Whew—the big event is finally behind us. I’m talking, of course, about the Ars Technica version 9 redesign, which we rolled out last month in response to your survey feedback and which we have iterated on extensively in the weeks since. The site is now fully responsive and optimized for mobile browsing, with a sleek new look and great user options.
In response to your comments, our tireless tech and design team of Jason and Aurich have spent the last few weeks adding a font size selector, tweaking the default font and headline layout, and adding the option for orange hyperlinks. Plus, they rolled out an all-new, subscriber-only “wide mode” for Ars superfans who need 100+ character line lengths in their lives. Not enough? Jason and Aurich also tweaked the overall information density (especially on mobile), added next/previous story buttons to articles, and made the nav bar “sticky” on mobile, all in response to your feedback. (Read more about our two post-launch rounds of updates here and here.)
If that’s still not enough site goodness, Jason and Aurich are currently locked in their laboratory, cooking up a brand-new “true light” theme and big improvements to commenting and comment voting.
So while they’re brewing up those potions, I wanted to take a moment to highlight our subscription offering. At just $25 a year, this is a great deal that does more than just support our fully unionized staff; it also offers real quality-of-life benefits to readers. Subs don’t see any ads, nor are they served any trackers. They get access to the ultra-dense “Neutron Star” layout and the bloggy “Ars Classic” view, along with the optional wide-text mode and the ability to filter topics. (Plus full-text RSS feeds, PDF downloads, and some other little goodies.)