Wednesday, October 6, 2010
News Page--NME
This is the website of the NME (New Musical Express), a very popular British music magazine. They are known as a source for online music news and are very reputable.
It's one of my favorite websites, but because of the content more than the layout. Look at how many links, pictures and videos are on the main page. There's a lot of information, but an overwhelming amount of it.
Overall, I like the font choices and layout structure of the page, it just needs to have way less content on the homepage. It makes it cluttered and hard to find information.
Monday, October 4, 2010
News Page- AOL
Although this is pretty old school, I still tend to use this newspage to get random news facts. I check other websites on a daily basis like the NYT to get the majority of news, but since I still use AOL mail, I always tend to scroll down this newspage and read what's going on.
I like it because it's very simple. It has a tab for top news, business news, entertainment news and sports news. The website as a whole looks very appealing and organized to me. There's also an area at the bottom right that lets you choose which city you would like to hear local news from.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
News Page - The New York Times
I really enjoy The New York Times' web page because the layout, in my mind, is similar to that of a traditional newspaper. There's the headline banner with the date as well as the included advertising. One doesn't have to scroll to the left or right when they open they page, however, one does have to scroll down quite a ways. The tool bar is rather large, but I think the use of bold and grey type makes it more easy to follow visually. The page is also broken up into sections, so that once one becomes accustomed to the page, they can instantly scroll to their favorite "section." Additionally, there are a lot of pictures included, but they don't overwhelm the page.
I think my favorite part about the page is that one can read the headline and the initial sentence which sums up the story for you. In an age where time is of the essence, it helps those who are on the go get a lot of news in a shorter period of time.
The New York Times also has an email version of their web page which I take advantage of as well.
News Page- The Washington Post
News Page BBC News
- I like the red and blue color scheme, and that the page is still very clear.
- The menu is at the top of the page, and you can browse by country or type of news.
- I think there is a good balance of graphics and text; the layout is easy to look at.
- It doesn't have a lot of movement, which I like because it's not too distracting.
- Most of all, this site is very easy to use.
- The gray type is a little weird; it's kind of hard to read. Black would be better.
News Page - San Diego Union-Tribune
Overall, the home page of the San Diego Union-Tribune is not designed well, although it does possess some good qualities. For someone who is arriving at the page from a link, it's hard to know exactly what the page is. I think the biggest mistake on the page is that the actual title of the news organization is one of the smallest pieces of text. The title should be instantly noticeable, especially since the URL is signonsandiego instead of sandiegouniontribune, or something like that. It would be more recognizable to do it this way.
I think that the drop-down boxes for navigation are pretty bad too. The links to inside pages are tiny, difficult to read, and also white against dark blue, which is not ideal.
One of the things that I liked about the page is that there were several interesting, large pictures which made it less boring. However, I would have preferred that the links to top headlines and most popular, etc. were on the right instead of the left, giving more attention to the stories that are on the main page.
When you first navigate to the page, what you see in the browser is not particularly interesting, so I would have probably put one of the interesting pictures "above the fold" instead of a bunch of text and headlines.