Happy new year, readers. Yes, we have threaded comments, an image-lite mode, and more...

Welcome back, can't wait to crack on, oh, it's Friday already

Happy new year. As you read this, we hope you're well past any New Year's Day hangovers, that you've caught up on your post-Chrimbo email backlog, and are fully limbered up for the first meetings of the year... all just in time to tiptoe off into the weekend.

Anyway, to the point. We've made a few changes that you should know about.

Thanks to our hardworking backroom vultures, the Reg now has threaded comments on articles and in our forums. You asked for it, you got it. Thus, it should now be a lot easier to follow discussions, and see who's replying to whom. If the lack of threading held you back from posting, well, we hope you'll reconsider and join in. Discussions are also placed on a single page rather than spread out over multiple pages. If you prefer comments broken up into multiple pages, you can opt into that from your Register account settings.

Next, as part of the overall redesign of the site, we've added an option to your account settings to enable image-lite mode. When activated, this hides the pictures from the front page, leaving just the headlines. This is for those of you who wanted just the news, wham-bam, thank you says my RAM. The new mode looks like this:

As with comment pagination, you will need to be logged in to use this image-lite feature. If you don't have an account, you can sign up for free right here. And, while you're there, pick up some of our daily newsletters, too, if that floats your boat.

Our website is now mobile-desktop responsive, meaning whether you visit us on a phone, laptop, workstation, tablet, telly, holographic love dungeon, whatever it may be, it should automatically display in a layout appropriate to your screen size. Crucially, that means the dedicated mobile site, m.theregister.co.uk, has been SCRAM'd: you should visit us at theregister.com, and it'll all work as hoped.

We're working on improving the small-device layout further to make the most of your screen display area, so keep your eyes peeled for that. We've already tightened up the spacing to get more headlines on your handheld.

We're also pulling the plug on the old desktop front-page design of El Reg. For those clinging to the previous layout, we allowed you to opt in to continue receiving the old homepage. Now that we're fully responsive, and have an optional image-lite mode in place, it's time to call exit(), retire the code behind that old design, and let our vultures concentrate on what's next. According to our stats, about 4,000 people a month were still opting in for the old homepage in December, so we figured it wasn't too popular.

If you miss the old page-one layout, and image-lite doesn't do it for you, there's always our week-in-summary page, which gives you the past seven days' headlines straight up, no twist, no login required.

And last but certainly not least: thanks so much for, presumably, being one of the 40 million or so people who read us in 2018; we look forward to seeing you again this year, which we have big plans for. Don't worry: we'll be biting the hand that feeds us, from bonkers boffinry to exclusives tech giants would rather we didn't publish.

If you want to tip us off with news, or advertise on El Reg and reach millions of IT pros and buyers, our contact details are all here. ®