The 2 pixel thick black borders are now only 1 pixel thick. Hopefully this will make Carsurvey.org rather easier on the eye, as the old thicker borders tended to distract from the actual page content.

I may experiment with lightening the borders further (grey rather than black) if this change is well received. No plans for curved corners or gradients though, just in case anyone thinks Carsurvey.org is arriving late to the Web 2.0 style party.

Almost two years ago I launched a little experimental site called CarFilter.co.uk, which was a Google Custom Search Engine for UK car reviews.

It never really got any traction, so I’ve taken the decision to close it down.

In an attempt to make finding high quality reviews easier, I’ve added a new navigation feature to most of the reviews on Carsurvey.org.

Where there’s at least three reviews for a particular car model, the old “All XXX YYY reviews” link is supplemented by two Recommended Reviews at the foot of the main review text. These reviews are chosen based on the following:

• Long reviews are favoured over short reviews. This is based on the review word counts
• Reviews must have summary text available
• If there are lots of reviews from the same geographic region, those will be favoured over other regions. Read a UK and Ireland review, and more UK and Ireland reviews will probably be recommended.
• How close the year of manufacture is to the current review; closer is better
• If there are lots of reviews for the current year, the old “All XXX YYY reviews” link is replaced by a year specific link. For example, “All Ford Focus reviews” may become “All 2001 Ford Focus reviews”.

Also, there’s a predictable order in the recommended reviews, so it can be used as a next/previous system for reading recommended reviews.

As usual, this has also been rolled out to the motorcycle and mobile phone sites, and any feedback would be much appreciated.