Welcome to the new Engadget!

By Peter Rojas

posted September 18th 2006 3:53AM

Breaking News

Welcome to the new Engadget! It's taken us a ridiculously long time to get to this point (could everyone please stop having keynotes we have to liveblog?), but we're finally ready to introduce the latest version of Engadget. We haven't just refreshed the design, either, we've added a bunch of new features that should make Engadget a little more user-friendly. Oh, and to celebrate the occasion we're giving away tens of thousands of dollars of gear -- dozens of prizes -- for the next few weeks. Yeah, seriously, you're gonna want to watch out.

For now, click on for a rundown of all the new features, plus some info on how you can give us feedback about bugs and whatever else we can to make the site even better. We're still working out the bugs, so please be patient with us as we get Engadget solid again -- you guys are first adopters, you can handle it -- and keep in mind that we'll be rolling out more improvements over the coming weeks and months.

Oh, and if things aren't yet looking right, clear your cache! Thanks, and on with the show...

User moderated comments

You asked for 'em, you got 'em! You can now vote up or down on comments, and filter comments based on their rating -- as determined by the readers! Comment ratings occur in five steps:

Highest ranked
Highly ranked
Neutral
Low ranked
Lowest ranked

One vote up or down does not equal one rating level, so voting a "neutral" comment up won't necessarily make it jump to "good." However, when enough users vote up or down, the comments will hop up or down a notch (or two). As we develop this system, you should eventually be able to see the standing votes for any given comment.

If you wish to report a comment, just hit the report button instead (the "!" all the way to the right). Please, only report spam or trolls, DO NOT use it to report comments you disagree with or dislike!

To reply to a comment, simply click the reply link and enter your comment. To view others' replies to your comment, click the replies link -- it will drop down your replies in-line. If you'd like to view the whole comment thread of replies, click "View Comment in Thread" to see the thread.

Also remember, the ratings of your comments do not have any effect on your standing as a commenter or user -- in other words, don't get bummed out if your comment is negatively rated! Try to be on-topic and civil, and your peers will thank you for it.

P.S. -Yes, we know you want filtering and/or sorting. We do to, and we're working on it. Like, right this second. Seriously.

Comment logins

We know you guys are mad sick of having to authenticate yourselves every single time you leave a comment. We hear ya. So now you only have to authenticate once, and you'll be sent a password to use for future comments on Engadget. Lose your password? No worries, just leave a comment as a new user, and your authentication email for that comment will include your password -- just like the first time.

Note: we don't have a way for you to change your password just yet, so make sure you click on remember me or have your browser save it for you. Sorry!

Dynamic / scalable content width

We know you guys love widescreen monitors every bit as much as we do, so why the hell waste all that space? Engadget now scales as about wide as your average widescreen laptop (1440 pixels), so you can have as much Engadget as you want.

But what good is all that width with itty bitty pictures? That's why we added scalable accompanying images, too. Our largest, highest resolution images will grow dynamically to fit your browser with little or no discernible loss in quality. Go ahead, do it -- watch the screencap above, or the logo image at the top of this post.

P.S. - If it doesn't actually look good, your browser might need updating. Try the latest version of Opera, Firefox, IE, or Safari!

Breaking news, features box, Engadget Mobile headlines

People are always asking us where they can find the breaking news on Engadget. Well, we've got a place for you to check now: the Breaking News box, where all the hottest news is going to go as soon as it hits the wires.

Right beneath it is the Featured Stories box, which will show off the latest reviews, hands-ons, columns, interviews, and other featured content from the Engadget staff and our amazing collection of writers, columnists, and industry insiders.

Oh, and over there on the right you'll see we've added Engadget Mobile headlines, so you can stay on top of what's going on over in the cellphone scene while browsing Engadget Classic.

We've also resurrected the suspiciously absent open-link-in-new-window icon for our read link! Sweet!

Tags and tag feeds, comment feeds, and category feeds

We're like, so Web 2.0. You may (or may not) have noticed, but we now have tags (and tag feeds) for our posts. So if you want to check out all the posts we've done on, say, Sony, just add Sony at the end of engadget.com/tag/ -- i.e. http://www.engadget.com/tag/sony/.

If you'd like to subscribe to the Sony tag feed and see all the Sony stories we're doing in your RSS aggregator, just add an rss.xml to the end of that URL -- i.e. http://www.engadget.com/tag/sony/rss.xml.

You can also subscribe to feeds for comments on individual posts now. Just add comments.xml to the end of the post (i.e. http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/18/welcome-to-the-new-engadget/comments.xml). Or you can go to the nifty little feed icon/link set up on every 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/

Multiple podcast feeds!

We told you guys over and over we were working on it, so here you go. You'll now be able to subscribe to the Engadget podcast in your choice of formats: MP3, OGG, and enhanced-AAC. We'll let you know how to get this rolling before our next show, so you can be sure to subscribe to the program in the format of your choosing!

We're all super excited about these new changes and features, but please remember: it's all in beta! If you're having any trouble, check out our bugs post, and see if there's a fix or some words on your issue in there.

Thanks for all your support everyone!
Peter, Ryan, and all the staff at Engadget.

P.S. - Mad shout outs to our whole tech team for making this happen. In no particular order, big ups to Brian Alvey, Mike Propst, Gavin Hall, Alex Rudloff, Celly, and the whole crew at AOL. You guys are the best -- now back to work!

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