Chris Saul's Blog

Sunday April 20, 2008

New look BBC site

I'm quite keen on the new look BBC news site. The rationale behind the new design is explained here - they seem to have met their goals well.

I would prefer the pages to be a little more compact - the old site packed a lot in without the need for scrolling but kept things legible.

Having video media nicely embedded into the page and using Flash to display it is an excellent addition. Launching a separate pop up that required Windows Media Player or RealPlayer was always a pain.

Too many ads in my opinion. I block them all using Adblock anyway, but the pages still have empty sections where the ads would usually be. Quite frankly, I'd pay money to access an ad free version and to get access to BBC TV online. Once you leave the UK you start to realise what good value the licence fee actually was...

The BBC's sites have always shown the way in terms of usability and judicious use of Flash, animation, video and so on. I'm glad to see they're not losing their way!