CNN’s home page sports a new look, with changes in the way the top story is displayed and a different look in the showcasing of sections. There is a sharper focus on the top story now, with fewer distracting elements – and the page looks lighter now, with a lighter grey replacing the predominant black…
This page, about the big-traffic moments on the BBC website over the last 15 years, provides us with us with fascinating glimpses into the evolution of design thinking and the conceptualization of news websites. This page offers screenshot displays of the popular stories and also, in the process, an idea of the design changes too.…
It seems that really big news portals too are taking up responsive design – the BBC has just announced how it is going to incorporate it into its mobile sites. I had in a previous post said why news sites should consider responsive design as having solutions to the design problems caused by the diversity…
Usability expert Jakob Nielsen’s recent prediction that mobile-optimized web sites will have the edge over mobile apps in the long run, has some implications for news sites. The mobile apps vs mobile sites or browser-based apps issue is a tricky one that all sites have to deal with. As Mr Nielsen observes, building device-specific apps…
There are media organisations that take their blogs very seriously, especially those that seem them as a key tool in promoting select verticals and building up niche content and audiences. Blog design too becomes important, but the problem that some media organisations face is the integration of a legacy blogging platform with their modern content…
Responsive design has been has emerged as a strong theme during the year gone by and online world news sites too have ben responsive to this trend. Many web designers say that the big thing in online media has been responsive design. I have written about the basic concept in the past; so I will…
A part of the front page of the US edition of the New York Times has gone through a re-design. The bottom-half of the page sports a cleaner look, with a better grid and some new visual elements in place. (To know the difference, switch to the global edition, which sports the old page) The…
The ‘routine’ story pages on news sites don’t often get the treatment that some other pages get; maybe because of CMS limitations or dull templates that see those pages as a kind of ‘print dump’. That is really disappointing because newsrooms have always been in the business of packaging stories and presenting them effectively –…
There is an increased emphasis on visual and interactive elements in the latest beta redesign of the BBC Home page. Given that a large part of the news is going to be consumed in mainstream on-screen environments that support touch and swipe (think Windows 8), the site is being geared up for better interactivity. How’s…
SEO can be taken up at different levels in a news organisation; but the people who matter the most are those who work in the newsrooms handling copy. While an organisation can create a multi-dimensional SEO strategy, the easiest, and perhaps the most practical way of going about it would be to invest in adding…
Despite the social media upsurge, I don’t think there are many sites that have gone as far in projecting their journalists and writers as much as Forbes has done with its recent redesign. Just consider this: every article page has a thumbnail photo of the writer, a generous bio and "opportunities to promote personal Twitter…
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