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Multiple, independently scrolling columns?

Did they forget the fervor over the Gawker redesign, or did we decide it wasn't that bad and nobody sent me the memo?

The Gawker redesign was fixed-height.
The problem with Gawker redesign was not multiple scrolling columns. The ReadWrite thing is just a cutesy effect, not a functionality change.
Thankfully the right scrolling bit is all ads, so you can just ignore it. No navigation there, thank god.
Thanks for the feedback. We've been using the technique on a few other sites with mostly positive response. We're tweaking it as we go.

On article pages, the left-side article list is actually pretty similar to something like a "See Also" box that would just show a few articles. Add a few extras and make it infinitely scrollable, and that's what we've got here. The main benefit is to not have to do a full page-load when skimming a series of articles. You also get the google reader-like J/K key navigation. Otherwise you'll be clicking the Back button and going back and forth.

Having the right sidebar scroll separately helps with ad exposure and keeps it from showing just whitespace. Some people like it.

Love the responsive design.
As a former Forbes.com staffer, I couldn't be more excited to see that Dan Lyons is leading the new site. ReadWrite has a great editor at the helm.
Yes, because if there's anything the Internet needs, it's more people who remain headstrong in ignorance, to the point of insulting the opposition without investigating alternate views.
I can't believe that people keep hiring Dan Lyons. He's gotta have the highest attitude to accuracy ratio in the industry.

Too bad, ReadWriteWeb used to post useful, informative (I.e. not link-bait) articles. Already on the home page I can see content-free link bait like "How many screens does one man need?" (name-checking Apple) and "As Facebook prepares to release 3Q earnings, reasons for cautious optimism."

We totally had link-bait articles. :)
I went back and looked at some articles from March of this year...they just seemed more substantive, and more useful to this guy who builds content websites for a living. The stuff on your homepage now reminds me more of Business Insider than of ReadWriteWeb. Just my $0.02.
I love that a site run by an advertising company uses a stylesheet that will remove all the ad clutter by shrinking your browser window.
the rebranding would be more cool as "io.io" but it is taken.
Just from browsing the comment threads on some articles on ReadWrite, it seems as-if people are making tons of mistakes, or more than likely, something is broken on the site and posting comments to the wrong article pages. (Seeing phone/camera toss comments on Google Stock article, google chromebook article, etc.)
Yeah, looks like they've set this up as a single page app but they are using Disqus for comments, which was not really built around that concept.

I have a feeling their are some loose ends in their code where a user visits Page A then navigates to Page B and posts a comment there, but Disqus wasn't properly updated and the comment therefore gets filed under Page A.

Dev here. They actually launched a new feature to reload comments for us. We're still working on the comment thread bugs. Using the new api and changing the domain + urls made migration complicated. It was working just fine pre-launch, of course.
id="facebook_recommendations" <~ Is horrifically ugly. It really makes me not want to look any further.
All it does for me is reload. Well played ReadWriteWeb, well played.
Thanks for the feedback, sorry you're having issues. How is it reloading? Have an example url? Which browser? (dev here)
Are others also getting a loading sound when navigating between pages? It's nice to see blogs pushing for better design but for Javascript pages site I would expect faster loads
Yeah, no problem. :)

It't not really a single-page-app, we just load the next article via ajax. First page loads normally. I prototyped that out but quickly realized it was totally overkill for a publication like this.

This particular issue is actually related to migrating comments to the new domain & urls. We actually have to provide Disqus with legacy urls for old articles. A few got mixed up. The reloading is actually working just fine.