BBC.co.uk, probably the best website on the interweb, has a revamped beta home page for all to view over here.
The burgundy and grey interface is an improvement on an already beautifully simple design for their current homepage. The beta page has an AJAX drag and drop interface and the content is fully customisable. Don’t want to see the sport headlines? Delete it. Want to see the History stuff instead? Add it.
After my initial amazement at the Beeb’s new AJAX-y design, I stopped and thought - “What about the millions of old folk who visit this site with JS disabled?’ Don’t fear! The page handles perfectly fine with JS disabled!
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7 responses so far ↓
1 Michael Flanagan » the BBC Homepage beta // Dec 17, 2007 at 11:01 pm
[...] Cormac Moylan, among others, have been pointing out that a beta version of the upcoming new BBC.co.uk homepage is available for public look-see. Cormac seems to like it. I think.. well, It’s a pity we can only see the frontpage at the moment, but… so far.. design-wise.. I don’t. [...]
2 Cormac Moylan // Dec 18, 2007 at 2:31 am
Reply to above trackback…
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Hi Michael, it’s going to be a very difficult thing for the BBC to combine their mass content with this design alright. I doubt this page will be pushed onto the homepage though. It will probably be released as an alternative homepage similar to google/ig or something.
3 Michael Flanagan // Dec 18, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Hey Cormac.. my post started out as a comment here, but I though it got a little too long so moved it to my blog instead. I”ll reply here anyway
When I looked at the BBC page shortly after writing my post I got a different version of it. The large ‘Top News Story’ box was over on the right hand side and much more media orientated… big picture taking up most of it (with no awful, clunky, gray header) and tabs for HD, YouTube and a couple of other things. It was instantly much better and I was about to eat my words.. but they seemed to have switched back again now.
That’s what happens with Beta’s I suppose and this thing’s obviously not finished just yet. I’ll be watching with interest. I guess I’ve always thought of the BBC site as a silent pillar of the Internet.
Also, after playing around with it, it does seem to *work* better than it looks. So I’m not entirely unhappy.
4 Dave Callan // Dec 20, 2007 at 12:54 pm
Hi folks, I noticed this the other day. My thoughts are that I’d prefer the existing regular version as it is so easy to use in terms of navigating through the different sections.
I could not find out how to reset the beta homepage after changing colors, link sizes etc., perhaps I was missing something though.
My ideal BBC would be a less ‘childlike’ design but with modular homepage content areas like the beta has to allow me to pick and choose which stories and sections get homepage real estate.
Cormac I agree with you 100% when you speculate that the BBC site (as is) is one of the best on the web. I often find myself opening multiple bbc windows without even thinking, it’s kind of a natural reaction for me to want to surf that site. Oh if only RTE could get their act together.
5 Andrew Banks // Feb 27, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Really don’t like the beta version and it look like they’ve actually gone live with it today.
http://www.good-together.co.uk/index.php/websites/dear-bbc-i-am-not-blind/
Technology wise it’s nice and I do love the functionality - it’s the design that drives me insane.
6 Cormac Moylan // Feb 27, 2008 at 7:44 pm
I agree Andrew. I can’t believe they put this design live. I was expecting this to be an ‘extra’ feature whereby a BBC user could create an account and customise their ‘my bbc’ page as they wish.
I can’t see this radical change going down well with the millions of people who comfortably used the old system.
7 Michael Flanagan // Feb 29, 2008 at 11:20 am
They haven’t changed the news.bbc.co.uk site (yet?)… that’s all I ever really use anyway.
Only noticed anything had changed at all when replies to this post landed in my inbox.
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