Reply to: bbc news website

[Clippy]

Absolutely agree. Why do they spend all that money on the website when CEEFAX was perfectly adequate.

They have probably re-invested the money saved on Natasha Kaplinsky's make up, now that she has moved to five, into re-designing the website.

[NickFitz]

I like it, but then again I'm a great believer in copious whitespace improving readability, and that's basically all they've done.

I would imagine that they've figured that as the majority of their readers have more than 800x600 or even 1024x768 monitors these days, they can add in the extra whitespace and make it easier on the eye. The judicious use of whitespace for this purpose is something that was well known to printers right back to the days of letterpress printing, but got rather lost when we had to make stuff fit on to comparatively cramped screens.

FWIW the folks at the Beeb News online team study these things very closely before making a change, or at least used to the last time I was there - a long time ago now, yet the current design isn't tremendously different from what was implemented with the move to using CSS in late 1999.

[Diver]

Who cares! it's just a political platform of lies and misinformation anyway

[Board Game Geek]

I hate the new BBC site. I much preferred the old one, and had come to enjoy its familiar layout and style. Now its all changed, and it will never be the same again. /cry

[Gonzo]

I much prefered the old, compact one to this.

Not impressed - waste of taxpayers money!

Absolutely agree. Why do they spend all that money on the website when CEEFAX was perfectly adequate.

[TheFaQQer]

I much prefered the old, compact one to this.

Not impressed - waste of taxpayers money!

[realityhack]

As far as I can see the layout is the same as the old one, but with bigger fonts - the three columns have the same content as before which is nice. I prefer the thinner bbc header though (the grey one).

If you look at the root page it's gone all igoogle/web2.0 which is quite cool.

Mostly correct - they have changed it a little - but used fonts with wider punch-widths and leading.
Loads of wasted space on the root page... seen that a while ago - plenty of room for improvement.

[realityhack]

I still think the Beeb suffers from info blindness on the main page - trying to impart way too much info on the first page - they need to take a close look at their IA, do some user scenario testing, content analysis and 'funnel' people properly into the relevant content.

Having a LH menu split between regions and subjects clouds it a little, the whole thing needs reshuffling - I don't think they've cracked it yet - too many competing CTAs on the one page, not enough distinction between them.

[Marina]

DUH! What a dizzy cow I am. There's me saying "Wonder what RealityHack makes of it", when his post was the one right before mine!

[Moscow Mule]

As far as I can see the layout is the same as the old one, but with bigger fonts - the three columns have the same content as before which is nice. I prefer the thinner bbc header though (the grey one).

If you look at the root page it's gone all igoogle/web2.0 which is quite cool.

[realityhack]

Don't know about that - the layout is simpler and the fonts have been dramatically improved. I think it's a lot more readable now. They don't need the double masthead though - they could incorporate the search in the red one and lose the black one.

[Marina]

That new layout is tulipe

Yes, hard to put one's finger on. But the old layout/style looked compact and professional, whereas the new one has a dumbed-down "My Little Pony" baby look.

Wonder what RealityHack makes of it, as I gather that's his speciality. Maybe it _is_ more ergonomic etc, but all the same. Ugh!

[realityhack]

The BBC have changed the lay out of the news website

combined with only 3 hours insomniacle sleep last night, i thought i'd entered a parallel dimension

Thanks for the warning BBC!

Are you me?

Had hardly any sleep last night, went onto the Beeb's site this morning, found the same - also that their News24 streaming service was down.

It's all a bit surreal today - with a hell of a lot of work to do. Perhaps I can procrastinate until midday before I start to panic.

[HYpno27]

That new layout is tulipe

[AtW]

I liked the old one. It would have been a better change if they put online BBC1/2/3 rather than just BBC24.