NYTimes.com's Awesome Design
The New York Times recently redesigned their website and I think it's the best news website design yet. It's just simply clean and easy to read. The width of the page is larger now and I think it's about time web designers stop bowing down to 800x600 resolution limit. All the main text fonts have been changed to Georgia, a beautiful and classy serif font developed by Microsoft specifically for easy reading on screen. The best change, though, is the entire organization and multimedia integration.
Much like the top half of the front page of the actual paper, the top half of the opening web page contains all the latest big headlines and photos. The wide spread of headlines and sub-headlines invite the reader to browse the news and with the advent of tabbed browsing, heavy news readers, like me, can queue up articles to read while still looking around for headlines.
There's a new video feature as you scroll down. Thanks to Macromedia Flash, video can finally be streamed without horrible buffer times and slow page rendering (Real Player, anybody?). The NY Times seems like the first big news outlet to figure how to feature videos professionally and smoothly. Every other news site uses unreliable media players, like Windows Media and Real (ugh). The worst is MSNBC.com, where you can't even play their videos unless you use Internet Explorer. Also, NY Times excels at their multimedia content. It seems like they're breaking through their limitations as print media and going into TV-like reporting. Their multimedia section contains wonderful photo essays (or slide shows), some with audio accompaniment. It's like a mix of NPR style reporting and photo journalism.
In the bottom half of the opening web page, there's a neat and efficient tool that lets you scroll through featured stories from other sections. What's really cool is that this scroll tool is on the bottom of every article on the site. So when you're done reading an article, you can go to another feature without having to go back to the front page. There's also a tabbed box that lets your browse through the most e-mailed and blogged articles, in case you're curious what other people are reading.
However, the second half of the page still contains the uninteresting list of headlines that was on the previous design. Visually uninteresting and overwhelming, it feels like a chore to read those headlines. Why read through all that when you can scroll through headlines above? A good idea would be to make several of those horizontal scrolls of smaller scale, one for each topic, and display them on the second half of the page.
Anyway, NYTimes.com is the right direction for news media. It's professional, classy, easy to read, and fun to explore. Now we just need the half decent LA Times website to jump on board.
Much like the top half of the front page of the actual paper, the top half of the opening web page contains all the latest big headlines and photos. The wide spread of headlines and sub-headlines invite the reader to browse the news and with the advent of tabbed browsing, heavy news readers, like me, can queue up articles to read while still looking around for headlines.
There's a new video feature as you scroll down. Thanks to Macromedia Flash, video can finally be streamed without horrible buffer times and slow page rendering (Real Player, anybody?). The NY Times seems like the first big news outlet to figure how to feature videos professionally and smoothly. Every other news site uses unreliable media players, like Windows Media and Real (ugh). The worst is MSNBC.com, where you can't even play their videos unless you use Internet Explorer. Also, NY Times excels at their multimedia content. It seems like they're breaking through their limitations as print media and going into TV-like reporting. Their multimedia section contains wonderful photo essays (or slide shows), some with audio accompaniment. It's like a mix of NPR style reporting and photo journalism.
In the bottom half of the opening web page, there's a neat and efficient tool that lets you scroll through featured stories from other sections. What's really cool is that this scroll tool is on the bottom of every article on the site. So when you're done reading an article, you can go to another feature without having to go back to the front page. There's also a tabbed box that lets your browse through the most e-mailed and blogged articles, in case you're curious what other people are reading.
However, the second half of the page still contains the uninteresting list of headlines that was on the previous design. Visually uninteresting and overwhelming, it feels like a chore to read those headlines. Why read through all that when you can scroll through headlines above? A good idea would be to make several of those horizontal scrolls of smaller scale, one for each topic, and display them on the second half of the page.
Anyway, NYTimes.com is the right direction for news media. It's professional, classy, easy to read, and fun to explore. Now we just need the half decent LA Times website to jump on board.
3 Comments:
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By
Tony, at 4/16/2006 1:49 AM
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By
Tony, at 4/16/2006 1:56 AM
that post could've been summed up as
"NYTimes.com, new design FTW"
By
Tony, at 4/16/2006 3:38 AM
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