next to each other :D
http://kna.webhop.net/site_/2005_Front_4d.jpg
Now the colours blend in with the gaming and hardware frames of the articles.
Makes it easier to get from the front page to the discussion of an article you've already read and commented on to see the new comments. Makes internet arguments a lot easier.
Quite honestly, we didn't really plan to change the look of the site at all - we didn't even plan the small cosmetic changes that we've made that you're all seeing today.
The point of this "change" is purely driven by technical issues - we've replaced our CMS because the old one was really showing its age, upgraded the database software, switched to php5, changed the db to a much better structure (which, for example, allows for better searching), blah blah blah. we've re-written the templates and CSS also. there's literally not a single line of old code that has been carried over.
When we do a re-design - which will happen - i'd be a liar if we said we won't allow *some* web2.0-design-esque stuff to creep in somewhere.
:)
And yea, the color changing links definitly make this better.
News is in there.
Yup. Before we had articles and news stored in different tables, so searching over two was a headache from start to finish. So news is now an article and has exactly the same functionality (multiple pages etc) where as before it didn't.
I like the backend features more though, the search was getting pretty old and it's about time it was replaced.
Nice work.
Widescreen version ? anyone ?
We won't ever be going back to "vari-width" but we will probably go to a wider version when enough people have stopped using 1024x768. I personally can't wait for the day we don't have to support 1024x768 :(
thats not going to be for a while. A lot of people are still on 800x600 (businesses and schools etc etc) its only recently that web design has ditched it and moved up to 1024x768
I'm now designing sites at 900ish px wide but there are a lot of purists that think we should still stick to 700ish-px
You could definately grab yourself a nice 80ox on what you've got now though :p
And yes I like the way the website is now. impressive. ;)
BTW: Nice kitty in Your icon. ;)
:)
looks... fresh.... lighter themed.... ;)
I'm no longer discouraged by the interface when I look back through older articles to find one I wanted. ;)
Same direction that the new design is heading in but with a few of my little inputs and ideas.
Bigger navigation (just a little bit taller), tighter fitting adverts, a few round corners and some little tweaks to padding and spacings and a nice little search box. So, still retro, but a little tidier.
http://www.willblackmore.co.uk/test/bitty.jpg
One issue I have is that when ever I used to look at Bit-tech home page ect. all of the articles would appear a very long way down, near the bottom of the adverts.
I hope its fixed :D
I love the layout of the news page now, you can fit way more articles on it.
I appreciate your efforts but it's staying the way it is, thanks. It's FAR more than a simple aesthetic design change.
The only thing I would change is the very bottom of the page where you can move on to the next page... why not cut off the # of pages you can browse through to say 5 (then place a link to the archive or something)... being able to go through 77 pages seems... strange...
Just my opinion.
Of course, it's your site and you can do what you want with it, but from what I've seen bit-tech generally plays the "it's your community" type stance. For example, in the "Bit-tech Needs Forumites Help!" thread Bindibadgi writes:
"It's your forums, so we figured people might want to add something of their own in, so their work will remain on the site for the next few years at least."
I'm just curious as to why any suggestions to design change are being automatically dismissed.
Regardless, it's nice to see bit-tech moving to more semantic markup - even if it doesn't quite validate yet. :p
Unfortunately the ads system we use doesn't generate valid xhtml, the rest of the code is valid ;)
Any response to the rest of my questions?
Basically, to cut a long story short this was a back end overhaul with some small tweaks to the front end (because the page was being rewritten anyway). There are many other projects going on in the background at the moment too, thanks to our development shopping list that never seems to get any shorter.
We could dwell all day on more aesthetic tweaks to the front page, but then we'd never get any further down the shopping list. We're quite happy with the site's current look (it looks much fresher without the mass of black) and we would rather focus on adding more functionality for you, to make your experience on bit-tech much better than it already is.
Obviously, the design will no doubt be tweaked again in the future, but now that we have more functionality (in the back end) it's time to start adding more functionality onto the front end for you.
I hope this helps to explain why Jamie sounded a little dismissive of will's ideas. :)
Not sure if I like the blue/red for links, though. The red is a bit bright, IMO.
http://www.mexbro.co.uk/bit/new_bit.jpg
The only thing I don't like, and this is me being picky, are the red 'visited' links on the homepage, but oh well.
Gman22
cpemma, I sincerely hope you aren't suggesting changing the default font of the website to Comic Sans. If indeed you are, may I direct you to the following web site:
http://bancomicsans.com/
Care to elaborate? I think you mean when you make the text larger?
This happens when I shrink the window to about half its original size when running at 1280*1024 and it only happens for the forums section of the site.
@-moz-document url-prefix(http://www.bit-tech.net/) { body {font: 12px "comic sans ms" !important; color: #111 !important;} }Now off to theme [H]ard in pink and lime... ;)I've added a min-width in the css to stop it doing it in firefox/opera/safari etc.