Journalism Martin Belam offers an analysis of the comments left that the BBC's blog related to the redesign of their news page, finding that 60% of people hate it. Having used it a bit more over the past few days, I am slowly growing to dislike the design. It's not that different to the earlier version, but the white space seems unnecessary and you do seem to have to click rather more here and there to find what you want.
The comment highlighted by Martin crystallizes the problem perfectly: "A silly waste of licence-payer's money and another example of the relentless advance towards turning the Web into a Fisher-Price wonderland for simpletons." The same push to make television and the arts accessible has now infected the web and I'm not sure we're going to be the better for it. The web should be wordy. It's the web.
It is worrying though that people, a couple of thousand by Martin's count can become so cross about the redesign of a website considering what else is happening in the world -- or as I found out yesterday what could be happen to you tomorrow. I do have a bruise now by the way, on my calf just above my knee. It twinges now and then. It's not really news, but I know that some you would be concerned if I didn't leave an update.
2 comments:
Utter rubbish - you have no idea what you're talking about. Try telling someone who is attempting to navigate a website with a mouth-controlled mouse that the web should be 'wordy'.
Fair comment, although I'm not sure what navigation has to do with content which is what I'm talking about, although I imagine the web's a pain to use in those circumstances because its not changing to suit the interaction device, but the interaction device is developed to try and cope with its sometimes mad inadequacies.
But even when a website has been designed with something other than a mouse in mind, couldn't it still have have intelligent, interesting, knowledgeable writing in long form (along with all the other multi-media content), which is what I mean by 'wordy'.
In recent times, I've seen an increasing number of websites from large media organisations which are written simplistically and treat the reader as though their an idiot. Which is, as I say, sadly the way that large tracts of television and the arts have gone too.
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