From the glimpses we have been offered of the ongoing BBC website redesign, the changes in the offing are going to be perhaps the most significant in recent years, but well short of being radical.

The grid composition is going to change.

"The new grid is based on 31 sixteen pixel columns with two left hand columns that can be split into four, and one wider right hand column, which accommodates the ad formats that appear on the international facing version of the site," said a BBC blog post, detailing these changes at some length. It is all of 976 pixels wide, which is nearly the same size as it is now.

But the basic units that make up the grid have changed.

The current grid for the front page basically has three big columns, excluding the navigation column on the far left - though the basic framework is made up of 12 columns 66 pixels wide with a gutter of 14 pixels:

The column sizes are going to change - each of the bigger columns will be 304 pixels wide compared to the 226 pizel-sized columns earlier.

The one column whose size will remain unchanged is the ’supercolumn’ on the far right (306 pixels wide).

The navigation on the left is going to be pushed to the top of the page; that, plus the reworking of the column sizes will change the look and feel of the page - the reference here is to the news site front page; though the changes are universal and its permutations will be seen all across the BBC’s portals.

And the pages are going to be set to a baseline grid - something that most news sites simply don’t care about - though that kind of visual discipline does make a difference.

The use of typograpy is going to be much more dramatic. "As well as Gill Sans we’ve introduced big bold type in Helvetica or Arial and restricted variations in size so that we have much greater consistency across the site."

Pictures are obviously going to be bigger. "Our recommendation is that pages have a predominantly neutral colour palette with colour being provided by large and dramatic imagery. The highlight colour is used sparingly to create vibrancy and draw the eye to key areas of the page."

Let’s wait and watch.