FOXNews.com Redesign
Posted on Wednesday, June 16th, 2004 at 13:00.
Everyone agrees. The new FOXNews.com redesign is the worst thing to launch since MSNBC.
Here’s why:
- The index page alone is ~900 lines long, weighing in at over 45 KB just in code!
- Layout priority is placed on advertisements, not news content, and even the content is incorrectly prioritized. I should not have to scroll through an iframe or click on JavaScript hierarchal menu to access top stories. Election and market headlines should come before entertainment news. Video segment access should come before an empty, non-informative form to access local weather. (If the site was really smart, it would find the geographical location of my IP block and display the weather for that city. The IP block owner is not always in one’s city, but something is better than an empty form.)
- Flash content should always offer more function than pretty animation. Instead of animating the question of, “What’s on O’Reilly tonight?” the Flash content would be more useful if it displayed the actual topics on The O’Reilly Factor that evening.
- At 1024×768 resolution, story content pages only display the actual story on 50% of the screen. The other half is dedicated to a category sidebar, advertisements, and the annoying JavaScript hierarchical video access column. Additionally, the top portion of the story area is further reduced with the story’s sidebar. Less than 25% of the screen is dedicated to the story.
- CSS is grossly misused and the site does not validate. One purpose of CSS is to create reusable visual styles. Repeatedly using <div style=”blah blah blah”> is no better than using <font>.
I think this is just a symptom of Fox News in general. How can you love Fox News Channel? All they do is ponder to the white trash of this country.
Yes I don’t like Fox News’ site. I never really did though, but this is definitely worse. I actually like the layout and design of BBC News. Yes, I know you hate it, but from a visual design standpoint for a news site, it’s pretty good ;-)
I guess I’m white trash then. Success is hard to argue with. FOX News consistently has the highest ratings by large margins over every other cable news network, the top 5 cable news shows (they hold 7 of the top 10 spots), and the top 5 financial shows on cable. And FOX News is the youngest of all the cable news networks. I watched nearly 300 hours of cable news networks for my honors research paper and while my intention was to prove FOX News Channel’s bias and use of sensational tactics, I found FOX News had the fewest uses of sensationalism and bias in non-commentary shows. Believe what you may, but FOX News Channel has me glued to the set.
Bryan, I never said that the production value of BBC News was poor. It’s incredibly high, as expected with an ass-load of British tax pounds. My issue is the anti-American bias of BBC News. Something quite awesome about the BBC is its launch of a Creative Archive.
DMNews: Fox News Revamps Site provides some insight and details about the FOX News site relaunch.