Neowin 5 - Latest news

[shockz]

Neowin 5 - Latest News

This thread was designed to give members a quick and easy way to find the latest news on the next version of Neowin.

Any important information that develops regarding Neowin 5 will be posted here.

Q: Why not just use the Countdown thread for the latest News? the staff do post updates there...

A: The Neowin Countdown thread has become too large to find news regarding the 5.0 post easily. A new thread (this one) needed to be created to relay news better.

As stated... staff involved in the design will update members via this thread.

First things first! The main newspost regarding Neowin 5:

Development started way back in July this year for a complete overhaul of the site, since then there have been 10 variants of the new design which originally started out as v4.0 as well as changes to our server plan. We've built this from the ground up, rather than modifying old code. Neowin is now running on brand new servers to make things go that little bit quicker.

So without further ado here is an image view of the mockup that we finalized on October 5th (also reffered to as a lockdown). Toxikk is currently coding this off-site in a test area.

As you can see from the preview, we've tried to maintain the basic layout of Neowin. Sidemenu on the right, news to the left. These core features aside, we've changed a lot. Here's a list of the big things.

Major Changes

• Sections can now be accessed by Tabs, The section you are on remains 'Active'
  
• Recent news can be viewed across 4 sections, hovering above a title shows 5 posts from that section
  
• Top story/Review preview area and Menu items can be collapsed/expanded, your preference is saved
  
• Themes are now entirely controlled by CSS and semantic & valid XHTML - thus allowing us to deliver a more rich experience at the click of a button along with providing cross browser support on all of todays most popular browsers.
  
• Enhanced image loading techniques are being utilized to greatly reduce page load times and
  
• HTTP server requests (Statistic: Current build weighs roughly 50% less than the current main page design)
  
• The CMS (Content Management System) has been totally rewritten and integrates into IPB 2.1 meaning we can now deliver dynamic content rather than static pages.
  
• Comments rating, trackbacks and enhanced user options for tracking news stories that interest you (keyword tagging on news & search)
  

Who is responsible for this update? Toxikk has done all the coding, making the images a reality, Flishfun has done all the graphics work bringing concept after concept of design ideas by me, representing the wishes of the Neowin staff and members.

We hope you like it. Neowin 5 will be launched sometime this month, first for load testing. Feel free to leave feedback!

Update The current design (v3.9) will be re-released on our new servers as Neowin 3.9s (Neowin SWIFT) Toxikk has been secretly working away on a validated, lighter version of the current theme. This will give everyone the option to switch from our new design back to 3.9 which we won't be dropping as a user option.

Screenshot: Full Preview Neowin v5.0 (Blue)

Here are some color variants we've already completed, there is more to come ;)

Source: Neowin 5 Preview Revealed

Edited November 8, 2005 by [NFC]Wave

[Steven P. Administrators]

Well I want to apologise to everyone for assuming we'd be finished in October, what I can tell you is that we've made massive progress on porting the Neowin3 theme to the new servers at neowin5.net (password protected). It is now called Neowin 3 Swift and at the moment fails on 37 errors in XHTML 1.1 Transitional. As you can see from my sig, the time it takes to render the page is awesome!

Neowin5 is making leaps and bounds with progress too.. the basic front page is already coded and we are working on completing the comments and forum theme too.

The Swift theme on the forums at neowin5 have seen a massive upgrade, new features have been implemented and the message center has been revamped (removing the annoying tables in tables). a lot has changed from tables to div and that is also faster and better cross browser compatible.

I can't tell you when we can switch over, but it will be in the forseeable future. Guys we want to get it right. Server syncing at neowin5 is now realtime (no difference at all) its all good and trust me will be worth the wait.

[Steven P. Administrators]

Heres a few teaser shots, remember we have a massive update here and Neowin v3.9 needs a lot of work, here are some things we've already completed. We are currently looking at the Blogs & Galleries layout (yes we will allow people to create blogs, but don't ask me the requirements yet, we want people who have been on Neowin at least 3 months to have that permission) Newbies won't be able to create blogs straight off.

Neowin 5 theme on the forums isn't anywhere near complete yet. Please be patient and let us do the work so that you will apreciate the final product.

Inline text editor

Jump Menu and improved Rating bar (Top and bottom of post) ability to change Rating

Options menu (mod options not present for members) ;)

Rich Text editor and Guidelines above post screen updated

Top area of forum cleaned up (navigation) and all links now underline on hover

I hope this at least shows we are doing something and not sitting on our hands. BTW the new forum has a db copy from Oct 15th, so when we are done we still have to import everything that happened after that (members, posts, news etc).

PS: Look at the server load/queries and time it takes to render ;) thats another thing we are working on.

[....]

Opened to the public...but only staff can post here.

[shockz]

For the latest news on Neowin's server and code development you can check out timdorr's development blog here: https://www.neowin.net/forum/index.php?auto...=blog&blogid=5&

Currently no exciting news about Neowin 5...

Coders, Grafix, and Admins are continuing work on it, and are making progress. However, no public timeline for final has been released yet.