We love all the feedback that Ars readers have submitted since we rolled out the Ars Technica 9.0 design last week—even the, err, deeply passionate remarks. It's humbling that, after 26 years, so many people still care so much about making Ars into the best possible version of itself.
Based on your feedback, we've just pushed a new update to the site that we hope fixes many readers' top concerns. (You might need to hard-refresh to see it.)
Much of the feedback (forum posts, email, DMs, the Ars comment form) has told us that the chief goals of the redesign—more layout options, larger text, better readability—were successful. But readers have also offered up interesting edge cases and different use patterns for which design changes would be useful. Though we can't please everyone, we will continue to make iterative design tweaks so that the site can work well for as many people as possible.
So here's a quick post about what we've done so far and what we're going to be working on over the next few weeks. As usual, continued feedback is welcome and appreciated!
Changes made and changes planned
The 9.0 design was based on reader feedback; an astonishing 20,000 people took our most recent reader survey, and most of these readers don't post in the comments or the Ars forums. The consensus was that readability and customization were the most significant site design issues. We've addressed those through (among other things) a responsive design that unifies desktop and mobile codebases, increased text size to meet modern standards, and four site layout options (Classic, Grid, List, and the super-dense Neutron Star view).