The 100 Best Tech Products of 2006

prostoalex writes "You've read about the 25 worst tech products, now it's time to check out a list of the 100 best tech products of 2006 from the same publication. PC World named Intel Core Duo, AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core, Craigslist.org, Apple iPod Nano and Seagate 160GB Portable Hard Drive the best tech products of this year."

Comments

IS THIS A FUCKING JOKE??!?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is, it is both funny and well executed, but I think we both know it isn't.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Leave well enough alone.

Roll back the CSS change. Please... do it now

Re:IS THIS A FUCKING JOKE??!?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I know this is OT, but I do have a beef with the new CSS style. Now the comment score is de-coupled from the post. Though I do understand how that's advantageous in some ways, it's a problem in others. It's certainly made my Slashdot reading habits harder. Maybe over time I'll get used to it, but I run at 1600 by 1200 so I have to run to the edge of the screen to read the comment.

No hard feelings if modded off-topic, but man, I hope the dudes in charge consider this.

Re:IS THIS A FUCKING JOKE??!?

[mythz]

Provide two stylesheets and make the new one the default if you want (for the noobs) But for the love of god offer us the old stylesheet back. This is way too hard to read!

New layout?

[mcc]

Am I just hallucinating, or did slashdot just switch over to that new CSS layout like they were threatening to last week?

Hm. I don't think anyone's ever accused slashdot of being pretty, but this new layout is somehow even uglier. How do I turn this off?

Re:New layout?

[RavenChild]

It might look worse if it was all black on a CRT/"TrueLife" LCD. (Look in the mirror.)

Re:New layout?

[w33t]

Yes you are hallucinating, but also yes they changed the layout.

Personally I think this new layout is nice.

It's clean and more with the times.

Also, I'm pretty sure this new layout now makes slashdot fully web 2.0 compliant ;)
--
Music should be free

Re:New layout?

[Darkmeerkat]

I see it too. It's still chops my name down to "Darkmeerka" in the user menu, though...
It seems more "plasticy" to me, I guess. I kind of like it. Reminds me of this comic.

Re:New layout?

[Reality Master 101]

I like it, but the nested comments aren't indented enough.

Re:New layout?

[eln]

The new layout looks too much like every other site out there. The old slashdot was simple, the new one is generic.

Also, the comments in nested mode don't indent as deeply as they used to, so it's harder to see the difference between the different levels of nesting. They should fix that.

Re:New layout?

[pjbgravely]

I wish I knew, this is too bright, and my monitor is already turned so dark I can barely view pictures. I guess slashdot is no longer a site for headache sufferers unless there is a workaround.

And on top of it all it's another dupe.

Re:New layout?

[Osty]

Am I just hallucinating, or did slashdot just switch over to that new CSS layout like they were threatening to last week?

(Yeah, yeah, this is off-topic)

Looks like you're not hallucinating. However, it also looks like they didn't really bother testing it, either.

• Loading pages spikes my IE7 process to 100% CPU for a minute or so, even on short pages like this one.
• The subject and comment box I'm typing in right now extend too far to the right (or more precisely, they're not lining up on the left correctly, pushing the boxes out to the right).
• A number of the collapsible arrows on the main page to hide sections and such simply don't work
• Speaking of the left-hand section headers, don't click on them. If you do, you'll waste a couple minutes while Slashdot AJAXly tries to load configuration information.
• The "Meta Moderated" link in the "Have you Meta Moderated recently?" block is unreadable (dark green on dark gray)
• Bulleted lists in comments don't display correctly, at least in the preview. For those that can't tell, this indented section here is supposed to be a bulleted list. (This one is also broken in FF)

Interestingly enough, most of the above issues are fine in Firefox. While I realize Slashdot is Firefox-friendly and anti-Microsoft, I wouldn't be surprised if 50%+ of their traffic is still on Internet Explorer. I don't have IE6 installed on this machine so I can't veriify that the site works correctly there, but it's horribly broken with IE7. Way to go, guys.

Re:New layout?

[T-Bone_142]

i like the header the footer, but the nav and main body just look to fake and dont flow at all :(

Re:New layout?

[Anonymous Coward]

its ugly and when I resize browser window in Firefox comment text gets cut off

Re:New layout?

[heinousjay]

So they haven't tested a beta browser, possibly on a beta operating system, and this is a problem? I'd say it's your browser that's the problem, it works fine in Firefox.

And I like it. It's clean, modern, and it twists the nips on all the /. luddites, which is always a plus in my book.

Re:New layout?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hm. I don't think anyone's ever accused slashdot of being pretty, but this new layout is somehow even uglier. How do I turn this off?"

I think it looks horrible. Kind of feels like a vague attempt to look "90's future", like a computer screen on Babylon 5 or ST:TNG.

Also, whoever designed it clearly has no experience with fonts. The logo on the top banner is blurry, the Helviticarial all-caps "tagline" is crisper and looks tacked-on at the last minute. The bold-white-on-green headlines are also blurry (and yes, I'm on a nice LCD monitor that's carefully calibrated.) The main body text is in sans seriff which is a difficult to read when the paragraphs get long. The strength of this font in web design is that it's very legible in small sizes, such as on menus on the side (speaking of which, the lines on the menu feel like they're too far apart.)

Of course, this is just an opinion, but I liked the old version-- a bit clunky but it had charm.

Re:New layout?

[residieu]

And they decreased the indentation for replies. Now its even harder to keep track of what a comment is replying too. Good work, slashdot!

Re:New layout?

[Osty]

So they haven't tested a beta browser, possibly on a beta operating system, and this is a problem? I'd say it's your browser that's the problem, it works fine in Firefox.

Beta browser, yes. Beta OS, no. I'm on XPSP2. Anyway, while IE7 is still beta, it's layout-complete. That means that barring any really major bugs, the HTML/CSS behavior you get today in Beta 2 is what you'll get when IE7 actually ships. Maybe Slashdot happened to find a major bug in IE7 layout, but I doubt it.

And I like it. It's clean, modern, and it twists the nips on all the /. luddites, which is always a plus in my book.

I like the layout as well, mostly. It does need some tweaking (mostly positioning, spacing, and a few minor color tweaks for readability), but overall it looks good. The problem is that it looks good at the expense of functionality. The site is very resource-intensive now, and a lot of the new functionality (like collapsing sections, circa 1998) is just broken (again, in IE7). It's a sad fact of life that it's easier to give criticism than praise, and I'm sorry that I jumped right into the problems without mentioning that I do like the direction it's going. However, I'm also not going to bury my head in the sand and rain down kudos when there are still problems.

Re:New layout?

[nbritton]

The new site hangs Opera 9 beta2 on FreeBSD 6.1.

Re:New layout?

[Anonymous Coward]

(and yes, I'm on a nice LCD monitor that's carefully calibrated.)

Wow, thanks for that little bit of extra info there...I was in the midst of wondering if you were viewing the site with a "nice" LCD monitor and, indeed, a carefully calibrated monitor, at that.

Okay, so you want everyone to know you have a kick-ass LCD monitor. Are you feeling guilty over the amount you paid, or the infatuation you seem to have towards this monitor?

You know, your comment was written such that you may have no interest in the parent subject at all, but simply wanted to redirect attention to your nice, carefully calibrated LCD monitor.

Kind of like when you got your first new car in high school...you wanted to drive everyone around -- you would always manage to interject comments about your car in every conversation.

[Terrance] Phillip, would you like me to drive you to the store in my new Gremlin?
[Phillip] Oh, Terrence, Yes! And then I'd like you to fuck me up the ass!

Re:New layout?

[dreemernj]

The site works fine in IE6. It works fine in Firefox. It works fine in Opera (up to and including 9.0 build 8031 AFAIK) Looks like they did a fine job. I can't test it on a Mac but I would assume they accomodated common browsers up to a reasonable point.

Re:New layout?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bingo. Can't figure out who is replying to whom!

Otherwise, I guess I will get used to the new layout over a period of time.

Re:New layout?

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a decent browser.

P.S. and a decent operating system while you're at it.

Re:New layout?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's even worse on Opera. I'm running Opera 9 beta 3 and the browser crashes every time I load up a Slashdot article now.

Re:New layout?

[Osty]

Get a decent browser.

I did. It's called IE7. But I guess you didn't notice the part where I mentioned testing with Firefox as well.

P.S. and a decent operating system while you're at it.

Linux runs my home network, but Windows pays the bill. Therefore, I run Windows. I'm not looking to spend the money to get a Mac, so what else would you suggest?

Re:New layout?

[courtarro]

The "Meta Moderated" link in the "Have you Meta Moderated recently?" block is unreadable (dark green on dark gray)

That's okay, no one meta moderates anyway.

Re:New layout?

[paulmer2003]

Personally, I conider the new layout to be an EXCELLENT improvement. However, one thing that really bugs me, is that each comments rating is all the way on the right side..So while im scanning threw posts my eye has go to right to left and such..Unlike before when all the important imformation was in one cluster....Annoying. Anyway, about the top 100 list, im dissapointed Ubuntu made the list. Ubuntu is nothing special, its just a fucking distro. I can consider hundreds of things better than fucking ubuntu!

Re:New layout?

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be one of those types who indent 4 spaces instead of the proper 2 spaces in C.

Re:New layout?

[glavenoid]

LOL !!

That's fucking rich!

Seriously though, as long as we're all offtopic...

Why hasn't the posting or reply/comment systems changed? THAT would have been a worthwhile site redesign. Not this.
This new "design" adds nothing to the old /. Yea, maybe difficulties with some reader's font rendering engines, and the spifficated new-fandangangled curvy-edges and gradient-filled delimiters, but nothing functional. What do the lynx or links readers have to say? Anything?

Slashdot is still sleeping in the 90's in so many ways. Is it really charming anymore?

ahhh fuck it...

Re:New layout?

[wyldeone]

The same thing happens in Opera, which is my browser of choice. After browsing /. for a few minutes the browser just crashes. Very anoying.

Re:New layout?

[glavenoid]

Also, I'm pretty sure this new layout now makes slashdot fully web 2.0 compliant ;)

I dunno. Slashdot still phailed to make my coffee early enough. Or was it Web 2point0 who failed?
Either way, I gotta find a new job Eternal promises. I'm going fishing...

Re:New layout?

[Mistshadow2k4]

Aha, I knew I was the only one who did! Man, what a sucker I am. I quit!

Re:New layout?

[Mistshadow2k4]

Considering how bad so many people think the new layout is, I wonder if more will start to actually read the articles.

(And, yes, this font is hard on my eyes too. Firefox, 17" flat-panel CRT.)

Re:New layout?

[dogolopee]

Oddly enough, the comments are much easier to read if you turn the page style off. In fire fox just go to the view > page style > No Style to get a plain yet non-eye bleeding slashdot.

Re:New layout?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I like the new layout a lot. Then again, I'm not some greasy neckbeard who thinks there's only one way to do things, and that "old school" reigns supreme.

I'm glad Slashdot no longer looks like a website from the mid 1990s. Welcome to 2006.

Re:New layout?

[consonant]

While we're talking about comments and indenting, just thought I'd also add that on the Comment page (where you click on the cid), the moderation totals table is not centered any more. Which looks freaking weird.

Not to mention that the table headings ("Starting Score") are black on slashgreen. Ugh..

Re:New layout?

[heinousjay]

Plan 9. (I wasn't the AC, by the way.)

I actually don't care for the collapsible sections. They are cute, sliding in and out, up and down, but they don't hold from page to page. That just annoys me.

I'd have to argue that IE7 may not actually qualify as a decent browser. Microsoft has been cranking foul balls since 5.5, and nothing I've seen yet indicates the 7 is a return to winning form. Run a Gecko based browser and the web is your oyster. Or maybe Opera. People seem to get zealous over that one.

Re:New layout?

[vlaube]

To make it really web 2.0 compliant you have to install my GreaseMonkey script first.
It allows you to collapse and expand the comments.
Get it while it's hot!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

GNAA FP

[Commander Trollco]

David Blaine Fails, GNAA claims responsibility

Dessimat0r - Trollcore, NYC

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As Blaine turned to look at this explicit imagery, he began to have convulsions of the anus as his poop began to flow out of his rectum. This caused the water to turn a muddy-brown colour. Blaine then attempted to take off his oxygen mask, possibly hoping to ingest the diseased water in order to get a real taste of rectal prolapse.

The organisers of the stunt then feared for his safety as Blaine reached for his erect penis, as the palms of his hands were suffering from myosis. With this, two divers jumped into the water to save Blaine before he had a chance to touch his throbbing rod, and succeeded in pulling him out in time. He was out of breath as he was rushed to hospital, suffering from the effects of the stunt upon his body.

When Blaine was interviewed in hospital by the Gay Nigger Association of the America, he had this to say: "JEWS DID WTC".

About David Blaine:

Kike magician.

About GNAA:
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Are you GAY?
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Slashdot CSS

[ericdano]

Should we nominate the new Slashdot CSS layout for the 2007 best awards?

I dunno, I kind of am longing for the old look. I think the colors are lighter or something. It doesn't feel right anymore.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[Simulant]

This new look... it's making my eyes water. Looks odd on 1280x1024 LCD. Hard to focus.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[Lord_Dweomer]

Honestly, I think we should have the option of using the old version. But the biggest issue I have with this version is that it COMPLETELY breaks up the flow of how I read comments. I used to be able to skim comments by their mod points. If I wanted to read a bit faster, I wouldn't change my threshold or anything, but I would just kinda skim over the 3s and maybe 4s since I browse at +3. However now that the comment scores are on the FAR RIGHT....completely away from all the rest of the post information, my eyes are jumping all over the screen and it is screwing things up.

Please for the love of god fix that, or give us the option of going back to the old way. If it aint broke, don't fix it.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[Bega]

I dunno, I kind of am longing for the old look. I think the colors are lighter or something. It doesn't feel right anymore.

Sortof, yes, since you've probably gotten used to the old layout. I got used to it after some while, but let's face it, it wasn't the nicest to the eye. I think it's nice that Slashdot finally got a facelift, and a nice one at that too. And Slashdot got finally SPACES between the different parts of the pages.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[ericdano]

Yeah. Agreed. They did do a CSS theme kind of like the old slashdot on Slashcode. Why not give us, the users, a choice of this new, terrible design, or the old one?

Re:Slashdot CSS

[AuMatar]

I'll add my voice to this- I find this new design much worse to navigate and read. I think it changed the comment font too, to a much worse one.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[biglig2]

Worst thing of all, by not changing it at the same time as posting an announcement story, all the meta-discussion about the new look is stuck here in a story making it impossible to read.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[ebasconp]

Was quite strange refreshing my Slashdot web page and see everything modified. Maybe it will take some time to get everybody comfortable with the new look and feel, but skin updates are always refreshing and good! I like it! Kudos for you! Slashdot guys!

Re:Slashdot CSS

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to point out that the Help section of the menu floats into the upper left hand side of the page at load time, only showing correctly after a toggle of the hide/show of help in Konqueror 3.5.2 (I don't know about other versions and does this also affect Safari?!). Either way, I think a tech oriented site should work with a well respected UNIX/Linux browser such as Konqueror/KHTML.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[Deltaspectre]

For a glimpse of the old look, click the Sections header for the Sectional Display Preferences :D

Re:Slashdot CSS

[Anonymous Coward]

The new css can suck my balls, it's "too much".

God, will they add some ad's and look like Tom's hardware ?

Re:Slashdot CSS

[Araxen]

Come on now, you can't totally pass judgement on the new look Slashdot until we get the "OMG PONIES!" look. Imagine this in pink...

Re:Slashdot CSS

[hereschenes]

One thing with the comments - I don't like it how the moderation score is way over to the right. Would be better right next to the comment title.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[Anonymous Coward]

Konqueror also displays a crazy long horizontal scrollbar even when it's not needed (I'm on a 1280x1024 screen). When you scroll to the right, it takes you to a black void.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[iKillCellphones]

Pity it doesn't render correctly in Safari 2.0.3 :(

Re:Slashdot CSS

[Propaganda13]

I noticed I don't see as many comments on one page as before. A lot more scrolling is involved.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[Deltaspectre]

WOW

http://vendors.slashdot.org/

Did anyone else know there was a whole section for AMD? That one took me off guard after browsing this site for years

Re:Slashdot CSS

[Bigbluejerk]

It's not rendering properly in Firefox for the Mac either. I'm seeing letters squished together.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[OzRoy]

I don't think so. The new design doesn't do anything original, and doesnt fix any of the problems with the old design. Basic problems like the rediculously huge amount of whitespace between the story and the comments.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[jbrader]

I like it, it goes nice with my new Ubuntu install.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[sr180]

At first glance, it looks prettier, but its much less functional. I was much more comfortable reading slashdot in the old format.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[cabd]

Why is it that people FOR the new look get modded interesting or insightful, but the ones against it get modded off-topic?

Just a thought.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[EotB]

I agree entirely. When the primary deciding factor on whether to read a comment or not is its score, wouldn't it make sense to place the score as close to the start of the text as possible? It would make it faster to skim down them.
Of course on the other hand maybe once I'm used to it, the alignment on then right hand side of the screen will make it quicker to look down a line of scores.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not rendering properly in Firefox for the Mac either. I'm seeing letters squished together.

That's not Firefox. That's your shitty LCD monitor. Try enabling cleartype or something, or returning that $100 POS to Wal-Mart.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[glavenoid]

No doubt!

Slashdot totally needs some sort of meta-discussion category. And here, on-site, not that silly sf.net bug tracking thing that's used for *slash* right now. Slashdot used to be so cool, but now, although the 3-day old "news" aggregation is still *sort-of* neat, it could so easily be so much better...

A few ideas...

1. Perhaps have a user-submitted section where people could vote on interesting links/headlines (freely submitted by users, a-la k5...) instead of waiting days for "news" to go stale. It could even work in a similar manner as the comment moderation system. Not too difficult to implement, no?
2. Slashback is great - I'm happy to see it's return! I think many other readers are also. Maybe give us more say, though, rather than just commentating... More interactive Slashback - Fuck yea!
3. More revelant polls that actually count for something here ie - Sections. BSD seems to be missing from the list, whereas linux, politics and IT are relatively new (what 3/2 years, maybe 2). How about meta-polls for logged-in users that help govern the direction of Slashdot? I'd like to see a music section. Nerds like music too! Or even entertainment/media. Put the vote to the users. Have a new section for digital media, see what happens... Not even sharing links to "pirated files". Just a place to have a diversion here from the "mentos and coke" articles?!
4. Post clarification - that is - editing. Not post deletion, merely adding onto a previous post to clarify a point, or even to publicly retract a drunken post... Even with a prominent "EDIT:" tag on the edited portion, this could save some bandwith. Which leads to the next.
5. A new posting system. This goes beyond all the other gripes that I have. For instance, have a larger input pane for posting. It's not necessary for people to post long messages, just clear messages. 11 lines is NOT enough. The ability to read the entire thread *so far* while posting would be nice also. Maybe even move the "submit" button to the bottom of the page like the moderation system, encouraging people to actually preview their responces first...

   That's just the beginning of *my* gripes. I know that this isn't the proper place, but this is the best I could do, because there isn't a proper place...

Re:Slashdot CSS

[John Nowak]

For the sake of building consensus, I also agree. I like most everything else about the new version, but, especially when you have a wide browser window, the current score location is very spatially jarring.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[Anonymous Coward]

This new look... it's making my eyes water. Looks odd on 1280x1024 LCD. Hard to focus.

Wow, spot on. I have exactly the same issue. I don't know if it is the font or what. My eyes are strained and I have to look away from the screen often so not to produce tears. Changing the font size doesn't help either. I can not read slashdot like it is now. If this does not change soon I will need to either find a "new" slashdot or read it in Lynx.

Don't get me wrong, the new look is very stylish and at first glance it is a huge improvement to the old look, but after a few minutes "my eyes water" due to the font or something. I can't pinpoint it.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[shellbeach]

Worst thing of all, by not changing it at the same time as posting an announcement story, all the meta-discussion about the new look is stuck here in a story making it impossible to read.

I think you've hit the nail on the head there ... :)

Re:Slashdot CSS

[Rob Simpson]

No kidding. I recently bought a 24" widescreen LCD, and it's a long way across from the subject line to the score.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[Whatever345]

Completely agreed on this one.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[donaldm]

It is different but it's not that bad either. At least they use the "W3C" standard.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[smeenz]

Wow. I haven't read slashdot for about 3 months now, because, well, mainly because I was sick of all the 13 year old trolls that pop up in every discussion..

But I thought tonight, I'ld have a look and see what had happened, and this is what I get... font is too small to read, and the dark green section headers are just horrible.. way too imposing on the otherwise drab gray and white. The first thing I thought was that oh wow.. slashdot has finally started using CSS which means I should be able to find a "change themes" link, but uh, no.. it doesn't look like they provide that option.

So I think I'll just leave for another several months, and see if things have improved when I next return.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[mkw87]

You know, Slashdot costs companies enough money in lost work. Making it easier to use won't help anything there...

Re:Slashdot CSS

[Malc]

It's a rather conservative choice. Really just a refresh of the old style. The colours are so similiar. What's really irritating me with the new style is the use of a Sans Serif font. It takes more effort, and is slower to read than a Serif font. Hopefully I will get used to the comment rating being on the left, but right now I'm finding that too is making scanning the page slower.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[festers]

This is killing me, too. I can't skim comments anymore. :(

Re:Slashdot CSS

[kimvette]

Actually I liked the mockup a lot. However now that it has been deployed, I like it less. Yes, the designer made very good use of whitespace, but check out your preferences page, or the boxes at the left, or at a poll - there is just a tad bit too much whitespace - just a tad. Remember, when each element has, say, 2px padding at the top and bottom, it's multiplied by the number of elements, which leads to lots of wasted screen estate and more scrolling -- and I'm not complaining about 1024x768 or 1280x1024 - I am running 3840x1440 right now and I still have to scroll too much vertically. Aside from that, I really like the new look a lot. There were better entries, IMHO, but this one is quite nice and retained the "slashdot feel" so I can understand why the admins chose it, but some tweaking obviously remains to be done.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[consonant]

the alignment on then right hand side of the screen will make it quicker to look down a line of scores

Probably not.

Y'see, that would be the case if all you would be looking at was a line of scores (i.e numbers). But here you'd be looking at a list of numbers AND words. So while you're thinking a nice columnar

5
2
3
4

would be nice, what you'd really see is something like

Insightful
2
3
Interesting

And this, of course, will all be right-aligned, which means your eyes would be scampering all over the place.

Re:Slashdot CSS

[Lord_Dweomer]

While I'm sure nobody will ever read this, (let alone Taco), I just wanted to give a big "Thank You" to the editors for addressing this and bringing the score back to the left with all the other information. It is a HUGE help!

Help help pls

[Anonymous Coward]

New Slashdot layout is ugly :(

Pls help how to change back to old Slashdot?

If it were an open poll...

[deminisma]

The new look /. might get my vote. What a transformation, seriously.

Re:If it were an open poll...

[w33t]

is it really that different? looks like everything is in the same spot to me.

the functionality is identical - but I admit, it is kind of like a new pair of shoes. They look awesome! but they are a little stiff until you walk around in them for a bit.
--
Music should be free

CSS

[newell98]

New Slashdot design! Now I can stop compulsivly reloading the homepage :P

And now it's time... fooor.... completely OT post!

[suv4x4]

I just hate the new skin. I have to get it out of my system. I friggin hate it. I keep hitting the hide/show section titlebars when I wanna click the links, the "Read more" link is not next to the X of X posts, the page is WAY too wide.

I hate it :(

New layout

[AchiIIe]

I just reloaded and lo and behold the new css is up. Are you not going to publish a story on this, taco? Anyways this looks great, keep up the good^W work.

Sad for MS

[grub]

They have two products listed: a keyboard (#54) and the Xbox 360 (#89). Odd for a company that focuses mainly on software. Apple has a decent showing, even Ubuntu Linux shows up at #27.

Re:Sad for MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoops, my mistake: #39 is Windows Live Local (google earth wannabe)

Re:Sad for MS

[toddestan]

On the other hand, a product that enables Macs to boot Windows XP comes in at number 10.

Re:Sad for MS

[Anonymous Coward]

Has Microsoft released any new software of note this year? I can't think of anything. That problem accounts for why there don't have any software on the list...

Re:Sad for MS

[WalterGR]

Windows Live Local (google earth wannabe)

Are you sure you don't mean "Windows Live Local (updated version of Microsoft's TerraServer)"? TerraServer has existed since at least 2000. Or maybe you mean "Windows Live Local (online version of Microsoft's MapPoint)", which has existed since at least 2001?

Or do you really mean the product developed by KeyHole, which Google acquired in 2004?

Re:Sad for MS

[fufubag]

Please tell me your sig is some kind of joke that I am just too lame to get.

Re:Sad for MS

[seanadams.com]

Grammar tip: "Effect" is a verb. "Affect" is a noun.

uhhh... I think you need to dictionary those words.

Re:Sad for MS

[omicronish]

Whoops, my mistake: #39 is Windows Live Local (google earth wannabe)

I'm assuming you meant Google Maps; Microsoft doesn't have a Google Earth competitor. Anyhow, have you actually used Live Local lately? Stuff it has that Google Maps does not:

• Can find directions between arbitrary points by right-clicking on the map. I almost never find directions between addresses; usually it's between general areas.
• Traffic overlays for a few US cities.
• You can create your own collections of places and share them.
• Bird's eye view. Check out Bird's Eye Tourist for interesting locations.
• Navigation features: mouse scroll to zoom, middle-click drag to create a zoom box.

Google Maps has the benefit of speed, but Live Local beats it in features. So it may be a google maps wannabe, but a very good one at that.

Re:Sad for MS

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's a mockery of a similar sig I saw a few months ago - some retard (hell, maybe it was him) had a sig saying "Grammar tip: Effect is a noun. Affect is a verb". Several people replied to his comments to point out that he was retarded, that effect was also a verb, and that affect is also a noun. He added them to his foes list (and presumably added a -6 moderation for all foe comments) because he "hated grammar nazis". Several people pointed out that correcting a flat-out statement that was blatantly wrong wasn't being a grammar nazi, and the guy caved like a mother. He removed the journal entry detailing his mission, took everyone off his foes list, and removed the sig.

Re:Sad for MS

[fufubag]

Thanks for the background info!

Missing from TFA:

[Anonymous Coward]

Bottom 100 Tech Products of 2006: 1) New layout burrrrrrrrn karma burn. slashdot inferno!

Dual Core Processors

[bwave]

Can't believe they feel Intel Dual Core 2 Duo X2 Dual-Processor CPU2 better than the Athlon 64 X2?

Re:Dual Core Processors

[wolrahnaes]

I love my AMDs, but the Core 2 Duo is making a better showing in preliminary benchmarks than the X2. Remember, the P4's NetBurst architecture was what made it such an abortion. Pentium M, Core, and Core 2 are all evolutions of the Pentium III's "P6" architecture, which was a much better competitor with AMD.

Re:Dual Core Processors

[bwave]

Perhaps, but this is a best of 2006. The Core 2 Duo isn't even out yet, we're over half way into the year. The AMD Athlon 64 X2 has been out since before Jan 1. The Athlon 64 has made AMD hugely profitable this year, and even beaten Intel in the retail channel for first time. Core 2 Duo best best of 2007, not 2006. Has anyone even posted an unbiased benchmark yet? Keep in mind Intel has only let the chips be tested on the Intel provided setup, and for less than 24 hours at a time.

(as far as the layout, meh, I could maybe get used to it but the title bars are what's blinding, hurts to scroll down and skim articles. Title bars are so big compared to fonts. I don't think they need to stand out as much as this style does. At least the HTML4, CSS and Javascript all seem to be working well with both IE6 and IE7. Haven't tried Opera yet. Death to Firefox! then again as guady as Firefox looks, their users probably like this new layout.)

Re:Dual Core Processors

[falcon5768]

last I looked July was still 2006, unless your looking at some newfangled cal. Regardless of which the Core 2 has been tested and released to media which is all that counts for these types of things.

now do I think making a best of list in June when the year isnt even over yet is stupid... yes.

Re:Dual Core Processors

[servognome]

The Athlon 64 has made AMD hugely profitable this year

No, Athlon 64 made AMD gain market share, if you look at the numbers spinning off their memory division made them the most profit (they cut their cost of sales almost in half).

Re:Dual Core Processors

[mkw87]

Key word is preliminary.

But I guess intel has never fudged benchmarks before, so what am I thinking.

Re:Dual Core Processors

[wolrahnaes]

The thing is, these numbers are not out of line. We know what the Pentium M is capable of, we know what the Core Duo is capable of. The Core 2 chips are just evolutions of the Core chips, and from what I've seen they're performing moderately faster than the Cores, which themselves put up quite a good fight against the AMDs.

I'm still sticking with Opteron dual cores, because I use the memory performance that a dedicated controller gives me, but all I'm trying to say here is that the Core/Core2 chips are putting Intel back in the game, where P4 had them way out in left field.

Re:Dual Core Processors

[mkw87]

where P4 had them way out in left field.

Better than right field, everyone knows no one but lefties hit to right field. At least in left field they got some action.

(Metaphors can be retarded, but I couldnt resist)

Re:Dual Core Processors

[kimvette]

but. . . but. . . I can't buy a Core Duo Extreme hyperthreaded 3.8Ghz processor that needs a huge honkin' fan just to keep it from exploding. How can it possibly be better than the Pentium 4?!?! Mhz is everything! It's only a few months until Intel cranks the clock speed up to 4.2Ghz and beyond!!

Oh wait, that's Intel marketing from three years ago. Carry on then! ;)

Re:And now it's time... fooor.... completely OT po

[therage96]

Not to mention the score is now on the far right from the title of comments.

Usability was definately not considered here.

First they post an article

[scenestar]

On the stupidity of web2.0

A few articles later the site looks like goddamn Digg

give me back my slashdot

(seriously, I wonder how long it takes before someone writes a greasemonkey script or ff extension)

Re:First they post an article

[Anonymous Coward]

Funnily enough, userscripts.org seems to be slashdotted.

Re:First they post an article

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I think it works marginally better in blazer than the previous version did. Not that I'm actually particularly fond of blazer, of course.

--posted using a Palm TX, while on the john

Re:First they post an article

[Pollardito]

userscripts has been down for at least a week, maybe people surging there nonstop since the new look was announced?

1st

[mortonda]

1st post not talking about the new layout....

uh... wait. dang it!

Man...

[Anonymous Coward]

does PC world HATE Microsoft. Call it what you will, but Xbox 360 is much higher than 89.

Gahhhh!

[Rank_Tyro]

I think some sort of warning would have been nice, I spent 3 minutes reloading before I figured out my browser wasn't hosed.

I think this new layout would not be on the top 100 list...

Re:Gahhhh!

[Anonymous Coward]

• ''I think some sort of warning would have been nice, I spent 3 minutes reloading before I figured out my browser wasn't hosed.''

Yeah, they really should be more considerate of the mentally challenged readers.

Re:Gahhhh!

[Rank_Tyro]

"Yeah, they really should be more considerate of the mentally challenged readers."
Ha ha, see the funny troll.
Ummm, that was an exaggeration. Sorry it wasn't obvious enough for you.

I will say, the main reason I was taken by suprise about the format change was because I had set up my Slashdot Firefox extension to make all of the pages show up in the YRO color scheme.

I have not seen the Slashdot main page in the normal green for a LONG time. The complete change from the normal layout was VERY suprising. I had completely forgoten the look of the normal page.

Re:Gahhhh!

[Anonymous Coward]

There were multiple warnings... and a contest you could have entered....

Butt ugly *and* slow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Gawd, I thought it took Microsoft to take something functional and go the extra mile to make it both ugly and slow, all in one fell swoop... :(

Who thought this was a good idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like Steve Jobs shit all over it.

Re:Who thought this was a good idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

the word we use in polite company for "shit all over" is innovate

Congratulations on the new layout

[techmuse]

Wow. It's happened. My online experience will never be the same again...

Re:And now it's time... fooor.... completely OT po

[RavenChild]

If you click them really fast the triangles get mixed up.

Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[w33t]

Ever notice how easy it is to say something bad about anything?

I like this new layout - but it seems that people like to post about what they don't like about something more than what they do. This new layout is clean and modern.

if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!

I admit, it's different, and it's ok to be scared by things that are different. But as times change so must one if one wishes to survive. You cannot grow without change. Growth is change.

Of course, everyone is entittled to his or her own opinion - this one is mine :]
--
Music should be free

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[EvanED]

if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!

I think it'll take a bit of getting used to... but I think the "read more" links back on the front page should move back to their old location. There was a bit of a shock when I couldn't find it at first. I don't think this is a "wait 'till you're used to it thing" because my cursor tends to hang out in the middle of the screen, so the links used to be closer to their common position.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[w33t]

hmm, that is a good point EvanED. That did kind of throw me off a bit at first too.
--
Music should be free

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[notque]

if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!

1. The faded icons on the sidebar look like any html template look you'd find on a website. They don't look nice, just cheesy.
2. It's brighter, which for some reason gets on my nerves. I like being able to fade into the lull of the old colors.
3. It looks like any other blog. I like to pretend that Slashdot isn't just a blog, but a professional website full of incompetent writers.

We will all get used to it, but it sucks. It didn't need to be changed. Weeeee.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[kfg]

if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!

It's clean and modern.

KFG

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever notice how easy it is to say something bad about anything?

It helps a lot when the thing is really and truly bad. Like this layout. God. It's awful.

if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!

Well, put the old one back. That wouldn't solve everything, but it at least would be a good first step.

Of course, everyone is entittled to his or her own opinion

I disagree, not if the opinions are going to be as terrible as yours :(

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[ResidntGeek]

1. The font sucks. It's harder to read.
2. Too much white, like there's too much space in between everything.
3. Posts not indented enough, it's hard to tell what's a reply to what without much pointless scrolling up and down.
4. Accidentally clicking on the "sections" header opens a settings box which won't go away for a minimum of 5 seconds after you click the [x].
5. The "Read More" link is far away from where my eyes and cursor end up after reading the summary.
6. Scores on the wrong side of the comment header.
7. Why the hell isn't the old layout an option? CmdrTaco was explicit in his statements that it was just a superficial redesign with no drastic changes, it can't require much more than an extra variable in the code.

I'm sure I'll keep discovering reasons to hate it as time goes on. If you'd like updates, just say so and I'll post them here.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[masterzora]

if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!
Gladly. The short version:

-The score being on the far right of the comment rather than near the title.
-The colors look like too sharp a contrast (not to the point of eye-hurtiness... just enough to look wrong)
-Newspost boxes separate all the info into small boxes without defining the newspost box (it just looks screwy)
-Overuse of gradients

And that's a small sampling. I couldn't tell you if any of them are real design faux pas, but I don't like them.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[w33t]

hehe, Actually I kind of would :D
--
Music should be free

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[ericdano]

What they should have done is given users another CSS to choose from. Slashcode is running a pretty close to the Old Slashdot layout but in CSS.

I don't like the colors either. They are lame.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[EvanED]

After using it more, I have a couple other suggestions (or complaints, depending on what tone you want to read it in):

* If you are on a page that doesn't have much content (e.g. the page with *just* this post until someone replies to it) the footer rides too far up, at least running with a height of 1200. (Looks like it'd be the same in 1280x1024 by my estimation.) There should be more vertical space added so that there isn't a couple inches of black at the bottom of the screen; it's distracting.

* No "parent" link when you're replying to a post. I'm pretty sure there used to be one 'cause I went for it instanctively. (So if you wanted to see the parent of the post you're replying to you could get to it with one link, as opposed to two (opening the comment you're replying to directly via the #15469727 link, then parent).)

* Another poster mentions that if you click the sidebar links too fast then the arrows can get out sync with whether the menus are up or down. Minor issue I think, but one someone should take a look at eventually.

* Did there used to be ads above the header? I never noticed them before if so. They'll probably fade from consciousness though. (When I used Opera I would go for a couple months without realizing there were ads. I'd then notice them, be like "oh yeah!" then forget about them the next day for another couple months.)

* I agree with the other posters that the score for comments being right-aligned makes browsing harder. (This *might* be a 'get used to it' thing.)

* There's what I consider an indentation bug. If a comment with a score above the current threshold for showing the full comment is a parent to a comment with a score below the threshold, the indentation is almost non-existant. I posted a screenshot of such a configuration. (I don't want to link to one because moderations can change.) I don't think this is a "get used to it" change.

* I also don't like the spacing between comments. (Assume that all comments in this aren't displayed; you just see the title.) If a top level comment has children, there's a significant space following the last child. But if it doesn't, there's no space. Again, a screenshot (and hastily added and barely-readable comments) shows what I mean. At a glance, it looks like that chunk of four comments in the middle are all part of the same thread. I don't think this is a "get used to it" change.

I don't want to sound too negative, because I think the change is okay overall, but it's harder to find nitpicks than it is things that are good. Though I can say I like the arrows that appear over the links on hover in the nav bar to the left.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[wolrahnaes]

yup, that got me too.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[EvanED]

Damn it, I screwed up the second link there. That should link to .

Which brings up another possible suggestion. When you put a link in a replay, /. could automatically add the http:/// at the beginning. I pasted in just evanparity.com/..., which /. took as literal and just fed back to the browser (you'll see if you view source). If it had added http:/// that wouldn't have happened.

I don't know if that's the right behavior or not. Maybe a poll, I dunno.

(It also brings up another idea, which is what happens if you put in a www before the address? Let's see: link. *previews* Okay, /. adds the http:/// then. I dunno what the right thing to do is... maybe see if it matches [a-zA-Z0-9].["com"|"org"|"edu"...]? (In some sort of regular expression syntax))

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[optikSmoke]

Actually, I'll take you up on that. I have thought about this a bit due to a conversation with a friend on the subject, so I'm not just spouting off garbage (I hope), and frankly it's not all bad. Most of my thoughts are on visual impressions and the design, since the actual layout and functionality doesn't seem to have changed much.

Anyway, I'll give you that there is some definite improvement here -- certainly there is a better use of contrast (that ugly grey isn't nearly as prevalent, and the green is darker, which gives a nice "crisp" feeling).

Unfortunately, the designer seems to have fallen into the gradient-trap, which has befallen so many tech forums. In fact, I find Slashdot to be rather generic looking now. However, I actually have a reason for disliking the gradients (ie, this isn't an undefended "OMG GRADIENTZ" argument). So I have a little experiment that really outlines why I don't like the new design.

First, go to the main page and just scan it with your eye. Down the center column, you see: green gradient, grey background, white background + grey left bar + icon, bottom gradient, dark grey line, etc for each story. There is a lot of visual information in there per story, each crammed into a relatively small area that is sparse on margins.

Now, click into a story and scroll into the comments. I find that even this is a relief on the eyes after the congestion of the main page. The green gradient is gone, the superfluous bottom grey gradient is gone. So you can see what more subtle cues can do to improve a design, even though the comments are still not great in my opinion. The thick green bar repeatedly breaking up the space is a little much, and the comments could do with some more margins to reduce visual congestion. Making each line shorter by increasing side margins, and removing the redundant green line at the bottom of each comment could potentially improve it, in my opinion. And that's just a start, really.

It seems to me that this design doesn't really recognize the value of subtlety in conveying information. Almost every has the same visual strength on the page -- thick bars delineating headers for everything, overwhelming the eye. There's a difference between contrasts and colours giving a crisp feeling, and a truly clean one. I don't feel this design is nearly as clean as it could be, simply because of the mass of unnecessary visual information.

All that said, there is good here. I think the design has some nice elements in the contrasts and colours, it just hasn't really abandoned the visual cruft that the even the old Slashdot design had (and has introduced some more).

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[EvanED]

If you are on a page that doesn't have much content (e.g. the page with *just* this post until someone replies to it) the footer rides too far up, at least running with a height of 1200. (Looks like it'd be the same in 1280x1024 by my estimation.) There should be more vertical space added so that there isn't a couple inches of black at the bottom of the screen; it's distracting.

A possibly related problem (yeah, I'm replying to myself a lot, sue me):

At least for me, on pages where the footer is visible (and maybe even on some where it's not), the page seems to render twice. It pops up for about 1/10 sec without the footer visible, then flashes black for about anothor 1/10s, then comes up right. Does it do this for anyone else?

(This is FF 1.5.0.3 on XP.)

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[ResidntGeek]

Haha... they already seem to have changed the motto back from "The nuts and volts of news for nerds." Thank God, because that would be a pretty crappy motto.

And I'm really noticing the extra space around everything - it hurts the eyes, makes me move my eyes more, and requires way too much scrolling.

"Have you Meta-Moderated recently?" on the main page is on a background not unlike a story heading, so it doesn't stand out at all - not cool.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[Anonymous Coward]

This new slashdot look has me thinking. Maybe it's time for me to grow up and move out of mother's basement. You know, stop waisting my life away with this childish bullshit. Start working out, get a girlfriend, lose my virginity.... Nah....

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[Dread Pirate Shanks]

Here are my specific gripes (minor as they may be):
-awkward placement of some information: the "read more" link and post scoring information are on the right, which means (for those of us with large monitors) your eye has a long way to travel to find information that is frequently looked at.
-it's a little dark: more contrasting colors means slightly more straining than it used to be.
-preconfigured fonts: It would be nice to use the fonts set in the viewer's browser rather than what the designer thought looked good. It does look good, but I like my default font, which is why I have it set.

Minor quibbles aside, it does look very nice, and the progress was inevitable.

oh yeah, the top 100 list is cool, too :-P

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[geminidomino]

if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!

Took me a few minutes to put my finger on it, but I finally figured out why I hate it:

Too much negative space. (Read: blinding fscking WHITE). Sure, it's cleaner, with all that space, but now its little bits of black on white. Too hard on the eyes.

How about a green-on-black CSS option, CmdrTaco?

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[nmb3000]

if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!

Very well. Here's what I've got so far.

  - First up: Big pages load and render SLOW. Pages with a large number of comments like this one make IE crap it's pants
  - Score and 'Read More' on the right away from other relevant information.
  - The 'Sections' link is worthless and annoying.
  - Spacing in IE is flunky. Various elements don't line up with others. Yes, it's probably IE's fault, but you can't ignore IE.
  - Links in the navigational menus (left and top) have different colors for visited/not visited. Looks better if they are the same and it doesn't really matter if you've clicked them before.
  - Comments are not indented enough.
  - Arrows on left-hand menu get out of sync easily.
  - Method of changing item color (gray/green) in left-hand menu is slow in IE.
  - Element spacing on User page blows in IE.
  - YRO is still ugly as sin.
  - The menu that opens when you click 'Sections' is a nasty kludge. It's way too slow to open, closes by reloading the page (real stupid).
  - The boxes containing "what is this" blurbs in Preferences are too big and conspicuous. They're supposed to be a subtle help, not obfuscate the main content.
  - IT is still puts Janet Reno to shame.
  - Comment headers (containing the subject) seem too big and waste space.
  - It'd be nice if there was some indication the little arrows were clickable (like using the pointer cursor).
  - The 'Sections' section closes after going into a section, regardless of its previous status. Annoying if you're browsing sections.
  - An old bug still exists where the content of a page will sometimes start a full page lower than it should in IE. Stories and user pages are affected.
  - Bad things usually happen if you click the Sections header after IE starts navigating to another page.
  - Simple Design option + the Sections header box = nasty.
  - Too much whitespace. Reduce it or perhaps go with a real light gray in areas.
  - I miss OMG Ponies! Really.

Personally, I think we should get the option to use the old template.

George Lucas raped my childhood and CSS raped Slashdot *cry*

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[rossdee]

I find the new font for the body text really hard to read. There should be the option in your /. preferences to swich back to the old serif font at least.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[Mad Merlin]

The font choice everywhere is miserably horrible, any designer who specifies a specific font should be shot repeatedly. The fonts are also too small.

In Konqueror, on every fresh page load, the sidebar elements are all stuck at the top of the screen until I resize the browser window.

Otherwise, I don't mind it.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[MaXiMiUS]

I don't like the new layout, too hard to focus. I'm used to reading the title, followed by the rating, then the body. With this, my eyes jump to the body, then I remember "Hey! What about the title!?" and look at that. I *just* spotted the stupid location for the rating. It looks sexy, I'll agree on that, but it's impractical for me :(

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[EvanED]

Another rendering bug: lists are indented so that the numbers stick out to the left. This alone isn't a bad thing, but to do it you need to indent non-lists more (with respect to, say, the green headings). Currently this causes problems. One instance is in the comments display, where the indentation is already very bad, the numbers sticking out into negative padding further decreases intelligability. It also looks pretty bad IMO. A second place where this causes obvious problems is this help page (screenshot). Stuff like that just makes this look unprofessional in my opinion.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[Anonymous Coward]

> if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!

It's fucking unreadable due to the micro-sized dot-matrix sans-serif font (or the ridiculously huge sized, equally-ugly font, that you get if you increase the font size with a Ctrl-+).

The 3-4 pixels (or more) between each line of text means a hell of a lot more eyestrain.

> I admit, it's different, and it's ok to be scared by things that are different. But as times change so must one if one wishes to survive. You cannot grow without change. Growth is change.

Ever notice how easy it is to say something that sucks is really wonderful by mouthing a bunch of bullshit about how change is intrinsically good?

> This new layout is clean and modern.
>
>if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!

If it's so fucking wonderful, why don't you tell us what, specifically, makes it so fucking wonderful.

Aesthetic opinions like "clean" and "modern" and philosophical statements "change is good" don't count.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[EQ]

The font is horrid - its tiny and not nearly as readable as the old one, at least not on Firefox/WinXP.

There is far too much whitesapce - makes for inefficient scanning.

And the scoring for the comments is WAY over on the right - needs to be back on the left.

Whoever picked this font and this size should be beaten to death with a dead Mac powerbook.

At least give us the option to go back to the old setup (seems /. learned "just cram it down their trhoat" from Microsoft's marketing bag of tricks).

I had some things set just the way I like them, and it was quick to load as well. Give me the option of getting back theold stylesheets. Or someone do a greasemonkey script.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[0racle]

And the bar on the left renders wrong on Konqueror 3.5.3. The text draws in correctly then jumps up over the logo.

The colours are wrong though, I don't remember it looking this bad in the preview.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[Darren Foong]

The extra space effectively reduces the amount of information we can see at a time.

Sucks. I was used to reading comments happily, until now. The mod scores, the mod scores! My eyes! My eyes!

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't work out whether you criticising the new layout or OSX - the same applies - which may provide insight as to why the new layout is "better"

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[dcam]

8. The scores are on the right hand side. The score is an important part of deciding whether to read a comment. When it is over the far right hand side you can't read the subject and the score in one quick glance.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[Bogtha]

if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!

The typography is absolutely awful. It reduces the font size by 18% and increases the line-height by 50%, making it way harder to read.

If you are using a Gecko-based browser like Firefox, there's a user stylesheet to fix things on userstyles.org

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well done you!!

Is there something else in your life as well as talking about the things you hate?
Maybe you'd also like to mention the things you LIKE? Improving a site is not only done by saying what is wrong with it. That way it becomes endless trial and error. Also encourage the things you like about it.

I guess you are, or will be, a awful person to do QA, mentoring or as team/group/department leader.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[Bega]

One big improvement - spacing between the elements. The old layout was a horrible chunk of text slammed together with no padding at all. I do agree on the comment score position, though, but otherwise it's mostly as much getting used to as with Revolution being named Wii - it might be fun/shit in the beginning, but after a while you all will be assimilated...

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[mkw87]

I think you meant competent, you should really use a dictionary when posting on slashdot if you are unsure of your word usage, it would certainly save you some dignity.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[gEvil (beta)]

For the most part I don't have any major gripes about the redesign. However, this one I can agree with--there is a whole lot of white/negative space all over the place. I couldn't figure out what it was that bugged me until this comment pointed it out...

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[mkw87]

George Lucas raped my childhood

Your dad was George Lucas? That must have been AWESOME!

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[zlogic]

If you don't like the font, change it!
I usually set the default font in Firefox and make sure that web pages aren't allowed to change it.
I set the monospace font to Dejavu Sans Mono and all the non-monospace fonts to Dejavu Sans. Also, I set the minimum font size to 12pt. It's amazing how some crappy sites using tiny Times-like fonts actually get readable and eyecandier.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, no, he meant incompetent, as in unable to to their job satisfactorily. Read the sentence again, and make a habit of doing that before you "correct" people.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[teslatug]

The dark color green on the comments is too distracting. Oh look a header...

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[pafrusurewa]

Haha... they already seem to have changed the motto back from "The nuts and volts of news for nerds." Thank God, because that would be a pretty crappy motto.

This still is and has been for a while the motto of the hardware section, not the main site.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[Malc]

Per your point one: that's because it's a Sans Serif font. It's one of the first things you can learn about fonts. Serifs make reading easier.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[Fallingcow]

That's my biggest complaint, too. Any time I try to read some black-text-white-background stuff too near one of the dark green header bars (or the overall page header, for that matter) my eyes keep getting sucked up toward the header. It's annoying. Makes it way harder to scan a page quickly.

Then there's the super-small text in general. That makes it even worse.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[mkw87]

Did you have to duck to miss that?

I thought I was fairly clear it was sarcasm... :(

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[rthille]

I don't care about the look, but it doesn't work as well for me. I used to read in 'minimal' mode. Not sure how that corresponds to the new css layout, but I know the new layout wastes a lot more vertical space making reading more of a pain, the default font on Safari is too small to read, and the location of the 'score' on a comment is way over on the right which makes it more eye-movement to check out when deciding whether to read it or not.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[hackstraw]

I like this new layout - but it seems that people like to post about what they don't like about something more than what they do. This new layout is clean and modern.

if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!

All in all I like it too, but it needs some tweaking.

1) How do you make the quoted comments look light grey with the bar on the side? It looks nice, but I'm not sure how to do it (yet, first reply)

2) The comment and story font needs to go back to a serifed font.

3) Ordered lists (at least in Safari) have the numbers sticking left of the rest of the comment, while the text is aligned with the rest of the comment.

4) Its too vertically intensive. The spaces between paragraphs and whatnot need to be a little smaller.

5) The score for the comment needs to be on the left somewhere. It does no good having it on the right hand side.

All in all I like the new layout. It was long overdue. But I believe that at least these 5 tweaks are a common consensus from what I've read others say about it.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[br0ck]

Add this to your custom stylesheet to move scores back to the left:

span.score {position: relative !important; left: 0px !important; right: 0px !important; bottom: 0px !important; top: 0px !important} h4 {display: inline !important;}

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[Bogtha]

1) How do you make the quoted comments look light grey with the bar on the side? It looks nice, but I'm not sure how to do it (yet, first reply)

The <blockquote> element type is for quoting, not the <i> element type. If you use the right element type, it'll automatically get formatted according to how Slashdot want quotes to be formatted. At the moment, this is light grey with the bar down the side, previously it was simply indented. I choose to use both <blockquote> and <i> (so basically <blockquote><p><i> ... </i></p></blockquote>), as Slashdot don't tend to have much of a clue about design, so I can't trust that the next design Slashdot uses will separate quotes visually as much as the current one does.

2) The comment and story font needs to go back to a serifed font.

The old Slashdot design didn't actually use a serif font. It used the browser default. This has traditionally been serif, but you can easily configure browsers to use a sans-serif font by default.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[ChrisMaple]

My monitor is 112 dpi, and the new font is much more readable than the old, without scaling.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[JLS-UK]

The info: (Score:5, Insightful) being on the far right is really annoying as my eyes have to dart across the monitor to check it out. Not much fun.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[ResidntGeek]

I liked it exactly how it was. And yes, I would be a terrible manager. I hate managers.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[ResidntGeek]

OK, you win this round, but I tell you I'll have the war!

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[br0ck]

My previous attempt breaks a few other headers in the nav bars, so here's another try. This one just moves the score under the subject heading and makes the text bigger. Drop the two font declarations to just use the normal text size. This does make the bar too tall in my opinion, but I couldn't figure out a way to just move the score next to the subject without breaking anything else.

span.score {position: relative !important; top: -8px !important; padding-left: 15px !important; margin-left: 15px !important; font-weight: bold; font-size: 115%; } h4 {padding: 3px 0px 7px 10px !important}

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[H0NGK0NGPH00EY]

The score is an important part of deciding whether to read a comment.

Indeed. Perhaps that is why the "Comments" section of your account Preferences contains more than 20 options for customizing your view based on comment score...

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dupe! Look at his #6.

Re:Thank you for your opinion - now here's mine.

[dcam]

Thanks for this. I don't have a whole lot of experience with css, so when I tried to put something into my custom CSS I missed a thing or too (!important seems to be the magic thing).

Craigslist

[alfs boner]

The real irony is that Craigslist tends to be, like Ebay (which was responsible for 3/4 of ALL internet fraud complaints), something you have to approach EXTREMELY carefully.

People on Craigslist tend to be really flaky- we're talking the stoned kind of flaky, or the "I'm going to try and cheat you because I think I'm clever" kind of flaky; I'm not sure which is worse. Then there are all the wierdos posting in the various personals section- if you want a great laugh (no matter your gender), read those sections; makes you think of someone walking into McDonalds with $2 and expecting a rare Filet Mignon with sauteed mushrooms. Or the ever popular "I'm hot. Send a picture. Sexiest one wins." I laughed for about 5 minutes so hard I couldn't breathe, and resolved never to look in w4m again because it was dangerous to my health, even if it was a fantastic laugh.

Top problem though, is that people are complete IDIOTS when it comes to listing their items. "Printer. Best offer." Inkjet? Laser? Dot matrix? Made this decade? God forbid they tell us what company made it. I also love it when useless, worthless stuff is offered up- like cheapo computer speakers. People, I'm all for the recycling bit, but take that shit to the RECYCLING CENTER, don't waste anyone's time putting it up for sale for $5. Round trip subway fare costs at least half that...

The hysterical bit is that Craiglist supposedly has an "advisory committee" that handles how the site is presented to users. When I complained that even basic instructions were never shown to users as part of the posting procedure and it was clear there was a problem, Craig just replied, "thanks, the committee will think about it".

Then there are the people who post the "free" iPod/plasma/whatever emails (which are usually flagged by the community)...the problem is that there's nothing to keep them from posting over and over, because (to my knowledge) there is no automatic blacklist after X number of posts flagged...so spamming is pretty easy.

Then there are the ripoffs. Go read your city's /sys/ for a few minutes, and see how many times you say "WHAT?!"...like people asking $500 for a Pentium 3 system. Go read /ele/ and see how many times you see "Theater Research" speakers being offered for $500; the more honest (or naive) ones admit to buying it from some guys in a white van...the others just think "oh well, I'll get some other sucker to buy 'em".

Classic example of the try-to-sucker-you-by-omission-and-feined-ignorance approach was a Phaser printer being offered for sale for a few hundred $ with no mention of WHY nobody uses wax printers anymore. In short- you MUST cover your ass like crazy. If it's too good to be true, it most certainly is someone trying to sucker you.

Typical, but when you consider it against Craig's motivations (community building and other crunchy-granola-ness), Craigslist has ultimately been a pretty spectacular failure. I used to report at least 5-6 posts a day to the abuse department for various reasons (all were accepted, and the abuse group IS very nice; they ALWAYS write you back! To the CL abuse staff, you have my sympathies and admiration), and I just got tired of it...it was like throwing a sandbag into a levee break and watching it disappear.

I also have a policy now, which I inform sellers of upfront. If the item is different from how it was represented in the post or follow-up emails, both of which I will have with me, I walk out the door- this is after several sellers presented something that was nothing like what they described (like a PC missing half its ram, being sold by a software programmer who played dumb. Riight).

Re:Craigslist

[dick pubes]

like cheapo computer speakers. People, I'm all for the recycling bit, but take that shit to the RECYCLING CENTER, don't waste anyone's time putting it up for sale for $5. Round trip subway fare costs at least half that...

I think that freecycle [freecycle.org] deserves a mention to help people dispose of stuff that has too little monetary value to hassle a price with it, but yet want to keep it out of the dumpster. Also, it is helping people out.

Re:Craigslist

[colini]

My backside is parked on a couch I bought from craigslist (Austin) and I'm completely happy with it. I've never tried to buy any PC hardware from the list, but it sounds like you're the one following up on 'too good to be true' ads. If the seller doesn't provide enough detail you can email them and ask for more, or just ignore it. WRT to furniture, I simply ignore postings that don't include a picture.

For a "spectacular failure" it sure gets a lot of postings every day, in an awful lot of cities. Personally I think it's going to kill the traditional 'pay' market for classifieds. The alternative weekly here has already started offering free classifieds.

Re:Craigslist

[Tablizer]

People on Craigslist tend to be really flaky... all the wierdos posting in the various...

Regular Slashdotters should be used to that by now.

Re:Craigslist

[ThousandStars]

All that may be true, but one thing Craigslist has helped enormously is in real estate. It's now *vastly* easier to find an apartment in most major metropolitan cities. I was recently looking for one in Seattle and found five times as many ads on Craigslist as compared to the Seattle Times. On Monday there were many more still.

The problems you're describing have always been true about newspaper classifieds; the only difference is in scale. But the scale factor is transforming industries ranging from real estate to used cars. That's fundamentally a good thing, even if Craigslist has problems associated with it as well. But it does serve a useful function.

Re:Craigslist

[slashdot.org]

I also have a policy now, which I inform sellers of upfront. If the item is different from how it was represented in the post or follow-up emails, both of which I will have with me, I walk out the door- this is after several sellers presented something that was nothing like what they described (like a PC missing half its ram, being sold by a software programmer who played dumb. Riight).

Yes, I have been thinking about an even more extreme version of that. Basically I think the seller should reimburse you for your expenses if they grosly misrepresented an item.

For example, I've been looking for cars and (unfortunately) it seems to continuously go like this:
me: so has this car ever been repainted?
salesguy: no, it's in great shape, original paint.
me: okay, well, I'm going to drive 80 miles to see this car, and I have to tell you that I used to work for a body shop, so I'll be able to tell in 10 seconds if it was repainted. I know you can tell it that quickly too, so I'm just asking you to be straight with me.
salesguy: it's never been repainted.

And then when you arrive, the car has not only been repainted (poorly), but the body has been "upgraded" to a newer model, the engine doesn't match the original car model, and the engine compartment is another color.

Last time that happened I actually started yelling at the guy. I mean, for fuck's sake. Posting freaking cell-phone pictures, claiming they don't do the car justice, insisting it's in "excellent" condition, and then presenting a car that was pretty much dug up from the Gulf of Mexico of the shore of New Orleans.

But what recourse do we have, as the person spending a few hours and cash on fuel to come see the pathetic piece of crap?

I think the asshole needs to reimburse us for the cost. I haven't tried it yet, but next time I'm going to propose this to the person because it's driving me nuts. You misrepresent your item, you pay for my expenses to come out to look at it.

Re:Craigslist

[muhgcee]

There are some pretty cheap fucks on Craigslist. It is a fun exercise to find something you don't want, and offer it up for free on Craigslist (because you don't want to throw it out, and you'd feel bad if someone paid money for it). You'll get about a dozen emails within 5 minutes, and you can have fun replying, telling people why you didn't choose them for your free thing.

I had a guy drive 45 minutes each way for a several-year-old digital camera that couldn't have been worth more than $10.

Re:Craigslist

[muhgcee]

Craigslist really does not deserve to be listed as a good tech product. The technology behind the site really sucks. In terms of looks and functionality, it feels like a site from 1996.

That is not to say it's not a great site. It is only great because of the users. There is nothing technologically remarkable about craigslist.

Re:Craigslist

[mkw87]

I had a guy drive 45 minutes each way for a several-year-old digital camera that couldn't have been worth more than $10.

Oh, gosh, I'm still laughing after minutes since reading this. Mostly b/c I have an old shitty digital camera not worth more than $10, wonder how far I can get someone to drive to pick it up for free!

Re:Craigslist

[muhgcee]

It is pretty fun...just say in your ad that you require the buyer to reply with where they are coming from. Or say you need their phone number then you can call each one and ask how far of a drive it is.

Re:Craigslist

[Anonymous Coward]

So, was the chick advertising giving up her anal cherry a fraud?

Re:Craigslist

[Chris Burke]

I think the asshole needs to reimburse us for the cost. I haven't tried it yet, but next time I'm going to propose this to the person because it's driving me nuts. You misrepresent your item, you pay for my expenses to come out to look at it.

If the guy wouldn't come clean about repainting the car after you told him that you'd know if he was lying, what makes you think he'd honor an agreement to reimburse your expenses?

I agree completely that the jerk should pay, but unless I'm just not creative enough I can't think of a way to enforce it.

Re:Craigslist

[slashdot.org]

I agree completely that the jerk should pay, but unless I'm just not creative enough I can't think of a way to enforce it.

Yeah, that is a problem. Maybe at least if you put it that way though, it will deter some from lying. But then again, once someone starts lying, they usually don't come clean anyways.

I guess it's just going to continue to be a frustrating exercise ;)

Re:Craigslist

[consonant]

Probably because it was formed in 1995..but you already knew that ;)

Next thing you'll be doing is accusing /. of looking like a site from 1998..oh wait, can't do that now :D

Re:Craigslist

[ravrazor]

the parent post (by "alfs boner") is just a copy of a this post...when will people learn that users with userIDs in the 900,000+ range with the word boner in their name are probably not legitimate posters?

and everyone wonders why there's so many trolls on slashdot - because it's so trivial to rack up karma.

and for the record: this layout is destroying IE...

Re:Craigslist

[pjp6259]

haha. The funny thing is the first reply to 'alfs boner' about freecycle is also a word for word copy of this +5 post:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=134146&cid=111 97554

It's sad though that if you were to mod down those posts, you'd probably get slammed in meta-moderation, and not get to mod again for a while...

Re:Craigslist

[alfs boner]

Too slow!

:)

Seriously... Re:1st

[mortonda]

Ubuntu only made 27th?

I'm impressed. I've always hated Debian because it was arcane and hard to use/learn. Ubuntu takes all the rough edges off.

Anyway these lists are pretty subjective. Nice way to use a non-story to introduce the new layout. ;)

GODDAMMIT just fucking KILL ME, PLEASE !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

GODDAMMIT just fucking KILL ME, PLEASE !!! This is one ass-fuck after another here.

i'm okay with the new design but..

[Dance_Dance_Karnov]

instead of a new design i think /. should fix some very real issues with the commenting. No editing for one. The fact that one has to use html to make a longer than one line comment readable. This is 2006, I shouldn't have to put in breaklines manualy.

Re:i'm okay with the new design but..

[Dance_Dance_Karnov]

thats the thing, I shouldn't have to worry about if I've got the right mode selected, it just smacks of 1997.

Re:i'm okay with the new design but..

[Anonymous Coward]

The new interface is a TURD!

Reminds me of the default LUNA XP interface

A turd is a turd is a turd. There was nothing wrong with the old syle...

Re:i'm okay with the new design but..

[Anonymous Coward]

It default the Plain Old Text. The rest of the options are just that, options. It's to give flexibility to the people who want it. Stop whining.

Re:i'm okay with the new design but..

[BlueCodeWarrior]

Being able to edit comments would completely break moderation. Besides, not being able to edit comments means that you really have to think out your post before you do so, or risk looking like an idiot. I personally like it this way.

Re:i'm okay with the new design but..

[HermanAB]

There is that switch called 'Plain Old Text' down below.

Works for me...

Re:i'm okay with the new design but..

[Blakey Rat]

You don't. Just use "plain old text" all the time. If you want to just hit enter for line breaks:

It works. If you want to add a HTML tag it works.

Re:i'm okay with the new design but..

[Dance_Dance_Karnov]

a 2-5 minute editing window to fix spelling or formating wouldn't break moderation. (obviously comments in this window couldn't be modded)

Re:i'm okay with the new design but..

[kchrist]

I always liked the idea of allowing editing of comments until the comment has either been moderated or has its first follow-up.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

I agree, it's been fun

[Anonymous Coward]

The layout's fine. Wasn't broken, didn't need changing, but whatever.

The font is AWFUL. Maybe it looks good on a Linux box or on a Mac, but the subjective readability of Slashdot's text on IE6 has just dropped by 50%.

The only good thing about this is that I'm going to get about an hour of my time back every day I avoid reading Slashdot.

Good luck, guys, it was fun while it lasted and I enjoyed most of my time here.

Re:I agree, it's been fun

[grub]

The font is AWFUL. Maybe it looks good on a Linux box or on a Mac, but the subjective readability of Slashdot's text on IE6 has just dropped by 50%.

Try increasing the font size. I did in Firefox on Win2k and it's much better, at least I won't have eye cancer by 2008.

Re:I agree, it's been fun

[iced_773]

Doesn't change the fact that the change in the blockquote tag rendering broke my ASCII sig. Just look at it now!

_____ ______ DCCLXXIII

|c3d

_____|_____

Re:I agree, it's been fun

[skingers6894]

The font is AWFUL. Maybe it looks good on a Linux box or on a Mac, but the subjective readability of Slashdot's text on IE6 has just dropped by 50%. The only good thing about this is that I'm going to get about an hour of my time back every day I avoid reading Slashdot. Good luck, guys, it was fun while it lasted and I enjoyed most of my time here. There goes Slashdot's last IE user...

Re:If it were an open poll... OMG PONIES WOULD WIN

[kusanagi374]

No way! My vote would go for a "OMG PONIES!" version of this layout... Really, pink would look perfect on this one... *giggle* OMG!

Behold It's Glory

[TheMotedOne]

The games page is finally viewable without sunglasses.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Slashdot new layout crashes my Opera 9

[okasion]

Also it makes slower to browse in old machines. I want the old /. back.

Re:Slashdot new layout crashes my Opera 9

[hugzz]

The new slahsdot also causes my opera 9 to crash when I open comments pages.

I'm not sure who's fault it is (slashdot or opera's), since Opera 9 is still in beta... but I've yet to have opera crash more than once on the same page which leads me to wonder if there may be something wrong with slashdot

Re:Slashdot new layout crashes my Opera 9

[DavidWide]

If a browser crashes, it's the browser's fault. No web page can be held responsible for a browser crash, regardless of content. File a bug report with Opera.

Re:Slashdot new layout crashes my Opera 9

[krazytom]

My Opera 9 Beta 2 is also crashing when I click on "read more." I just switched from Firefox too, this not leaving me with a good impression of Opera, I know its beta, but I would expect slashdot to write proper code.

Re:Slashdot new layout crashes my Opera 9

[dreemernj]

I get some bugginess in build 8367 but built 8031 seems fine. I'll have to try one of the more up to date builds from labs.opera.com and see how that goes.

Re:Slashdot new layout crashes my Opera 9

[dreemernj]

/. probably has proper code, and the beta browser probably has a bug. As was said by DavidWide, file a bug report. That's what beta is about, finding the bugs to fix them in the final release.

Re:Slashdot new layout crashes my Opera 9

[nbritton]

Yes... I can comfirm this problem... Opera 9 beta2 on FreeBSD 6.1

Re:Slashdot new layout crashes my Opera 9

[residieu]

I initially had this problem but upgrade to the latest weekly (build 8455) and it now works fine. (The page is still ugly, but its ugly on all browsers)

Re:Slashdot new layout crashes my Opera 9

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera 9 beta 2 crashes consistently now, turned off javascript, turned off plugins seems to stop the crashing.

Re:Slashdot new layout crashes my Opera 9

[JaniHalinen]

Same here (FC5 + Opera 9b), but after I disabled Javascript for /. it stopped crashing.

New /. ... I could learn to like this ...

[WoodieR]

yes I believe I could learn to like this ...

Re:And now it's time... fooor.... completely OT po

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree...I also find it annoying that the title of post and the score aren't next to each other anymore. Now I have to look across the page...

Re:And now it's time... fooor.... completely OT po

[suv4x4]

Not to mention the score is now on the far right from the title of comments.

I also hated that, it makes no sense. On my wide screen, by the time my eye reaches the right side of the monitor I've forgotten which post I'm looking for. Short memory, or wide monitor? Or crappy skin? voting for the latter.

The colors are way too contrasting, the sans-serif fonts make formatting less distinctive (like italics) and it looks really wrong.

Damn it :P

On the other hand, maybe I'll do some work now :)

MY EYES!!!

[brian0918]

THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!!

We need a way to choose CSS styles.

[Dash_Rantic]

Seriously guys, maybe the old CSS needed to be changed, but this is a hell of a lot worse. It's hard on my eyes, hard to read, way too generic, and looks like it was based on Windows Vista. Come on. Can we the readers of Slashdot PLEASE have a way to switch back to the old CSS if we choose? I've been quite a longtime reader of Slashdot, but if this new design is kept with no way to switch, I'm going to quit reading Slashdot. I don't really know where I'd get my tech news from, since Slashdot is the best, but this design is absolutely horrible and makes my eyes ache (quite literally). Nastily clashing colors too... Yuck, did the guy who made this ever take a design class? OK I'm ranting now. But before I got modded down, ket me please as for some way to switch back! -Dash

Re:We need a way to choose CSS styles.

[kusanagi374]

Actually, there is a plugin for firefox that lets you change CSS styles on the fly... if you can get the address of the old css (or even the omg ponies one), you can change back and forth. You could try googling around or maybe a good soul will find the correct links for us?

Re:We need a way to choose CSS styles.

[Anonymous Coward]

I cannot fucking believe I never saved the old CSS files. I knew I was going to hate the new style, what the hell was I thinking?? Please, somebody tell me they have it...

Re:We need a way to choose CSS styles.

[Dash_Rantic]

Yeah, that would be nice. Thing is though, I should be the one who is forced to go through finding their old CSS and geting a plugin for only one of the browsers that I use just so I'm able to read the damned site without a headache... They make a problem, they need to fix it. Thanks for the idea for the plugin though, I'll try and check that out if this CSS isn't fixed soon.

Re:We need a way to choose CSS styles.

[Chapium]

I actually think the design is quite nice. I dont quite make the connection to vista other than the pretty rounded corners which Slashdot sported in its previous incarnation. The text is a bit hard to read. I think it might be a tad too small. I'm also used to the Subject lines of the comments being quite a bit bigger.

Re:We need a way to choose CSS styles.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been quite a longtime reader of Slashdot, but if this new design is kept with no way to switch, I'm going to quit reading Slashdot.

A) No you won't.
B) Stop being a tool.

Bug Reports

[newell98]

Where can I file bug reports on the new layout? I've already found a few easy to fix CSS problems.

I'd love to be able to hide the left-hand nav bar.

[astrosmash]

It seems to take up more screen real estate than the old one, and I never use the damn thing anyway.

I like the design, overall, so I figure it's time to pick nits. And what's with using Tahoma? Not as bad as Verdana, but still, ugh. What's next, .aspx pages served from IIS?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Mostly blank column

[machine of god]

How about letting the comments extend to the left edge of the screen. To be honest, I don't come here for the crap articles. Slashdot's real content is the comments.

The way it is now looks like a xanga page 'customized' by someone with maybe some aesthetic ability. It looks ok, but it's still generic as hell. The front page is pretty good, but the format doesn't support area where the real value of the site is.

Re:Mostly blank column

[Cantus]

How about letting the comments extend to the left edge of the screen.

That is not something the new design has introduced. It has always been like that.

Re:Seriously... Re:1st

[grub]

Nice way to use a non-story to introduce the new layout. ;)

They kicked it in at 9:30 my time (32 minutes ago). I was editing a journal entry, reloaded and thought I was having an acid flashback for a sec.

another "please consider advertising with us" list

[fermion]

This list reads like the top cars of the year list in an automotive magazine. Enough catagories so that each major mass market automobile manufactur gets one winner for each major automobile they produce. These lists are more like an effort to get more advertising from the manufacturers than editorial content.

So apple gets two listing for the ipod. Both Intel and AMD gets the top two spots. Hey, I wonder who makes chips for most computers? Googles gets a number of spots all the way through, and even Amazon, someone who probably advertises a lot but has done almost nothing interesting, gets an honorable mention for it's lame search facility. Throw in an award for every printer, every camera, and a few nods to popular technology, and can we say suck up.

I know that people like to complain about stealth ads on /. In this case, the complaints are warrented. This has no editorial content, and simply is a way for pcworld to prove to advertisers that pcworld cares about them.

Should have posted a separate story

[Anonymous Coward]

When the css change-over went into effect, it should have been a separate story; "New format in effect!"

Now the poor 100 best product story will be filled with NOTHING but comments on Slashdot itself.

Re:Should have posted a separate story

[Marcion]

"When the css change-over went into effect, it should have been a separate story; "New format in effect!"
Now the poor 100 best product story will be filled with NOTHING but comments on Slashdot itself."

True but are not all stories "filled with NOTHING but comments on Slashdot itself."?

Its the hermeneutical circle, as the Slashdot community we get there in the end.

I for one welcome our new CSS overlords.

Re:Should have posted a separate story

[illuminatedwax]

At least it's somewhat fitting. The new design could be considered one of the 25 worst tech products.

Re:Should have posted a separate story

[SpectreHiro]

Actually, there is a separate story, but it was just submitted so we won't see it until sometime tuesday. I'm going to reserve my review until they post the dupe story wednesday night.

Apple List entries

[Marcion]

The Boot camp is at number 10, while the Mac Mini is down at 35??? Surely they are the wrong way around?

Surely the trip-proof magnetic AC adapter is far more important than Boot camp?

Apple got Windows working on Intel hardware, Big Whoppee, Windows on Intel, like fifty billion other people haven't already?

-----------------------
If this is nuts then excuse me but I having a hyper-fit with this new Slashdot layout. I'll just go lie down in dark room for a bit.

Re:Apple List entries

[ScaryFroMan]

First, you're thinking of the MacBook/Pro cord, not the mini, and second, isn't effective dual boot on common and popular hardware somewhat more important than a little power cord that most reviews didn't like all that much?

Re:Apple List entries

[jacobw]

Here's a little exercise. Imagine an article on the history of the computing business 50 years from now. Complete the following sentence in the most likely way: "Among Apple's moves in 2006, the one that had the single biggest effect on their market share and the landscape of the computer business in general was...."

A. "...making their power cords magnetic."
B."...fitting a computer into a cute little box."
C. "...making it possible for a user with no technical knowledge to boot Windows on a Mac, thereby making Apple the only company in the world to sell computers that, out-of-the-box, were compatible with both the world's most popular operating system and the world's best-reviewed one."

Re:Apple List entries

[Scudsucker]

Apple got Windows working on Intel hardware, Big Whoppee, Windows on Intel, like fifty billion other people haven't already?

No, they haven't, since this isn't like throwing Windows on a Dell or Thinkpad. Apple's Intel based machines use EFI, not a BIOS, and Windows XP does not support EFI, thus making it a non-trivial task.

Re:Apple List entries

[Marcion]

I never said the cord was on the mini.

Re:Apple List entries

[Marcion]

Well for the amount of times I have sent a laptop flying, and considering some of the other junk on the list. I would say the magnetic power cord does it for me.

Not to mention that we have two Mac minis in our office now, as compared to 0 mac boxes before.

. "...making it possible for a user with no technical knowledge to boot Windows on a Mac, thereby making Apple the only company in the world to sell computers that, out-of-the-box, were compatible with both the world's most popular operating system and the world's best-reviewed one."

"world's best-reviewed one." - well Hitler got rave reviews at the time, so that kind of argument is pointless IMHO. Most reviews are just rehashed press releases, or worse, paid for placements.

Users should simply not be encouraged to have "no technical knowledge", that is how we all got into this Windows mess to start with. Cars should not be designed for people with "no driving knowledge" nor should planes be designed for people with "no flying knowledge". There comes a point where people just have to RTFM.

'Dual-booting' is a panacea, you can only actually use one of them at once so why do you want two? Indecisiveness is not a cure-all for technical ignorance.

It burns us! Freezes us!

[Anonymous Coward]

Filthy little CSS writerses hurts poor Smeagol. We can't reads the tiny Arial, we can't, noo. It's not very nice at all!

Nope

[mcc]

The font is AWFUL. Maybe it looks good on a Linux box or on a Mac, but the subjective readability of Slashdot's text on IE6 has just dropped by 50%.

Looks terrible on the macintosh as well. You get some kind of unholy resonance with the built-in text antialiasing that just slaughters readability. It's just one big blur, like the page is all antialiasing and no text.

The only good thing about this is that I'm going to get about an hour of my time back every day I avoid reading Slashdot.

I'm thinking maybe I should finally get around to trying out Digg. If slashdot really wants to be Digg so hard as to steal their layout, I might as well just go ahead and read that instead.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'm thinking maybe I should finally get around to trying out Digg. If slashdot really wants to be Digg so hard as to steal their layout, I might as well just go ahead and read that instead."

The content at Digg is pathetically bad and the comments barely rival what I would expect from a five year old. Enjoy!

Re:Nope

[Space cowboy]

Looks terrible on the macintosh as well. You get some kind of unholy resonance with the built-in text antialiasing that just slaughters readability. It's just one big blur, like the page is all antialiasing and no text.

Sounds like something wrong with your Mac / display / graphics card. It looks gorgeous on my G5/23" cinema displays/Ati X800 setup ...

Simon

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit, they really ARE ripping off slashdot!

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

The content at Digg is pathetically bad and the comments barely rival what I would expect from a five year old.

So it's just like Slashdot.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

> > If slashdot really wants to be Digg so hard as to steal their layout, I might as well just go ahead and read that instead."
> The content at Digg is pathetically bad and the comments barely rival what I would expect from a five year old. Enjoy

Yeah, but can you blame 'em? Digg's comment pages are unreadable. Nobody with anything to say is going to spend time burning their eyes out trying to follow a discussion on Digg.

Prediction: If Slashdot's comment pages remain at this new-CSS-layout level of unreadability, the quality of its comments will descend to approach that of Digg's, too.

(And yes, for those of you who think I can't read small fonts: I run at 1600x1200, and use 6x8 and 7x12 bitmapped fonts. I have multiple 80-column-wide windows on my screen right now. And every one of 'em is more readable than Slashdot. Hell, fark.com is more readable than Slashdot.)

Re:Nope

[Mistshadow2k4]

And yet, in all my time at Digg, I've never once seen a "First Post!" or a whole post of racial slurs -- i.e., trolling. Funny how all you snobs say that Diggers are so immature but fail to mention that /. has far more trolls.

Re:Things change, get used to it.

[DAldredge]

Funny. A person supporting a site that sells vinyl records telling others to get used to change...

Re:And now it's time... fooor.... completely OT po

[Basehart]

Waaaaah, Waaaaah, I want it back like it was this morning. Waaaaah :-)

Re:If it were an open poll... OMG PONIES!

[texaport]

I wish someone would have let all of us know there would be a change ....
Next time I wish you would let someone in my department know ....
You know, you could at least have let ME know about it....
And why was all this changed during the weekend....
The change broke my password during login....
Who's in charge of all this stuff....
Is techsupport available now...

In Soviet Russia...

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, the 100 best tech products check out YOU!

Re:And now it's time... fooor.... completely OT po

[Frogbert]

I like it, I can learn to love it but for gods sake please bring back the "Click here to read more" link.

The old Slashdot look...

[Dr. Zowie]

... which took a lot less time to load despite being 100% as functional.

Re:And now it's time... fooor.... completely OT po

[wolrahnaes]

Don't maximize your browser window when reading large amounts of text, such as Slashdot. It's hard to read extremely wide pages anyways.

I have a Dell 2005FPW, and I keep my firefox window taking up 2/3 the screen width, with an IRC window right below it and IMs taking up the rest. Works great for multitasking. I never did this up until a few months ago, when I had a Powerbook for about 2 months and got hooked on the not maximizing thing.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Things change, get used to it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny. DTardredge talking about other people when he is the biggest fucking hypocrit on this site!

I have no idea which Craigslist you are using.

[sulli]

I have used it very successfully to buy, sell, and give away stuff. Maybe you're in a different city from me (San Francisco)? I have had very few problems with craigslist.

Slashdot, youve done good for yourself

[IAMTHEMEDIA]

Very nice, it no longer looks like its 1997 in here!

Re:And now it's time... fooor.... completely OT po

[Tibor the Hun]

That's right. The "read more" and "score" are way
too far off to the right.
They wouldn't even pass your lameness filter.
Please bring them back.

It's like confirming moving a file into a trash bin. Takes much too much time to get it done.

Speaking of Macs...

[jeremiahstanley]

Wow, the new layout doesn't look like trash in FF on my Mac. Kudos!

Re:And now it's time... fooor.... completely OT po

[Nicolay77]

I expected the super ultra duper new Expandable Comment Tree !!!

Where is it ???

(and I know about greasemonkey, but this should be here for all browsers to use)

WOw!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The new SlashDot layout is a lot better!!! Modern.. simple.. fast... keep it!!

Re:WOw!!!

[Dash_Rantic]

Why does everyone say "oh it looks so modern!!!"? Sorry guys, if this is modern, I want my 1990's back. Or at least some way to switch back to the old style...

Re:WOw!!!

[GaBTGurl]

Does mental retardation run in your family or are you just a fucking troll ?!

Thank you!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd just like to thank the parent poster for getting the quote right rather than phrasing it as "The goggles, they do nothing!" like so many uninformed people do (likely in between their instances of parrotting "Luke, I am your father").

Really, that's all. I've got nothing to add.

Re:Thank you!

[brian0918]

I've seen that episode too many times not to have that quote tattooed into my brain.

Flickr

[BandwidthHog]

Flickr is an amazing piece of technology. Not only is it a remarkable demonstration of the much-maligned (in these parts) Web 2.0, but it has without a doubt made me a better photographer. (Well, that and doing enough overtime to afford a dSLR.) And any technology that can improve your skills rather than just compensate for your shortcomings is all-fucking-right in my book.

Re:Flickr

[mgblst]

How has Flickr made you a better photograper?? I thought it just hosted your pictures?

And the new format sucks. (In lite mode, anyway)

Re:Flickr

[utnapistim]

How has Flickr made you a better photograper?? I thought it just hosted your pictures?

For me it was the critique. With minimal fuss you can make sure to get constructive (or not) criticism to your photos and suggestions for improvement.

Re:Flickr

[BandwidthHog]

Like the other dude said, you can get a lot of helpful feedback from photographers of varying ability, all the way from some chick snapping pictures of her cats with a camera phone to professionals doing National Geographic quality landscapes. That and the fact that just as Slashdot’s moderation system has a tendency to shape people’s comments to conform with the groupthink, Flickr’s system tends to encourage posting of photographs that conform to the accepted rules of effective composition. In other words, just as Slashbots often say what other Slashbots wanna hear, us FlickrWhores tend to try and shoot stuff that gets a “wow” from our fellow FlickrWhores.

Re:And now it's time... fooor.... completely OT po

[T.Hobbes]

I like the new look overall, but I have a couple complaints:

- The 'Sections' header in the sidebar should not open up a (kludgy) preferences window. People only change that kind of thing once in a blue moon; there's no need for it to be on the front page. I'd much rather it be a link (like the 'Vendors' header), pointing to the search page or something
- The open/collapsed state of the lefthand sidebar seems to be preseved between browser sessions, but only on the front page: Once you enter a story, it defaults to the open state for all items in the sidebar
- The comment score should not be on the extreme right
- The [blink] tag is used far too sparingly

Re:And now it's time... fooor.... completely OT po

[Anonymous Coward]

what the hell, it is news for nerds, stuff that matters, always will be. What is this nouts and volts crap?

#24 is a Slashdot sidebar item

[brianlmoon]

FYI, #24 on the list, dealnews.com can be added as a Slashdot sidebar item.

</shameless plug>

Re:New layout? By: Cmdr Taco

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, damn. We failed to consider headache sufferers in our analysis of the design. Had we known, we would have been more sensative to specialized needs of the infirm.

We are pleased to offer this workaround to our headache-suffering viewers:

• increase/set the resolution of your monitor to 1024 x 768;
• decrease the refresh rate to 60Hz.

Re:And now it's time... fooor.... completely OT po

[Anonymous Coward]

sorry, i was a idiot ):^0 ... 'News for nerds' is on the front page.

Re:And now it's time... fooor.... completely OT po

[Anonymous Coward]

Erm, could it be that this is hardware.slashdot.org? Just maybe?

Slashdot 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

What? How am I going to differentiate my geeky self if Slashdot looks like the websites the cool kids visit?

OT: Fix the damn CSS

[belg4mit]

Fix Light Mode! Simple design + low bandwidth mode should be an exact replacement.
People using Light Mode *were not* eagerly awaiting the latest eye candy redesign.

Unnecessary white space

[Nefarious Wheel]

User's comments page -- clicking on your name -- sections show serially, instead of properly placed on the page (say that with your mouth full of marbles!). Huge amounts of white space that don't belong.

Best of 2006?

[KermodeBear]

The year 2006 isn't even over yet. Geeze. A little premature, don't you think?

Re:Best of 2006?

[SeaFox]

I agree. It's bad enough we have to put up with "Best _______ of [Year]" every December, but in June? Is this the start of a biannual trend for everything?

I know one that won't be making the list

[Lord Kano]

The new Slashdot layout.

Maybe I've been here too long and am just used to the old layout, but I really don't like this new one. Would it be asking too much to request an option in preferences to return the previous layout.

LK

Breaks Opera Browser

[pallmall1]

This new Slashdot style also wrecks the Opera 9 (beta 2) browser on linux. The start page loads OK, but when you click on "read more", the page loads and then immediately locks up. You can load a page using plain text, but you can't find any controls. After the page is loaded in plain text, you can change back to the Opera "Author mode" and get the new style. I know Opera 9 is still beta, but the old Slashdot style worked great with it. Slashdot is too much of a pain to use now, and that's a shame.

Re:Breaks Opera Browser

[Solosoft]

I can confirm this issue with Opera Beta2 on Windows XP Media Center Edition (Windows XP Pro SP2). The page loads for about a second then uses 100% untill you close opera. I don't know if it's slashdot or opera all I know is it's terribly inconvienent.

Re:Breaks Opera Browser

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a bug in the beta version of Opera 9.

I'll bet

[Freaky Spook]

They kicked it in at 9:30 my time (32 minutes ago). I was editing a journal entry, reloaded and thought I was having an acid flashback for a sec.

I'll bet your glad your not driving a bus right now!

These people are great.

[houghi]

They now already know what the next 6 months will be like. Or is 2006 already over and did I miss it?

Re:These people are great.

[chawly]

You missed it.

CSS: Too much space between lines!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hate it, hate it, hate it. Must have option to changes styles, else its off to Dig for me.

Pricing a bit off

[Anonymous Coward]

They list a 4800 X2 at $1001. I just ordered one from Newegg for $632, hopefully it'll come by Monday. Can't wait. A real bargin at that price.

Re:And now it's time... fooor.... completely OT po

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I'm finally gonna create an account if they provide the option to select ANYTHING besides this horrible, hard on the eyes, broken, and just plain UNREADABLE layout.

Why the fuck did Taco choose this lame excuse for a layout as the winner?

Breaks the Opera browser

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck the new layout. It locks up the Opera 9 browser tighter than a gnat's chuff. I know Opera 9 is a beta, but the old style worked great with it. That's why I'm posting anonymously.

I like it

[joel8x]

I've been waiting a long time for Slashdot to upgrade the look, and I welcome the new font (I always disable serif fonts in my browser anyway). The coolest part is the Apple section - go check it out, its very nice!

And to the current mods who are modding down all the comments on the change, maybe you should all chill out and realize that this is a big topic for the loyal Slashdotters and a bit more interesting that the story these comments fall under.

Re:New layout? By: Cmdr Taco

[Anonymous Coward]

So you are the one who modded me down
So how is reducing my resolution and my refresh rate going to reduce the brightness of the site?
Now as soon as I can figure out how to see the buttons on the preferences I will turn off the ability to see Zonk postings so he can't mod me down again.

Best new design rollout strategy evar!

[Hartree]

It's truly amazing. Zonk's on duty, and everybody's bitching about something other than him!

Conroe whops that POS in the ground

[Anonymous Coward]

Conroe whops that POS in the ground. You wasted $632 when you could have had a cheaper, much cooler, much faster Conroe. SUCKER !!!

vid cards / bitching

[fufubag]

How could the 7600 GT beat the 7900 GTX? This makes absolutely no sense. '100 best products of the Year'? I don't have either of these cards (mine is 6800gt) but I was under the impression that the 7900gtx was at this point nvidias flagship, am I wrong?

BTW, the discussion for the new layout is in the lady's room boys.

Re:vid cards / bitching

[mkw87]

It's called performance for your money. Performance for dollar, the 7600GT spanks the socks of the 7900GTX. Unless of course, money is no object to you.

Re:vid cards / bitching

[fufubag]

I had that figured out. But then the list should be called The 100 best values in tech products, not "The 100 BEST tech products"

Re:vid cards / bitching

[mkw87]

Point taken, however I agree and disagree. The fact that it is affordable makes it, at least in my opinion, better.

I don't like the font

[JesusPancakes]

I'll be honest - I'm not happy with the default font.

There are two types of fonts. Serif fonts have little squigglies coming off the sides of the letters (like Times New Roman, Courier) whereas sans serif fonts are smooth-edged and end sharply. When you read text, serif fonts tend to slow your eye down whereas sans serif fonts cause your eye to move quickly and smoothly across the text.

When I read comments, I want to be slowed down so I absorb. I want titles to be smooth and continuous while text-heavy content is serif and slows me down to pay attention to detail - I'm getting a headache because my eye moves faster than I want it to across the new font.

I know that smooth fonts are all Web 2.0 and shiny-looking, but they're not pleasant to read a lot of text with.

Re:I don't like the font

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm getting a headache because my eye moves faster than I want it to across the new font.

Hear me now and do me later.
If you can't stop your eyes, then you are a girly reader.
Slashdot is going to
PUMP!
YOU UP!

Bad 100 Best List! Here's a better one.

[Bushido Hacks]

I believe that this list is BIAS. This list is not rated on raiting but by who gave PCWorld the most money. Since I, Bushido Hacks, is a broke college student here is a top 10 list.

1. YouTube.com - Who the hell put in in 9th place?
2. Google Earth - Google Maps: good. Google Earth: f***ing awesome!
3. eBay - Great spot to browse for technology products. Though the virtual mall is great, it is a good idea to browse the real mall to compare prices and features first.
4. Sony Viao Notebooks smaller than 12 inches - Any notebook with a screen larger than 15 inches is NOT a notebook. It is a freaking TV. Computers are suppost to be small as well as fast.
5. Any MP3 player not by Apple or Dell - As much as technological convergence is a convience, I prefere to buy things for what they were used for. An MP3 player is for playing MUSIC, not videos, not "podcasts", not these overated technology that turns everything into TV or as I call it "The Virus". Televison is stupid!
6. Texas Instruments graphing calculators with the USB port - FINALLY, TI gets with the program.
7. Sony PSP - Who cares what the critics say! This would be the greatest gaming platform since the Sega Game Gear if only Sony didn't keep trying to kill itself like a 15 year-old emo kid. Why does Sony keep trying to kill itself? By the time the PS3 gets here, Nintendo and XBox will be on to the next thing. Why does Sony keep procrastinating? The people who create the Sony products want what they are making as badly as their consumers, but their Marketing (marketing, the sworn enemy of any computer sciencist!) keeps pushing it back saying things like "people are going to hack into it" or "DRM". These Japanese guys need to grow a little backbone and stop letting these salarymen with hidden agendas kill their company.
8. Yahoo! Answers - I must get up to 20 answers sometimes with the questions I ask. Some times I ask questions to test peoples knowledge or to express their opinions about things.
9. Holograms - yet another suppressed technology. You know what would be a great application for these things: automobile decals. You've seen these cars with the hydrolics at car shows with teh airbrush. Why not airbrush a hologram onto a car. One of those 3D projected holograms with a half-naked valkyre warrior woman with a battle axe or sword riding horse with wings that breaths fire! Something worthy of Heavy Metal magazine and Popular Science! 10. The new Slashdot layout - Do I really need to explain why?

Re:And now it's time... fooor.... completely OT po

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. And why not add some fins to reduce air resistance. Also, I think these racing stripes look pretty sharp...

But seriously, Move everything back to the right side. Especially the "Read More", now i have to drag my mouse all the way across the page!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

OMG! WTF?!

[GaBTGurl]

What the heck is with this new layout!? It is **SO** BRIGHT, and the text is teeny tiny, and YUCK I HATE IT!!!!!!!!!

Re:And now it's time... fooor.... completely OT po

[Anonymous Coward]

Ditto on the location of the comment score. I always read the comment title, then the score, and then the comment (if it's a 4 or 5). The new location makes this task more time consuming.

Either I'm trying to be efficient or maybe I'm just lazy. I guess I haven't created an account yet (after reading for 5+ years), so it must be the laziness...

Lets not forget . . .

[Dissectional]

. . . the /. CSS redesign. I like it.

I'd place it at or around 57. Perhaps 59.

Runs fine and fast on Nokia 770's Opera

[Werrismys]

Looks better than before, and speed is fine. No crash either. The Nokia browser in 770 is based on some old Opera version.

Re:I'd love to be able to hide the left-hand nav b

[typhoonius]

I like the design, overall, so I figure it's time to pick nits. And what's with using Tahoma? Not as bad as Verdana, but still, ugh. What's next, .aspx pages served from IIS?

I find it bizarre too that Slashdot is now using the same font as the Windows UI. I thought hating Microsoft was the one thing we all had in common here.

Why not a trifecta of Bitstream Vera (for Linux users), Lucida Grande (for Mac users), and Lucida Sans (for Windows users)? They all look similar at this size and, as far as I know, none of them was explicitly designed to replace MS Sans Serif.

Even if we must use a Microsoft font, Verdana is a better choice since a) it's basically identical to Tahoma except with less claustrophobic spacing and b) it's free-as-in-beer-ly available to everybody as it's part of Microsoft's core web fonts.

#1 & #2

[skiflyer]

What gets the Intel Core DUO put at #1 & the AMD 64 X2 and #2?

Seriously? I have an AMD 64X2 system and I love it, so I'm just curious... all the research I did pre-purchase certainly put the AMD way ahead of Intel... true 64bit, shared memory space, better performance, and definitely better performance per purchase dollar as well as performance per electricity dollar.

Is this all the hub-bub I've been hearing about the last couple weeks about the brand new not yet out Intels that're supposed to be better yet?

Re:#1 & #2

[teg]

The Core Duo is the laptop chip released earlier this year, not Intel's next architecture released later this year. It's also used in some desktops, e.g. the iMac and Mac mini. A bit early for a 2006 list, isn't it? I'd expect the next Intel laptop chip to be better than the Core Duo, and the X2 might be better or worse than the Core 2 Duo - we don't know that yet.

Re:#1 & #2

[skiflyer]

Gee, I'm really glad they all switched away from the confusing notations like P3-667 or PM-2Ghz, this shit is much clearer.

Me, nerd?

[tsa]

I use about ten percent of the things listed. Does that make me a nerd?

Looks more like a "Oooo shiny" list ot me

[Sycraft-fu]

They don't seem to be rating the items on there by any useful metric, such as how innovative they are, how much money they've made, how useful they are, it just seem to be a list of what's big buzz. Case in point, the #1 entry the Conroe. Now I fully believe Intel's demos, I believe the Conroe is going to be a great processor. However at this point, it's not a great product because it isn't for sale. It's a tech demo. You show me real systems with real COnroes, then we can start talking about where it should rank on the product list. Until then, it's just hype.

Same thing with boot camp. It's a "Shiny toy" kind of thing. From a technical standpoint, it's nothing special. It emulates old BIOS to allow XP to boot (not hard) and Apple supplies the hardware drivers necessary. Great, nothing any other OEM doesn't do. From an impact standpoint it seems pretty low too. Basically all the Mac users I know (and I know quite a few) are going to put XP on there to noodle around with, but they aren't buying a Mac to run XP, they are buying a Mac to run MacOS. This is no big deal. I also haven't run in to any real converts at this point because of it. After all, if your intent is to run Windows, you'll probably do it on a PC that costs less.

I'm sure it will generate a few crossover sales, but nothing much. All in all, it's likely to be a nice feature for Mac users that need to run a couple apps not on MacOS, but nothing that's going to have any ral big impact.

However the concept of Windows native on a Mac is one that lots of people seem to have trouble wrapping their minds around. Thus it gets a big wow factor from many, despite the fact that it's really pretty minor. The fact that Apple is switching to Intel is the major tech story, not that because they have you can also boot XP.

To me, this looks like most of these lists where it's just a collection of whatever happened to catch the writers' eyes rather than anything based on any kind of useful metric.

Re:Bad 100 Best List! Here's a better one.

[EotB]

10. -- Well judging by most of the posts I've read so far, yes.

For the "Not 2007 best awards"?

[Mr. Sane]

I totally agree -- it seems like it is too much screen scanning is required to determine the mod points -- and (oddly) I feel I have to move my pointer a lot more to find where I am.

I am a big fan of updating web sites and products to keep them refreshed, but my opinion is that these changes seem to have missed some important UI guidelines...

Oh well, I have faith that I'll evolve to accommodate the changes :)

Is it 2007 already ?

[MarkTina]

Any chance people could wait until 2006 is finished before anouncing the best products of the year ? Or has everyone else been issued a crystal ball ? :-(

Well, let's face it...

[dimension6]

...the members of the General Public (A) are selfish by nature and (B) aren't salespeople.

Re:Well, let's face it...

[Anonymous Coward]

the members of the General Public

You say this as if you're not one of these people. How are you any different? (cite your sources -- put up or shut up.)

Re:Well, let's face it...

[dimension6]

I never mentioned any personal participation or lack of participation in the general public. I merely provided a couple (admittedly unencompassing) points to explain the parent's situation. Capitalism is built around the very fact that altruism is not commonplace (read The Modern Firm by John Roberts for insight as to why markets and companies exist or read this economic analysis of altruism). And, I think it's fairly safe to say that most individuals who sell items on Craigslist are not salespeople by trade (if you can provide some evidence proving otherwise, I will retract that statement). Incedentally, I am a licensed salesperson (real estate), although my license is inactive and that is not my profession.

I've used both eBay and Craigslist extensively (eBay more), both buying and selling (about 50%/50%). Because both those sites reach such a large audience, the range of users is really too great to summarize in any detail. The user groups get more homogenous when dealing in specific items, but even then there is a wide variety. One point I'd like to make is that in at least 600 transactions, I have not seen any bona fide altruism. I have never had any buyer pay more than was necessary and have never had a seller send me an item that was vastly better than what was shown in the auction (although every now and then they'll include something small that wasn't mentioned). If sellers included something small extra, it was often a way to vye for repeat business (and hence, they were probably more experienced salespeople). People do things for a reason (even the Dadaists ran into trouble there).

In judging on the amount of time it takes to list an item on eBay as compared to Craigslist, it's clear that Craigslist takes far less time to list an item on. It's also free to list most items/services. Because they have very little to lose, it's easy for anyone to throw a five-word ad up on Craigslist. Therefore it's reasonable to assume that because they have so little to lose, people will try to "reach" for the best deal they can. Craigslist does fill a need, though, for those of us who don't read newspapers at all....

Re:Bad 100 Best List! Here's a better one.

[__aabwba5127]

I agree with your whole list except for the mp3 player part. My video IPOD allows me to watch my music videos while i'm on the bus /plane / subway, which is pretty cool considering I have a TERABYTE of music concerts & video clips. Way cool.

Zee PCworld! They know nuthink!

[Gli7ch]

"58. ATI Radeon X1900 XTX Graphics Board ($600) Cards based on ATI's X1900 XTX chip and on nVidia's GeForce 7900 GTX chip (#92) compete for the fastest gaming performance. We think the ATI board delivers slightly better image quality, hence its higher ranking. "

WTF? "Better image quality"? It's a graphics card you dolt! Not a camera! It deserves a higher ranking because it's faster sure, but you can not be telling me you can tell the difference in a still frame image. They probably tested on different monitors >.<

Skipping to the 7900GTX:

"92. nVidia GeForce 7900 GTX GPU ($549) Graphics cards that use this power-hungry processor are so expensive that you'll need to sign on for a second paper route to pay for it. But the payoff is excellent gaming performance."

Except the 1900XTX is more expenisve... You knew that right?

*sigh* bring on the troll mods

Re:Zee PCworld! They know nuthink!

[Hanners1979]

"WTF? "Better image quality"? It's a graphics card you dolt! Not a camera! It deserves a higher ranking because it's faster sure, but you can not be telling me you can tell the difference in a still frame image. They probably tested on different monitors >.

Errm... The Radeon X1900 XTX supports anti-aliasing when floating-point based HDR rendering is used, and has an option to use a more comprehensive (rotationally invariant) anisotropic filtering technique. So yes, you can tell the difference in some game titles.

get yourself a userstylesheet, fixes it for me

[lixlpixel]

i added this to my userstylesheet (available in every decent browser) for slashdot.org

fixes (at least the frontpage) for me...

/* move the "read more" and "n comments" boxes to the left */
div#contents div.storylinks ul li
{
float: left;
padding: 0 0.2em;
}

/* put the "read more" link where it belongs */
div#contents div.storylinks ul li.more
{
border-right: 0;
float: left;
padding: 0 1.5em 0 0.2em;
background: url(//images.slashdot.org/read-more.gif) no-repeat 95% 50%;
}

/* normalize the link */
div#contents div.storylinks ul li.more a
{
background-image: none;
padding: 0;
}

/* get rid of the spaaaaaaces and make it a nic(er) font */
body
{
line-height: 1.25em;
font-family: Georgia, Times, serif;
}

Re:get yourself a userstylesheet, fixes it for me

[Anonymous Coward]

OK - I give up. Which browser actually implements user style sheets?

Re:get yourself a userstylesheet, fixes it for me

[Jjeff1]

Thanks, that's about a 1000 times better. My biggest gripe is the new design follows the windows trend of more graphics and less information. Remember when we all had 14 inch monitors (12.5 inch viewable) at 640x480?? These days that size screen would mostly be filled with toolbars and icons.

Re:get yourself a userstylesheet, fixes it for me

[Bogtha]

Pretty much all the major browsers support user stylesheets.

• Internet Explorer: Tools | Internet Options | Accessibility | Format documents using my style sheet
• Opera: Tools | Preferences | Advanced | Content | Style Options
• Konqueror: Settings | Configure Konqueror | Stylesheets
• Safari: Preferences | Advanced | Style Sheet
• Firefox: Edit ~/.mozilla/firefox/*/chrome/userContent.css

Firefox is pretty awful in this respect, but it gets a lot better if you install the Stylish extension. Opera makes it easy to switch between stylesheets. Konqueror has a nice, user-friendly interface for building simple user stylesheets.

Re:get yourself a userstylesheet, fixes it for me

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah - thanks very much.

Figures that I use Mozilla so wasn't aware of it. Looks like I'll be installing Sylish.. I see there's a decent Slashdot style posted on userstyles.org too :

http://userstyles.org/style/show/266

This new style has got to go... the front page *looks* cool, but the usability is awful, especially once you get past the front page to read the comments.

Re:get yourself a userstylesheet, fixes it for me

[Anonymous Coward]

I do remember those days. As in not today. We dont have 14" monitors - even on laptops - anymore.

Humans like reading text in relativly narrow columns. See your local paper. So there is thus a lot of extra space. Toolbars be better then nothing at all.

Maybe they should consider a calendar next year?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... lots of the products were'nt this year or even close. Google search? Come on that's not even the right millenium let alone year.

...first half of 2006

[Major Mayhem]

Not to be a troll (yet), but aren't such articles supposed to come at the end of the time period that they specify? As far as I know, the year is only half-over, unless one of the products of 2006 was a time machine, and that surely would've made the list.

...Or would it have? Perhaps it flopped during beta-testing by creating a lapse in the space/time continuum and disappeared in it. Who knows?

Hmm, is anyone else getting the feeling of déjà vu?

Now, to be a troll about the new /. layout, since everyone else is. I think it's rather well done; it looks nice and spiffy on my Firefox. Kudos to the contest winner for a job well done.

Re:Bad 100 Best List! Here's a better one.

[Bushido Hacks]

What did I say about adding video playing features to devices that are not meant to play video. I've stated quite clearly, they become televisions. Technology is about more that a 3 inch TV in your pocket, in fact technology SHOULDN'T be about 3 inch TVs that fit into your pocket. Television is the opiate of the masses where as technology is the anphetamine of the masses.
The iPod is NOT COOL by any standards of technology except for the fact that it uses a NAND gate flash memory storage system. However, there is a flaw with storing to a flash memory and that is compacity. After a certain point, flash memory become faulty and you have to go back to using a Hard Disk storage system due to file corruption.

Why not Gmail?

[slashdotmsiriv]

Any reasons why gmail does not make the list? From all the s/w products of the last 2 years gmail has dramatically changed the way i organize my email. It is a great improvement over previous paleolithic approaches. Every time i check my old hotmail and yahoo account I cannot help but wonder how i manages to live without gmail all these years and then i burst in laughs for all those milions that still use hotmail and keep it in the top of the list of web mail apps.

Works fine in Opera

[Troglodyt]

I'm running Opera 8.51, and everything is working smoothly.
Perhaps you should try browsing with a NON-BETA BROWSER before you start complaining.

Re:Your sig

[Anonymous Coward]

is a 404

No Skype

[dapprman]

I know Vonage is listed, but I can not beleive Skype is not. I suppose they may have decided that as they had one down, they'ed ignore the other.

Re:No Skype

[Anonymous Coward]

Vonage = advertising out the bum. Skype = no ad $$$, no top products listing.

It's freaking June of 2006 so there can't be a best of 2006 yet, not to mention less than 10% of the products on the list debuted in 2006. This article is so much BS, there should be a "this is a promotional article" thingy in the top corner. This is a "shit you should be using in 2006, 'cause we say so list".

Re:Bad 100 Best List! Here's a better one.

[iainl]

You did indeed mention it, but then you went on to suggest that the PSP is a good thing, so you clearly aren't that serious.

Being less sarcastic, Apple had a device that had a colour screen (because they look nice and they wanted to display album art, and more generally photos), tonnes of storage space and a reasonable amount of processor power.

Just as with the PSP, why _not_ allow it to play videos? You don't have to use the functionality, and deliberately removing it wouldn't save enough money to bother.

You're so right, right is just not right

[alveraan]

Same thing here. I really like the new layout except the very disturbing fact that I have to look at the far right corner of the browser window to see the (for me) most important thing about the comment: it's score. Please please change this.

What happened to honouring user font selection?

[gidds]

I usually set the default font in Firefox and make sure that web pages aren't allowed to change it.

Until now I've never needed to do this. Most sites honour my choice of fonts, and the few that don't still look bearable.

UNTIL NOW! The new /. Light look won't use my own fonts, and looks crap, forcing me to override it (and every other site too). NOT good for a site that's supposed to be about portability, user choice, etc...

The new CSS breaks old stories

[k1980pc]

I don't know if this was mentioned earlier but the new CSS somehow is messing up with earlier stories.
Can someone click on the 25 worst products link on top of this page and let me know if they are able to see all the scores completely. I tried with couple of other stories and all of them seems to have their scores(or part of them) chopped off.

Wow lot's of complaints

[Heikell]

Haven't you guys noticed that whenever something changes from Old to New alot of people complain? This happens everywhere but guys honestly get over it, change is sometimes good.

Not much of a year, was it?

[blair1q]

Craigslist ads have been around for several years. And ain't all that.

OMG

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe AMD didn't make the top of the list! Fanboys unite, we have some excessive flaming to do!!!! We can't let PC World get away with such evil things as putting those awful companies such as Intel at the top of their Product list!!

2006?

[LoudMusic]

Has anyone else noticed that 2006 isn't over yet? This list is worthless. In a month there will be new technology out that could be on the list changing all the numbers.

Even the reviewers are getting ahead of themselves. Is there just nothing going on worth talking about?

Slashdot CSS solution

[nephridium]

Until they let us customize the look through our profiles we can fix it client side via Greasemonkey. So, after checking here I got this:

// ==UserScript==
// @name SlashdotFix
// @namespace http://www.slashdot.org/
// @description Enhances Slashdot's viewing experience ;)
// @include http://slashdot.org/*
// ==/UserScript==

function addGlobalStyle(css) {
var head, style;
head = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
if (!head) { return; }
style = document.createElement('style');
style.type = 'text/css';
style.innerHTML = css;
head.appendChild(style);
}

addGlobalStyle(" body #wrapper { background-color: #bbb; } div div.generalbody form { color: #011; background-color: #bbb; background: #bbb; } ");

This significantly reduces the amount of death rays piercing my eyes in the current version. Obviously this is a very crude version with lots of room for improvement. Maybe you can post your own addGlobalStyle functions and we can have a nice Slashdot CSS-fix contest here ;)

Re:Bad 100 Best List! Here's a better one.

[Bushido Hacks]

"Clearly not serious?!" Again, I buy an MP3 player to play music. I buy a PSP to play video games. I buy a telephone to place and recieve phone calls. I buy a computer to write programs, to comunicate with other programmers, and to post my opinions to stories on Slashdot. I do NOT buy these devices to watch VIDEOS or TELEVISION CLIPS!

That is what TELEVISION is for! I don't care if it is not cool! And I defintely don't care if it is not trendy. Trendy and cool do not replace utility. Trendy and cool do not pay the bills. Convergence has its limits!

the list is biased

[mapkinase]

Yahoo maps but no Google maps?

Yahoo mail but no Google mail?

Improper Headline

[tm1rules]

Should have been "Teh 100 Best Tech Products of 2006"

Re:Bad 100 Best List! Here's a better one.

[GaryPatterson]

1 - YouTube - great toy, especially if you love jerky cameras that shake so much you think you're having an epileptic fit. Maybe one day I'll see a video there that I can make out or watch.
2 - Google Earth is great. What's it good for though, other than a toy? Maybe a learning aid, but...?
3 - eBay - great site, lots of good stuff, deserves to be in the top 10 of 2000 though, not 2006.
4 - Why Sony? Overpriced hardware is nice and all, but it's nothing special.
5 - Someone who rebels against Apple! How original! Don't like video - don't use it! It's not something you're paying extra for.
7 - PSP? Nice idea, nice execution, don't see them being used on the street anymore. Looks like a flash in the pan.
8 - Haven't! Been! To! Yahoo! In! Years! I! Will! Check! This! Out! Tonight!
9 - Airbrush a hologram? Seriously? Why not make one using magic instead? You know, if we're going to drop all pretense of science.
10 - The new layout's nice enough. I'd like to play with the CSS sometime to tweak it a bit.

Here Here!

[Rastan_B2]

On a similar vein, the only thing I would add, is that when skimming the front page its harder to read the number of comments as well (e.g. 123 of 228). If they modify these two minor issues I for one, will be much happier :)

Credibility of the list

[SgtChaireBourne]

They have two products listed: a keyboard (#54) and the Xbox 360 (#89).

Inclusion of #89 strikes me as completely bizarre.

Other consoles have had more of an impact as far as leaps in graphic quality or choice of games. Other consoles have been in high demand around the world, not just in the US or the 51st State, Sweden. Other consoles despite high demand have kept up supply. Other consoles have been manufactured without self-immolating power supplies or recalls that blamed components not actually part of the fire hazard.

So its presence on the list is to me a mystery and certainly shoots down most of the credibility of the list in my eyes.

Re:Bad 100 Best List! Here's a better one.

[chawly]

Pragmatism, in today's commercial world, is a sin. Wait for August - new list - everything can do everything. Wait till you see the additional functions on the new refrigerators.

Re:Bad 100 Best List! Here's a better one.

[iainl]

Yes, but Sony are specifically trying to sell the PSP on its media capabilities - displaying pictures, playing music and video files, surfing the net. I recently bought one myself for its ability to play OutRun 2006, so I'm not knocking the ability to play games as well, but that wasn't the point of their last ad campaign.

As I said before, the real reason for Convergence devices is that everything has a fairly general-purpose CPU in it these days. Video playback is so close to free with all the other features they have designed it for, that they would be mad to deliberately exclude it.

Next time there's an iPod topic (and lets face it, that won't take long round /.) see how many people continue to criticise it for not having a radio, not having a line-in to record with, or other random, non-essential features that similar devices have as it is.

Re:Bad 100 Best List! Here's a better one.

[Bushido Hacks]

But will it still keep my beer cold and my porksteaks frozen? That is the importance.
Aside from that you make a valid point.

Re:Bad 100 Best List! Here's a better one.

[chawly]

Yes and yes - be reassured - those 'fridges will all run Linux.