05 December 2007
During December the BBC will be unveiling its new homepage. The new look will probably have will have lots of JavaScript and Flash animations, with an awful lot of gradients and plenty of colour. The new BBC homepage has been a long time in development but if the recent websites like BBC Music, Nature UK and even BBC Radio Ulster are anything to go by it will work great and look lovely. The BBC is the 48th most visited site on the internet according to Alexa, the internet information site.
The new homepage will become fully operational in January. The preview bares little resemblance to the Reboot bbc.co.uk competition winner (a competition that every Tom, Dick and Keith seemed to be taking part in) from last year. Reboot was an BBC endeavour to let Joe Public reinvent the bbc.co.uk homepage.
BBC.co.uk will certainly be better than ITV's painful attempt at Web 2.0 which still doesn't work in Firefox. When I asked they suggested installing IE Tab (which requires IE installed)! They were politely informed them that the free video wasn't worth the risk. I also felt it was my place to inform them that their web designers weren't worth Jack if they couldn't even create a cross-browser website for however million pounds it cost. </rant>
Speaking of Channel 3, if you're already in the festive mood try out UTV's Blooper advent calender at u.tv/calendar - I have a sneaking suspicion that it might just be sponsored by The Outlet.
Full screen capture of the new BBC homepage and there's quite a lot to play with. As you can see I've customised my page with Northern Ireland news and the latest from The Devenport Diaries. I've also been moving the blocks about, minimizing them, or removing them from the page.
There are many more blocks(? - don't know what the technical term is) to choose from using the "customise your homepage" menu which pops-down when selected. You can choose to minimise boxes and some blocks (like the news one) allow users to choose what specific content appears.
The overall colour scheme of the page changes depending on which of the four coloured boxes have been selected. All things considered a very nice website, if not a bit jumpy. An option to save your layout would be useful, so it can be accessed quicker next time.
The new homepage will become fully operational in January. The preview bares little resemblance to the Reboot bbc.co.uk competition winner (a competition that every Tom, Dick and Keith seemed to be taking part in) from last year. Reboot was an BBC endeavour to let Joe Public reinvent the bbc.co.uk homepage.
BBC.co.uk will certainly be better than ITV's painful attempt at Web 2.0 which still doesn't work in Firefox. When I asked they suggested installing IE Tab (which requires IE installed)! They were politely informed them that the free video wasn't worth the risk. I also felt it was my place to inform them that their web designers weren't worth Jack if they couldn't even create a cross-browser website for however million pounds it cost. </rant>
Speaking of Channel 3, if you're already in the festive mood try out UTV's Blooper advent calender at u.tv/calendar - I have a sneaking suspicion that it might just be sponsored by The Outlet.
Update...
Full screen capture of the new BBC homepage and there's quite a lot to play with. As you can see I've customised my page with Northern Ireland news and the latest from The Devenport Diaries. I've also been moving the blocks about, minimizing them, or removing them from the page.
There are many more blocks(? - don't know what the technical term is) to choose from using the "customise your homepage" menu which pops-down when selected. You can choose to minimise boxes and some blocks (like the news one) allow users to choose what specific content appears.
The overall colour scheme of the page changes depending on which of the four coloured boxes have been selected. All things considered a very nice website, if not a bit jumpy. An option to save your layout would be useful, so it can be accessed quicker next time.
3 Comments:
The link to the beta site won't work outside the BBC until mid-December.
Anyway - the new look homepage is impressive - it works really well and will get even better as people give their feedback during the beta phase.
It seems to basically work on having a series of pre-built widgets you can place anywhere you like.
Updated post
Thanks for the comment Ryan. It has been 'online' for a couple of hours each day since Monday. The rest of the time there is a 401 Restricted Access error.
Just a quick FYI... The current design of the BBC homepage has been in design/development for 90 days.
It signifies a shift culturally in the way in which the BBC is designing, developing, & delivering. Build, ship and iterate rather than build, tweak, tweak, tweak, ship.
Just thought I should redress the balance.
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