Last month I wrote about the huge exercise that has been underway this year of moving the whole of the Guardian's online operations over to the 'new generation' site that will integrate all the paper's output, wherever generated, into one system. This has been designed to present material in formats that are user-friendly on all the devices that people now use to access the paper, not just on desktops and laptops. The trend to the smaller mobile screen is accelerating all the time and the Guardian is, for obvious reasons, intent on keeping pace with the market.
In the past few months new formats for the crosswords have been beta-tested to see what problems they produce on the smaller screens. The development team is extremely grateful to all of you who have tried out and commented on these new formats, because online crosswords present a whole range of issues that are not shared with other parts of the operation. However, I fear that not everyone can be pleased all of the time. For example, there is an irreconcilable conflict between those who want the black squares to be as grey as possible so as to save on the horrendous cost of computer printer ink and those who want the black squares to be as black as possible so as to have a sharp contrast with the white squares.
We have now reached the point where the majority of you are by choice using the new formats and, in general, approving of them. Accordingly, in the next couple of weeks the old version will be switched off. To anticipate the question 'Is it not possible to keep both the old and the new sites running in tandem (as they have been during the period of beta-testing)?' the answer is 'No'.
The reason is that the new site is based on completely updated architecture, which is more stable, better able to handle small-screen formats and is incompatible with the architecture of the old existing site. Continuing to support the old site alongside the new is not viable in terms of computer staff or money.
The development team's guiding principle has been that the new site should aim to be at least as good as the old in all respects. Given the range of devices and apps now available (to say nothing of the choice of browsers), this is a tall order. Some of you will inevitably experience difficulties and frustrations with the changeover. Some of these will be of the sort that adjusting to any new electronic device or program throws up, but some of them will doubless be caused by the way in which your particular browser or device works. Either way, you are urged to send a description of the difficulty, including the details of the browser, device or app that you may be using, to crosswords.beta@theguardian.com (copied, if possible, to me at crossword.editor@theguardian.com).
Similarly, the development team would welcome suggestions as to how the new site could be further improved.
Already, the team has taken on board many of the suggestions you have made. The clues and the grids have been made more legible and each puzzle should now print out on one page. Because of the variety of screen sizes that you use, it has been impossible to have the same system for viewing clues on all devices. With desktop and laptop machines you will be able to see all the clues at the same time, with the selected one highlighted on the right. With tablets (and the like) the full list of clues will scroll, with the grid remaining fixed. With mobiles, the selected clue will show at the top, to save you having to scroll up and down all the time.
If you post or read 'comments' under a puzzle, you will now be able to see the time at which they were posted. The archive search facility has been included and the anagram testing facility has been improved.
There are still some very desirable improvements to the site that it has not proved possible to make at this stage, such as the fact that the Saturday prize puzzle cannot be submitted online and that the present 'temporary' Genius submission form is very clumsy. But one day …
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The September Genius (No 147 set by Paul) got 332 entries by the deadline. There were 16 on the first Monday. First to the finishing line was M1f at 02:46. Then came a New Zealander (DR) at 03:48 and an Australian regular (PSC) at 08:19. The next Brit home was NM at 08:19.
Congratulations to Dr Michael Ewart from North Berwick, East Lothian, who is the winner of the September Genius competition.
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If you have any technical problems with our crossword service, please email userhelp@theguardian.com. If you have any comments or queries about the crosswords, please email crossword.editor@theguardian.com. For Observer crosswords please crossword.editor@observer.co.uk .
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