Things are changing today… it’s all very exciting. A new front page for Guardian Unlimited will allow us to better reflect the rich variety of content already on offer, and help tell stories in new and exciting ways.
“The wider pages allow us to feature more news and different, dramatic layouts as the news agenda changes throughout the day – we will not be wedded to the fixed story and picture positions of more conventional sites – and we want to offer users the best possible gateway into the full depth of our award-winning content.
You will notice that we have placed a greater emphasis on the visual elements of the site, with pictures, interactives, graphics and video destined to play a much larger role in our future.”
“For a while, the new front page will be a facade concealing a busy building site, as work proceeds on an 18-month programme to redesign and rebuild every part of GU. But as the first page many of our visitors see, it makes sense that the homepage should be one of the first to reveal our new design approach.”
Eye-catching, easy to navigate, simple to view. Good job!
I like it.
Love the increased use (and size) of photographs. I’m always surprised at the lack of stand-out images on newspaper web sites. Well done, hope it didn’t involve too many oil burning sessions. What *is* the new media equivalent of burning the midnight oil?
My midnight oil remains untouched on this one, I’m happy to say! But that wasn’t the case for all concerned. Still, I’m sure we’ll all burn our allocations before the year is out
Like it. Lots.
I’m glad to see it’s working in Safari/OSX today, which it wasn’t quite doing yesterday!
t’s definitely a lot clearer and more open than the old version. I just wish the main navigation bar at the top was larger, and maybe subdivided (one part for news sections, another for blogs, podcasts and other stuff).
I like it very much (and its great to see “last updated less than one minute ago”!
I’ve sent an email saying just how much I like it, but should also like to put on record that I like it very much.
It’s very pretty. Much less cramped than the old one. I agree with Adrian that the top navigation bar needs a bit of a rethink – it’s not easy to scan at a glance and community features could be more intuitively gathered together perhaps. Somebody somewhere must have user-tested the taxonomy surely? I guess that’s the closest match for the Guardian’s impressive print font you could find but it suffers in comparison when trying to convey the relative weight and importance of different items. Inevitably you can’t squeeze all the content in above the fold but my scroll finger is working overtime on this one. The Blogs, Comment and Most Read widgets get a bit lost as a result. Anyway I like it, I think.
Thanks, all, for the comments. I think you’ll continue to see it evolve over the next wee while, but generally the change has gone well… (touches wood).