New look for Guardian’s Organ Grinder; Video Content on Telegraph site
And it’s great. I just found a copy of the Guardian from August in a bag I’m packing at the moment and was thinking about the design they recently introduced. Personally I like the size, and find the fonts easy to read even at 11pm when my eyes are tired. Comparing it to other broadsheets, I think they’ve got it just right. It’s also a co-incidence that just this morning I was thinking the Guardian site had a different front page to a lot of the site, and comment areas appear in three very different styles.
I check out the Organ Grinder blog on media every day and love what they’ve done with it. I think the way the titles of the posts are done is better - now loading with no delay. The categories down the left hand side are very clear and tidy, although I’m not sure how well the red links on grey down the right hand side work. The comments are now formatted in the familiar style from Comment is Free, and they’re much easier to read as a result.
The formatting of posts is very nice indeed. Whilst the trend is to add buttons for the major social sites, or a share button to open a box with dozens of buttons, they’ve stuck with just Digg and del.icio.us, which are certainly the tools I use most for blog posts. Props for plain text links too. There’s also a link to see what’s being said about a post (”Conversations about this post”). This is very worth while when you gather almost 7,000 diggs on a blog post like Charlie Brooker’s I Hate Macs.
I believe the Guardian are doing a lot of work at the moment on the website and look forward to seeing how the rest looks. I’m a big fan of the new Times Online site and think the broadsheets have responded very well with the challenges of putting together sites (see Independent, Telegraph, New York Times, USA Today) which look great, have some familiarity with the paper edition and innovate with new types of content like blogs and podcasts.
Last week on the MediaTalk podcast (look at that smooth segue), Emily Bell mentioned the video player on the Telegraph site. I’ve not been the quickest to adopt viewing these channels, but the Telegraph video player is so well done I’ve gone back a few times. It’s worth noting how these flash players contrast with traditional Microsoft and Real delivery. Just look at what CNN are doing and compare it to the “beta” player from MSNBC. I find Flash is often quick and convenient, especially as it doesn’t interfere with anything else I’m doing. In Vista when I watch the BBC video content I lose sound, the screen goes black for a few seconds and it all comes back with the basic theme. Close the window and the same thing happens again.
I think this extends past a technology choice on the website. The video podcasts from ABC and CNN are very clean and they clearly understand the differences between viewing online and on TV. MSNBC only make available audio highlights from shows like Countdown with Keith Olbermann, even though the clips are incredibly popular online on YouTube or other video sites.
It’s a really exciting time for online content. When ABC and CNN are moving forward, it still seems strange that the BBC would move backwards.
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