Welcome to the new LWN.net! [LWN.net]

After nearly four years, LWN has finally upgraded its site code. Nobody can accuse us of having rushed into anything... The following is a discussion of what we've done, in a FAQ format.

What's different about the new site?

We have changed a lot of things:

A new appearance, making light use of style sheets. Note that you can now change the appearance throught the customization options.
A more dynamic front page. Much happens in the Linux community every day; it made little sense for the LWN front page to change only once every week. The weekly edition remains at the core of our content, but the front page now looks more like the old daily page.
Stable article IDs for everything. The old situation, where the daily updates page would be reset every week, is no more. Once something is posted on LWN, it will always be available under the same URL.
Users can create accounts on LWN and use them to customize the site.
Comment posting is now supported.
The security alert and press release databases are better integrated with the rest of the site.

We have many other features in mind, but that's what is implemented at this point.

Are you dropping the Weekly Edition?

No. The LWN.net Weekly Edition is the heart of LWN, and it is not being dropped or scaled back in any way. The first Weekly Edition published with the new site will come out on June 5.

What if I don't like comment posting?

A number of our readers have told us over the years that they prefer an LWN that does not include reader comments. Others, instead, have asked for the ability to post comments. After seeing what has happened with comment posting on some other sites, we have been reluctant to add that feature here. In the end, however, we have a great deal of faith in our readers, and we believe that they can bring some great writing to the site.

If, however, you really do not wish to see reader comments, simply create and log into an LWN account. In the "MyAccount" screen you will find an option to turn off comments; select that option, and LWN will look as it always has.

What about headlines?

The LWN.net headline feeds (in RSS, text, and HTML formats) work as always, though the RSS feed has been upgraded to RSS 1.0. We will be adding more, special-purpose RSS feeds in the future.

How was the new site developed?

The new LWN site was developed in-house by Jonathan Corbet and Dave Whitinger. It is based on the following tools:

The Python language, of course!
The Quixote web application framework sits at the core of the site. Quixote is a nice, simple, and powerful framework which is a joy to program with.
Underneath it all is the PostgreSQL relational database manager.

What happened to all the old content?

The old LWN.net site is still available as old.lwn.net. The new site has been set up such that almost no old links should break - let us know when you find an exception. Some parts of our content will remain on the old site for a while until we are able to migrate them over.

Does this mean your financial problems are solved?

Unfortunately, no. We are hoping that the upgraded site will be helpful toward solving our financial problems in the near future, but it is still not clear that we will be able to continue operations for as long as may be necessary. Please consider donating to LWN or running an advertisement to help keep us on the net.

What about privacy?

We actually have a real privacy statement at last. We welcome comments on it.

What's missing?

The biggest gap at the moment is that we do not have a search engine working properly with the new site; we're working on it. There are also some issues with rendering in certain old, proprietary browsers; we're working on that too. Doubtless our readers will find other issues - please do let us know when that happens.

to post comments

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted May 31, 2002 20:40 UTC (Fri) by dr_lha (guest, #86) [Link] (8 responses)

First post? ;-)

A couple of comments:

1. The site seems alot slower than before

2. Not sure I like the thin black border around everything. Thought I'd popped up the page in Mozilla Editor by mistake at first!

3. The comments need too much HTML formatting to make them look good

4. Good luck! As someone who's contributed a small amount of money to the running of LWN I hope that this brings you more traffic, advertising and profit.

Long live LWN!

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted May 31, 2002 20:53 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (5 responses)

First post indeed :)

We have a lot of issues to work out with the new site, obviously. Performance turned out to be a rather more urgent one than I had expected. A bit of Apache tweaking appears to have resolved the worst of it, as far as I can tell. The site is now running fairly high traffic and is reasonably responsive.

On comments and HTML: it's on my list to recognize a "plain text" comment and format it appropriately. Should have been done by now, I agree.

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted May 31, 2002 21:39 UTC (Fri) by dr_lha (guest, #86) [Link] (2 responses)

Speeds seems much better now thanks! And yes formatting for plain text will be much appreciated. Great work so far!

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted Jun 1, 2002 16:10 UTC (Sat) by TheOneKEA (guest, #615) [Link] (1 responses)

This site is gorgeous. Much nicer than the original - and being able to add comments is a major plus.

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted Jun 1, 2002 16:12 UTC (Sat) by TheOneKEA (guest, #615) [Link]

Uggh - posted too soon. The style sheet for the very front page has bugs in it - the top article text runs into the ad box. This is with Mozilla 6.2.

Formatting

Posted Jun 2, 2002 9:52 UTC (Sun) by ikm (guest, #493) [Link]

Why not to provide an option to use LaTeX style formatting, i.e. one or more empty lines separate paragraph, everything within the paragraph is freely reformatted by the engine? I personally think this would solve many problems...

Structured Text?

Posted Jun 3, 2002 10:13 UTC (Mon) by iamamardeep (guest, #970) [Link]

what about using structured text for posting comments

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted May 31, 2002 21:23 UTC (Fri) by sanguinearcher (guest, #160) [Link]

Article titles should be bold. The color red isn't easily read for text. Article title bar crossed through your text box. In summary, the old site was easier to read quickly. The new one needs work to service the reader better.

Font sizes

Posted Jun 1, 2002 0:25 UTC (Sat) by flepore (guest, #296) [Link]

I agree with the others about the too small fonts. You specify specific font sizes in your code. This assumes that you know what size is most comfortable for viewing your pages by ALL of your visitors. It's better to leave that font attribute empty or use only relative sizes.

Text Ads aren't working

Posted May 31, 2002 20:49 UTC (Fri) by roskegg (subscriber, #105) [Link] (4 responses)

I just went through the process to set up a text ad, but at the step where it asks me to set up an account for my "campaign", I submitted my desired account name, and desired password, and the page that came back to me was blank. Mind you, I hadn't given out any credit card information at that stage. But I was looking forward to running my little text ad. Could someone help?

Text Ads aren't working

Posted May 31, 2002 21:36 UTC (Fri) by jimwelch (guest, #178) [Link] (3 responses)

My browser(IE 5.5) at work hides the text ads with the story bars.

Text Ads aren't working

Posted Jun 1, 2002 2:00 UTC (Sat) by erat (guest, #21) [Link]

I've noticed text ad issues with IE6 as well. Mozilla 1.0rc3 has no problems with anything on this site, though. Quite odd.

Text Ads aren't working

Posted Jun 1, 2002 4:52 UTC (Sat) by walt-sjc (guest, #394) [Link] (1 responses)

Let me get this straight: you are reading Linux Weekly News with IE???

Some peoples parent's kids... :-)

Text Ads aren't working

Posted Jun 5, 2002 16:26 UTC (Wed) by jimwelch (guest, #178) [Link]

Of Course, the Suits at work demand it. At home I use Linux since RH 2.0

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted May 31, 2002 20:52 UTC (Fri) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (1 responses)

Congratulations Dave and Jonathan! I hope these extra features will make LWN pay for itself.

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted May 31, 2002 22:07 UTC (Fri) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

Ok for the real questions:

What is the site written in? Are you using standardized software or was it written from scratch?
What is the server(s) running on hardware wise?
What is the server(s) running software side?

How have you had to tweak things (apache, XXXsql, etc) to better handle the loads?

Can people help out on the code? Can people help out through donations (blatant question to plug donations page.)

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted May 31, 2002 20:56 UTC (Fri) by rzm (guest, #116) [Link] (3 responses)

When you make so big changes I will ask you for something I was long thinking about - to add consecutive daily news below, NOT ABOVE the previous ones. This way it would not be necessary to search for the last item read before reload. Scrolling down would be enough to see the new items.

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted May 31, 2002 21:30 UTC (Fri) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link] (2 responses)

I disagree-- I really like having the newest news right at the top. lwn.net/daily is a site I visit extremely regularly. When I go into "procrastination mode" (which I do a lot), I'll cruise by the site... and at an instant glance once the site loads I can see if there is anything new.

Please keep the newest stuff at the top!

(When you procrastinate, you want to be able to do it efficiently.

-Rob

Where should new news go?

Posted Jun 2, 2002 2:03 UTC (Sun) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

I concur with Rob's opinion; by all means keep the new items at the top of the page.

On a related topic, with Konq from KDE2, note that the text entry boxes are overly wide, even at 800x600. Boxes I have to scroll the browser window to see irk me only slightly less than ones which I have to scroll (themselves) while entering text in -- a problem you thankfully don't have.

But, to reiterate my email comment, I think you *really* ought to look into a Usenet feed, with a bidirectional gateway to the website -- I *hate* web interfaces; there are too many of them, and the problem is long since already solved: slrn does it quite nicely. Or, y'know, whatever other newsreader someone likes...

I'd be more than pleased to submit design suggestions thereon, if you like..

Oh, and requiring us to do the formatting is ok by me... but it'd be nice if you mentioned what HTML is acceptable...
-- jra

adding newest at the end or at the beginning, automatic quoting

Posted Jun 2, 2002 17:27 UTC (Sun) by rzm (guest, #116) [Link]

> I disagree-- I really like having the newest news right at the top.
> lwn.net/daily is a site I visit extremely regularly. When I go into
> "procrastination mode" (which I do a lot), I'll cruise by the site...
> and at an instant glance once the site loads I can see if there is
> anything new.

There may be a way to satisfy both your and my aproach. If we have to use accounts (a small girl in a progressive kidergarten asks: do we _have_ to do whaterver we want also today?) the direction of the news-items list could be a configurable option.

One more thing for TODO list: I would like to be able to answer with the previous writer's text included automatically.

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted May 31, 2002 21:11 UTC (Fri) by gjw (guest, #130) [Link] (5 responses)

Sorry for my criticism, but

1. I don't like the large headlines and

2. IMO the green and orange doesn't fit together.

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted May 31, 2002 21:27 UTC (Fri) by jeffphil (guest, #168) [Link]

Another vote against the large headlines.

I don't mind the green and orange, though.

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted May 31, 2002 21:37 UTC (Fri) by jeffphil (guest, #168) [Link]

Just noticed if you go into "My Account" link and "Preferences" you can change the color preferences.

Unfortunately, you can't change the text size.

The new layout is "interesting".

Posted May 31, 2002 22:31 UTC (Fri) by kune (guest, #172) [Link] (2 responses)

"interesting" must of course be read as bad. 1. All the boxes with rules -- Typographers and Designers would call them prisons. 2. You are using to many different fonts (bold, serif, sans-serif, many sizes). Reducing the differences would improve the design. Tufte explains in Visual Explanations the principle of the minimal recognizable difference. 3. The color contrast between the agressive green and the agressive blue for used and unused links is to strong. 4. You should think about going back to Times Roman, I loved that on your old web site. I recommend to read Bringhurst "The Elements of Typographic Style", it's a great intellectual pleasure. After previewing my comment: 5. Why you don't preserve my paragraphs?

The new layout is "interesting".

Posted Jun 1, 2002 9:00 UTC (Sat) by copsewood (subscriber, #199) [Link]

You can preserve your own paragraphs if you use <p> tags wherever you want a break, e.g. like here:

New paragraph.

Link-color settings

Posted Jun 7, 2002 19:08 UTC (Fri) by Max.Hyre (subscriber, #1054) [Link]

I'll go further than kune on the colors: There's an option on the (read: at least on my) browser to set visited and unvisited colors. It'd be nice to see them in effect. Setting that and stuff like font sizes (and maybe fonts, even) feels like you want to work in TeX. TeX is great, but HTML is about getting the info to the reader, rather than about beautiful design. It's wonderful when beautiful design is there, but as soon as it interferes with legibility or navigability (on, I claim, any browser), it's time to ditch the chrome.

Sorry, I bet you put a lot of work into the appearance, but if there's a way to tell the browser: ``If your user has set a preference for this, skip setting the site's version'' would probably be more comfortable for most people.

That said, note that it all comes under niceties. This is certainly gonna continue as my top site, and I really appreciate the hard work you all do to get out such high-quality news. (It certainly beats the two ``real-world'' newspapers offered around here.)

Finally, thanks for the Visa donation method. You've got my dough, and can expect more next year. :-)

Links to the archive are broken.

Posted May 31, 2002 21:23 UTC (Fri) by goeran (subscriber, #151) [Link]

My bookmark to http://lwn.net/archives/ doesn't work any more. That might not be too serious. But the same URL is available on the traditional pages in the left margin. There, it is a bit unfortunate if it isn't working, I'd say.

Font sizes! (Text too small.)

Posted May 31, 2002 21:28 UTC (Fri) by rknop (guest, #66) [Link] (4 responses)

My first reaction was that, oh no, they've gone and made the fonts smaller.

Now, granted, with Galeon, it's very easy to click the little expander button a couple of times and make the thing readable again, but....

It seems to me that a basic precept of web design should be that the users have chosen their default browser font size because that is the font size that they find readable and in which they want to see the bulk of the "text" that they see.

Given this, I'd love to see LWN made the standard text of the articles be the standard font size, not something resized.

(The headers are too big too; I liked the old LWN Daily smaller headers, but that's not something I really care enough about to comment on, even though I just did, so hmmm.)

-Rob

Font sizes! (Text too small.)

Posted May 31, 2002 21:59 UTC (Fri) by bluecobra (guest, #195) [Link] (3 responses)

I agree with this, FYI: I'm using Mozilla on a 1600x1200 display

Font sizes! (Text too small.)

Posted May 31, 2002 22:34 UTC (Fri) by smeg4brains (guest, #207) [Link] (2 responses)

I don't know about mozilla, but at least with Galeon, you can specify a minimum font size as well as a default font size.

I never even noticed, nor have I ever gotten to see the "font sizes that are too small".

--
Nothing is as simple as it seems at first
Or as hopeless as it seems in the middle
Or as finished as it seems in the end

Font sizes! (Text too small.)

Posted Jun 5, 2002 18:22 UTC (Wed) by dbreakey (guest, #1381) [Link] (1 responses)

Actually, Mozilla (and, by extension, Galeon, although I haven't actually figured out how to set it in Galeon yet) has a nifty little option that specifies a minimum font size. Once I enabled that, I've never had a problem (Mozilla requires that all fonts be at least that minimum size, even if the stylesheet or something else specifies otherwise). Unfortunately, it's not a user-visible preferences item (you have to manually edit the .js file for now), but it works on all recent versions of Mozilla I've messed with (Linux, Win32, 0.98+).

Check the Mozilla Organization for more info, or more specifically here. It's under UI look-and-feel issues. Even though this page covers Unix-specific issues, that particular fix seems to work under Windows as well. Good luck finding the config file, though, esp. under NT/2000.

Font sizes! (Text too small.)

Posted Jun 5, 2002 18:27 UTC (Wed) by dbreakey (guest, #1381) [Link]

Nevermind. I'd forgotten about the ability to set the minimum font size in Galeon (actually, I haven't needed to bother yet), and it seems that Mozilla (at least 1.0rc3--don't know about earlier ones) has added that option to the Preferences/Appearance/Fonts tab.

My goof.

I wonder how they evaluated which web software to use...

Posted May 31, 2002 21:37 UTC (Fri) by gbailey (subscriber, #58) [Link] (2 responses)

This is the first I'd really heard of "Quixote". I wonder how it compares to phpnuke, slash, etc., etc....?

I wonder how they evaluated which web software to use...

Posted May 31, 2002 21:58 UTC (Fri) by nas (subscriber, #17) [Link]

I don't know a lot about phpnuke and slash but it looks like they are
both meant for building portal sites.  Quixote is a general tool for
building dynamic web sites (e.g. more similar to PHP than to phpnuke).
I suspect Quixote was chosen because Python was prefered over Perl and
PHP.  However, in the Python world there are lots of web frameworks
available (e.g. Zope, WebWare, Twisted, SkunkWeb).  I can't say why
Quixote was chosen over them.  I'm biased anyhow. :-)

  Neil Schemenauer
  MEMS Exchange

I wonder how they evaluated which web software to use...

Posted May 31, 2002 22:54 UTC (Fri) by mdavis (guest, #241) [Link]

I've been using Quixote for some small sites and find it to be quite flexible and easy to use, assuming you know Python of course. With regard to the speed issue raised in the first posting, could you give any details on your setup and performance you're experiencing? Thanks

Text Ads obscured when using IE

Posted May 31, 2002 21:48 UTC (Fri) by dr_lha (guest, #86) [Link] (1 responses)

Another poster said this but I'll repeat it on the top level. The page doesn't work right with MSIE. Especially the Ad box - the salmon pink title bar runs over the ad partially obscuring it (pretty bad if you want to make money off advertising). Alot of people probably surf this site from work so don't all have the option to use Mozilla.

On Konqueror as well!

Posted Jun 1, 2002 1:02 UTC (Sat) by fdesloges (guest, #291) [Link]

The ads are overwriden as well on Konqueror 2.2.2

And I don't like the large title either.
Actually, up to now I was considering LWN a model of good taste through simplicity and efficiency.

Please don't destroy this!

A "old syle" option would be cool in the customization, which brings the look as close as possible to the old one.

Please don't let the packaging ruin the content, because as for the content, LWN is simply the best!

Thanks!

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted May 31, 2002 21:48 UTC (Fri) by mickwd (guest, #182) [Link]

Good luck with the new format.

I hope you keep up the (very high) quality of what you produce, and I hope the comments prove an interesting and informative addition to the site.

Fonts

Posted May 31, 2002 22:13 UTC (Fri) by copsewood (subscriber, #199) [Link]

I wish you all the best with the new layout and welcome the comments feature. It will take me a few days to take it all in.

Problems ?

Using Mozilla the default font is large enough for me but not easily readable. I prefer a serif font for blocks of text. I guess I will be able to change this somewhere when I work out how.

Will you be publishing the Python source code ?

outlines

Posted May 31, 2002 22:27 UTC (Fri) by gerdts (guest, #226) [Link] (1 responses)

Could you add a preference to get rid of the outlines around the different sections?

outlines

Posted Jun 1, 2002 2:23 UTC (Sat) by gerdts (guest, #226) [Link]

To follow up to my own post, I did find the option.

Lynx

Posted May 31, 2002 22:47 UTC (Fri) by Taerom (guest, #77) [Link] (2 responses)

Nice to see that LWN's new layout looks good in Lynx (I spend most of my time in text mode :). It's a shame the same can't be said for the login system -- it says it can't set the login cookie, but it doesn't even attempt to do so according to Lynx. But anyway - keep up the great work, guys! I've looked forward to LWN each and every week for the last few years, and I've never been disappointed. Great job!

Lynx - and links

Posted Jun 1, 2002 23:11 UTC (Sat) by estel (guest, #732) [Link]

Alas, the same problem occurs in links 2.0pre5. *shudders at having to load mozilla to post this* Also in links graphical, the links and page title on each page are pretty awful. Big black blocks lie to the right of the text. Ugh. But everything is readable, so it's okay.

Can't set cookie

Posted Jun 6, 2002 13:40 UTC (Thu) by anth (guest, #1509) [Link]

I got this error on IE6 (its not my computer) when I set up my account, but it worked when I logged in later.

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted May 31, 2002 22:58 UTC (Fri) by Johbe (guest, #249) [Link]

Neat thing. I did my emacsian thingy with the website aswell, monocrome kinda with some other colors aswell. I like it alot. :-)

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted May 31, 2002 23:00 UTC (Fri) by Johbe (guest, #249) [Link] (1 responses)

Each article should be marked to what section it belongs, that would help. Johbe

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted May 31, 2002 23:03 UTC (Fri) by Johbe (guest, #249) [Link]

Erm, nevermind, its just me beeing halfblind. You should make it abit more visible, or at least customizable with color or something. I'd like it yellow with my background black for example. Makes it easier for me to see. :-)

Some responses

Posted May 31, 2002 23:22 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

Thanks, everybody, for pounding on the sites and for all of your comments. I expected a lot more griping than I've heard so far :)

In response to a few specific things:

MSIE troubles: I really wanted to try out the site with MSIE before switching over, but couldn't find one that actually worked. We don't have much of that stuff around here. We'll fix the problem somehow. About 1/4 of our readers use MSIE, we do want them to be happy.
How did we have to tweak things? The main thing I had to do was to turn off KeepAlives in Apache. If our server had more memory we could probably afford to have a lot of httpds sitting around waiting; as it is, the performance problems vanished as soon as I turned that feature off.
Releasing our code: it's on the list, but not anytime real soon. I want to get a lot of things into better shape first. Eventually we will put it out there.
Large headlines: we've heard you. They will shrink some when I put in the next code update, and eventually become configurable.
Boxes with rules: when the update goes in, you'll be able to turn them off. (And yes, I've read Tufte, and even seen him speak, back about 1984. Smart guy.)
Logging in with lynx: didn't think to try that. We'll figure it out.

Again, thanks.

please, bring back the old format

Posted May 31, 2002 23:54 UTC (Fri) by gonkgonk (guest, #281) [Link] (1 responses)

The old format was perfect. Please do not force me to use this new format. I beg you. First nitpick: The headlines and text are HUGE, and I have my fonts set very small. I think my head might explode if I have to read LWN like this. Second nitpick: Oh my god, the humanity!!! Bring back the old format!! That said, keep up the good work. I love LWN. robert

please, bring back the old format -- AMEN!

Posted Jun 1, 2002 1:28 UTC (Sat) by DeletedUser333 ((unknown), #333) [Link]

Sorry to say this but yes, please bring back the old format...

Please please why do you have to look like Slashdot? That is the precise reason that I like(d) LWN. It's actually focussed around Content not around Headlines.

Accounts are absolutely horrible as well. I had to sign up just to post this comment, ugh.

P.S. And if you're going to stay with this horrible new format why does everything have to have a border around it??

P.P.S. And please add [less than]P[greater than] tags automatically to text in this text box, I don't want to have to type my own HTML.

CSS px units bad for fonts

Posted Jun 1, 2002 0:32 UTC (Sat) by DeletedUser302 ((unknown), #302) [Link] (4 responses)

Please do not use the px unit to force font size on users. It ignores the font size preferences that users have set.

Also it would be more user friendly if the session management worked without cookies.

CSS px units bad for fonts

Posted Jun 1, 2002 2:54 UTC (Sat) by DeletedUser366 ((unknown), #366) [Link] (3 responses)

Is that what it is? Geez, I've noticed that there are a large number of sites these days with text that I can not get Konqueror to increase in size. For those of us over forty, the inevitable presbyopia means that these sites are a #$(&^! nuisance to read. And I'm to the point that unless the content is important to me, I give the site a miss cuz it's too goddamn painful to read.

CSS px units bad for fonts

Posted Jun 1, 2002 4:43 UTC (Sat) by walt-sjc (guest, #394) [Link] (1 responses)

Install Galeon. It supports a minimum font size.

CSS px units bad for fonts

Posted Jun 1, 2002 12:50 UTC (Sat) by DeletedUser549 ((unknown), #549) [Link]

Konqueror also has that since months already. And I think the zoom feature also works correctly for fonts with 'px' size units in KDE 3.0, at least I've never seen the zoom problem since then.

CSS px units bad for fonts

Posted Jun 5, 2002 19:46 UTC (Wed) by dbreakey (guest, #1381) [Link]

Use a recent build of Mozilla. It also supports setting a minimum font size (although in older releases, it's a pain to configure this option; current releases have put the config option in the GUI finally).

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted Jun 1, 2002 1:24 UTC (Sat) by croftj (guest, #332) [Link]

Hi Yall, What a shock. It looks great. Please put the links on the side again! I used lwn.net as my first stop to my favorite sites (yours included naturaly)

Horrible pixel based web design...

Posted Jun 1, 2002 1:30 UTC (Sat) by morhippo (guest, #334) [Link] (2 responses)

Morons. On my high-res display 20px font size is too small to be read without xmag. Please DON'T SET A _PIXEL_ FONTSIZE !!! You are making STUPID assumptions. I have a 22" screen at 1600x1280 and I won't buy a 17" for LWN.NET.

Horrible pixel based web design...

Posted Jun 1, 2002 1:45 UTC (Sat) by erat (guest, #21) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm sure constructive criticism would be appreciated much more if it was presented in a friendlier manner.

Horrible pixel based web design...

Posted Jun 1, 2002 20:27 UTC (Sat) by morhippo (guest, #334) [Link]

You are right, I was tired at the time. But seriously, pixel font sizes are so 1995....

Comments on the new design

Posted Jun 1, 2002 3:00 UTC (Sat) by azz (subscriber, #371) [Link] (3 responses)

Like many of the posters here, I liked the old design much better; LWN used to be a pleasure to read. My major complaint is that you're now forcing the text font to Verdana, whereas it used to be the browser's default font (typically Times or some other serif font, and easily overridable by the user if they have a preference); I find it much easier to read large blocks of text when they are set in a serif font. I also feel the black borders make the layout seem a little cluttered.

More simply, I can't quite see why the design changed---the old design was simple, readable and distinctive, and should be easily reproducable using CSS. Please bring it back, or at least give those of us who preferred a readable LWN to a flashy one the option...

Substantial response / follow-up?

Posted Jun 12, 2002 21:29 UTC (Wed) by sphealey (guest, #1028) [Link] (2 responses)

Some fairly substantial comments, suggestions, and even (dare I say it?) criticisms have been posted here in the last 10 days. I hope that the LWN staff has collected these and will reply to them in its usual thoughtful, thorough manner. It is always difficult to deal with when one provides requested feedback and then hears nothing after that.

sPh

Substantial response / follow-up?

Posted Jun 20, 2002 21:24 UTC (Thu) by sphealey (guest, #1028) [Link]

Guess not, eh? Oh well. Still one of the best sites on the web.

sPh

Substantial response / follow-up?

Posted Jun 21, 2002 20:05 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

We have tried to supply our feedback in the form of an improved site - many, many things have changed as a result of the comments we have received, and many other comments are represented on our ToDo list. We are paying attention...

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted Jun 1, 2002 5:48 UTC (Sat) by DeletedUser416 ((unknown), #416) [Link] (2 responses)

Well, it's a bit of a change, but I think it has potential. Quite nice, really, but it'll take some getting used to.

One thing I miss already, though, the links to various other resources you used to have on the left-hand side of the daily page. Do you think you can bring that back? Or at least create a "Resoures" link up at the top? I used to use the old daily page as a sort of a home page - I could get to almost anywhere I needed to get from there.

External links

Posted Jun 1, 2002 23:11 UTC (Sat) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

The links will come back, though probably not to the front page. It's just a matter of finding the real estate for them...

External Links

Posted Jun 5, 2002 16:32 UTC (Wed) by jimwelch (guest, #178) [Link]

Yes, I did used the links alot. Maybe when user configuration is up. This can be a left side option.

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted Jun 1, 2002 6:17 UTC (Sat) by mdekkers (guest, #85) [Link]

Hi,

Love the new site, well done! Two things I miss though: the links, and maybe you could let us set up our own personal links as well?

Congratulations!

Posted Jun 1, 2002 8:26 UTC (Sat) by Dom2 (guest, #458) [Link] (1 responses)

It's a nice change and I hope it goes well for you. Seeing as everybody else is pointing out what doesn't work for them, I'll throw my oar in too:

The black lines are bad; they're the first thing I had to turn off. The site looks lovely without them though. I would suggest turning them off by default.
Any chance of having a time based expiry on the front page instead of a number? I used to like the way that the daily page didn't expire until next week, so that I could come back after a long weekend (4 days off in the UK right now!) and still find everything there.

Many thanks for your time and keep up the good work,
-Dom

P.S. Don't forget to strip out stylesheet info from comments. :-)

BUG - titles

Posted Jun 1, 2002 8:29 UTC (Sat) by Dom2 (guest, #458) [Link]

There appears to be a full stop immediately after all the comment titles. Is this intentional? It should probably only appear when it matches r'\w$'.
-Dom

Usability problems

Posted Jun 1, 2002 11:34 UTC (Sat) by mce (guest, #522) [Link] (1 responses)

I have been an weekly visitor almost since day 1 of LWN and an almost daily one ever since LWN/Daily was created, so I was willing to loose some time making the site look usable again for me (I really hate all those extra colours, lines, andwhatnot). However...

The link color color settings don't work. (minor)
The new site is unbearably slow. (serious)
On every visit I have to log in again, making the slowness compliant even more important. This is a killer. I used to quickly check LWN Daily several times a day, e.g. while waiting for a compilation to finish, and coming from various computers (geographical locations even). There is no way that I will keep doing this if I need to log in each time in order to get my preferences back and then to discover that there is nothing interesting to be read.
I myself am not suffering from the font problems because my NS4 config is set to "always use my fonts" and my Mozilla config has a minimal font size set. But if what I read in the other comments is true there are some serious usabilities issues there as well.

All in all: I've always liked LWN a lot, but if the usability doesn't get back to the previous level, I'll soon say Sayonara. I hate to have to say it, but that really is how things stand as far as I am concerned.

Usability problems

Posted Jun 5, 2002 13:28 UTC (Wed) by sphealey (guest, #1028) [Link]

# On every visit I have to log in again, making the slowness compliant even more important. This is a killer. I used to quickly check LWN Daily several times a day, e.g. while waiting for a compilation to finish, and coming from various computers (geographical locations even). There is no way that I will keep doing this if I need to log in each time in order to get my preferences back and then to discover that there is nothing interesting to be read.

Agreed - this is a killer.

Also, a bit more testing under Microsoft Internet Exploder would be helpful. Although I understand the desire to be "Microsoft-free", the sad fact is that IE dominates corporate desktops today. In the interests of evangalisim better IE support would be a good thing.

sPh

Well done.

Posted Jun 1, 2002 13:44 UTC (Sat) by DeletedUser564 ((unknown), #564) [Link] (1 responses)

Well done guys, I know you've had a lot of hassles recently - good work! Ignore the people bitching, they'll get used to it ;)

Not really. (was: Well done.)

Posted Jun 1, 2002 23:02 UTC (Sat) by DeletedUser718 ((unknown), #718) [Link]

> Ignore the people bitching, they'll get used to it ;)

That might be true if the problems with the new site did not include readability. If the font is too small, it does not matter how good the content is.

The way to fix it is not via some account preference. Few new readers will take the time to create an account at a site that is even merely uncomfortable to read, just so they can figure out if they can somehow make the site readable.

In all honesty, I imagine a significant number of current LWN readers will stop frequenting the site if it does not respect the choices made in the user's browser preferences.

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted Jun 1, 2002 14:42 UTC (Sat) by waltech (guest, #90) [Link] (1 responses)

Using mostly win95/netscape 4.08 800 X 600 for webbing. I'm very glad to see: 1. The page fit is compatible. 2. Neither the right border nor text runs underneath the right side window scroll bar! Horraah ! 3. Page displays nicely with my pc java and java script setting off. 4. You are not using too much in the way of IE's blue tone for links- which is impossible to see on this netscape. Far too many Linux sites reduce themselves to using MS's IE default blue, rendering viewing with Win netscape 4 useless. 5. the light grey on headliners provides 'some' contrast. 6. Your pages still download and render FAST ! 7. Regular new submittals thoughout the day, as always, which is why I visit frequently. If you ever start collecting and posting, say, twice a day, I will be gone. What I miss: 1. the center screen text and columnn width of the old pages. (almost 'newpaper column' style, which makes reading easier and faster) 2. the nice yellow to contrast the text.. it prevented too much of my screen from being 'white' and the light emitted washing out my eyeballs. What was omitted: 1. In the newaccount screen, tell us you require cookies at the top area. 2. Tell us if any area should use java or java script- preferrably you won't use any. I generally keep cookies off, so I always have to switch on those few sites where I will use them. Same for java/script. I'm not sure that with your new style I would read your pages 5,6,7 times as day as I used to. 3. I don't see a "Letter to the Editor" I really enjoyed reading those letters from those who took the time to address issues. I feel that simply being able to place comments about articles is a different horse. Internal discussion on your part may be needed to define how that should occur. Perhaps you could accept letters addressed to the editor, or perhaps selected 'comments' to be placed in an 'editor' section. I'm not overly interested in reading 'comments' that may consist in the hundreds, threaded, and looking like a general discussion list. I want selected material. Your judgment selecting news and commentary has always been very good. After writing, I previewed and was dismayed that all the careful editing I did to make this comment readable had gone away, and there is now simply a mass of text. Perhaps it's industry norm to prevent long comments, or I need to be more concise ?? W.........

welcome: preferences

Posted Jun 1, 2002 15:04 UTC (Sat) by waltech (guest, #90) [Link]

Need a "reset to defaults" in preferences.

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted Jun 1, 2002 16:35 UTC (Sat) by bferrell (subscriber, #624) [Link]

I may be wrong, but I seem to recall a list of other sites that carried Linux news as well as yours. Will that be re-instated?

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted Jun 1, 2002 16:39 UTC (Sat) by bferrell (subscriber, #624) [Link]

I've also noticed a problem on the frontpage. The text overlaps the sponsored link box. I'm using netscape 6.2.3

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted Jun 1, 2002 16:46 UTC (Sat) by achitnis (guest, #20) [Link]

Some comments:

Change is good ;-)
Just for the record, since Jon has already promised to look into it: PDA friendly version please!
Re:ads. On the ads page (the one that describes it) it may make sense to put in a wee bit more stats/demographics. For example, I'd be interested in a country breakup (I am from India, so this would matter). You know, a simple webalizer output with pre-cached DNS output.
Windows XP comes with a great option - click here to make everything look like the old Windows. For the resistance-to-change gripes, this may be a useful option. After all, it's all about theming, so let's have a "Classic LWN" them ;-)

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted Jun 1, 2002 18:13 UTC (Sat) by lilo (guest, #661) [Link]

Congratulations. The new site looks excellent.

What's good with weekly news

Posted Jun 1, 2002 18:53 UTC (Sat) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

Glad to hear you're not dropping the 'weekly' part. What you have built now is some sort of /.-lookalike. Or should I say, *yet another* lookalike. The weekly newspaper has some journalistic quality where the author writes about what he thinks about current subjects, and sprinkles the text with links to more information. That's whats good with LWN!! This is just a list of news.

Suggested change of layout

Posted Jun 1, 2002 22:01 UTC (Sat) by DeletedUser717 ((unknown), #717) [Link]

It would be great if one could customize the layout to put the whole left column (lwn.net logo, login info, etc) on the right side instead. It's a little too wide for my personal liking, and the fact that I have in my brower always open a column for my inbox/bookmarks/contacts, makes the site feel unbalanced, with the actual content on the far right edge of the screen and where our eyes will look last when reading from left-to-right.

Just a suggestion. Slashdot is doing it right, with a narrow left column, then main content and then a wider right column.

Left hand column, printing articles

Posted Jun 1, 2002 23:19 UTC (Sat) by DeletedUser718 ((unknown), #718) [Link]

It would be nice to turn this off if there is no useful information there (like the links in the old site).

Related: it would be nice to be able to print the articles without the left hand column. With the column there, the print outs are useless since a good portion of the text of the article (the right hand side) does not actually make it onto the paper.

Suggestion: get rid of Full Story link...

Posted Jun 1, 2002 23:40 UTC (Sat) by DeletedUser718 ((unknown), #718) [Link] (1 responses)

... just make an inline link in the text. There is too much whitespace on the front page. If you get rid of "Full Story", then people who turn off comments will be able to eliminate some of it. Example:

Red Hat security update to tcpdump
[Security] Posted Jun 01, 2002 13:57 UTC by corbet

Red Hat has issued an updated version of its security alert for tcpdump, which fixes a potentially exploitable buffer overflow in that package.

whitespace (was: Suggestion: get rid of Full Story link...)

Posted Jun 2, 2002 0:06 UTC (Sun) by DeletedUser718 ((unknown), #718) [Link]

When comments are turned off (and there is no "Full Story" underneath the article), it looks like there are three blank lines. It would be great if two of them could be eliminated.

Fonts from user prefs are back! Thanks!

Posted Jun 1, 2002 23:47 UTC (Sat) by DeletedUser718 ((unknown), #718) [Link] (1 responses)

That is sooooo much better :-)

Fonts from user prefs are back! Thanks!

Posted Jun 4, 2002 11:56 UTC (Tue) by azz (subscriber, #371) [Link]

Absolutely; that solves my major concern with the new design. Thanks, guys. :)

More wishes

Posted Jun 2, 2002 12:55 UTC (Sun) by mce (guest, #522) [Link]

If you allow people to set the colors of links and followed links, you should also allow them to set the one of active links. I changed my colors to something I like better, but now I'm being distracted by all sorts of not so interesting links becoming red whenever I happen to move the mouse.

On a related note: I have all my browsers setup to underline links, but on the new site this doesn't work. Please don't overrule by personal preferences, or at teh very least allow me to achieve the same effect in an other way.

And last but very definitely not least: if you force people to log in to make the site readable, and to accept cookies to be able to log in, then please go all the way and also allow them to retain the cookie. If you want to make the users do things that they would not normally do, you need to offer them something in return! At least for me, this will be the killer criterion when deciding whether to continue visiting LWN.

PS: The block outlines really should be off by default.

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted Jun 3, 2002 2:09 UTC (Mon) by DeletedUser870 ((unknown), #870) [Link]

Thank-you for the long needed improvement. Blogging (Web Log) style web sites are the wave of the future, or at least of the present. I enjoy reading troll posts, and like submitting comments myself, even if they troll. Its quite slashdot like without all the bloat. Great job guys, and good luck. - Arthur H. Johnson II

Where have the useful links on the left gone?

Posted Jun 3, 2002 7:05 UTC (Mon) by DeletedUser923 ((unknown), #923) [Link]

Subject says it all--I really enjoyed all convenient liks to e.g. Slashdot and Linuxfr...

customization is not so good if i have to relogin everytime.

Posted Jun 3, 2002 12:00 UTC (Mon) by DeletedUser853 ((unknown), #853) [Link] (1 responses)

Hi lwn.net team, well, u have done a great job. I don't like the new layout so much, but this just depends on my personal taste. That's why i created an account for ur site and used the nice customizing to create a look that i like. Now i'm looking often at ur site but everytime i have to login again to get my own look. Well, this is annoying. I would like to have the cookies with a lifetime of one year or so that i don't need to log in every single time when i have a quick look if there is something new. Will u maybe add some preference for the lifetime of the cookie or something? This would be great thing for me! Thank u again for the great job you do! I really like lwn.net. kasbah

Agreed. Also, the cookie checking routine seems to be broken

Posted Jun 5, 2002 13:20 UTC (Wed) by sphealey (guest, #1028) [Link]

When I go to the "Login" screen, I usually get the message "Cookies not enabled". However, cookies are enabled on my browser (browers: I have experienced this in both IE and Mozilla RC2). When I click "try again" and put in exactly the same userid and password, I then log in successfully. Seems like a problem with the cookie checking routine. sPh

Uh... is this just shooting LWN in the foot?

Posted Jun 3, 2002 15:55 UTC (Mon) by DeletedUser1066 ((unknown), #1066) [Link] (1 responses)

If the LWN is at the core of the site, why is it sublimated to a link? I dont need another slashdot site.. geeknews and all the others tried and failed. What you give is a NEWSpaper that is worthy. I did not mind the daily news.. but that was the subliminated stuff.. now it is the main features of the website.

Look and feel detract from content, but mainly I want the NEWSPAPER I have come to enjoy once a week. Daily news is what portals like slashdot are great for. lwn.net/daily was decent but only viewed if bored.. but lwn.net weekly paper was the BEST.. Make that your home page again.. let the CORE business of LWN be at the forefront or be regulated into the netherworld of "slashdot wannabee's" LWN Reader who loved the WEEKLY part in LWN.

Uh... is this just shooting LWN in the foot?

Posted Jun 3, 2002 19:03 UTC (Mon) by DeletedUser1114 ((unknown), #1114) [Link]

I agree completely with the feeling that the weekly edition should be the front page. I value lwn.net more than slashdot because it gives me a clean and concise review of what's happening. The rest is extra.

Always put the link in the front page blurb

Posted Jun 3, 2002 20:48 UTC (Mon) by edgewood (subscriber, #1123) [Link]

Please, always include the link to the off-site article in the blurb that appears on the front page, not just off the "Full story" page. It looks as though that link is never on the front page if there's a "Full story" link.

I switched to LWN's daily page because I got tired of having to click through a completely extraneous page to get to the actual article at sites like Newsforge. I liked the old daily updates page, donated money to the site when you asked for contributions (which reminds me, where's the link to the contributors page?) and was considering buying a text ad just to express my support. But I'm going to have to reconsider if you're going to a "hide the link to generate more page impressions" model.

What sucks about the new LWN.net!

Posted Jun 4, 2002 1:18 UTC (Tue) by DeletedUser1148 ((unknown), #1148) [Link]

1. Border-styles. The thin black boxes around everything look horrible. The lack of padding makes it even worse. 2. Table of contents up top, functional but unattractive. What was wrong with the old sections list along the side? 3. The clash of colors with the green-border logo square (upper left) embedded in the off-orange sidebar! 4. Headline fonts are bigger now. It looks less professional. The use of bold fonts for the headlines, links in the article summaries, and the "Comments" links is ugly. 5. No pre-formatted text in these comments? What's up with that? Now these items are all run together ....

Search engine for lwn.net

Posted Jun 4, 2002 8:40 UTC (Tue) by DeletedUser1032 ((unknown), #1032) [Link]

> The biggest gap at the moment is that we do not have a search engine
> working properly with the new site; we're working on it.

I have managed to create dedicated search engine for lwn.net at http://lwn.aspseek.net/ a few months ago, and everybody is welcome to use it. I can even fix the layout to fit new lwn.net design, and I will fix advanced search form when lwn weekly issue will be available.

More to say, I can help lwn.net stuff to setup ASPseek at lwn.net, as I am ASPseep developer and big time LWN fan.

"Dirtier" design?

Posted Jun 5, 2002 13:24 UTC (Wed) by sphealey (guest, #1028) [Link]

Typically when publications change their design style, they claim that the new design, fonts, layout, etc. are "cleaner" (I have never exactly understood how fonts become dirty, but that is a question for another day).

LWN's old design was one of the cleanest and most crisp on the web. Elegant, too.

I understand the need for periodic change in publications, the desire for new features, etc. However, I would ask the LWN staff to bring up an old and new page side by side and ask themselves: which is more elegant?

I imagine my answer to that question is clear, so if there is any way to customize the new design to look a bit more like the old I would appreciate any pointers.

sPh

I like it! (But for comment formatting...)

Posted Jun 5, 2002 17:48 UTC (Wed) by potatohead (guest, #1389) [Link]

Have been reading today on IRIX w/ older Netscape 4.7x browser. Everything worked nicely.

My one real complaint is with the comment formatting. I really like the large text entry area, but that is offset by the fact that I must also provide all formatting hints.

Keep up the good work!

Welcome to the new LWN.net!

Posted Jun 6, 2002 13:01 UTC (Thu) by DeletedUser1505 ((unknown), #1505) [Link]

How do I get the Alphabetical List of Software and the Software Sorted by license??

Mail archive links

Posted Jun 6, 2002 18:51 UTC (Thu) by slamb (guest, #1070) [Link]

First, I do like the new layout. It looks good and is very usable.

One thing I wish for, and maybe now it will happen since you're in a redesigning mood. The email links on the kernel page all go to a local copy of the mail without any links to the rest of the thread. I'd much rather have a link to a full mail archive, so I could follow the thread if interested.