Dear Readers,
Welcome to Central Europe Review's new format!
Don't worry, the high quality of the articles will remain the same; only the pacakge has changed.
The new format is based on our readers' comments and criticisms over the past nine months. Most importantly, we have finally addressed several long-standing technical problems, and the new page is improved on a number of fronts:
- Quicker download time: This has been our readers' number one criticism. The problem with the old format was that it contained a great many large images, and combined with a large front page, this was giving some readers download times of over a minute and a half. The new format uses a few well-compressed images, and the front page has been shrunk to about half of its former file size. This reduces download times very significantly, and we trust you've already recognised the difference.
- Less scrolling: The old format's front page had to be about the longest opening screen on the Web: on a 15in monitor, the front page would often take up 13 or 14 full screens. Many of our readers found this rather tiresome, and many introductions to article on the front page would get lost. Of course, the extended length of the front page was caused by a gradual increase in the number of articles in CER over the past nine months. Whereas we used to have 15 to 20 articles per week, we now have 30 to 35. The new format reduces annoying front-page scrolling to a minimum by presenting all the links to the week's articles in a compact format.
- Greater compatibility: The old pages were of necessity made in quite a bit of haste, and they contained several coding problems, some of which prevented some browsers from seeing parts of the site altogether. The new format has been rigorously tested in an enormous variety of HTML validators, browsers and operating systems to ensure the widest-ranging compatibility.
- Easier navigation: Since the humble beginnings of CER, we have introduced a variety of new standing sections: the Kinoeye Archive, the Author Archives, the Thematic Archives, Book Review Archives, Conference pages, News Review Archives and expanded links pages. In all, CER now has close to 1500 different pages, and, thus, the navigation of the site needs to be more carefully thought-out than it has been up to this point. Every page of the new format has a left-hand side-bar with links to all standing sections to make the site conform to the "three-click" rule of Web design.
All these improvements aim to provide readers with a clearer and more easily navigable journal. We have worked hard on this upgrade over the past few months, and, as always, we welcome your comments and suggestions.
Happy reading!
Andrew Stroehlein,
Editor-in-Chief
Moving on:
