Home Page Changes

[L&LD]

Tim,

I am greatly appreciate the speed of the forums here, but I wish I could say the same for the look of the main page.

I come by here a lot and I have to admit that the new (square graphic) layout really slows down my getting to the great information contained on this site.

I can imagine that it would work well on a phone, but I relegate those devices to actually calling people with. When I'm surfing, I use a full sized computer with keyboard and mouse and the current layout of the main page is quite frustrating, to say the least.

I am asking to go back to a text based front page that is more data-dense, searchable and linear too. Right now, clicking the previous or next buttons seems to just randomize the huge squares but doesn't give me any links to older articles.


Thanks for considering this change and thank you again for this great website which provides such useful info that would otherwise be impossible to get anywhere else. All I'm asking is to make getting to that info easier.

Thank you.

 

[sinshiva]

I actually like the design, but there does seem to be a lot of open space in those squares that could otherwise display a preview of the text in the article, etc. also, i'd not be averse to the entire boxes being a clickable link to the article as opposed to just the article title.

fwiw, using a 1366x768 10.1" win8 tablet as my daily driver now

 

[thiggins]

Thanks for the feedback on the new design.

Data showed most readers didn't really make it very far down the front page. And the section lists showed only the 5 latest articles anyway in each section.

That top section now has latest articles in chronological order from all sections. So you should be able to quickly see what's new without having to scroll much or consult section indicies. Using the "See more articles" button will show up to 36 articles, in 9 article increments. I can add more articles, but am trying to watch page load times.

The Latest Reviews box further down the page shows all reviews in descending chrono order. The previous and next buttons move you back and forth. I enable the auto scroll in case people missed the Prev / Next
buttons. I can kill it if it's annoying. Hovering a mouse over any article pauses the scrolling.

The "Don't Miss These" box is used for articles we want to feature and has no particular sort order.

The page is searchable using browser search.

Section indicies are still available via the menus at the top of the page.

The top new article section needs work. Good suggestion about making the whole article box clickable on the top article matrix. I will be working on brightening up the images, and getting more consistent sizes so that there is more room for teaser text.

If there are other things people want to see on the front page, let me know.

Again, thanks for caring enough to take the time to comment.