TR Forums

Damage wrote:

Perhaps with lists of feature articles, top topics, hot forum threads, and blog posts across the top?

Agreed with FireGryphon here. This is almost exactly what I wanted.

All you need is a fluid layout to shut me up entirely.

flip-mode wrote:

Damage wrote:

LOL what a dork!

Any more personal attacks like that and you will be temp banned.

This mod knows which side of the bread is buttered.

flip-mode wrote:

Damage wrote:

LOL what a dork!

Any more personal attacks like that and you will be temp banned.

pwned!

OK, stop picking up on my taunt and rate my suggestion

/me thanks Damage for putting up with my shizzle - I never set out to be an ass, sometimes it just happens

I like flip-mode's drawing, give those articles the space they deserve!

Bug found: If you middle mouse click to scroll in the comments area of a page it gives you left and right, not up and down.

king_kilr wrote:

In the event TR offers more then one "homepage" type page perhaps there could be a way to set which you want to load up when someone requests techreport.com(ala digg)

That'd mire the TR crew in more code than is worth their while, imho. The fair compromise is that I think TR needs a news page, so they might as well make the News page on the new site very similar to the homepage on the old. Those of us who like it can just make that our homepage. TR still gets ad revenue and article hits from us, the content is still there for us to get at, and new users who are attracted by the newer frontpage have an additional page of juicy news data to surf to if their little hearts desire it.

MixedPower wrote:

I'll try to keep most of my opinions to myself for the moment. For reference, I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.6.

Posting comments seems to be working fine, although as SNM noticed they don't seem to be synced between the two pages. Editing isn't working properly, however. At the top of the 'edit comment' window it gives me "Access denied for user ''@'localhost' to database 'jazz'", and when I try to post the edit it tells me I can't post comments to the article.

The search function seems a bit easier and more convenient, but It really should have some way to filter results.

The forums are kinda screwy. If I visit them on the new site, I'm logged out on the current site, and vice versa. Also, trying to switch them to the subSilver theme changes the forums back to the current site.

That's what I've got for now, I'll see what happens with IE7, and maybe even Safari just for kicks.

Thanks for finding the edit problem! it should be fixed now.

The CMS that drives the new site makes some serious changes to our database schema, so it wouldn't function running against the same database as the current code.

The forums can't really be used on a dev server without reconfiguring because phpbb has it's base URL configured in the database.

Another little thing we've done is to kill the old reply system and import all those comments in jazz. The never-ending 75GXP thread can now live on forever

i like the new logo.

ludi wrote:

The ugly:

4. The news is now in a collapsed format. Bad, bad, very bad! The highly visible, well-organized front page news is a key reason why TR is near the top of my daily site visits, and not the plethora of other hardware sites. At the very least, there should be a "News" link that displays all recent news entries on one page, just like the present site. IMO you're destroying an important part of TR if this disappears, because titles are often insufficient to determine interest, and being able to quickly skim a couple lines off each entry is an important part of the visual filter mechanism.

Ludi beat me to it, with the new style news stories are listed only as titles which being a lazy user means more work for me to investigate and I lose interest unless there's something really intriguing. The classic way of showing a column of full news posts and introductory snippits for articles is my preference, my daily tech news intake is just a vertical scroll away.

Damage wrote:

Sounds like some of you guys want something like this:

http://trweb2.techreport.com/oldskool.x

I like that style better, if there was a News/Articles style toggle you could switch between browsing News in the oldschool style to browsing articles in the new style. Also when I go to the oldschool page it opens the Hitachi Deskstar Article in it's entirety and displays all of the news after that, im assuming thats just because it's a test and the article hasn't been truncated in the classic 'Read On' format.

another little thing I noticed is if i click 'more stories' under the Top Stories section, it goes to August 15th on the calendar by default. That's a bit confusing, it would feel more natural if it went to the current date showing the current top stories and if you want to go backwards from there then that's up to you.

overall it looks nice and professional, i'm looking forward to the wide style otherwise my monitor may be going vertical

oh and dang, I may have to change my sig soon

king_kilr wrote:

Bug found: If you middle mouse click to scroll in the comments area of a page it gives you left and right, not up and down.

Thanks. There are a handful of issues like this that are related to how we've chosen to get jazz to function in the new site. We know that the current situation is not optimum and we'll be working on a longer term solution during the next few months.

blitzy's sig wrote wrote:

TR - she ain't the prettiest, but my god does she put out.

ROFL

That's one of the very worst designs I've ever seen.

Hot Threads at the top right is great on the current page. I usually scan the articles and, if interested open into a tab, and then open any Hot Threads with interesting subjects to tabs. That's how I use TR. So any design which does not facilitate quick scan of stories and hot threads and getting those into tabs is a downgrade for me. The appearance is an upgrade and easier to read, imo, but the layout needs tweaking.

I like the new logo, but the hourglass hover on the horizontal link bar is not my style. It is quick loading and doesn't seem to have any issues on Firefox 2.0.0.6

computron9000 wrote:

Hot Threads at the top right is great on the current page. I usually scan the articles and, if interested open into a tab, and then open any Hot Threads with interesting subjects to tabs. That's how I use TR. So any design which does not facilitate quick scan of stories and hot threads and getting those into tabs is a downgrade for me. The appearance is an upgrade and easier to read, imo, but the layout needs tweaking.

In all fairness, I like that part of this new approach. Now instead of the main page having all the recent articles, news posts, and forum topics, the main page has the articles (which are the meat of the site) and then a secondary page would have the News posts in their entirety.

I personally would be up for there being a similar 'home page' for the blog posts that would list them like a regular blog, which each story being on top of each other. Also having a 'home page' that has a longer list of the most recent forum posts would be just dandy, especially if there were a way to include which forum the post is under.

Just my 2 cents.

Korr wrote:

That's one of the very worst designs I've ever seen.

Elaborate.

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

I personally would be up for there being a similar 'home page' for the blog posts that would list them like a regular blog, which each story being on top of each other. Also having a 'home page' that has a longer list of the most recent forum posts would be just dandy, especially if there were a way to include which forum the post is under.

Huh. So the main homepage is a snapshot of everything, but each section on the front page (hot threads, blogs, news, articles, topics) has a separate homepage. Intriguing.

FireGryphon wrote:

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

I personally would be up for there being a similar 'home page' for the blog posts that would list them like a regular blog, which each story being on top of each other. Also having a 'home page' that has a longer list of the most recent forum posts would be just dandy, especially if there were a way to include which forum the post is under.

Huh. So the main homepage is a snapshot of everything, but each section on the front page (hot threads, blogs, news, articles, topics) has a separate homepage. Intriguing.

Well almost. The homepage is also where the articles should live. I'd be up for having blurbs for the most recent 3-4 articles, as if I'm away for a couple weeks on vacation or something, I can see exactly what I've missed (Not that "Hitachi's Deskstar 7K1000 hard drive" leaves any doubt as to what that review is about )

FireGryphon wrote:

Usacomp2k3 wrote:

I personally would be up for there being a similar 'home page' for the blog posts that would list them like a regular blog, which each story being on top of each other. Also having a 'home page' that has a longer list of the most recent forum posts would be just dandy, especially if there were a way to include which forum the post is under.

Huh. So the main homepage is a snapshot of everything, but each section on the front page (hot threads, blogs, news, articles, topics) has a separate homepage. Intriguing.

Depending on the level of subdivision a compilation page would be great.
I think the main page should be articles
and then a news page which is basically as it is now, news+articles
and finally a blog page, which is the compilation of all the blogs.

Damage wrote:

Sounds like some of you guys want something like this:

http://trweb2.techreport.com/oldskool.x

Perhaps with lists of feature articles, top topics, hot forum threads, and blog posts across the top?

Perfection. The initial beta looks too crammed. Crowded. And I'd rather have my ads scattered than assigning a full 35% to it. Makes the rest look too narrow. The old skool layout draws a line between the two.

I don't go to the [H] or Toms any more due to their cluttered layouts. I hated the old Ars layout. I love the new one. Hope the same happens with TR.

Dear god.

Is there anyway for http://www.oldtechreport.com to be made.




I love the current layout. That new one burns my eyes.

Here's my Photoshop abortion... I make generic site designs a couple times a week so I have a constantly growing portfolio of work for web site design prospects. Instead of making another "Generic Company, Inc." I did a TR-themed one for the hell of it... (no worries, I'll change the TR verbiage back to Generic Company Inc for my personal purposes...)
*runs away*

Hmmm, I liked flip-mode's design idea better. It's not substantially different, but it does give you a visual anchor point far more quickly.

And I very much support the idea of a separate news page. I've never really gotten into RSS for some reason and I like having it all on one page instead of needing to open those million tabs.

pete_roth wrote:

Korr wrote:

That's one of the very worst designs I've ever seen.

Elaborate.

Ads take up almost a 3rd of the page, and crammed on the right. It looks like an amateur hack.

The News section is a joke. Who wants to click on each story to get it? Dumb idea.

The entire middle section can be junked.

I could go on, but the whole thing looks like an amateurish hack...spend some money on a real design instead of something that was constructed to obfuscate information and drive up page clicks.

I understand the need for a new page, but if TR think a crappy design is going to win over content, they are in for a nasty surprise, in part because the new design sucks and it highlights the near vacuum of articles they publish.

I LOVE getting topical news in each sub section though.

one thing that is a bit annoying about the new design (even though I am a big fan of change).. is that the ads take up basically a third of the space on a Fixed Width page.. it would be different if it wasnt fixed..

overall I kinda like the design.. but like the blue colors better.
.. also.. to be honest, I like being able to scroll down to get more stories.. after looking at the new design some, I have to agree that it does seem alike almost just too much right in my face.. hard to have anything stick out or get my attention


I guess if the "Main" column was twice the width that would seem better..

Loads fine with Firefox on Kunbuntu. Although beige looks terrible and the flash ads slows it down a bit.

Just my 2 cents...

1) I like how you basically clump the ads into a specific spot. Easier to ignore.

2) I miss not seeing the full text for each news story. I understand the reason behind it though. Perhaps, if it's not too much trouble, you could make it so that a mouseover tooltip on each title would show a short blurb more of what's in there. Dunno. Or add a little AJAX so that clicking on a tiny button to the left/right of each title will expand the box and show a short blurb below each title.

3) I'm not too thrilled by the look of the rollover images for each site section. IMO, it looks a little umm... cartoonish (specifically the use of the maginfying glass). I understand what you're going for, but there's gotta be a way to make the graphics look a little less cartoonish.

4) I actually like the default color scheme.

Edit:
5) Also I love the load times. MUCH faster than the current site.

SnowboardingTobi wrote:

5) Also I love the load times. MUCH faster than the current site.

That might only be because it isn't being slashdotted. Lol!

I second the rollover expansion idea. That'd be great to see the first few sentences maybe. I for one don't mind the magnify glass mouse over animation. I actually thought that was pretty nifty.

One thing I've noticed is in the Google search function. Now, I don't know if there is a way for you to change it, but it'd make more sense to me if items were returned, not only by relevance, but by descending date order as well instead of random date order. My logic here is that someone looking for something specific is more likely to be looking for something recent. Maybe that's just me.

Found a bug, I think. Clicking More Stories... in the Top News Stories brings me back to the earliest date on the list. Maybe you did that purposely, but I expected it to show me the current days stories first and then allow me to select a different date.

Shortbread[3] Shortbread[14]... These are items that I scan for general interest when I open the current TR, but presented this way (inside Breadbox) I'll probably not look at. And if you aren't a regular, how are you to know what Breadbox means?

How about enabling single page reviews like in Anandtech and xbitlabs? I'd prefer just scrolling and getting the review in one shot, than having to click and load each individual page.

I'm using SeMonkey. Works fine. Damage, you were very brave to ask for comments! With your audience, you'll get a gazillion ideas....good luck filtering them!