Welcome to the new Lifehacker. Things look a little bit different around here today, but we think it's a big improvement. Here's why.


For starters, the new front page is a lot simpler and lighter, which means it will load quickly. (It may not be loading all the quickly at this very moment. If not, we apologize; we're working out kinks as we speak!) And at last we have a way to display big, gorgeous images and videos on the front page of our site. The redesign is a work in progress, and we'll be fixing bugs and improving things in the weeks to come, but here's what you need to know to get started:


If you don't like the new look, you can switch to Blog view—a layout that looks very much like our old design—at any time by clicking the Blog view button at the top of the page, to the left of the Home button.

How to Scan Through Stories

When you come to Lifehacker, usually you want to scan through a lot of stories at once. Now you have more ways to do that.

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Keyboard Shortcuts

Even better (we're all keyboard shortcut lovers after all), you can flip through the pages right from your keyboard: Just use the right and left arrow key to page through the day's stories, or use the Gmail/Vim-style j/k navigation. Try it!


Flip from One Story to the Next

If you like the experience of flipping through stories and glancing over the full text, video, and pictures for each one, you can use our "next post" button. It's on the left side of the navigation bar at the bottom of the page. Clicking it takes you through the day's stories one at a time.


Scrolling Through the Headlines

If you'd rather just scroll through headlines in the right-hand column, you can use your mouse's scrollwheel or the "Next headlines" button at the bottom of the column. (It's not here yet, but a scrollbar is on its way later this week.) The stories are displayed in reverse-chronological order.


At the top of the right-hand column, you'll see three icons: A house, a flame, and a magnifying glass. Click the house if you want to see today's stories. Click the flame for today's most popular stories. Click the glass for search.

What's in It for You?

If you're a regular reader and commenter, you'll notice right away that the site is lighter and faster. Just click on a headline if you'd like to read the story. The headlines will stay with you in the right-hand column no matter what story you're reading. No more clicking back to the front page when you're done reading a story. When you're done reading a post, you can go back to scrolling through the day's headlines, or start flipping through stories one at a time.


There's also a big, generous space for your comments now—they're no longer scrunched into a small column. That means your commenter name is bigger, your comments are a lot easier to read, and there's more space for your pictures and videos that you've uploaded.

You'll also find that it's easier to change comment settings. The big navigation bar at the top of the comments section makes it a lot easier to choose whether you'd like to see all comments, or just one featured comment thread.


Comment forums will also be much more readable and flexible, but the address you'll use to find them has changed. Here's how you get to Tips Box, where readers submit tips:

lifehacker.com/tips/forum

...or Open Thread, our discussion forum:

lifehacker.com/openthread/forum

Same goes for any other forum you want to reach.


Right now these forums may be buggy—we're aware that there are problems, and our tech teams in the U.S. and Hungary will be working very hard to fix them. If you are experiencing problems with anything from comments to logging in, please mail our help desk at help@gawker.com. Somebody will be responding to your concerns at that address 24 hours a day.

Also, we are still working on making direct messages and friends/followers work in the redesign. That should be fixed by the end of the week.


Why Did We Do This?

We wanted to make the front page lighter and simpler to scan, while also emphasizing big feature stories that we've written. The fact is that we spend a lot of time creating cool, original articles for Lifehacker—but sometimes they would get lost in that long, long blog scroll. This way, we can splash them as big as we want! And not sacrifice load time.


To reiterate: If you don't like the new design, you can always switch to the blog view—which gives you something that's a lot like the way the old site looked. And of course you can also read Lifehacker via your favorite RSS reader.

I've Got Feedback! Who Do I Contact?

If you've got feedback, good or bad, screwy screenshot or bug, send it to tips+redesign@lifehacker.com.