New TradingFloor.com design and loads more

The regular users of TradingFloor will have noticed some really big changes today. Please let us know what you think by sharing your thoughts in the comments section below. I'll be around all day to chat about your thoughts.

The changes are:

• New design
• New front page
• Root topics page: A central page which shows all TradingFloor content
• Calendar events integrated with activity streams
• Share squawks and comments via social networks
• A major refactor of the code

New design
We have a new design across the whole site which means every single page has been re-styled. We have added clocks to the top right so you can quickly see the time in major world cities. I think you’ll really start to grow attached to these! (I know from previous projects that people really love this little feature.)

The top menu bar now ‘sticks’ to the top of your browser, so even if you scroll down to go weeks back in time, you can still find your way around the community.

We worked with our talented (and award winning!) friends at e-Types design. One of their inspired little flourishes is the ‘wavy line background’, designed to remind us of bank notes. We hope you like it.

New front page
The new design also introduces a new front page. The old one had not seen much love for about three years, so an overhaul was long overdue. The new design should feel a lot more 'alive', showing live updates and a greater range of content.

We are running some tests to compare the performance of the new design versus the old and will make adjustments accordingly.

Root topics page
This is a single page which displays all content from across all asset classes, giving an overview of everything on TradingFloor.com. That means there is no need to hop between Forex, Commodities, Equities and Macro pages. In some ways you can think of it as the ‘anti-dashboard’. If the dashboard shows just the stuff you are interested in, then the root topic page shows everything else. If you ever feel you are missing some of the action, this is the place to go.

Calendar events integrated with activity streams
For a few months now we have had our awesome new financial calendar tool, but it lived isolated and alone on its own page. From today, all high impact events will be introduced as posts into the activity stream (topics pages, profile pages, your dashboard). From here you can comment on major market moving events before they are released. You can also continue conversations with community members after release.

Just like the financial calendar tool, these posts will update live in the activity streams, so if you follow the US Labor report topic, every month, the event will automatically appear in your dashboard, and within seconds of the publication in Washington, your dashboard will update to show the value… as always, this is free to TradingFloor.com members, so if you haven’t done so already, sign up now. 

Share squawks and comments via social networks
From today, when you write a squawk or a comment on an article, you can automatically share this with your friends on other social networks. Just check the box next to the social network logo and your squawk or comment will automatically appear on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

A major refactor of the code
It is now six months since a major new release and in that time we have done some heavy engineering work to speed up TradingFloor.com. You may not have noticed these subtle day-to-day enhancements, but the launch today is our biggest change and improvement yet. Under the hood, TradingFloor is now a radically slicker beast. Big thanks to our unsung heros in the engineering teams.

So please let me know what you like, what you don’t and what you would like added. We are here to serve!

Sincerely

Laurence Wheway, product manager for TradingFloor.com