BBC redesigns and 'widgetizes' homepage The BBC has launched the first redesign of its homepage in five years, and it's gone well web 2.0. You can try it yourself here, in beta, naturally. At the moment only the home page has been swept up in the web 2.0 tide. The BBC's news pages are set for a redesign in the new year once the consolidation of web and TV news …
@Dave Cozens
It is possible to remove whole sections. Check out customise homepage at the top.
First impressions.... I like. Very nice, how much? (Borat impersonation!)
I'll be interested to see what they do with the news section in the new year as I believe the design is superb considering the amount of content they have. It is so easy to navigate.
Any news when this will come out of Beta? (I know it just became Beta but still.....!)
I'm not keen on the re-design at all.
Firstly, for any section, (news, sport and their sub-categories) you only get to see three "headlines". Clicking on the "+" sign, gives you ONE more headline...click again and you get ONE more (and so on).
So if you want to see ALL the headlines (as it is now) so you can choose the specific items that interest you. you can't....!!!
Is this some form of mock censorship ???
After all, on the news page, isn't the idea to provide all the news quickly and efficiently, rather than having to waste time clicking on stuff in case you missed something (i.e. you'd heard about something and wanted more details)...or trawling through various layers to get to what you want.!
Please lord let the BBC Trust tell them to make it usable.
Why does the Beeb suddenly feel the need to go web 2.0 all of a sudden.
I like the current homepage to get to other content quickly.
I don't need the site to become a portal.
I'd be surprised if it got past the approval committee of whatever they have at the Beeb now.
"We wanted to build the foundation and DNA of the new site in line with the ongoing trend and evolution of the internet towards dynamically generated and syndicable content."
Ah yes, the standard web2.0 muppet-speak...
Shame about the fact that when they redesigned it they STILL failed pathetically to produce a liquid (i.e., scalable/flowable to multiple resolutions) design, instead they stuck with the standard incompetent fixed width layout...
Also, what's with this stupid love of scrolling things "smoothly" (well, slowly). If I want something to appear or disappear, I want it to do it now, not when it feels like completing the task.
Apart from the usual gripes, it does look better than the old page. Shame there seemed to be no way to remove the other extraneous junk on the page such as the big "live lounge" flash and other content that I have absolutely no interest in
The dateline says the article was published at 14:56, but the clock in the screenshot shows 15:14. When I looked at the page at 15:50, the clock was right.
Was the screenshot updated after the article was published? I think we should be told.
Generally, I rather like it.
Sigh. So only expats and Americans have to fight with the ads.
Dear BBC:
Why do you do it? Why do you act so childishly? Why do you make yourselves look so niggardly and snobbish? is it because you can't help it?
Please spare me your business model, it's forced you to cut back dramatically so why should I be forced to support it?
At present I get your headlines on the iGoogle widget and if I want to look further I can use those links. You've taken FiveLive away from your expat audience and your anglophilic users, and now you crap on us again by forcing us to fight with a badly-formatted and UGLY ad column. Why should I bother with you at this point?
I used to love the Beeb. Not any more.
TQ
It displays it but then immediately comes up with:
Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage
Most likely causes:
You are not connected to the Internet.
The website is encountering problems.
There might be a typing error in the address.
I'll look at it in FF after work then...
Look, broadband is getting less and less useful. When you've been throttled, how fast is this page going to load? What about text browsers (the basis of most assistive technologies on the WWW), how is the navigation working? Can you get a low-res version for people who are still on dial-up?
When broadband was being sold as a new thing, many sites had a "low-res" link to the same page but with less flash content (literally and figuratively) but now we're all supposed to be broadband enabled, these low-res links have gone.
And the pages are now all designed for the 18 inch LCD monitor the C*O is using...
Lots of wasted space, left and right..
IE7, tuff get a mac (and a life)
@ TomatoQueen Adverts, not here in euro land, privoxy sorts all that rubbish out!!
@Mark Yep, still a tax payer, so still paying for the FCO's contribution to the World Service, so no don't expect to have to suffer adverts, please supply tax payer working abroad cookie thingy to remove adverts. yep still watching uk tv as well, but then do pay a license in the country I am working in, in the EU, and there are no barriers to tv in the eu. :)
@The clock, delay, thats the laws of physics!!, not even auntie can overcome that(unless they send the pips overseas a bit early, but I have patented that idea!!)
News content, ROFL!!
Mark, I pay through the nose for cable television service, over $100 per month, and out the wazoo for internet service, $95 per month and rising, and still can't see footy as provided by the BBC, I have to pay extra for that too (MatchLive with the BBC broadcast, Setanta Broadband by the month, in addition to fees for the cable sports package and the FoxSawkerIdiotChannel). What I am objecting to is the attitude toward outside-the-UK as opposed to inside, especially when it comes from the BBC, which used to be world-class, and as far as I am concerned is becoming second-class.
The BBC should look at marketing more of its products abroad.
The iPlayer should work abroad for programs not likely to be marketed abroad.
That is, it is a red herring to say licensing is the reason for not letting the iPlayer show BBC owned programs abroad. The real issue is trying to make money with by selling the show or the idea of the show.
@Steve
"It just needs the italicized /BBC 1/ to be added..."
Try this: http://625.uk.com/tv_logos/flash/bbc1_clock_72.asp
@Mike Richards
"Any chance of Web 2.0ing the terrifying gongs that introduced Open University programmes at far-too-late-o'-clock?"
Try this: http://625.uk.com/tv_logos/flash/ou_bbc2.asp
Absolute pants. The WHOLE SCREEN is taken up with advertising some crappy thing called 'live lounge'. Ok, 1/2 the screen then, but I get to customise a single column on the left which just squeezes in a few news stories. If I want more I have to scroll.
Don't you polo-necked ponces understand that I have a life here - I don't have time for scrolling for goodness sake!
Absolute pants. Worth repeating.
The BBC seems to have abandoned backwards compatibility and adopted techniques which can be guaranteed not to work with some browsers and platforms. I don't like being told to use a more up-to-date browser with css enabled when I do have css support and the page won't display properly on a browser built three days ago.
Fixed width 1024? This is not very standards compliant. Just viewing it in 800 x 600 for a laugh - much horizontal scrolling. It's just so unnecessary. If you're widgetising the front page, then catering to 800 x 600 is entirely possible, I don't think the advertisers would be impressed that their ads are hidden to 8-10% of the population who still browse in under 1024 width.
I like it... Its an improvement on how it appears on my screen anyway...
Here's how it currently looks....
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2415/2111909047_26793de3b0_o.jpg
I did fill in their questionnaire and asked for them to centralise it so maybe they have..
Now if we can just get them to give unbiased news coverage on the fuel protests today !! ( No government spin added)
It seems a bit strange to show only three days of a five day forecast. Perhaps, they should change the title to "The best of the five day forecast".
The weather graphic for "Sunny" appears to be a depiction of a day when the fog hasn't burned off. Other than the bluish tint, it doesn't look that much different from the "Cloudy" graphic.
M C Crockett
What strikes me immediately about the new homepage is that it offers _much_ less information than the old one -- there are many fewer headlines, and much less story text (snippets from top stories) -- and yet at the same time the new site is even _less_ readable/usable!
The new homepage also appears less organized: the old one has a structure, but the new one appears to have sacrificed most of that (in the name of widgetization?).
It's all in-your-face huge graphics and colors, and these also serve to distract one's eye from the actual news.
Oddly enough, it's not even more attractive than the old homepage, just different.
It looks like someone went all buzzword happy and forgot to actually think about what the site is for...
Why would I want to customise the BBC home page, when it will be reset every time I use a different computer?
Its not like they are making it useful, with bookmarks and e-mail (a la my.yahoo) that you sign in to access. Its an index to their content. Just display it simply and efficiently, and forget this nonsense.
"It was a no-brainer to move to a layout that would be cleaner, more open and more easily readable. There was also a desire to get away from the tired and monotonous blue base colour of the original page."
is it me or is that a thinly-veiled excuse for simply having less content on the page?!
Whoever said it was right, I don't want the BBC homepage to look like an iPhone interface. I'm not touching the screen and I am not using my fat fingers to do it.
These website with big primary coloured rounded button naffness just make it feel childish and not very-seriouss at all.
Whoever said it, I want the BBC to be content related, not a portal. BOO!
It's like a facebook. For partially sighted people. But less useful.
And I browse with the "Clear Private Data when Firefox Closes" option, so I don't want to have to mess around with logging in to the BBC homepage for it to be useful. I do want them to go right back to the drawing board.
Could someone arrange for it to be OK to just kill people who design web pages like this? May be we could lock them up as terrorists and pretend to drown them or something, because they're certainly doing a lot more harm than the people we do lock up as terrorists.
I mean, doesn't it occur to these people that I might be doing other things as well, and I might not want my browser window to be however wide they think it should be? I guess the answer to that is obvious: no it doesn't occur to them, because the web 2.0 worms have eaten deep into what brain they ever had, and they can no longer conceive of a world where anyone uses anything but a web browser for anything.
This means you too, Mr Register: I will be coming for you soon. Do you prefer to be boiled down for glue (fun, but has a substantial carbon footprint) or to have your head impaled on a stake as a warning (greener, but occasionally smelly)?
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