As you have probably noticed, macosXrumors has been noticeably transformed this week-end. When I designed version 1.0 last year, I thought that, with the success of the site, the "Aqua Terminal" theme of its design would become the symbol of macosXrumors, something that would make people remember the site.

For a variety of reasons I began working on an updated design. Firstly, traffic issues that resulted from the success of macosXrumors since the beginning, July 2002, suggested a redesign. The problem wasn't the bandwidth that the site used but the large number of hits per hour that it consumed. Secondly, I received a lot of e-mails from readers telling me that, although the interface theme was original, it wasn't particularly pleasant reading articles with a monospaced font.

I reckon that this new design is not necessarily more attractive than the first one. In version 2.0, I initially focused on the need for speed - fast loading pages with as few hits as possible. So this new design not only allows for very fast loading (less than 50 milliseconds) but also consumes only 3-4 hits per page view at a maximum. This compares more than favourably with the more than a dozen hits per page view that consumed version 1.0. Besides, it's easily possible for me to reduce that to 1 hit for very high traffic days but I don't think I'll ever have to do it with this design.

The second thing I managed to improve with version 2.0 is the usability of the site and the readability of the content. I tried to make a very simple interface and I'm using larger and more conventional fonts which makes the site quite a bit more pleasant for the reader.

There are also some new features that come with this new design. For sources that would like to be sure that they're going to remain anonymous when they contribute, an anonymous contribution form made for that purpose is available on the "Contact" section. Also, the shop has moved right on the "Main" page and I'm wondering if it's still worth keeping a "Shop" section.

Finally, those of you who bookmark or link to my articles, you will be happy to learn that the "Archives" section has been re-organized and older articles are now archived by month, which will make it easier to find them.

I hope that you enjoy the simplicity and the speed of this new interface. Now, the task of checking if a new article has been posted is a question of milliseconds ;). It is possible that I will make further changes to improve the interface in the days or weeks ahead. I also hope you appreciate the fact I'm trying to update the site more regularly, I know it is sometimes not "100% Mac OS X rumours" content, as sometimes it's tests of unreleased software or articles not related to Mac OS X software at all, but as long as you're interested, it's worth writing articles on these subjects.