We launched Ars Pro, our ad-free subscription service, at the beginning of the year. At the time, we told you we wanted to hear your ideas on how to make Ars Pro and Ars Pro++ more compelling. And we've been listening. Last spring, we removed tracking scripts for subscribers. More recently, we added PayPal as a payment option in response to your feedback. Today, we're excited to offer Classic View, an old-school way of browsing the front page.

When Ars launched in 1998—two whole decades ago—it was a simple site with the entire text of stories appearing on the front page. The only exceptions were things like Cæsar's lengthy musings on the blue-and-white Power Macintosh G3 ("Bottom line: I like the machine") and John Siracusa's epic Mac OS X reviews. Everything else was right there on the front page for you to read.

Classic View isn't exactly like the Ars of 20 years ago. Our stories are longer on average than they were back then, so putting the entire text of all of our stories on each page would result in an insane amount of scrolling. Instead, Ars Pro subscribers will see headlines, lower deks (the brief summaries that accompany story headlines), and the first three paragraphs of each story.

It's a nice, clean, reverse-chronological layout. No ads, tiny images—just the text, ma'am, as Sgt. Joe Friday might have put it.







Ars Pro and Pro++ subscribers will find the new view option in the upper right three-bar menu dropdown (the so-called "hamburger menu"), alongside the existing grid and list view options. In addition, we've slimmed down the top navigation for Classic view, and made it even easier to toggle between light and dark reading modes. You may need to log out and back in to see Classic View.

In addition to Classic View, subscribers also get all of the other features of Ars Pro:

An ad-free experience

No tracking scripts (aside from those from embedded tweets, YouTube videos, and the like)

Full-text RSS feeds

Access to subscriber forums

PDF downloads of stories

Subscribers to Ars Pro++ also get:

Clean Reading mode

YubiKey 4 (a $40 value)

Coupon for 20 percent off additional YubiKeys

And, of course, you're supporting the mission of Ars—quality journalism that informs and educates in an era where online advertising alone isn't enough to keep the lights on.

Ars Pro++ costs just $50 per year, while Ars Pro is $3 per month, or $25 per year. What are you waiting for?