Anyone reading this will have seen it by now, but just in case you gave up hope (but, erm, kept coming back to us for updates), Drobe has - after a few sparks of life recently - now relaunched.
 
There has been some criticism of the new design; visually, I think it looks great, but then I've always enjoyed websites that are clean and simple and uncluttered. My biggest complaints with the old design were that the masthead looked too busy, and there wasn't enough white space; both of these issues have now been addressed. (Although can we have the logo back in colour? Pretty please?)
 
The biggest advantage to the new site is with the outside links to other articles. Previously stuck in a sidebar to the right, they are now fully integrated into the main article listing - making them easier to see immediately, and also allowing comments. This clearly makes the site easier to run, and Chris Williams has made no bones about the fact that if the site was to return, it needed to take up less of his time. (Co-running a couple of websites myself, I fully sympathise.) This redesign solves that issue - now an interesting link can spark off a decent discussion rather than a full article, and the fact that a lively commenting community can fill in the gaps and make people come back to the site is vital when a site-runner is short on time. Moreover, there's also still room for full Drobe articles when time allows. A win all-round for everyone - or, at the very least, the best everyone was going to get in the current climate, as a return to numerous full-length updates from Drobe seems unlikely at this point.
 
I also personally like the disappearance of the comment and user ratings - I never found them especially helpful, and at times they almost felt like they were inviting trouble, rather than alleviating it. Maybe they'll come back in a future update - the launch article says some missing features are due back soon - but I really hope they don't.
 
Any bad things? Well, I can't say I like the linking of the headline of the launch article to an email address - I don't want my email client appearing unless I specifically want it to, and I don't really feel like having to check the browser status bar before clicking on every link. (I generally solve that issue on my websites by only linking email addresses to actual visible email addresses - but then I am a bit of a boring bastard.) Still, I don't expect this to be a major issue - most headlines will link to external articles or actual Drobe content, rather than email addresses.
 
A bigger disadvantage is the addition of threaded discussion. I've never liked it on websites, as I find it easier to follow all new comments on a discussion at the bottom of the page, rather than having to glance right through the list of comments. This is a personal dislike, though - many people love threaded discussion, and it does have its benefits too. It's certainly not something that would be easy to allow users to switch on and off - threaded discussion discourages the quoting of the previous comment, and so allowing users to switch it off would quickly render some comments unintelligable.
 
Still, overall, it's a great redesign. It would have been easy to give up on the site completely, or have unrealistic expectations of how much time you would actually be able to spend on the site to keep it running properly. The new look allows the site to be quickly updated, for commenters to keep the site interesting with new discussion - and also allows full articles to be posted as and when time allows. It's just great to have Drobe back again - hell, I haven't used RISC OS in ages, but I still drop in, because there's usually stuff worth reading there, external link or not.
 
And that bloody awful creased paper background has gone as well. Result.
 
On a TIB note, the irony is not lost on me that this is only the sixth article we've actually published on here this year. The idea of us being qualified to comment on how another site does is slightly laughable, admittedly. So feel free to laugh away - although we should have a fourth installment of our Building the Dream articles up soon.