[Feedback needed] Atlas, the next version of Neowin


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That is some crazy good design. I really like it a lot. Needs some dash of colors here and there, but overall really good. I think Neowin is one of the best designed sites out there. And the best thing you guys always try to improve yourself despite having a killer design.

I like it a lot :). The ad placement is a lot better than the current site layout IMO.

Yeah, I originally said I disliked the ad. placement, but I have since changed my mind; after having used it for a bit and got used to it, I seem to automatically skim over the advert.

Going to address this now, than later.

Safari, Chrome, Firefox (3+) will get nice rounded corners and drop shadows.

IE, Opera (crap) will get a squared looking site (which still looks nice, but a bit more "lite" like).

post-1912-1253302455_thumb.png

Yeah, I originally said I disliked the ad. placement, but I have since changed my mind; after having used it for a bit and got used to it, I seem to automatically skim over the advert.

but aren't the ads hidden for mods like they are for subscribers^2?

Going to address this now, than later.

Safari, Chrome, Firefox (3+) will get nice rounded corners and drop shadows.

IE, Opera (crap) will get a squared looking site (which still looks nice, but a bit more "lite" like).

I noticed that too.

Going to address this now, than later.

Safari, Chrome, Firefox (3+) will get nice rounded corners and drop shadows.

IE, Opera (crap) will get a squared looking site (which still looks nice, but a bit more "lite" like).

The squared version looks utter crap :/

True you are but even a 24" screen is merely 300 euros nowadays and even on that it must be extremely small - I prefer to have the wide version, that's a matter of opinion of course. Naturally a fluid dynamic webpage would be even better - that way everyone would win, too bad it's so hard to implement.

I'd agree, I prefer content that stretches to fit

Going to address this now, than later.

Safari, Chrome, Firefox (3+) will get nice rounded corners and drop shadows.

IE, Opera (crap) will get a squared looking site (which still looks nice, but a bit more "lite" like).

So you are deliberately designing a more crappy version for opera users? what the hell :/

It's not on purpose. We are using the border-radius CSS property, rather than having a bunch of images sent to you. It cuts down on the amount of HTML sent, too.

Opera is set to include border-radius in Opera 10.1, if I remember correctly. Hopefully Internet Explorer 9 will include some early CSS support, too, so IE users get a cleaner style too.

We did not make the decision quickly, and we didn't want to cut some members out. So we designed around it. The site looks a bit squared in Internet Explorer and Opera, yes. But it doesn't look that bad. And the bandwidth and load savings for you and for us make it worth it.

We're trying to move web standards forward that should have been in place long ago. I know someone will come in and say "CSS3 isn't finalized yet" - and we know it isn't. But it's been too long, and the benefits to using border-radius and drop-shadow are too great for the majority of our users to not use them.

I hope that clears it up a bit. We're not picking on certain groups of people; if we were, we'd put ads for Firefox, Chrome and Safari all over the site. Instead, we degraded the experience gracefully. It does not impact the usability of the site in any way.

One note about our use of border radius and drop shadows: by using them, Neowin downloads more than twice as fast as before. During heavy load, this will be a huge advantage for everyone, but even under regular load, you won't be waiting for images and extra HTML to be downloaded.

One note about our use of border radius and drop shadows: by using them, Neowin downloads more than twice as fast as before. During heavy load, this will be a huge advantage for everyone, but even under regular load, you won't be waiting for images and extra HTML to be downloaded.

Combine that with a FAR more efficient back end too (recoded from the ground up), pages render faster on the server, are delivered to you faster, and will display in your browser faster :)

It's not on purpose. We are using the border-radius CSS property, rather than having a bunch of images sent to you. It cuts down on the amount of HTML sent, too.

The HTML difference will be tiny per page, you'd save more space by removing all the whitespace in the HTML! As for images, shouldn't they be cached?

Opera is set to include border-radius in Opera 10.1, if I remember correctly. Hopefully Internet Explorer 9 will include some early CSS support, too, so IE users get a cleaner style too.

Opera 10.1 is basically Opera 10 with Unite included. The border-radius won't be added until Presto 2.3 which won't be very soon. As for IE9 when will that get released?

We did not make the decision quickly, and we didn't want to cut some members out. So we designed around it. The site looks a bit squared in Internet Explorer and Opera, yes. But it doesn't look that bad. And the bandwidth and load savings for you and for us make it worth it.

How did you design around it? You did nothing! It also looks very squared (not a "bit") and the tiny amount of data saved hardly makes up for the crappy look of it.

The HTML difference will be tiny per page, you'd save more space by removing all the whitespace in the HTML! As for images, shouldn't they be cached?

Opera 10.1 is basically Opera 10 with Unite included. The border-radius won't be added until Presto 2.3 which won't be very soon. As for IE9 when will that get released?

How did you design around it? You did nothing! It also looks very squared (not a "bit") and the tiny amount of data saved hardly makes up for the crappy look of it.

To be honest, we had it square on our dev sites for a very long time, and it looked fine. Once you see it and use it live, you'll see it really doesn't look worse.

It's not on purpose. We are using the border-radius CSS property, rather than having a bunch of images sent to you. It cuts down on the amount of HTML sent, too.

Opera is set to include border-radius in Opera 10.1, if I remember correctly. Hopefully Internet Explorer 9 will include some early CSS support, too, so IE users get a cleaner style too.

We did not make the decision quickly, and we didn't want to cut some members out. So we designed around it. The site looks a bit squared in Internet Explorer and Opera, yes. But it doesn't look that bad. And the bandwidth and load savings for you and for us make it worth it.

We're trying to move web standards forward that should have been in place long ago. I know someone will come in and say "CSS3 isn't finalized yet" - and we know it isn't. But it's been too long, and the benefits to using border-radius and drop-shadow are too great for the majority of our users to not use them.

I hope that clears it up a bit. We're not picking on certain groups of people; if we were, we'd put ads for Firefox, Chrome and Safari all over the site. Instead, we degraded the experience gracefully. It does not impact the usability of the site in any way.

I completely disagree that different browsers get a different version of the site.

Every browser should get the same experience.

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