Hello There, Ladies and Gentlemen...

[Rob Williams]

We recently introduced the newest member of our staff, Brett Thomas, who will be heading up our Senior Editor position. There, Brett will help both with site direction and also management. To help kick things off, he has a few things he'd like to share on some of the upcoming changes you can expect to see here at Techgage.

You can read the article right here, and discuss it here. In there, Brett mentions that we're open for both ideas for content and also suggestions to content we've published or are working on, and that's definitely the case. We have a site discussions forum for that very reason, so don't be afraid to use it!

 

[Glider]

While I'm new over here, I have to agree with Brett that the site could use a CSS update. If I could change 1 thing, I'd make the site span more across the screen. Now a lot of screen real estate is lost to the background...

 

[Doomsday]

GAMING STUFF!! reviews n previews!!

 

[Brett Thomas]

Yep, that's right, gaming is back on the map. It's more of a mid-term target but it's a key goal, so you'll definitely be seeing it. Not just reviews, though - I want to do technology previews and interviews with game designers to give an insight into how things are advancing aside from "Oooh pretty!"

I hope that you guys will take a minute to leave your thoughts on our roadmap, because we can't include ideas we don't have. So if you see something missing here, fill us in!

 

[Rob Williams]

Glider: Most sites out there use a fixed-width just like we do, and the reason is simply because many people who view the web still use super-old resolutions, such as 1024 and 1280. Most of these people are likely surfing from work where they're limited to what resolution they use, but it's the key reason we don't expand the site width-wise. If we did, those people would have to scroll left to right, rather than just up and down.

One possible idea is to offer an "HD mode" in the future though, where someone can click a link or edit it in their profile to change the site to a 1680px width, which is really the max I'd go. There's only so much content and boxes and such we can add before things look too cluttered, and we really don't want to run into an issue where there's a ton of whitespace.

Doomsday: Gaming content in the future is a definite, and you have no idea how much I've wanted to expand our game coverage over the years. At one point, I even went through exhaustive work just setting things up to expand for more gaming content, and I even went as far as to purchase extra domains in case I wanted to add a gaming sister site. Simply put, I want more gaming, and most of our readers want more gaming, so it needs to happen. Of course, there's a limit when there's limited manpower.

That said, we have a hundred ideas for cool gaming content though, so once we're set to shift some focus there, you should be seeing some really fun stuff.

 

[Greg King]

Excitement!!!

 

[Ben]

"Hello there, ladies and gentlemen...
Are you ready to ROCK?"

Indeed I am. Unfortunely Cheap Trick isn't up my alley, but this is:
<object width="425" height="344">
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/TgsoJrzplUI&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></object>

 

[Greg King]

While I'm new over here, I have to agree with Brett that the site could use a CSS update. If I could change 1 thing, I'd make the site span more across the screen. Now a lot of screen real estate is lost to the background...

This has been discussed in the past and I cannot agree with you more.

That said, not everyone uses a wide screen monitor and for those, the site looks solid.

 

[Kougar]

I admit there is a ton of empty space on my screen, but I use a 1920x1200 display so what would ya expect. I think the present width is fine, some sites were (at least until recently) much thinner than this one which was ridiculous. It's just another reason I stack my tabs on the left edge of the screen with Opera.

 

[Glider]

Couldn't the CSS just scale? Instead of using a set width?

 

[Ben]

I admit there is a ton of empty space on my screen, but I use a 1920x1200 display so what would ya expect. I think the present width is fine, some sites were (at least until recently) much thinner than this one which was ridiculous. It's just another reason I stack my tabs on the left edge of the screen with Opera.

Wow so you have a 1920x1200 resolution and you maximize your browser to use the whole thing? If so, why on earth did you pay for a monitor with that resolution if your only going to use one window at a time? You might as well have maxed out at 1280x1024. I use a 1680x1050 resolution and even with that I keep the browser window not maximized so I can have IM/IRC open along with whatever else I'm doing.

 

[Greg King]

Wow so you have a 1920x1200 resolution and you maximize your browser to use the whole thing? If so, so on earth did you pay for a monitor with that resolution if your only going to use 1 window at a time? You might as well have maxed out at 1280x1024 then. I use a 1680x1050 resolution and even with that I keep the browser window not maximized so i can have IM/IRC open along with whatever else I'm doing.

I do what you do if I have to have multiple windows open at once but then again, Alt+Tab is a powerful tool as well. I too have a 1920x1200 monitor and like Kouger (I am assuming) I did not buy my monitor for web browsing.

On a side note, for multitasking, there is no better option than multiple monitors.

 

[Rob Williams]

Running a web browser full-screen on any resolution above 1680x1050 looks silly in my opinion. I remember the first time I tried out a 30"... I loaded up MSN (which was 1000px at the time), and it was truly hilarious. Most sites now stick to 1280x across though, so it's pretty much a standard. Personally, I run a Firefox plugin that allows me to scale my browser to a specific width/height, so what I do is simply adjust it to 1280x across and all the way down to the "start bar" (around 1170px).

That allows me to see the proper width for sites, but I get a lot more height-wise, which is nice for reading.

 

[Rob Williams]

Couldn't the CSS just scale? Instead of using a set width?

It's not that simple How are we supposed to fill up all of the whitespace that's inevitably going to appear? No site that I visit currently does a loose-width scheme, and I'm not sure how one could be properly done. If we allowed people to run whatever width they'd want, then our article paragraphs would begin to look like sentences. I still think 1680x would be possible, but we need a lot more content before that can happen (I don't want "ticker" boxes that look like they're never updated).

 

[ChuckR]

Review Slants

It would be nice if a site also addressed systems/components for non-gamers.
I plan on having built a system for Video/Database/Mathematica, etc. type applications.
With eye problems a monitor/card recommendation is something I could use. This slant on reviews would be a nice addition.
Best of Luck

 

[Rob Williams]

Welcome to the forums Chuck! Our articles don't only focus on gamers, unless it's a GPU review, because as it stands today, there are few applications out there that take advantage of the GPU. The ones that do, tend to be NVIDIA-only, and not many of those appeal to me as being worthy of being included in our content. Most are simple video tools or image manipulators that appeal to a limited audience. I look forward to GPGPU becoming far more popular, so that we can actually tackle it and include ATI, not only NVIDIA.

Our CPU reviews for example don't contain information for gamers, except on one or two pages. We take a look at a wide-variety of applications there, from math-based tools to 3D modeling. We attempt to cover all of what's important to the majority of our readers, and if there's something that's of a really limited appeal, we'll likely omit it.

What kind of content are you referring to, exactly? Are you looking for benchmarks of those particular scenarios? We do that already with video, but haven't with a database or mathematica. Database isn't something I'd be against though, it's just a matter of figuring out where it fits into our content.

 

[Kougar]

Wow so you have a 1920x1200 resolution and you maximize your browser to use the whole thing? If so, why on earth did you pay for a monitor with that resolution if your only going to use one window at a time? You might as well have maxed out at 1280x1024. I use a 1680x1050 resolution and even with that I keep the browser window not maximized so I can have IM/IRC open along with whatever else I'm doing.

Don't assume I use only one window at a time. I only use one browser window, but I populate it with anywhere from 8-50 tabs at any given time. I also overlay other windows ontop of it, MS Word especially.When attending classes I make use of W7's split screen feature almost daily. It's also a boon for using Excel... Also, I game regularly so I needed the huge resolution.

If I have more than a few IM, chat, and related windows open then it only takes a second to click the flasing taskbar button... a large screen means my taskbar buttons almost never need to be grouped up or hidden so I can read each window title at just a glance.

 

[THUMPer]

do something on windows 7. Talk about the lame tool bar.

 

[Kougar]

do something on windows 7. Talk about the lame tool bar.

Frankly I think W7 has the best toolbar of any Windows to date. Don't like something about it? Customize it... it can be customized into any toolbar from a previous Windows. Personally I just added the quicklaunch bar, button text, and removed pinned icons, but kept W7's new features So I get the layout of Vista's toolbar with the functionality of W7's new toolbar.

 

[THUMPer]

i guess i should try to customize it. I just un-grouped them.