I don't know if anyones touched on this yet, but I'd like an option of having just a list of article names in the reviews section.

I just tried to browse your GPU reviews, and it's pretty hard to skim down to find the one you want (whereas before it was all in a list, with no pics or text)

If its possible to choose to collapse it into just the name of the card being reviewed, that'd be perfect.
Cheers.

It would be nice to see the discussion forums hot/new threads listed right where the Shuttle advertisement on the main page is to catch my eye better instead of having to scroll down and search for it. Otherwise alot of times i pay less attention to other peoples posts.

Under the "Latest news stories" section can you make some kind of indicator as to what are new articles posted today. For instance, add an asterisk before each article title that was posted today. The next day that asterisk will be removed and added to only new articles added that particular day.

It would make checking new articles much easier as sometimes it is quite difficult to determine whether there is new news or not and whether I read it already.

It would be even cooler if it somehow marked which ones you already read but Im not a big fan of more cookies so I dont care as much about that.

Thanks,
Kharn

Just a thought about the fixed width with regards to the forums.....

What if you set the actual message area to what the whole width is now. That way those with smaller screens could scroll to the right just enough to read the whole reply without having to scroll back & forth. The only draw back would be that they would have to scroll back to the left to see who posted.

*shrug* dunno.....just a thought.

Question... Why not make the section headers links too (being the same like as "More...") ?

New changes:

-Blue scheme further adjusted, now color balance is even closer to the old TR.

-Blog posts, top topics, Shacknews feed added to news page.

-News page headline size increased.

-News page link in the front page news widget headline

-News widget headline changed to "Latest news stories"

-"More stories..." link is now "News page..." Breadbox and Report news moved to left.

-Publication dates added under headline in the lists of feature articles around the site.

-Blue scheme further adjusted, now color balance is even closer to the old TR.

-Blog posts, top topics, Shacknews feed added to news page.

-News page headline size increased.

-News page link in the front page news widget headline

-News widget headline changed to "Latest news stories"

-"More stories..." link is now "News page..." Breadbox and Report news moved to left.

-Publication dates added under headline in the lists of feature articles around the site.

Huge, huge improvement.

Much thanks to the TR crew for hearing our cries.

I like the news list on the front page. It's made me realize how much scrolling was involved before.

One suggestion: The cycling item in the corner could use a label for what category it's in. IGN doesn't label their stuff either. I hate it when I click on something and find myself on the Xbox 360 page.

Also, the beige and blue stripes in the tan scheme on the right side are barely noticeable. I thought they were fingerprints at first.

Ok, the darker blue is in now. Shift-reload to see it.

I think I just ran into a bug here: http://techreport.com/discussions.x/13118

I tried to edit my post and it popped up an error saying, "Doule post!"

Edit testing edit

The highlighted news item with the short description with image is great, but it's random. I would prefer to have that featured snipet dynamic. The mouse-over 'Top news stories' would work great to this effect. A toggle would be fine too I suppose, for the anti-mouse-over obsessed! :)

I love the new layout! A few tweaks sounds good!

Kraft75

regarding color: both of your color schemes rely upon a dark border, light primary window, and dark inner windows. i think you should look for an alternate design which has a border that contrasts with a dark primary window containing lighter inner windows (with dark text).

Regarding the mouseover news summary tool, I would rather prefer a box that pops up upon clicking a button next to the news headline and then allows us to read the news in its entirety complete with scrolling. When we are done with reading that, we can close the box and open a new one for the next news piece. Anyone like this idea?

CRT vs. LCD on TR1 vs. TR2

I wonder if the perceived 'electric, fluorescent blue' has something to do with the fact that a lot of people have the brightness (or backlight depending on the LCD) turned up way to high to be comfortable (I have never allowed myself to buy the 'lesser' 6 bit displayes, so I suppose it could be that).

I turned the brightness control (which actually controlled the backlight) down from 100 to 7 when I bought my first LCD monitor (a Samsung 191t for $800). I found this to be a more accurate (less neon or electric) representation of how we see things in the 'real world'.

I have since practiced the same 'philosophy' with all my LCDs over the years, including my new Sharp LC-32GP1U 1080P TV I use as my main monitor. I have the backlight turned all the way down to zero.

With this setup, the blue background with white text looks 'washed out', or has less contrast, so one has to concentrate harder (if thats the way to put it) while reading. The blue background of this post, looks better than the blue background of your blog imediately above for instance.

I have found the black on tan easiy to read, but the amount of light color on the screen (though not as bad as white background) seems somwhat overwhelming in overall brightness of the screen, at least compared to the old blue background.

All of the above ideas can of course vary from person to person, and can totaly depend on room lighting type and brightness. I use a single overhead 60 watt incandesant in an 11x11 foot room.

Anyway, thanks for considering the changes for us perfectionists...heh.

darker blue, larger font (one size up would be fine). and stretch it out. i dont mind the ads on the left, but they fill two smaller columns. one larger column for ads would be nicer, less busy. on the darker blue, i regress; how about a real blue. this new one looks almost looks purple. maybe a higher saturation on the one you have now with one size up font. i really want to give larger font emphasis; i really would like to not increase my browser font size as it is fine on other websites. and with that noted, there is a woot-off!

I agree almost entirely with #13. I really prefer the new, lighter blue. Easy on the eyes, looks good on all my monitors, and I like the interlaced of light blue, dark blue, light blue for quick scanning.

I would like to see wider of some capacity, but that subject has been beaten to death. I tend to skip the front page and jump right to the news, but I think that is because I come for the news, so why would I make it difficult on myself?

All in all, I like the new design, I like the new colours, and I think you should not stress a few vocal people who think that they need to complain.

Best of luck!

1) I like the new colors (light tan), I'm keeping them.
2) I can find the news page easy. But I guess making the title "Top news stories" a clickable link to the news page would be easier.
3) Mouse over sounds awesome.
5) Wider, yes please.

"A mouseover news summary tool"

honestly, i've already been trying to do that, so i'd like it. :)

maybe have icons next to the text as well, so that it'll be just like WoW... ;)

1/ darker blue:
-Honestly this one's not a big deal to me. I find the new colors quite nice.
2/ news page:
-Just having the "Top News Stories" be the link to the page would be great.
3/ mouse over:
-Please don't implement this by default. I really hate mouse-over popups by default. Maybe a toggle button would be fine.
4/ font size:
-Don't mind this one ;-)
5/ wide scaling
-This is a big one to me. I know that you say that it would be really hard to have a dynamic width one. What resolutions would you be planning for? 1024/1280/1440/1680/1920 would be 5 options. Would that be too many?
I do hope that you aren't giving a true one. Just as long as there is a stop-gap until you figure it out. Also, I presume that it wouldn't be hard to give the forums a truly fluid wide version, like the old one's had?

I don't think I would like mouseover summaries, but some sort of ajax thing where I could toggle the summary would be nice.

Darker blue would be good. I have always liked light text on a dark background.

A link to the new page would be nice although I dont find it that hard to find.

Moving the hot forum threads to the top would be good.

A mouseover summary tool. PLEASE GOD NO!!! I friggin hate those things with a passion. The mouse over tools remind me of intellitext which spins me into a state of pissed off you aint ever seen before.

I havent had any font issues with opera in ubuntu or windows xp. The drop down menu to change from threaded, to flat, to dthread is broken in opera though. If you click on options you can change it but you cant change it from the main comments page.

I am one of the people that likes to turn his head from left to right when I am reading a web page so yeah wider is good. My desktop is 1600X1200 and the current page doesnt look to bad on it. Its a little narrow for my tastes but not terrible. My laptop on the other hand is 1920X1200 and the page is just to narrow on it.

A darker blue would be very nice.

Mouseover effects I usually don't like. But if they're done with CSS and text only so they're not slow to appear and disappear, it could be pretty slick.

If you're not going to make a fluid-width layout, I guess I'll just have to do one up in Stylish for myself.

I've spied a couple of different things today. One is a bug, I think, and I don't know about the other one:

* The forums don't always remember my preference for tan or blue background. When I hit Reply, I'm usually taken to a page with a tan background, and then when I submit a post the forum background stays tan. The style switcher button on the forum page doesn't do anything, although the main page one still works. (Latest Firefox, WinXP SP2)

* The forums have the old TR favicon that I like so much. Is this a new change, is it rolling out to the whole site and my cache just hasn't updated the main page one, or was it removed from the whole site initially and my cache still hasn't updated it from then?

I'm really getting used to the new site, even if I'm not prepared to say it's better yet. Thank you for the news page and for listening to your readers.

yes sounds good, make the news page easy to find.. id suggest an articles/news view mode toggle.. like Go to news view, Go to article view.

an option for a wider format would be the next priority for me.

and one other suggestion is to add the shacknews table on your news page.

apart from that, looking good and overall a step in the right direction IMO.

Moved Hot Forum Threads: I agree, it would be nice to have it up higher, I think. Their placement on the news page is pretty good though, IMO. Maybe a similar placement on the front page, tucked into the ads? There seems to be enough room.
Darker Blue: I would also appreciate a more darker blue background. At home I'm still on a good-old CRT, and I'll probably stay like that until it dies of old age. (it's only 7 years old, so it might be a while) But at work they have cheap LCDs everywhere, and I can't say I ever noticed the old blue looked that bad. But maybe I was just used to it.
Easier to find News Page: Definitely agree. I know where to find it, you know where to find it, and most of the regulars here know where to find it, but people that just come here every once in a while are completely lost. :-(
Mouseover News Summary: Could be neat. I probably wouldn't use it much myself, I stick mostly to the news page, but I think a lot of people would like this.
Font Issues: No real problems here personally. I'm a regular Windows + FF user, being in the majority crowd has its advantages. ;-) I'd appreciate it if the font in the news page was a bit larger though. I'd really rather not have to resize the font using my browser, that's really kind of a last resort, I think. I've read one guy say that the font looks horrendous in Linux. I can't speak to it personally, but I'll pass it along for what it's worth, in case you missed it.
Wider CSS Template: I'd really, really like a fluid-width layout option. At least on the news page, and maybe feature articles. It might be more trouble than it's worth on the home page. I myself don't run my browser maximized, but adjust it to a size that's comfortable, but I don't think that any specific fixed-width format will please everyone.
But if fluid-width is too much work to pull off, then I'll live with what I get.
One more request: It would be nice if on the news page, after the ads end, that the news text would wrap into the void empty space beneath the ads. Or perhaps place the fancy article-accompanying image there, that the home page enjoys. You could fit a lot more news onto the page then, or at least be able to fit the same amount with a bigger font. I dunno, with everything else so small and snug, the empty wasteland there just looks out of place.

Whatever happens I'm not going anywhere. This is bar-none my favorite website. I might not be too fond of the new look, but the quality of the articles, and the personalities of the authors are more important to me honestly. You guys rock.

The changes sound good, and think they'll help greatly. My biggest complaint so far would be finding the news page, as often time I find it easier to type techreport.com/news.x, rather than trying to find the actual link. And the darker blue will be nice, easy to do, and help bring back the old TR look just that much more.

This new web page was a surprise, actually, a shock at first, and my initial reaction was rather negative, but I've pretty much grown accustomed to it over the days, as you said in your post most of us would. This is what makes TR so good, you guys actually listen to your readers, even though we may whine and bi*** more than necessary.