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Welcome: New BetaNews Launches!

By Nate Mook, BetaNews

June 6, 2004, 12:00 AM

Dear BetaNews Readers,

I would like to take this opportunity to extend a long-awaited welcome to the new BetaNews. We have come a long way since first launching on June 1, 1998, and the new Web site serves as fitting celebration for a sixth birthday.

For the past six years, we have endeavored to bring you the latest software and technology news, and the new BetaNews will further this effort immensely. The BetaNews team has worked countless hours to redesign and rewrite the entire site from the ground up.

From day one, BetaNews has sought to be a community-driven Web site, relying heavily on reader submissions and interaction. The new BetaNews builds upon this focus with a vastly improved software submission process that gives authors direct control over their software titles via the Author Center.

Software searching and browsing has also been completely overhauled, providing a powerful interface to locate programs that suit specific needs. A Download Cart enables users to save those programs to be downloaded at a later time.

Features such as hiding software titles, and being notified of new releases come directly from feedback we have gathered from you. BetaNews could not be where it is today without the incredible support of our millions of readers, and we thank all of you.

While things may seem very different under the hood, little will actually change on BetaNews. You will always find the most up to date software releases and related news on the main page.

From all of us here at BetaNews, enjoy your stay at the new site, and don't hesitate to tell us what you think.

Nate Mook
Editor-in-Chief

BetaNews Staff:

Eric Steil
Lead Programmer

Eddie Elmore
Editor-in-Chief, FileForum

David Worthington
Senior Editor

Karl Kwasny
Lead Designer

Add a Comment (86 Comments)

BetaNews reserves the right to remove any comment at any time for any reason. Please keep your responses appropriate and on topic. Foul language and personal attacks will not be tolerated.

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By chocthunder

posted Jun 17, 2004 - 1:12 PM

6 years is a very long time in the web buisness, so you should be very proud of this milestone. I'm very impressed with the new look. Keep up the good work !!!

Score: 0

By mdrlucky

posted Jun 16, 2004 - 2:21 PM

BRAVO !!

Score: 0

By sirhardi

posted Jun 14, 2004 - 3:20 AM

I have been coming for i believe close to three years.
I like the new layout very much, alone due to the fact, that news and betas are now on the same page.
Love the ratings indicator as well.
I wish we had a specific section now for liux etc.
In my case it would be 64 bnit Windows and thereafter.
Thank you

Score: 0

By Yakuzing

posted Jun 14, 2004 - 2:39 AM

Im not too happy with this new design, before it was so neat and easy to get around on the site, now its slower and reminds me of windows media player which we all know isnt the best and coolest piece of software around.

Score: 0

By Jeffsoft

posted Jun 12, 2004 - 3:11 PM

the title of new Betanews is
BetaNews | ProgramName
but the " | " symbol won't appear in the shortcut,and in IE bookmarks. which makes browing a lists of my favorite shortcuts not as fast as before.
In the old Betanews, we have a dash " - " before a program's name, so it stands out very quickly.

Score: 0

By SeSwa

posted Jun 12, 2004 - 7:30 AM

Hi,

Love the new design, it looks very slick.

One question, I'd love to see an rss feed for the latest "beta" programs, not just the news.

http://www.betanews.com/rss2.php
http://www.betanews.com/mnn.php3

those 2 give the latest news but not the latest updated/added programs, could you make it possible so that we can get a feed for those too?

Excellent job on the website again.
Congrats on the 6 years of existence.

Score: 0

By nate

posted Jun 14, 2004 - 4:10 PM

You may also use:

http://fileforum.betanews.com/rss2

We will be putting up the RSS links shortly.

Score: 0

By robodesign

posted Jun 11, 2004 - 7:20 AM

Hello! Even if this site did not function very well on Opera 7.5 ... i still like it very much. Now you guys fixed some of the problems and is better. The site is very well made, it uses good HTML and very good CSS. I like the new very good site features: add program to watch list :). That's really good :). I also like the filters when browsing a category and the new application search feature. Happy Birthday and congrats!

Score: 0

By -=WarLorD=-

posted Jun 11, 2004 - 5:20 AM

nice work guys

Score: 0

By piercedboi99

posted Jun 10, 2004 - 8:59 PM

I had not logged in for about 2 weeks and when I did today I was wondering if I made a mistake to an incorrect link. Needless to ssy I am AMAZED at this nrw transistion & LOVE it. The new BetaNews is very easy to navigate & the Download cart is an long awaited improvement. SO to BetaNews a very Happy 6th Birthday to you and thank you for providing great info & programs for the general public to try. Keep up the excellent work!

Score: 0

By darktubbly

posted Jun 8, 2004 - 5:00 PM

Ze colors, Spot, ze colors! Looks very nice, and doesn't seem to be as drastic a change as the first time you guys turned the world upside down ...

http://web.archive.org/web/*/betanews.com

Here's to another 6 years!

Score: 0

By Noldster

posted Jun 7, 2004 - 10:52 PM

thats all i gotta say =)

Score: 0

By uNdisputed

posted Jun 7, 2004 - 11:46 PM

happy b-day.
one of the best sites on the net..very useful.beta newz and the comment`s from user`s of the software do also help alot...
i come here daily more that once a day , since 2 year`s or more i guess
may you really have many more good year`s to come.
regard`s to all at my beta news

Score: 0

By GoodThings2Life

posted Jun 7, 2004 - 8:31 PM

Congratulations on 6 years! You guys do an awesome job of getting this news out everyday, and it is greatly appreciated. Now, some feedback on the new design:

Good things about the site design: I love the "watch" feature, and the ability to edit posts.

Bad things about the site design: I strongly dislike the 800*600 resolution template. The old fluid design was much better, since it allowed those of us on high resolution a much easier experience.

Aaron

Score: 0

By xippon

posted Jun 7, 2004 - 6:39 PM

I'm glad that betanews is 5 year old!

and a new design looks great!

Score: 0

By httpd.confused

posted Jun 7, 2004 - 5:51 PM

I hate to say it, but I don't like the new design at all. I see it as a step in the wrong direction, although I do recognize it as perfectly typical.

The old FileForum design was nice, fast, light, and easy on the eyes. It nicely took up my entire browser window, whatever size I decided that should be. The new design, however, uses only the middle 1/3 of my window, which bothers me rather intensely.

When you are browsing listings, you scroll all the way down to the bottom, and if you don't find what you are looking for, you must scroll back UP to the top to hit that "Next 30 Files" link. Why isn't that link also on the bottom of the page? Why can't I make it list more than a puny 30 files at a time?

These are just examples. Go ahead and slam me, damn me, curse me, hate me for saying something negative, but don't you dare say I didn't justify my position. Being "negative" and being "wrong" are two very, very different things.

Score: 0

By pohlman

posted Jun 7, 2004 - 8:43 PM

I like the looks of the new "modern" design at first, then the usability hits me. It seems more cluttered and hard to read and just... unfriendly. The content is still the same though so I can maybe live with it.

Also, could someone please check the page out in Opera 7.51? There are some buttons (starting with "submit news") at the top that are piled on top of each other. Kind of strange coming from here - this is now one of only three sites I know of with bugs in Opera.

Nice overall look, but I would ask for some breathing room.

Score: 0

By seelengarten

posted Jun 8, 2004 - 4:17 AM

For Opera users: This skript is written a little blowzy. And for Opera ist a different, if you put values in single or double quotes. Therefor you got these strange button on the top, the button values there are only in single quotes...
Christian

Score: 0

By xmendragon

posted Jun 7, 2004 - 10:39 AM

This new version is very excellent ! congradulation !

Score: 0

By Aitvo

posted Jun 7, 2004 - 7:14 AM

I hit this site, and thought someone bought you out! (I then remembered that this change was 5 years in the making) IT LOOKS GREAT!

Score: 0

By Pko66

posted Jun 7, 2004 - 6:42 AM

The new design is not bad, but there are a few things I do not like.
- All concentrated in the center of the screen, with too small letters (had to Ctrl+ twice) and lots of wasted space in the left & right. This is really a BIG flaw that NEEDS to be corrected somehow.
- Swapping news and betas is a little annoying
- The files MUST have an entry for "homepage". The "publisher" lin is NOT enough. Also, a link to the homepage from the "what's new" windows, as it was, should be great.

Score: 0

By seelengarten

posted Jun 7, 2004 - 4:53 AM

Hallo! Great work and some new usefuil features. Some small things you should korrekt:
Check your scripts for the termes or and put the values in normal "Quotes"! In Opera you see too big buttons.
The Text on the top "Downloades chart ..." on "Logout" lies over the three buttons "Submitt News", "Help" and "Preferencen". It should be one line above.

Christian

Score: 0

By seelengarten

posted Jun 7, 2004 - 6:26 PM

The script deletes tags... So again: You should replace all single quoted valus in your script with regular dopple quotes ones! Eg. type='no' to type="yes".
Christian

Score: 0

By RobertM

edited Jun 6, 2004 - 9:10 PM

Like others, I just have to say that I love the new design, and I was happy to see that it used XHTML and CSS.

However, I do have a couple issues. The first is the fixed colum width, which--like others have said--wastes space on larger resolutions, and also makes it harder to read on smaller resolutions. For me it's not a big issue, but I could see that it could be for others.

The other issue is the invalid code. In my limited experience, invalid XHTML sites are rare. :) Two things seem to be an issue here in my quick glance at the validation results: unclosed tags (that are valid in HTML but invalid in XHTML) and case. Every XHTML tag must be closed--even "weird" ones like <br>. One offender I saw on this site was <input>, which must be closed--and I'd probably use the "shorthand" form, i.e.: <input /> Of course, you'd have the rest of the attributes in there. And the space before the closing slash is optional, but it helps older browsers not to get confused. Also, XML is case-sensitive, and all XHTML tags are declared as lowercase. One incorrect tag I saw was <A href=...>, which must be <a href=...> instead.

Also, a big accessibility issue: the tabs at the top (BetaNews, FileForum) do not have any "alt" text specified. This is a must. :) The "alt" attribute should be set to the text of the tabs. And while I'm at it, just to prevent a possible misuse: if you want a tooltip, put what you want for that in "title" and not "alt" (but you need "alt" either way).

That said, I really do like this site--I don't want to sound like I'm complaining. :) Great job, happy birthday, and I wish you many more. Such a great-looking standards-complaint site would be great, though, and a good example.

PS - Sorry for the long post, and than goodness for the Edit feature! (I wasn't aware what I typed would be converted into actual (X)HTML.)

Score: 0

By joey2cool

posted Jun 7, 2004 - 2:16 AM

Betanews/Fileforum >>>>>>>>> Download.com

Good luck in the future guys and keep up the good work!

Score: 0

By ResonantEcho

edited Jun 6, 2004 - 8:55 PM

I like the new design. You got it right! I can't tell you the number of times some of my favorite sites have redesigned only to make the browsing experience awkward and clumsy. GREAT JOB!

Score: 0

By micd

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 7:54 PM

The new look is great! I just joined after visiting this site regularly for about a year. Congrats and hope another 6 years rolls onward.

Score: 0

By royedmund

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 8:15 PM

Happy Birthday and thanks for the last six years

Score: 0

By BklynKid

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 7:36 PM

I love the new layout. It has some problems with Opera though...

Score: 0

By Darken

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 6:58 PM

Good job for the new design! and happy birthday!! :)

Score: 0

By saharusa

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 3:33 PM

I love it, very god job, my eyes are happy. :-)
Thank you very much for the very great job over the past 6 years and for the years to come, so i hope.

Score: 0

By xer0

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 2:20 PM

http://web.archive.org/w...http://www.betanews.com/

Score: 0

By justinb

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 2:36 PM

wow O_O betanews looked a lot different back then in 1998!!

it's gonna take some time to get used to the new layout....but it looks all spiffy :D great job

Score: 0

By myke

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 1:41 PM

I love it! Good job, staff.

Score: 0

By k0zy

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 1:12 PM

This is awesome!
Good work!

k0zy

Score: 0

By tom3311

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 12:47 PM

I have been a member of Betanews for almost the entire time of its existence and have found this website one of my DAILY visits (usually multiple times)! I am one of the "bleeding edge" kind of guys and BetaNews helps me keep up with the changes in a way that no other website can. Thanks for hosting this important website...and I really like the new format! My wish is for growing successes in the years to come...Keep up your great work!

Score: 0

By iamtux

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 12:37 PM

Congratulations on 6 years!
The new site design looks great, I was pleasantly surprised when I came to the site this morning. Great job! Again, congrats on 6 years!

Score: 0

By madjo

edited Jun 6, 2004 - 12:15 PM

Congrats on the 6 years. My are you growing up :-)
The site looks great. Good work on that too.
Let's put another 6 years to it :)

will there also be an RSS-feed in the future? :)

Score: 0

By jrepin

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 12:44 PM

Oh yeah. RSS feeeds would be awsome.

Score: 0

By nate

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 3:45 PM

The links aren't up yet. But the feeds are:

www.betanews.com/rss2

and

fileforum.betanews.com/rss2

We may be providing more customized feeds in the near future.

Score: 0

By madjo

edited Jun 7, 2004 - 5:18 PM

the second 'link' has some error in it...
"undefined entity" on Line Number 14, Column 115
(according to my browser that is, not sure which entity is meant)

now it is a-okay! :-)

Score: 0

By jrepin

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 11:28 AM

I like the new site very much. The only thing I miss is the field to enter Jabber instant messaging info (Jabber ID or JID) into my profile. Like there is one for ICQ for example.

Score: 0

By GEO2000

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 11:08 AM

Very professional !! :)

Keep up the good work...

Score: 0

By bangbang023

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 10:34 AM

I love the site and love the new design concept, but the wasted space at higher resolutions is killer.

Score: 0

By ProXar

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 10:18 AM

Like the new looks, smooth. Keep up the great work.

Score: 0

By Dixon_Butz

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 9:52 AM

Only down side to the new site is the inability to change the font size. Have to use control+ in MYIE.

Score: 0

By ZJAM

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 9:35 AM

i have to say i love the site im so glad to see it back i missed it...betanews has been my souce for betanews the past year and when i saw it not being updated i exspected the worse that you guys were gone its great to know your not...keep up the good work and oh yah Happy Birthday.

Score: 0

By krispyk

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 9:34 AM

I've got to say that I love the new features for program authors and people to control their own listings and view pending article updates. Good Work! And Great New Look!

Score: 0

By contranj

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 8:53 AM

congrats, the new site with the xhtml/ css layout is so nice. it will take a little while to get used to but peeking around the new features and layout make the site better then ever. great job!

Score: 0

By kiwibank

edited Jun 6, 2004 - 8:53 AM

i`ve been frequenting file forum since you started...great site...great new layout..good one

Score: 0

By Pikoro

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 8:31 AM

First post on the new site.. must say I like it a bunch. Much easier on the eyes.

Score: 0

By winwizard42

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 7:51 AM

I have been coming to this site several times a day for the last 6 years. Keep up the good work and many more b'days.

Score: 0

By dsilvertx

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 7:21 AM

This is one of the sites I look most forward to visiting several times a day. It is informative, well laid out, and full of information and files. Thanks for the access and all the best in coming years.

Score: 0

By balondemu

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 7:06 AM

Outstanding new look! Thanks for all the hard work you're doing. May you have many more birthdays!

Score: 0

By thehunger

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 6:58 AM

Congratulations with your birthday and an AWESOME new look! Very, very nice!

Score: 0

By agent2killa

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 6:46 AM

This website is great coz this is the only place I can get the latest news on softwares.Anyway,the website looks cool.Great job!

Score: 0

By aoeu

edited Jun 6, 2004 - 6:29 AM

...Being a web designer myself, I'm happy to see this website designed entirely with CSS and not with those messy tables. Kudos to the designer of this website!

Score: 0

By shawkins

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 4:48 PM

XHTML and many DIV tags! Whoohoo!
I was getting a bit worried when I didn't see any site updates for a few days, and then BAM!, there's this! :-)

Score: 0

By paul-white

edited Jun 6, 2004 - 5:37 AM

A much needed makeover certainly brings a new an updated look and feel to the site.

But what about those dates? There's some inconsistencies here. Some dates are in the format June 06, 2004 and some 06/01/2004. Please, please bear in mind that we don't all use the US date format and 06/01/2004 to me is five months ago not last week. So either give users an option to change the date format or use the longer version with month show as a three letter abbreviation.

Score: 0

By nroediger

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 5:32 AM

Happy birthday, BetaNews!

Congratulations on the nice new layout & features. But there are also some things I don't like:

- I agree with mikulka about the wasted space. Maybe you can use it so we see more recent betas without having to scroll?

- The site is pretty slow now. BetaNews used to be a very fast site but now needs 6 seconds to load with my 3 Mbit/s DSL.

- Maybe I just can't see it but I am missing the "changes"-popup window.

Nic

Score: 0

By nate

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 6:40 AM

Chances are your popup blocker is stopping the changes window. Add BetaNews to your whitelist and you should be okay!

Score: 0

By nroediger

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 3:05 PM

nate,

mea culpa! I guess I was just too blind to see the "changes" link ;-) It seems I still have to get accustomed to the new design.

Score: 0

By mikulka

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 4:22 AM

I really like the new design, but
-the blue buttons at the top are totally messed up in Opera
-there's too much wasted space on the sides

Happy birthday BetaNews!

Score: 0

By

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 7:36 AM

-the blue buttons at the top are totally messed up in Opera

Same here

Score: 0

By nate

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 7:40 AM

We will look into fixing the Opera issue right away.

Score: 0

By Rolphus

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 5:26 PM

Confirmed here as well, Opera 7.5, WinXP, yadda yadda...

It also looks like ads.betanews.com is causing a good proportion of the holdups I'm seeing when browsing the site. Just thought you might like to know :)

It's a fantastic looking site though, I'm thoroughly impressed with the redesign. Great work, guys, and I here's to another 6 years of Betanews!

PS: And to think I emailed them to check Betanews hadn't died! Stupid me...

Score: 0

By ingrampj

edited Jun 6, 2004 - 4:17 AM

The new site has been worth the wait, it looks good. The new look will guarantee that www.betanews.com still continues to be the first place to go to be informed of what is happening in the world of software changes and for news. Thank you to all concerned for all of the obvious hard work that has been done. May I also take this opportunity to wish you "Many Happy Returns" on your 6th Birthday.
United Kingdom.

Score: 0

By Wheelie

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 4:10 AM

I like the new look very nice but will take some getting used to :)

Score: 0

By OPaul

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 4:00 AM

It'll take a while to get used to this, everything is backwards and there's so much space wasted on the sides. Still, looks nice.

Score: 0

By sarcosos

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 3:58 AM

this is so much better..!

Score: 0

By MS.Blueberry

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 3:46 AM

And congratulation for your release. It's very nice, (perhaps a bit heavier to load). You're my home page since ... years and I was very afraid to see no more since a week. Keep the good job ! :)

Score: 0

By H8TEIRIS

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 3:41 AM

Been with you guys since day one, and i love the new setup!

Score: 0

By freeza

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 3:35 AM

very very nice layout, keep it up guys

Score: 0

By wormeyman

edited Jun 6, 2004 - 3:39 AM

good=
i love that we can watch files now :D and edit our posts!

bad=
1 http://validator.w3.org/...tp%3A//www.betanews.com/
your code doesn't validate to the w3 standards at all... 367 errors is pretty bad.

2 The posts sort in reverse order from latest first to oldest on the bottom.

Score: 0

By Baggio

posted Jun 12, 2004 - 11:25 PM

Netscape.com has just as many errors. I think the width of the site is a problem, but I wouldn't be as concerned about the compliancy errors.

Score: 0

By sarcosos

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 4:02 AM

I like reverse chronology. It makes sense for news. Maybe there should be an option though?

Score: 0

By Alexis76

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 3:08 AM

Great job !!!
And still free !

Score: 0

By VictorAnderson

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 2:59 AM

Great job guys! Congrats on the 6th year...

Score: 0

By rpertusio

edited Jun 6, 2004 - 3:06 AM

I was pleasantly surprised to find that BetaNews had received a facelift! Happy Birthday!

What I like:
- Modern look
- Download Cart
- Easier to find programs
- Better disctiction between BetaNews and FileForum
- More 'customized' look (heading of page)

What I don't..
- Had to re-activate username
- News and Files sections swapped (left/right) on main page. I like the news on the right side.. but I'm a creature of habit, and could get used to the current layout.
- No link to "go back where you were" once adding something to Download Cart

Overall, Great Job to all those who gave BetaNews a paint job. Looks great!

Score: 0

By icec

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 2:55 AM

Wow, looks really nice! Keep up the good work, and you will make it another 6 years and then some! :)

Score: 0

By sniperg

posted Jun 14, 2004 - 1:54 PM

1st Congrats on the birthday :-)

2nd -- I really don't like the new layout... sorry, I am probably in the minority here but it is just not the same, which was probably the intent... Oh Well, maybe I'll get used to it or maybe I'll drift on by...

3rd -- Whats with the 'strange' ads that float across my browser window... PLEASE get rid of those at least.

Score: 0

By MMPD

posted Jun 6, 2004 - 3:19 AM

Looks Awesome!!!!

Score: 0

By tommy52

edited Jun 8, 2004 - 10:38 AM

Can someone explain why the category headline text is overlapping itself? Am I the only one seeing this? Happening both in IE and Msn explorer. Thanks.

Score: 0

By whiterose

posted Jun 7, 2004 - 5:04 PM

Same thing happening here. I think it's another problem that occurs only in Opera.

Score: 0

By normangerman

posted Jun 8, 2004 - 5:47 AM

Very nice work! Very Good UI!

Score: 0

By xsnslaine

posted Jun 9, 2004 - 7:49 AM

Very nice, easy to navigate and visually appealing well done :)

Score: 0

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