Engadget 2.0 bugs (and feedback)
By Ryan Block 
posted Sep 18th 2006 3:52AM
posted Sep 18th 2006 3:52AM
Hey man, nobody's perfect. We've put some serious time into our new software, but it's not until you put it in front of an audience of millions that you'll really know whether you got it right. So please, let us know if something isn't working correctly for you -- and if for some reason that problem happens to prevent you from leaving a comment, you can hit up our problems form to tell us what's up. You can also leave us your suggestions on how to improve the new Engadget, but please go easy, we're going to read every one of these and we want to make sure the bugs get worked out before we can start rolling out new stuff. Thanks everybody!P.S. -Before you leave a bug, CLEAR YOUR CACHE -- and then try again. Thanks!
Our goal is to make it as simple as possible -- and it's going to get even simpler with new upgrades we're rolling out in the coming months. Thanks!
test
By the way, we may not have passwords in the emails right at this moment, our servers are going to be updating throughout the night and into the morning. Stay tuned!
Passwords don't seem to be happening yet. Good luck on the revamp!
Finally! User accounts!
This comment isn't showing up!
Oops, wait. Never mind... there it goes.
Article - http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/16/embedded-rfid-to-smack-down-dvd-piracy/#comments
The comments seem to be from the Wii article about region coding, and not about shitty DVD's with RFID :)
The feeds page (http://www.engadget.net/feeds/) seems to be password protected.
That's 'cause of the .net instead of .com. http://www.engadget.com/feeds/ works fine.
Where do you see that link at?
Not just the DVDs; the Blackberry Pearl seemes to have been Wii'd also:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/17/blackberry-pearl-wont-ring-in-your-pocket/#comments
ha so it is...
its here in the main post:
We also made the category feeds a little more prominent. This should help you hone in on the stories you like, organized by category. Check 'em out here: http://www.engadget.com/feeds/
the text is .com but the link actually leads to .net
bug screenshot here:
http://flickr.com/photos/25824478@N00/246355986
Yeah I get the same problem too.
I'm using Firefox en 1.5.0.7 on winxp.
Looks like the URL to the thumnails is broken so the images aren't loading so firefox is showing the alt text instead?
I prefer the old layout with lots of news on the front page, so that I can scroll through them at my own pace, rather than going next page - next page, next page....
I know this will save you bandwith, but it may loose you visitors!
Now I definately can't read this on my Palm TX. Maybe have a link to a lite version someplace in the top, so I don't have to look at this new, much bigger but improved design?
Well bugs I've found...
Since many browsers' image resize algorithms (Opera excluded) are fairly poor the cool image resize feature produces slightly distorted / blocky images. Don't know if anything can be done about that though.
Speaking of Opera, the nice slight shadow effect for the border of the page is displayed as an ugly black solid border in this browser.
It doesn't look that nice... kind of a bland half attempt at a make over.
The ads are easier to remove now though!
Congrats!
Hi, one thing about Engadget that annoys me (even if I can totally see where you're coming from with it) is the lame video ads - I have an old PowerBook and something about the videos brings my computer to a crawl. Maxes out the CPU and pretty much crashes my browser. As a result, I can only read Engadget stories via the RSS feed. As for possible solutions: maybe you can make it so you have to click before the video starts playing?
Are you using Firefox? If so try the flashblock extension - it will do as you describe requiring a single click to activate flash on a page.
If you are using firefox, get RIP, its a lot better and doesn't kill all flash, just the items (ads) you want to remove.
No on the main page, but when you go into any individual story the pictures next to the breaking news stories gets switched to text that overlaps the text above and below it.
Observed on several pages 6:41am CST 9/18/06
Testing Testing...Wait, we are allowed to test the new system here, right?
Um, that's not my user name....
The resized images look like crap. I guess this redesign is for people still at 1024x768. Running 1920x1200 here, unmaximized even.
I like the new look very much, I just would propose the following:
- please give it more space on the left and on the right, it's just too big and you have to look all around the screen, that's annoying (19" / 1280*1024 / Firefox 1.5.07)
- maybe I missed it, but is there a version for portable devices? (I'd love a PSP-optimized version)
Rendering in Opera 9 completely sucks. There's repeats of pictures instead of what ought to show up, story headers aren't in the right spots, and there's this dotted line of blue dashes down my left side.
Hmm. It works fine for me in Opera 9
It's working in my Opera now, looks good.
Feedback. Hmm, well you went overboard on width. There is simply too much going on. The stories barely cover HALF the width, with the other half having absolutely no meaning to me. Even when I maximize the browser, it still isn't much better. There are many items on the right hand side that I'm pretty sure nobody uses, and are just eating tons of bandwidth. For example: nobody needs the ENTIRE listing of "Weblogs, Inc. Network". A link to a page that lists them all would suffice. If they MUST be there, list them on the bottom where they can be ignored more easily. In fact, if that entire right hand column would be removed, The new layout wouldn't be half as bad, and I might actually like it. You could spread the sponsored links horizontally across the top, right under your engadget logo, and who needs the engadget mobile on every page? Move that "Discover what's new" image out of that column as well, and place it next to your main logo after removing the now redundant engadget logo from it. The "Most Commented On" may as well not be there, as it is in a clusterfukc of all the other items.
I hope I'm not the only one that feels that column in worthless and taking up valuable browser space.
The new comment rating system is good, and reminds me of digg's. I have yet to fully see it in action, but it looks like it has potential as long as there are viewing thresholds.
I agree. I also think you need to add an option to display more than 20 comments per page. 20 is way to few. It needs to be 50 at least.
It may be just me, but for some reason, (yes I have cleared the cache) the image resizing, doesn't work on my version of safari, it seems to stay at the largest size.
Make your logo smaller and ditch the grey border. Your logo should have been white reversed out of a crisp blue bar with a clear content area on the left and a light grey column to contain the ads. Take the shading off your +-! icons. Why say 'neutral'? Your logo should only have 3 echo bars-your designers need a mentor.
The ads dominate. No wonder I visit here about a tenth as often as I used to.
Everything is fixed by adding the following 2 lines to my userContent.css ! :p
/* Begin My-Engadget */
#container #wrapper { padding-right: 8px !important; }
#container #wrapper #wrapper2 #subcontent, body div.topleader, #bp3 { display:none !important; }
/* End My-Engadget */
I like that you guys added more width (sites that still design for 800x600 annoy me to no end) but you also expanded the columns on the right side in the process. It already took up too much space in the old design and now it takes up even more. Ugh.
Also, I want to see more than 20 comments on a page. There's much paging going on when most of the comments are barely worth skimming.
Any chance you could put the line spacing back to what it used to be? It was easier to read with less gaps.
Can you guys constrain the width a bit?
I kind of liked it in a smaller format it made it a bit easier to read.
Also the mobile section no longer has a next button for previos entries...
The new layout doesn't display properly on Windows Mobile 5 devices. I'm trying to browse on a Motorola Q and the text is squished into a long column with a width of about 3 words. I realize pocket IE is not the best, but most of the other sites I read with regularity seem to manage. I'm not aware of a mobile version of engadget (not engadget mobile!), but if there is one, my apologies. Otherwise, I enjoy the scaling for use on my cinema display, thanks!
Wow... holy awful new layout, kids. Not a fan.... not a fan at all.
This isn't a bug - just a style comment (I didn't see a post for style comments). I like the auto widening thing, but I use my browser at fullscreen. This puts the ads and incidental things right in the middle of the page and the stuff I want to read is on the left (no politcal jokes please). Perhaps the main entries should be in the middle with the incidentals off to either side? cheers
This is a test comment.
You are missing your favicon.ico file. This is trivial, except to us geeks who only use icons in their Firefox Toolbar Folder to identify their favorite sites.
Can you fix this?
Thanks!
Favicon path is incorrect.
The layout only resizes by screen resolution, not browser width, at least for me in Firefox. This is ridiculously bad practice - what if I want a Firefox window on half my screen?
i like the big images scaling to the right size on the site, but they don't scale in my rss reader. it would be nice if you could put smaller images in the feeds, or better yet have the option of summaries
Couple bugs- I'm using firefox 1.5.0.6.
The tails of the g's in engadget are not attached, and not even the same font/header/color here:
http://engadget.com/tag/palm
Also, that tag is delayed or things aren't tagged correctly. I would expect this article would display under the "palm" tag:
http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/18/treo-750v-review-roundup/
On a style/design note, it is awful wide for not a lot of reason.
And the seemingly endless lists of tiny tiny text links are pretty useless. Who would ever read them or click them?
Where you are including the super-resolution images for each post, it would be really cool if you could click on the image or a little "enlarge" icon or something to display the full size image, either on its own page or in a new window etc.
The aliasing on Firefox 1.5.0.6 make the image look pretty crappy sometimes so it would be cool to be able to quickly enlarge it to view it as god intended!
Anyone agree?
The "Comment Up" & "Comment Down" buttons are a little too brightly colored and prominent on the page. Maybe tone down with greys or outline-only that show color only on mouseover?
nothing
why is my name kyle on the first post and kyler on the second one?