91Èȱ¬

Great, keep up the good work on this excellent site! (Although I did notice that the image link to this article on the home page is broken...!)

Seems very interesting. I await the refresh with interest.

Before you inevitably get flamed by everyone who doesn't like the refresh (talk about pre-judgement) and who moans once it happens, can I ask a question: What are you doing to make the "geo-tagging" more robust? I'm fed up to my back teeth to be sitting in London and be told I'm in the UK on the front page, but then be not allowed to access video content for "being outside the UK". Even more frustrating is to be sent to a non-UK front page.

Await your response with interest.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Looks great. Can't wait.

Will the Sport website be 'relaunched' next week as well?

Good luck with the new design. The 91Èȱ¬ news website is an excellent 'one-stop-shop', so I am sorry if this sounds a bit churlish. If I may suggest, there is room for improvement in your Search facility. If you 'search' for a story, usually what you are offered is list of old stuff, mostly out of date, and often not relevant. It is often much quicker to go to an outside search engine (eg google), search for a story and add '91Èȱ¬' to the item you are looking for. Google can usually find archive 91Èȱ¬ stories better than using the 91Èȱ¬'s own search facility - which is a bit odd! You have an excellent archive of news stories, so it would be great if they were easier to find!

I assume video still won't be available to those using an iDevice? Obviously Steve Jobs bares a responsibility for this but it would be ever so nice for the 91Èȱ¬ to implement HTML5 video.

It's about time the 91Èȱ¬ moved forward with it's website. I like the fact that they're finally moving the left-menu to the top as I have always felt that the current layout gave the 91Èȱ¬ website a cluttered feel.

The new design appears very similar to CNN.com to me

Very cool indeed. The 91Èȱ¬ News page has been my homepage for many years and if anyone asks me why I pay my licence fee - I point them here.

Bring on the new look!!

Looks good, although it looks more of a design refresh rather than redesign.

Good all the same, since you're generally perceived as the benchmark for sprawling sites.

Very exciting stuff, guys. I've been waiting for this for ages. Looking forward to it.

Any chance of seeing some screenshots of the CPS? I appreciate we don't need to, but it'd be interesting as both a web developer and someone interested in journalism to see how your journalists actually provide the news we read.

Should be interesting to see.

The current 91Èȱ¬ News site represents the perfect design of a news website in my opinion and will be hard to improve on.

As 1981suede says, I guess the videos won't be HTML5? or have mp4 videos for those without Flash?

I believe the internal version of the 91Èȱ¬ News website has this, or at least the iDevice 91Èȱ¬ apps (not allowed in the UK, thanks 91Èȱ¬ Trust) play videos, so the encoded material must be there somewhere!?

But will external links open in a new window?
Nice that you add links to other websites with a news story but I still end up losing the original bbc page when I click one.

Even more prominence given to Facebook and Twitter.
Once again I ask, isn't this against the 91Èȱ¬ Editorial Guidelines?

Looks good in the slideshow, but as ever the proof of the pudding emerges when it is eaten!

Like the idea of a top navigation bar, and the clear arrangement of connected stories and follow-up links boxes.

I'd like it to be easier to choose which national version you want to view, though. It's frustrating when globe-trotting to be directed to one 'where you are now' when you might be wanting to check up on something 'back home' - like continuing to follow a story that you were interested in before you left, or finding out the weather and road conditions at home just before you return from a trip. Or you might want to see what the news is in the place to which you are going...

Looks very good, though there will be the inevitable backlash when users are asked to adapt to something new.

I hope that you make full use of newer technologies like HTML5 in this redesign (without going nuts with the jQuery animations as is so fashionable on modern websites nowadays). It would be a shame to have to re-adapt it again in couple of years' time when such standards are in common use and expected.

The redesign looks good - in most places you've pruned the unnecessary and emphasised the relevant. The only negative criticism I've got is that I don't feel the numbers in the "most shared/read/etc" side panel have any function. I can count to 10 without help, and I suspect most readers can as well. ;o)

Switching from Verdana to Arial, eh, after all these years?

Have to say, it makes it look a lot more modern (though expect complaints from users of older Windows PCs where arial renders less attractively).

Now all you need to do is get your global 91Èȱ¬ branding bods to ditch Gill ;)

#9:
// "The new design appears very similar to CNN.com to me"

That can only be a good thing, IMO.

So long as I can get to the sports page within 1 click, you can do whatever you like with the rest of the site ;)

Well it can't get any worse than the last "facelift" where the low bandwidth text only news site disappeared a month or two ago leaving us with the current mess with pages loading and immediately starting to stream video when all I want to do is read the story.

I assume the omission of any mention of HTML5 video means it's not coming any time soon...

I like the new look, in particular the improved navigation. Excellent work.

Will the videos be in HTML5 or something else that I can view on an iPhone?

Looks great! I look forward to seeing it appear. But why make the regressive change to the distorted world map showing Greenland huge and Africa tiny (slide 7)? You currently use a much more representative projection and, although it is a nice improvement to show a bigger clickable map, it looks silly to illustrate continents using what seems to be Mercator projection.

I guess when your new site goes live, you'll check the spelling of 'environment' (slide two in your slideshow)

Otherwise, I like it!

Can you put sub-titles on all the video clips on the site and the text transcript of radio articles.

Excellent as usual, but can't believe the 91Èȱ¬ Trust still thinks it's OK to cut the online budget by 25% - just as the 91Èȱ¬ website was becoming its own. Really hope the changes don't affect the core websites that we all value so highly.

Why do news sites (and here, 91Èȱ¬ is not alone) feel a need to tailor content for US readers? It gets harder to stay informed about the world when news organizations buy into the false notion that we don't care about the rest of the world. I hope it's easy to switch back to the international version.

Good move to get as much done as possible before Hack 'n' Slash (Cameron & Clegg) takes a 25% bite out of your online budget.

Any chance of some HTML5 video for iPod/iPhone/iPad's?

@Rod Smith

Depending on your web browser, you can hold down Ctrl (to open in a new tab) or Shift (to open in a new window) when clicking on a link.

Alternatively, if your mouse has a middle button or scroll wheel, if you click a link with that (instead of your normal mouse button) you'll probably see it open in a new tab.

Personally I think it's better for websites to leave it up to the user like this. This way I always know what a link is going to do when I click on it, rather than not knowing whether it'll be a normal link or whether I'm going to get a new window

Are you going to include Cheshire in your list of local news regions?

Our TV news comes from Manchester (NW) and our local radio is from Staffs (Midlands) so we continually get shortchanged as there's no cohesive service for our region. When looking for local news we have to choose Stoke or Manchester basically, neither of which is local.

I sincerely hope you adopt HTML5 video and audio instead of attacking my computer with even more dreadful Flash instances.

Also I pray you will have a leaner Website. I hope "progress" does not mean double the page load size. Think mobile. Think widening your audience to the globe where the Internet speeds are slow.

I don't like the idea of a site catering for North Americans either.

I think the 91Èȱ¬ ought to make up its mind whether it's is offering a AV site... sort of 24 news in snippits or a print + picture site. (or both but not at once) In News with few exceptions a vid is NOT worth a 1000 words. Nowadays 91Èȱ¬ vids and indeed TV programmes move far too slowly for me so I pass them over. It's the bane of the portable vid cam and reporter vanity (and his pets too).

Actually I would put more money into better jornos. Some of the writing is dire, and the red top cliches suggest its all done by hoodies 1950 vintage.

I hope you are not going to try something clever with Javascript, which ca cause problems with Internet Explorer 8, forcing people to use Firefox.

What about the ability to personalise the content on the 91Èȱ¬ news homepage?

I'd really love the ability to say "never ever ever show me anything even vaguely sport related".

Can you go back to having easy to read black text rather than the awful grey text which you currently use.

Ever heard the expression "If it ain't broke"...

At a time when the 91Èȱ¬ is under scrutiny in respect of costs, why spend more money on fixing something that is not broken? Whilst I'm at it - who needs "canvas"?

I'm sure the money spent on both of these added to that which was used to make the drivel we are about to be subjected to on a Saturday early evening, could have been used to make something that went near one of Lord Reith's values?

new design looks really good. hopefully the masterhead won't expand and shrink to accommodate advertisements. ever since the bbc have accepted ad banners for non-uk residents and the design has beeb degrading as it seems the bbc cared more about placing those banners than the actual ergonomics of the layout and for few years now that has been the trend.. hope that new design won't be uglified by badly placed ads as usual.

I agree with BobRocket's suggestion. I almost always access the site in places where audio would create a nuisance, such as at work, in a library, or on my mobile while waiting for an appointment. It is frustrating to access a story, only to find a video window with a short paragraph of text. Video is a nice addition, but it shouldn't be a replacement for text.

The new website looks amazing

Again, would like to add my voice to call for support for iDevices, HTML5, a bit narked that theirs a 91Èȱ¬ app that works but isn't available in the app store of the country that paid for its development!

Here it comes, yet another site overloaded with Flash. I "love" clogging network with pointless code. 91Èȱ¬ turning slowly into more serious version of YouTube. In truth every modification to 91Èȱ¬ websites making it less, and less accessible. Time is coming when I will not bother with visiting 91Èȱ¬ anymore.

Clear HTML is the answer, not wasting time with Fla$h. Atrocious World Cup 2010 Live Text Commentary is perfect example. It lags PCs and network to hell. Problems are/were gone instantly as soon as Live Text is/was closed. [Tested with various network configurations in different locations and every internet browser imaginable]

It would be a good idea to remove all multimedia content - Flash Player in particular. It is utterly useless addition considering the fact that vast majority of visitors to 91Èȱ¬ News/Sport connecting from outside UK and ~85-90% of it is unavailable outside UK.

Congratulations to the best news organization in the world for making their website even better. The website is indispensable for Americans to keep in touch with the rest of the world. The redesign ideas seem like they will work well. I can't wait to see and try the new layout. Keep up the great work.

Disappointingly, the word "accessibility" does not appear at all , in your post. What does the new design do, to improve the accessibility of the site?

Great!!. Congratulations!!. This will be a base for future improvements.I like it!.

Now, I'm guessing that you didn't painstakingly craft the new user experience all yourself? So why not name drop or congratulate the teams that did all this sterling work?

Lots of comments asking for HTML5 video, but I'm not sure this is a good idea. HTML5 isn't a completed standard yet, and in any case, there are far too many different video standards being used by different browser manufacturers, some of which are not high quality. If your device can't handle flash, direct your complaints to Steve Jobs...

The design refresh looks nice and clean, although I've never liked having that amount of navigation at the top. For some reason, it's always harder to scan a long, horizontal list than a long, vertical one.

Why constantly redesign this site, have you got money to burn ?
The only issues Ive ever seen people complain about this site are allowing people to vote on comments and stopping people who dont pay any licence fee accessing it, both issues the 91Èȱ¬ totally ignores.

"A better indication of which are the most recent headlines" - great news, well done as I'm sure many of us are frustrated in constantly seeing 3 year-old articles in the 'Most Read' section! If this is combined with a good Archive search / content organisation for articles which are only a few days old (and drop off the main pages but one might still want to read), then this will be a great step forward.

iPlayer videos are of course already available in HTML5 for the iPad and iPhone, which is great, but News clips certainly should be also.

P.S. When is the UK 'switch' coming back please? My frustration at being forced to view the International version at work (through a proxy server) has meant I've switched my reading to Sky and The Guardian!

Fab. Looking forward to it.

I hope the change to shared content will prevent the seemingly deliberate pushing of old stories to the top of emailed and shared stories. Seen too many of those in the last few weeks. Example, Guinness good for you, snake bursts..., untidy beds..., etc.

Great work I like the design very much,

Backing up what Chris said - I live in the US, but do NOT want to see a US-centric 91Èȱ¬ news page. The whole reason I get my news from the 91Èȱ¬ is to find out what's really important in the world, not just the insular content we get from other American sources. Please - all it takes is for us to be able to set a cookie to choose between the UK / North American / World versions, with a default based on location.

Can I just say, if the final design isn't rotated from the vertical like these mock-ups we shall be *most* disappointed. :-D

Also, add me to the clamour for HTML5 videos so it'll be more useful on an iPad...

A very impressive and much needed update. Great job. As an editorial based creative director I must admit this is perhaps the best update to one of the news "big guns" (Guardian, Times, Telegraph etc).

Long may it continue.

As well as having a "New" logo next to new stories, can we have a little "Old" logo next to the random old stories (e.g. more than 2 weeks old) that crop up on "Most Popular" and "Most Shared", so that I know to not bother clicking on them? Once they appear on the list, self-perpetuation ensures they stay there for a while, even though they're only relevant to a tiny subset of the population that have clicked-through from a link on a blog, or similar.

Will it work with AOL? Pages/video often don't load when acessing the site via AOL, I do hope you've sorted this out.

The 91Èȱ¬ seems to be a massive fan of Twitter recently, and I see that a Twitter button will be coming in the pics of the new design; but why not use the Tweetmeme Retweet button?

It's by far the most widely recognised and popular way to retweet something! I'm sick to death of having to shorten the URL with bit.ly and then tweet it manually when I could just click the button and be done with it.

Any kind of progress on the 91Èȱ¬ sites is a positive sign. Also i'm missing the shortwave service for europe but this is another theme. What worries me is that from time to time there are articels in the news that the funds for the 91Èȱ¬ are step by step being dried out. Systematically. One of them seems to be the 91Èȱ¬'s internet presence which will be reduced to a certain primary content in similar ways as the media laws in germany which restrict state funded media so as not to be too competitive with the private media corporations. But then again, this is in a somewhat "natural" accordance with the neoliberal premisses that state funded systems shall not be in competition with private entities. I'm of the strong opnion that private media systems are inherently not capable to deliver unbiased nor neutral news whereas state funded systems are inherently capable of doing just that if the management of content and publishing has democratic roots. I wish that the 91Èȱ¬'s will manage this delicate path and withstand any influence or pressure form private media lobbyists. I also wish to have more demanding news here instead of this easy going or outright silly content of the private media outlets.

Re: the North American 'international' version. Thanks, but no thanks. I have plenty of news sites here in the US to get my US-centric news from. I specifically come to the 91Èȱ¬ site to get a NON-US viewpoint of news items.

Looks good, but one thing that often frustrates me is that I'll read a story, perhaps a court case or crime, and then have it lost in the mists of time...

Is there no way for a user to flag a story so that if anything linked to the story comes up in the future, it alerts the user...

The list of links along the top looks liek it will be hard to chnage... with the links at the side, it was easy to add or subtract something as needed (e.g. Election 2010).
Also, surely it's "USA & Canada" not "US & Canada"? I thought USA was a noun, and "US" was an adjective. (Hence "news from the USA and Canada" vs. "US and Canadian news").

I like the extra space gained by moving the navigation from the left to the top but the sub menu should appear at the top of every page; not only on the news 91Èȱ¬ Page. I don’t want to have to click on 91Èȱ¬ to get to Have Your Say or Video etc. The double menu should also be repeated at the foot of every page so that readers don’t have to scroll back to the top after reading an article.

It’s a pity you have to abbreviate the word science.

why are we limited to only 10 news stories?? We're not going to get scared away by text.
If it's a news page... GIVE US NEWS!

Now that you have a surplus of cash to spend on Americans can you return our HYS back to its former glory?

My biggest problem is that I can't always tell before clicking on a link whether it's going to be a news article or a video - particularly if you go from a 'most shared' link. This can be really frustrating as the video pages can take longer to load and try and start playing automatically. Can/has something be done to help clarify this?

Also, as an expat in the USA, I'm not sure I want to default to the North America version of the site. Why can't the articles which appear on the front page be more personalised rather than localised?

I'm not a fan of horizontal nav-bars, but I'll reserve judgement till I see it. Sometimes they can be done right, sometimes wrong.

What I really hope though is that the site remains lightning quick, and doesn't go the way of the sun's website, which not only looks awful, but is one of the slowest on the planet to load.

I hope the 'twanging' or 'drumming' or 'tomtoms' will cease from all News Bulletins on the Web pages and on 91Èȱ¬ 1 in particular. Whoever arranged that in the first place must never listen to the News!
It is banal, irrelevant, and totally unecessary. It even continues when people are speaking and reading the headlines. It is like having the News read during the Proms in the Albert Hall.
I have asked 91Èȱ¬ to do that - to have thirty people chatter through the musical presentations!

It's ironic that the 91Èȱ¬ has focussed on its "Big" website when more and more users are using "small" websites on mobile devices in order to access the internet. The 91Èȱ¬ has a mobile site, but Sky, STV, Le Monde and La Stampa all have free apps, which are a much better way of reading the news on an iPhone. It grieves me to use the Sky or STV apps, but if the 91Èȱ¬ can't or won't...

I agree with previous posters, please stick to proper reporting. Twitter comments from people who can't be identified are worthless and devalue 91Èȱ¬ journalism.

BigStu82
"As well as having a "New" logo next to new stories, can we have a little "Old" logo next to the random old stories (e.g. more than 2 weeks old) that crop up on "Most Popular" and "Most Shared""

Haha, yes - good idea!

Well done, you basically are turning 91Èȱ¬ into Telegraph. It is better as it is now, please don't do it! :( well, it's alright, i will get adjusted.

Now a "North American" version.

There are those of us stuck with "The International Version", when what we really want is a customisable UK version with UK (91Èȱ¬) news from a UK viewpoint, where we live (or lived). To be screwed into an "international version" (which we can get elsewhere) is not what I want.


Hello Steve, we meet again.


Is it not possible to have a fully customisable UK orientated news page? (In my case NO SPORT).

The adverts I will accept- as long as they:-

don't last longer than the news item they precede, (when running video),
don't obliterate the entire page by suddenly expanding, from a small box to half a page.

I await the new site with great interest.

However, get the journalism right as fast as is necessary.
"First with the news" isn't important- "The news- RIGHT", is.

Oh, and stand up for your journalists, and crews.

The 91Èȱ¬ continues to do brilliant work online. Can't wait to see the new website in the flesh!

I'd add to comments calling for HTML5 video asap.

Is it possible to include hover text over the links, so I don't have to click to determine nature of contents ?

As long as I'm not forced to always start on an Americas only front page, I'm content. When I want local news I can always click on some US news site, but I go to the 91Èȱ¬ when I want world news. Otherwise, why bother.

Why all the fuss from I-thingy users about wanting the site to work on their devices? When you all bought your 'cutting edge devices' you knew that they couldn't run flash, so why moan? You could have bought any number of devices that worked on nearly every website. But you didn't and now you can't.
Probably the same people who go abroad and want to find fish and chips and a pint of warm beer every night. I bet there's an app for that.

I do specifically like the old 2003 format and layout. Sometime back even the 'low resolution' version was replaced with a mobile version. I am not a fan of the mobile version, rather the older 'low resolution' version loaded very well on mobiles and had plenty of content/links to read in single page than the current mobile version. Hope the mobile version can be improved as well. How about 91Èȱ¬ News releasing an APP for Android / WinMobile / iPhone platforms.

I live in North America, but I have no desire to see a US-specific 91Èȱ¬ webpage. Will I have the option to switch to the international version, or am I going to be stuck with the US version?

Lets hope the new site adheres to web standards, it took ages for them to fix things last time around...

I don't like it. On my computer the current site lines up with nice horizontal text and vertical borders. I don't want to have to angle my head to read the news as per your slideshow, no matter how "edgy" you think the design. Please fix this immediately.

looks great, I hope you've also considered the mobile website, which will grow a lot in time

Please don't get excessive with the video content! For one thing, we're still a few years away from the technical standards settling into place... you'll have to support a half-dozen standards simultaneously in order to please everyone.

More important, there are reasons why read textual news on the Internet rather that watch video news on television. Chief among those is the fact that you can read a website on the job and appear to be working, whereas you cannot so easily get away with watching television on the job! Content made available in video form only is wasted content for most office workers.

WHY????????????????????

"16. At 1:56pm on 06 Jul 2010, FishFingers wrote:
Even more prominence given to Facebook and Twitter.
Once again I ask, isn't this against the 91Èȱ¬ Editorial Guidelines?"

Seeing as it's happening, the answer would be "no" then.

I say leave the site as it is.

I use the site daily, I know where the items I need are and it works very well for me.

Having worked in IT for the past 20 years I know about the desire to tinker and also the problems it can bring...

The site is brilliant as it is - don't gild the lily!

Can you make it much easier to search for recent news articles in any given section? I find it almost impossible to find a news article once it has slipped off the front page of any given news section. Even something as stupidly simple as a link to "Other recent news stories" which is a list of headlines and links from the past 7, or 10 or 14 days or so. It really doesn't need to be fancy, just functional.

Oh, actually, the other thing that I really want to moan about... Can the journalistic standards rise just a little? By that I mean have better headlines which actually state facts rather than rhetoric. If that means having longer headlines then do it. The 91Èȱ¬ is supposed to be (and should be) at the pinnacle of journalism but I've noticed more and more headlines appearing on the 91Èȱ¬ website which wouldn't be out of place on the Sun website.

Very exciting. I only want videos in HTML5 instead of Flash :(

dotconnect, if you were anything of a true typeface enthusiast you would be championing Helvetica and not a poor mans PC version (Arial).

Gill? Are you serious? Your stock just took a tumble in my book. Don't knock what you can't design.

… ...

Site redesign is not before time. …hate to repeat previous comments but the menu move from side to top was screaming out for ages. Also, the site search has always been terrible - I too use Google to search the 91Èȱ¬ site, how backward is that?

I'll chime in with everyone else and say that more-or-less this overhaul is a good idea - unlike your change to HYS, the inability to favour or rank down comments is quite annoying and if you don't check the internet allow me to tell you you're swimming against the tide as more sites (newspapers) are adopting the format. Sift the wheat from the chaff - I don't like reading through +1000 comments - don't have the time.

This might be due to the website changes currently under way however I must point out that lately the 91Èȱ¬ website has been crashing my home, my friends and work computers. Unfortunately I think your putting to much information on one webpage. The inclusion of video content on pretty much every news article is causing internet browsers to simply slow down and crash.

When your new website is released I do hope the 91Èȱ¬ pay close attention to the publics ability to access the website.

So no more Verdana. Nice.

Oh dear. Why ditch the useful, expandable and versatile left hand menu in favour of what will either be a fixed width, limited scope top menu or a horrendous "fold back on itself" mess for those who need larger text sizes?

Instead of losing this why not sacrifice the stupid links on the right that most people ignore anyway, just put them in a box at the bottom of the pae if needs be.

I'd agree with the comments regarding video; this is annoying at work, particularly while loading in a new tab in the background and it suddenly starts broadcasting to the office!

Secondly we don't all have the latest lightning-quick machines with cinema-sized displays. So again, video takes an age to load and also I've been finding the current site is a struggle to fit onto the 1024x768 screen of my laptop (especially the In Pictures sections). I strongly believe that websites should fit to my browser window, and not the other way around.

Other than that, looking forward to trying it out!

Looks great to me! I prefer the two-row "banner" style menu... it works well on the Guardian's site.

Whatever you do I am sure it will be brilliant. I live in Sydney and I use the site every day to keep up to date. Congratulations on a great resource.