Forum Moderators: phranque
[edited by: encyclo at 6:56 pm (utc) on Mar. 31, 2008]
[edit reason] fixed link [/edit]
There's an entry in the editor's blog:
This morning we launched a new look for the BBC News website. Specifically, here’s what HAS changed:It’s wider - ...we’ve always taken a rather cautious and gradual approach to this because we want to make sure that the maximum number of people can still access our site wherever they are, whatever the screen size or device. But we now reckon that 95% of you have your screen resolution set to 1024 pixels or wider...
More open design - Our research told us you wanted the content on the site to have more “room to breathe”, so we've opened up the design to let more space in.
Bigger images - Elsewhere in the user feedback, people have told us they think the pictures we’ve been using on the site look a bit small and cramped. So the new design takes advantage of the wider pages to allow bigger photos...
Better presentation of video and audio - ..we are introducing embedded audio and video on the site – so that you can watch and listen within the page...
There's more at: [bbc.co.uk...]
Personally, I've always been impressed by the BBC's use of space on their pages. They have so much content to list, yet have always handled presentation so well.
Apart from the increased amount of space in the layout, the most obvious change is font colour. All colours are that much lighter, one presumes to enhance the effect of more space. My initial thought is that it detracts from the authoritative nature given by the previous design, but perhaps it'll just take a few days to get used to it.
Syzygy
Although the overall layout is ok, spacing seems to be poor generally. It seems that they have simply decided to spread out over a larger area, so that means more vertical scrolling than before. Surely a wider layout should mean less scrolling not more!
Kaled.
It's also wider, but seemingly poor use of space, with blank sections all over the place.
I suppose it's intended to be a bit more modern, but I confess my first reaction was that I'd accidentally clicked on a very old article, which has always showed an older design.
I'll get used to it I suppose. I'm probably being grumpy.
But its bad news for me - I tend to go with what the beeb do as they spend a lot on usability etc - hence I'll need to convert all my sites to a wider layout now!
The older design managed to cram so much into a smaller space.
I do not like it, but I guess it will grow on me. I almost feel as if it is a change for changes sake with nothing really new.
As probably the number one ambassador of Britain abroad, the BBC should be delivering something of much better quality and built upon much firmer foundations than this tag soup.
Quite why they put in an XHTML doctype declaration is beyond me as they've not paid any attention to it whatsoever in their code.
But I agree that the code leaves a lot to be desired. It doesn't appear to even come close to validating, and why still all the tables? Plenty of other high profile sites have figured out CSS layouts by now.
With regard to the wider layout, it's still fixed width though. Surely stretchy would be better?
that's easier on the eyes.
Dear Beeb
At the very least.
.storybody p {color:#000;line-height:1.2em}
There's definitely some work still to be done on the css. For instance, if you look at the bottom section (Around the UK Now) the links to stories in each region are placed nearer the region below - not good.
Maybe the beeb is listening because this has now been fixed. Unfortunately, the little pointy arrows are now way off the mark and there are still ~350 validation errors (although many reported errors are caused by other errors).
Kaled.
But it hasn't grown on me yet, in fact I like it less and will have to start looking for another site to visit which is a shame as i love the BBC. I just really dislike this new design.
