BBC News website redesign (5)
Post categories: BBC News website
| 15:54 UK time, Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Thank you for all your feedback on the BBC News website redesign. There has been a lot of it, and we'll continue to sort through the comments and e-mails we've been receiving, identifying specific issues we can address and adding answers to the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page.
Most of you commenting here on the Editors blog have been critical, with many urging us to change the design back to the way it was. Given the strength of feeling expressed in some of the comments, I'd like to explain again, as clearly as I can, what our thinking is.
• Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering, but building and continuing to improve on the changes we've made certainly is.
• We are looking closely at the comments and feedback we are getting on all aspects of the new design, and we'll also be carefully watching usage, traffic and conducting further audience research, as we would after any such change.
• There will be a review process and if changes need to be made, they will be considered as part of that.
• There are a few things not yet working exactly the way they should be - our developers and designers are tackling those now, and we are addressing them in the FAQs.
• The changes we have made are based on careful research and thinking about how the site can work at its best now, and how we can make sure it is adaptable enough to continue to evolve, not stand still.
Along with everyone else on the design, technical and editorial teams here who have worked together to try to improve the site and the systems which produce it, I hope you will grow to like it, if you don't already (and thanks to those of you who have let us know you do!)
Here's what we've already said about the reasons for the new design, why we didn't run a public beta and the thinking behind the design itself.
Many of the specific issues you've raised are tackled in our FAQs page and we've added some further updates there, which are also summarised below.
Thanks again to all who have commented here - I'm sorry I haven't been able to reply to everyone individually. The intention of these blog posts over the past couple of weeks has been to let you know what we are doing, and why. I hope that even if you are one of those who doesn't agree with what we've done, you at least understand a bit more about it.
We'll continue to follow the feedback, and to address specific issues where we can in the FAQs page.
• Where has Europe and other world regional weather gone?
We are currently working on better ways to present weather in our world regional sections, and hope to re-introduce it soon.
• Why don't you have a single list of the main News blogs linked from the front page?
We do not currently have a single destination page aggregating all our News blogs, but we link to blogs individually on relevant section indexes around the site, also on related stories and on the front page, depending on the news agenda. All the blogs are also linked to from the right hand navigation within any individual blog post. There is now a new section on many of the main indexes called "Expert Views" which does provide a home for blogs in the respective subject areas. For these reasons we do not currently have a permanent link to all of them on the front page.
• Can I turn off the Facebook option?
Some of you have contacted us to say that your work computer blocks access to Facebook which is causing you problems looking at our pages that embed the Facebook "Recommend" button. We're working to see if there is an automatic solution to this, but in the mean time, if you would like to remove these Facebook buttons, then you can do so by clicking here to set a cookie. This will tell us not to show you the Facebook buttons. If you would like the Facebook buttons back at any point, simply clear your cookies. If you clear your cookies you will need to visit the link above again to re-hide the Facebook buttons.
• Why does video slow down my story page download?
Some of you have reported that the video player in our stories is sometimes slowing down your experience of using our site. This will be particularly true if you are using a slower connection, but we are aware that it is an issue and are working to resolve it as soon as possible.
• Is the site designed just for large screens?
We tested the site extensively on all modern browsers and screen resolutions, however, we have received a number of comments from some of you with small screens saying that the text on our pages is too close to the left hand side of your screens - we are still investigating this
Steve Herrmann is editor of the BBC News website.
Comments
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Well its great to know you have ignored our comments and requests,i am off to a better site, the BBC is going backwards, shame as it was a good place to visit, bye bye
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The issues regarding the fonts, the white space, the bizarre interpretations of local settings etc etc etc were all pretty much flagged up days and days ago. When are we going to get some fixes rather than just explanations as to why the revamp was a good idea? It's about time there was some sort of timetable / roadmap for how this is going to move forward.
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Sorry to say this Steve, but it appears like you are completely ignoring the wishes of the people that are paying for this site...
All you appear to be doing is steam rolling over peoples honest opinions with re iterations of the same information that we all knew was there from day 1
Your quote "Given the strength of feeling expressed in some of the comments, I'd like to explain again, as clearly as I can, what our thinking is" is truly an insult.
You are attempting to treat those with an opinion based on solid understanding of the facts like children who 'need to be told'.
We have all read the FAQ's and the numerous blogs from yourself and others on this matter...
This doesn't change the fact that so far the vocal majority do not like the changes.
You haven't acceded to apply a vote.
You haven't given us a representation of the numbers that have been readily available elsewhere that you seem to be hanging onto for dear life.
Your FAQ mentions
You are quite frankly insulting us.
Answer a few simple Q's, please Steve.
Will your 'review process' include the possibility that you have made a mistake in implementing this re-design?
You keep mentioning progress, but isn't this simply about revenue from previously untapped sources and coupled with the fact that only half the project is ready?
Why have you ruled out the possibility that the site is not going to be reverted?
Oh and finally, please be more prompt with your updates...
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Steve
You make the comment that "thousands" were allowed to see the prototype site, so therefore could you answer some specific questions.
1. When was the 'prototype' site available for viewing? A number of people have commented on your earlier posting saying they only got to see it 2-3 weeks before the launch.
2. What was done to ensure feedback from the 'prototype' site was then fedback into the design before launch?
4. What rollback plan did you have in place before launch of the new site? It would be somewhat surprising to find out that senior BBC managers signed off on a 'sh*t or bust' implementation.
5. There have been numerous specific and detailed points raised in the comments section by people wanting to have certain things addressed. Rather then a general 'we are looking at things' fob off answer could you please tell us, the licence payers, when specific raised issues are going to be addressed, an organisation the size of the BBC must surely be able to publish a list of items, what is intended to do to correct them and timescale for doing it.
6. Give the Alexa numbers are suggesting site traffic is down between 15% and 20% on the BBC news site when you take into account that news represents about 50% of bbc.co.uk total traffic would you consider the redesign a success?
I'm sorry to come across as pi**ed off but I'd really like to hear less justification of why and how it happened and more "this is what we're going to do to fix it quickly".
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Weak Steve, really weak.
"Most of you commenting here on the Editors blog have been critical, with many urging us to change the design back to the way it was. Given the strength of feeling expressed in some of the comments, I'd like to explain again, as clearly as I can, what our thinking is"
Why don't you just stop thinking and put it back the way it was? You have just acknowledged that most of us are unhappy with what you have done, yet you persist with this debacle. Anywhere else apart from the BBC, a head would have rolled and the site would have been rolled back.
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Yay another blog to tell us how wrong we all are.
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Sorry, Mr. Herrmann, but your post above just isn't an answer to anyone. I do appreciate the Facebook-removal option, however, but I'm not sure whether it's also blocking whatever Facebook-linked tracking software you have running.
Sadly, however, your post left me with an unshakeable feeling that you're adopting a position of "stand very still, and hope the storm blows past." There isn't a 'change to your existing design' possible that removes the need to scroll for half a metre just to see the content of the home page, and as such, your site is no longer useful to me.
The fact that you choose to post an FAQ response to "Why isn't there a link to all News blogs", but make no comment on the fact that your font is illegible on many Windows systems, or any of the other major problems, implies that you're only looking for easy, low-hanging fruit to respond to. (FYI - a "return to top" button is about 3 lines of Javascript at most, and wouldn't/shouldn't break anything, so I don't know why that didn't fall into the "easy" category, unless you want people to scroll back to the top to double-show US ads, of course.)
"Along with everyone else on the design, technical and editorial teams here who have worked together to try to improve the site and the systems which produce it, I hope you will grow to like it."
Sorry, nothing for me to like here. It's a pity, really, because there was a post in your last blog that linked to your designer's initial mock-ups, and they were 10 times better than what you've ended up with (albeit still worse than the pre-update version).
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The "On This Day" section seems to have vanished in the redesigned site. Is this intentional or just an oversight? I imagine it probably doesn't get much traffic, but it can be quite interesting.
Thanks
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How much of our money has this disaster cost?
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"I'd like to explain again, as clearly as I can, what our thinking is"
And I would like to explain again, as clearly as I can, what your customers' thinking is:
The vast majority don't like it, and explaining it again isn't going to change that fact.
Is that clear?
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Steve (and fellow sufferers),
Very disappointed that this does not address most of the concerns expressed, including very specific ones about usability and others about BBC policy.
The most serious question, for me, is this: Does this redesign violate the Corporation's charter? It was explicitly done to satisfy BBC Worldwide's desire to please overseas advertisers, as described by Miranda Creswell, senior VP for BBC.com: http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=144943
The 10 Washington reporters for this site (and a 25-strong US-based ad sales force) are being paid for directly by BBC Worldwide.
Why isn't this redesigning of the UK site and its content (even if it cannot be fully seen by American/Canadian and other international readers) a violation of the charter which requires independence from commercial considerations?
Isn't sharing users' IP addresses with Facebook unless they insert a cookie (which is hardly easy to find) on their browser - apparently as a source of revenue based on non-UK IPs - also a violation of BBC privacy standards and of EU data protection?
I understand that this is difficult for someone who is trying to be loyal to the BBC. But this is a public trust which requires honesty and transparency.
As for all the complaints about ruining the best news web site in the world, would you post what has happened to traffic so far? Normally when a new site launches with lots of splash it goes way up at least initially. What happened here?
And, finally, 4,000 comments about 95% of them highly negative. Doesn't this require something more?
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" Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering,"
Goodbye BBC News online!
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I was at first unhappy and critical of the new design. However after a week, I have gotten used to it and can now see why changes were made. I do like the 'features' section on the right hand side of each page. There is a few things I think needs sorting out, like the amount of white space but overall its good!
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"Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering"
Thank you.
Goodbye.
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Sigh, sorry for double-posting so early in the topic, but:
"Why does video slow down my story page download?
Some of you have reported that the video player in our stories is sometimes slowing down your experience of using our site. This will be particularly true if you are using a slower connection, but we are aware that it is an issue and are working to resolve it as soon as possible."
This is also a fairly major issue for me. I'm not quite up to par on JS/embedded player integration in websites, so this is a layman's opinion, but there are two questions I have.
1) Regardless of which computer I use, the big box, Watch/Listen, gets rendered on my screen twice, in very different ways. Initially, it comes as 7/8 stories arranged vertically, then it "snaps" to the normal view. I don't know if that's intentional or not?
2) I'd be curious to know, since you have a cookie for outing Facebook, whether you couldn't set a similar thing with an on/off switch for the videos?
(PS: Not a personal problem as I'll never want the FB buttons back ever, but it's not exactly convenient to have to wipe all cookies to get them back. I still think your solution is (for the first time) a genuine improvement, however.)
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Actually, removing BBC as my home page was very hard to do as I have always held "Auntie" in great esteem, high regards, and with great affection, but once I press "Post Comment" at the end of this message.
I don't care anymore.
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I really don't see this simply going away if you ignore it long enough.
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Stories with embedded video are really really slow to open on Safari on my Macbook. Takes about 10/15 seconds to load the video. Slowing the entire browser down to a crawl. I never even watch them anyway!
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"Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering, but building and continuing to improve on the changes we've made certainly is. "
It always amuses me when companies disingenuously solicit feedback and opinion and then politely explain how they are going to completely ignore it all. We now know of course that these changes are being driven by the commercial arm of the BBC (see [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator])
If they are already dictating the format/content of the website, how long before it starts affecting other programming. Perhaps it already has.
I see there is still no mention of any improvements in interactivity. It has taken a severe nosedive over the last year with the downgrading of HYS to a completely unsuitable blog format. Interactivity is an area where the BBC is being completely left behind.
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I think you have (probably inadvertently) provided a public service by forcing lazy regular visitors to the BBC News website to try out other providers of news and entertainment.
After day 1 of the BBC News website re-design I had a quick look elsewhere and have found that Google News (aggregator), The Guardian, Telegraph and even Daily Mail informative, engaging, entertaining, and most importantly none of those give me a navigation (or physical) headache, like the new BBC News website does. So thanks for opening my eyes to other News sites that are out there.
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Although I quite like the redesign overall (and, thank goodness, the local weather works much better now), when I use my RSS reader (FeedDemon 3.0) and click through to view a news piece, the layout / font is frankly terrible - kerning wrong, overlapping text etc. I'd send a screenshot if it were allowed ...
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"Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering, but building and continuing to improve on the changes we've made certainly is"
Returning to the old layout would be the single greatest improvement you could make. I sincerely hope the hubris you have demonstrated in this matter is your downfall.
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• Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering, but building and continuing to improve on the changes we've made certainly is.
The statement above shows your arrogance BYE
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Put a vote on the name site, make it easy for everyone to see (shouldn't be hard, you have enough space) and see what the response is of the paying (ie. UK) public.
If the majority say they like the site then you have proved all of us wrong, if the majority say they dislike it, then you can start to implement a roll back to the award winning site you had before.
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I see Mr Herrmann is still adamantly refusing to leave lalaland.
But please don't give up, my fellow bbc newssite devotees and licence-payers.
The old site was too good to be vandalised like this.
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Clearly, the new design reflects the BBC’s continuing journey into populist/red-top/tabloid territory, and in that sense, I think it’s been very successful. The disdain being shown towards users who raise perfectly valid issues about good design, is a typical response from Auntie, who always thinks she knows best. Bless.
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I can see you ARE slowly sorting out some of the issues that people have ie White space is getting less, Borders seem to be shrinking and the line spacing is slowly getting back towards normal.
But you still have no decernable layout on the home page. Its messy and disjointed .I'm sorry But I really prefered the side menu and there is still crazy amounts of scrolling needed to see anything.
I am trying to get used to the changes without just hating them because I liked the old site. But I am physically not able to view as many stories as I did due to constant scrolling and extra clicks to get to the pages I want.
I really can't see how this is any Improvement on the previous site.
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Considering the whole redesign has been introduced to create a new US edition of the site that can sport Ads, I have the following comment.
You are ignoring the license-fee paying british public to earn american money.
I find the whole debacle offensive, and think it heralds the end of the TV license. When people realise they are paying taxes (a rose by any other name.. ) for something that already is already collecting ad revenue, they will force the BBC to be completely Ad supported, Home and Abroad.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Steve,
Judging by the comments on this blog and speaking to many of my friends, the single biggest criticism of the redesign is that people now find it HARDER and LONGER to navigate your site.
I think the one element that most people miss is the vertical navigation bar. It is a fact that humans find it easier to read lists in a vertical format as opposed to horizontal (as it is now). For commercial reasons it is difficult for your competitors to use vertical navigation bars as this usually gets taken up by adverts. The BBC is throwing away it's unique advantage over other websites and has come up with a generic news site that anyone could have come up with! We pay our license fee to get a style and quality of service that isn't possible from commercial providers - not to mimic them!
I cannot see why you could not revert to this popular style, I fear that if you don't people will drift away from using it, as it will not offer anything that isn't available elsewhere on the net - and in many cases is done much better.
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Actually, can I have a go at drafting update (6) for you? Try this ...
"We have been hoping that your comments would have dried up now, but as they keep coming please be reassured that we are considering them very carefully. Yes indeedy. Every last one. Sort of.
In response to your comments we have updated the FAQs explaining that we have had to make these changes because things can't stand still. Not for a moment. Has to be done. Busy, busy people. I can't of course admit to you that we have done this to incorporate the ads on the international site because that would be giving too much away. But let me reassure you that the experience of our users is a fairly important consideration, always provided it doesn't conflict with our overly-prescriptive style guidelines which we are very proud of and which we have almost finished writing.
Finally we will be introducing changes in response to some of the points you've raised as soon as possible. Which will be very soon. I can't tell you when, but it will certainly be soon. Or soonish. Probably. But don't hold your breaths"
There. How does that sound?
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Looking back at http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2008/03/refreshing_changes.html, which was the previous redesign 2 years ago. It's essentially the exact same comments. "Dumbing down" "If it's not broken don't fix it" etc. etc. If that redesign was so awful, then why are all you lot complaining about the new one!
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"If they are already dictating the format/content of the website, how long before it starts affecting other programming. Perhaps it already has."
Why do you think the beeb has so many 45 minute programs?
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Please be less defensive and more forthcoming in what you are willing to take on board of the many, many valid criticisms posted here.
Either that, or simply remove the comments section, and put us out of our misery.
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Well I've been wondering about this and now I know why this just does not fit the bill. I used to be able to scan all the important news headlines quickly and easily on a single page prior to this update (I can't call it an upgrade as that implies it has improved). This site is so much worse than it was before and I simply do not see all the information I had before IN ONE PLACE. I have been a BBC user for years and now I really do have to consider going elsewhere to read news online. I just cannot express how strongly I feel that this is a HUGE backwards step, and it would seem like there are many many people who feel exactly as I do. Do not put your head in the sand over this, the BBC has had a well deserved reputation for the quality of its news coverage online and this change has set you back considerably.
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Doesnt it show truely breathtaking arrogance to explicitly rule out a return to the old format given the truely massive negative response the redesign has engendered.
The BBC is charged with providing high quality output at good value for money for the british license payer. How is a downgraded, dumbed down mediocrity enabled to support advertising that the public dont want and facebook integration for a minority not bothered about their own online privacy.
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"Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering, but building and continuing to improve on the changes we've made certainly is"
Why didn't you build on the old design? Why couldn't you just improve the image/video quality, make more spacious etc... the old, far superior, BBC News page. Why did you waste my money changing something that worked? All you have done is annoyed people and made some web developers/design gurus very rich. It's a shame the BBC isn't directly controlled buy the government, as if it were than perhaps this "age of austerity" culture would have stopped this pointless redesign.
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It takes a strong man to admit defeat. Steve, how about addressing the awful navigation bar at the top of the page. What did your "1000s of users" have to say about that in the beta?
Or is it just that a few BBC employees and their families were invited to take a long if they fancied. I bet none submitted feedback.
You have ruined a great website. Well done
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I like the new design. IMO it looks good, has a clean design and is easy to navigate. I'm not a big fan of the fixed width but that hasn't changed.
My only complaint - the Sport site is now inconsistent with News which is a shame.
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"Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering" - what an attitude. At least you came straight out with it. I bet my boots that you will be taking back that statement pretty soon. The design is rubbish. The criticisms are valid, start listening!
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Why have you done away with the paper review?
Worried that we'll leave your site too quickly. That smacks of desperation BBC, but then much of this blog has been desperately trying to justify your revamp in the face of overwhelming opposition.
Extra opportunities to link to social networking sites? Even as a regular user of FB, I just don't get what need that serves. You're a NEWS organisation and your average readership isn't 12 years old. The whole reworking is a triumph of style over substance but at least it's made me go and investigate other news outlets so like many others I'll be spending a lot more time elsewhere. It would be interesting to know how much traffic you're prepared to lose before you listend to some of the comments on here...
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I'm afraid its deja-vu all over again. They didnt listen when they forced the international edition on us ex-pats, after taking away the Edition option, and they aren't going to listen now...despite all of Steve's platitudes.
I hope you spend all your ad revenue more wisely than you have on this disaster.
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I'm looking at the FAQ page in a 900-pixel wide window right now, and it's not even slightly better.
The text is immediately against the left-hand side, no margin.
There is a large column of white-space in the middle, occupied only by the banner and part of the headline at the top, and by the footer at the bottom. At the top the right side has a 'top stories' box, a 'features and analysis' box, and a (giant) 'most popular' box. After that there's nothing. For most of the page, there is a body of text crammed in on the left-hand side, and absolutely nothing in the right. It is an absolutely terrible layout.
The same FAQ tells me that you've 'been rolling out more of the components that make up the pages, so some of them have appeared with more space than will be typical'. I can't think of anything you could possibly put in the middle of the page to fill this space.
You know what would work? Having a left-side margin, say 4 or 5cm wide. You could even put something useful in it, like navigation links, which are frequently used on user interfaces for predominantly text-based sites and applications. That improves the layout, and increases usability!
Yes, I know removing the navigation bar on the left let you 'offer larger images and galleries, videos and interactive graphics', but I don't visit BBC news for any of those thing. I visit BBC news for the news. In text. That is what the layout should prioritise.
That all sounds like I'm asking for you to revert back to the old design, which you've said you won't even consider doing, but I'm not asking you to do that. Changing the new design so it's almost exactly like the old design would be fine.
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Well I give up then, moving to another new source, your just blatantly ignoring us Steve and it's very disheartening that the BBC should act in this way to be honest, not only has this attitude put me of the sit it's made me think twice about my TV license, this is the worst design change I've seen on a large commercial website in the last 15 years, thousands and thousands of people complain because of their love of the BBC and the news service that it provides and you just ignore us by way of just regurgitating the same lines which can be summed as as follows, "we know you don't like it, live with it", absolute disgrace, I have lost all faith in the BBC after this.
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Why bother with all that text BarkingP, when you only need seven letters (well 5 letters but one is used three times) to form two words that send out the same message.
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Disappointing but not surprising.
This is a big problem in the UK, the pervasive institutional arrogance that comes from budgets and marketshare based on handouts rather than having to compete in the marketplace. It means you don't have to consider 'users' as customers, you simply give them what you want to, not what they want.
The irony is that the US market you seem bent on exploiting would not tolerate such a disgusting lack of respect for customers. In the US a company thrives by providing superior service, not by leading a sheltered existence.
I cannot stand the attitude and approach. Time to leave, delete bookmarks, and vote with my feet. Time for CNN even if their layout is less than ideal, at least they are seeking to provide what their customers want...
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Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering, but building and continuing to improve on the changes we've made certainly is.
Dont u think you and your team should leave it to another team .....
Bet your all not happy with our thas all the MR nobodys like me who use
sorry that are leaving your rubbish new site. SO WELL DONE TO YOU AND ALL THE TEAM WHOS MADE A RIGHT PIGS HEAR OFF IT .......PS 99 .2 % dont like it the others must be ur team lol sorry bye
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Still trying to get my head round all this.
I am a paying customer of the BBC, paying on threat of fines and imprisonment if I refuse to pay. I have no choice.
In these circumstances I would expect to have some choice about the service I receive for my compulsory levy.
It appears not.With minimal consultation, still no real evidence of the scope of this has been produced or the feed back from it, a service with which I, and most others, was very happy with has been changed into something I am deeply unhappy with.
I still check the News page hoping for a drastic change back towards what it was but it stays pretty much the same garish tabloid format with
poor storylines not updated anything like often enough and appalling navigation.
Now after thousands of complaints I, and everyone else is told a variation of like it or lump it.
In the real world a business that upset its customers to the extent that they got mass complaints, letters to the press e-mails to parliament, and, worst of all customers leaving for other outlets in their droves, would change whatever had upset their customers pronto.
But of course they would or they would go bust. The BBC wont coz it still collects my licence fee whether I use their service or not.
Mr Herrmann by failing to acknowledge what a disaster this change has been and reverting to something more like the old site you are treating me with contempt.
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"Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering"
Wow, that's the attitude! Comment as much as you like, we'll ignore you anyway!
Well, here is a petition requesting the BBC to revert to the old design:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/37916.html
PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION!
Everyone who believes the old design was better please sign, it only takes 10 seconds! Maybe they'll re-consider if we get enough signatures.
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"There are a few things not yet working exactly the way they should be - our developers and designers are tackling those now..."
- clearly you did not test this site properly, these are not minor bugs, they are fundamental problems
"We are currently working on better ways to present weather in our world regional sections, and hope to re-introduce it soon."
- you state that plenty of research and consideration went into this revamp, would you like to restate that?
"...we are aware that it is an issue and are working to resolve it as soon as possible."
- again, not enough consideration for you audience or testing.
"...the text on our pages is too close to the left hand side of your screens - we are still investigating this."
- these problems are not small bugs that slipped through, this whole site smacks of an awful level of amateurism.
"The changes we have made are based on careful research "
- I think most people don't believe that nonsense.
"Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering, but building and continuing to improve on the changes we've made certainly is."
- I can understand that the new content management system might not work with the old site, but what you can do, and there is no doubt about this, is MAKE THE SITE LOOK AND FUNCTION LIKE THE OLD ONE. That will be enough for me.
In the mean time, I'm working on a greasemoneky script to do that, will post when I have it looking a bit better.
I suggest again that people contact the Director General and Assistant Director General of the BBC -
Mark Thompson DG
Mark Byford
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@32
Last time they didn't totally change the whole navigational layout of the site. And also they did take on board some of the criticisms. So by the time tempers had clamed and tweaks had been applied, the site felt like a natural evolution.
This one has totally thrown the old style out. So even if they answer some of the worst criticisms,, it still won't feel anything like the old site. And to some of us, that's exactly why we kept coming back.
This change hasn't felt like anything I particulaly want to visit again, except for specific stories. I used to check it several times a day, I've maybe looked at a day or two's worth or news according to my old habits over the past entire week. And some of that was just so I could actually get a good feel of the new site so that I wasn't ranting about stuff I'd not even looked at.
Now most of my ranting is done, there's nothing left worth looking at until the left bar is restored and the right bar is removed.
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"My only complaint - the Sport site is now inconsistent with News which is a shame."
Please, Please, Please, Please BBC dont change the sports section.
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Steve
I should not have to opt out of sharing my personal details (IP address, browsing habits etc) with Facebook. this may well be illegal.
Why hasn't anybody answered my formal complaint about what the relationship between the BBC and Facebook is and what information Facebook can see by the BBC including a third party widget on every page.
The BBC must not be complicit in any behavioral profiling, especially with a US company with questionable privacy policies.
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Just checked back to see if you have reverted back to the better layout of the old site but no - It's still sh*t.
Given that it's clear no one at the BBC has the guts to admit their mistake, Can I suggest to other BBC license payers on this blog that everyone states their preferred alternative news site so that everyone can locate the best one that matches the glory of the original BBC one. I'm currently using Skynews but it's not a lot better than the BBC's new mess. Anyone got a better favorite.
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As the editor has decided to toally dismiss, failed to justify his actions and ignore my comments and request to restore the old News front page I have logged on to the BBC complaints page at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/homepage/
to lodge a formal complint and ask for information relting to meetings etc about this matter
The BBC had 16,400 complaints in June about TV and Radio and has now had 3000+ in a week about this website, I think that says something !!!
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Steve,
You are acting like a dictator, you think that if you say it enough times that your new design is an improvement, then eventually the readers will believe it! Only problem is the readers don't have to live in your world, they can go elsewhere.
Please seriously think what your stance would be if you were doing this for a commercial company, you would need to make a quick decision and revert to the original design for fear of losing more readers and impacting the companies profile and profits.
The way you have responded to this matter is a gleaming example of the BBC failing to be accountable to it's clients / license fee payers. Very poor indeed, and the longer this continues to more ammunition the new Culture Secretary has to use against the BBC.
Mark.
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Steve
I'll be flamed for saying this, but what the heck - I'm pleased to hear you're not reverting to the old design.
Yes there are undoubtedly legitimate issues/problems/concerns with the new design in its current form - but I can see past that and say that the new site is really growing on me. What's more, I think if some people here would calm down and try to be less dogmatic, less revelling in their outrage, they might find it actually grows on them too, especially when solutions to some of the issues they're raising are implemented.
At the moment, "the problem" will seem worse than it is for several reasons:
(1) Internet discussion, which tends to favour hyperbole over measured criticism. Things are rarely small problems nowadays, it seems. They must always be "a disaster".
(2) Aversion to change, which accompanies any major redesign. Some of us recall the vitriol directed at the Times, the Guardian the Daily Mail, and others when they revamped. There were subsequent tweaks, and many people got used to it.
(3) The anti-BBC mob (or at least certain unremittingly negative posters) who seem to sit and wait to pounce on any new BBC development so that they can dismiss it as a "fiasco" and a "shambles".
(4) The sheer popularity (and familiarity) of the BBC News site - that in itself magnifies any perceived problem and the amount of flak you will receive.
(5) Mob mentality and the snowball effect - once a narrative gains momentum, it's easy to get caught up in the feeding frenzy and lose perspective.
Once again - there ARE real problems with the site. I don't deny that. Some good comments have been made over the last week or so. But these other factors will be making it seem so much worse. Which is why I think you're right in not relying entirely on blog comments.
So I hope the team that worked on the site will be able to filter through the impolite nonsense and po-faced announcements of departure, not get too downhearted by the spite and bile, and pick out the constructive criticism, in the knowledge that some of us appreciate all the hard work and the improvements.
I look forward to seeing it improve.
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Like the others I hate the new design and have registered just to say that despite your determination to ignore your customer. But I won't get mad. I will go to The Telegraph instead. It seems okay and certainly a lot easier to read. I miss the London/local stories but at least sport is back.
I'd be interested to hear of other good alternatives as the Sky one isn't up to the old standard that BBC had set with the previous design.
I'll be surprised if you are still in this job next year.
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"Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering"
You don't have to revert to it, just offer it as an option. Bit of Javascript here, some CSS tinkering there. Voila! we are all happy.
I do however, think that your statement above is quite condescending and soemwhat blinkered. It takes a big person to say "Hmm, sorry readers, we got that wrong", a bit like Steve Jobs and his failed joke of "use the other hand" with the Iphone 4.
The difference is commercial organisations HAVE to listen to their customers. Remember Ratner and his "crap jewellery"?
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Steve
If I were you, I'd talk to my Legal team very quickly, as I think that you may have inadvertantly breached UK and EU law.
Remember all that fuss the other year about PHORM. The proposed "solution" in that case was to give people an opt out via a cookie (like you're doing with the facebook option on this site.
In the end, the legal opinion was that this "solution" didn't cut the mustard legally speaking, and the ISPs concerned ended up dropping PHORM rather hurredly (just before outraged customers launched an EU complaint).
I strongly suggest that you disable the Facebook option while you look into this issue, as the penalties the BBC face (both in terms of £ and in reputation) are severe.
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What I really take exception to is the utterly arrogant "fingers-in-ears-lalalalala"-approach of the BBC Editors after loud, clear and constructive criticisms from the license fee payers.
All you seem to do Steve, is simply regurgitate what you've said before.
It seems that only one thing is going to change the BBC's mind: a drop in visitor stats.
And with that said, I'm out of here. I may check the front page once every fortnight or so, just to see what's happening, as opposed to 10 browsing sessions or more per day.
I predict at least a 30% drop in visitor numbers in the next few weeks.
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Your columns are far too wide for reading comfortably.
Try comparing your column widths with a, say, the Economist or Paris Match. Those are wide enough.
[Many newspapers use even narrower columns so they can up their Ad yields per page for lineage ads, so you'll need to survey mags that don't do much lineage business].
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Follow up to my last post. If you Google "PHORM" you see that the (previously shelved) investigation has been reopened at the request of the Crown Prosicution Service, and that the City of London Police have an active and ongoing investigation.
Speak to the lawyers, before you inadvertantly drop the BBC in it.
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Still hate the redesign. More importantly hate the arrogance of the BBC. It's not the first time they've done something their audience doesn't like. The one common theme is that they will never ever admit a mistake and change things back. The BBC believes it is above criticism, it is simply the audience who has got it wrong and just doesn't understand.
The BBC mantra is we know best, our audience doesn't.
In your face fonts, white space, too many menus and gimmicks. Bad presentation before content.
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57 dotconnect
May I politely ask how it is an improvement to make it so that to access the countrywide news for England I have to access 10 separate sites when it was all accessible before with one click on England from the front page, ( left hand side).
You do many a diservice with the way you categorize people into "mobs"
for questioning the arrogance of a public authority that changes things in the way this change has been implemented.
A public authority that is funded by a compulsory levy enforced in a particularly vicious manner also.
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We are looking closely at the comments and feedback we are getting on all aspects of the new design, and we'll also be carefully watching usage, traffic and conducting further audience research, as we would after any such change.
If you really value feedback from users then why is not a prominent FEEDBACK button on every page? The easier you make it to get feedback the more representative and comprehensive it will be.
Your volume of readers are a valuable source of ideas and feedback. If only the BBC could find a way to use them to evolve the site then maybe it really become a great news site (like it was before).
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Smaller fonts please, especially for the headlines on the index pages.
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Line. "Also in the news". Line. ...
Line. "Sport". Line. ...
"Special Reports" ...
These sectional headlines on the main index take up EXCESSIVE vertical space. Vertical space is a premium (for everyone, not just netbook users. I doubt anyone has a screen tall enough to display the main index page as far as the lower stories).
Please value vertical space. Trim the waste. Get more "above the fold"
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I've been waiting since Friday to see what response we would get from Mr Herrmann. What a massive letdown that was.
Whilst you recognise that the vast majority hate the new design you decide to ignore them.
"Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering"
Well that's made my mind up for me. I will now remove the bbc as my homepage and replace it with something more appealing to the eye. I'll probably pop by now and again to see how it's going on, and I'll continue to visit BBC Sport (until that gets "improved" in your own inimitable style). Well done for decreasing the page traffic even more.
Bye.
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65, xTunbridge
Looks like you need to re-read my post.
You'll see that I neither (a) categorized people into "mobs" for questioning arrogance, nor (b) suggested that every change was an improvement.
Congratulations though. You sort of demonstrated my point about comments on 'teh internets'.
(I wondered who would be first)
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Please get rid of the "UK News" / "World News" black box!!!!!!
A huge ugly box that has been pushed into the middle of the main index page. How did that happen?
This is damaging to your main index. It pushes the sectional headlines (business/tech/entertainment/sci/healt/etc) much further down.
Not being able to see at a glance the headlines is one of the biggest problems with your new index page IMO.
As an interim, can the "UK/World" black box be relegated to the final box on the page? i.e. above/below the "world service" box? That would allow users to see the main headlines without visual interuption and then they could scroll-or-END down for the local/world news headlines if they want to check it.
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On the story pages...
The headline font is huge. Smaller please?
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Dear Mr Herrmann,
It is my opinion - and seemingly the opinion of most readers who have taken the time to detail their opinions in this blog - that the new website just does not work well. The homepage seems haphazard and, when I read an article, I just get the feeling that it is far from an enjoyable experience.
I have changed my homepage to Google News but will continue to check the BBC News website since I have previously always found the content to be well presented and well written. I hope that your review process will improve things by moving towards (backwards?) to how they used to be. I understand why you must be reluctant to revert it completely back to its former state. However, I just can't be convinced that the new site is better when I see comparisons like this:
* Old site layout: http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/bristol/hi/
* New site layout: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
Although the new site looks quite "stylish", the old site simply works better for me. The layout is clear, compact and draws your eye to articles of interest. Plus the old site just about fits onto 1 screen for me, as opposed to 3.5 screens for the new site!
Finally, 2 specific questions:
1. Why is some of the website in the new format and some in the old format? I can't believe it's good policy to partially complete the job in hand. Jumping from the old-style Bristol page to the new style article page is a very strange user experience.
2. Helvetica Neue: I have a brand new Windows 7 laptop; the font is not installed. To be fair, it seems that many people do have this font (and regret it!) but I would be interested to know if this font is a "standard" one. If I am indeed unusual then that's fine but if a significant percentage of users do not have it, then why choose it at all? Not that I would like it anyway from reading comments here!
You of course can't reply to all of these posts individually but I hope these comments are of some help. It does seem that you are trying to lecture us why you have made all these changes.
Please host a poll on the homepage to better gauge your readership's opinion.
Until this is done - and results analysed / actions taken - I personally will use other news services.
Regards,
James
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The new site is a navigational nightmare and I'm off to join everyone else who won't be using this website any more. Since our comments aren't working I hope that a fall in user numbers will persuade you to revert to the previous design.
It's a sad day when I'm more inclined to look at the headlines on my email account homepage than those on the BBC.
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On the story page...
The "Most Popular" box is again much to big. Can we have smaller fonts? Can we reduce the whitespace and dividers? It is just an ordered list of links. Can it be as simple as that?
That cost of oversized boxes is that it reduces the information visible at a glance. Especially what is visible before scrolling occurs. Some designer might say it looks good with lots of whitespace but try using the site...
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On the story page...
The "Related stories" and the "Related Internet links" have both been burried in the foot of the page. These were great navigational links before. It is much harder to find and use them now because they are mixed up with all the clutter and the foot of the page.
Can you use color to help readers locate these recurring boxes?
Perhaps lightly colored background on small headings for these sections? Color coding could help users pick out these items from all the other junk there.
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You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. And quite frankly, what you have now can hardly rise to the standard of a sow's ear. Your readers want the old design back because this design is terrible, bland, inefficient, ineffective, cluttered, pandering to the lowest IQ. So in short, and there really is no other way to say it, the new design SUCKS.
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70 dotconnect
Sir you are disingenuous.
You 3 and 5 put people into mobs.
That you try to score some kind of imaginary point by saying my response to you proves your point 1 is laughable.
You seem to favour style over substance and all the points you have made, which incidentally prove the thing was not fit for launch,have been on the technical side.
I want a BBC site that gives me as good as or better news service than the old one. The current enforced offering in my opinion and that of thousands of others, does not.
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"Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering, but building and continuing to improve on the changes we've made certainly is."
...Says it all really, doesn't it.
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I havnt lost my sense of humour.
Just logged onto this site and it came up, google chrome, a bit odd looking, massive white space and not moving.
I thought no they havnt got at this as well have they.
Then up popped a box saying the site has become unresponsive wait for it to respond or kill it !
If only !
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The current index page has
Line
"Expert view" (section heading)
Line
"Mark Easton's UK" (link)
Line
Picture story and 2 more story links
Line
"Democracy Live" (link)
Line
Picture story
Line
There is so much wasted space. All the horizontal lines, padding, headings, padding, lines, padding etc. It is a complete waste of the vertical space.
The site feels like a splurge of "computer generated" output boxes. It can still be computer generated but please generate a compact output that respects readers and keeps it all short.
The goal should be to generate output comparable to a hand craft compact index page (in the same way that the old index compactly conveyed the headlines).
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The changes we have made are based on careful research and thinking about how the site can work at its best now, and how we can make sure it is adaptable enough to continue to evolve, not stand still.
Can you publish the research documents and planning documents on the web and linked from this blog? The BBC is a public body and the FOI gives us the right to ask for them but even better the the BBC editors choose themselves to put all these documents up.
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Over the last few years, whenever there has been a change to the BBC News website it has made me twitch a bit at first. I'm not a great one for change, but in every instance I've soon adapted to the new site and come to recognise the improvements. However, I can't see these changes as being anything but a retrograde step.
The previous design was, in my opinion, near enough perfect. It was clean, quick and easy to navigate. This latest redesign is an utter mess. I appreciate that ultimately design is a matter of taste, but usability and basic functionality are not. Even now, a week after launch, navigating the site is painful, and there are errors in the layout. As I type this, one of the "Watch/Listen" links is "Oiled pelican rescued from Gulf", and then half a word hanging out of the available space. This word is simply "click", and given the preceding text, it doesn't even represent valid use of the English language.
Clearly, there was insufficient testing on many levels before the site went live. I find it impossible to believe that if, as claimed, there was some sort of beta before the launch, that none of the points raised across these forums were picked up on at that stage. As far as I can see, the beta test was nothing but a paper exercise, this is reflected by the way that the site design is now being tinkered with on an almost daily basis.
For those as opposed to Facebook as I am, the simple solution is to install some form of advert blocking solution, and simply filter out anything that has Facebook in the URL.
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When will low graphics return?
Low grpahics had a simple page with a simple list of stories in importance order.
I read that one of the features of the new backend was flexibility in rendering the stories. If that is the case why has low graphics not been restored?
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@chestermat and others interested in alternatives
(in no particular order)
http://www.guardian.co.uk (local and international news, limited accessibility support)
http://www.independent.co.uk/ (local and international news, no accessibility support)
http://www.economist.com (great editorial, best in international and finance, weak health coverage, good accessibility support)
http://www.channel4.com/news/ (local and international, good accessibility support)
http://www.wn.com (aggregator)
http://www.topix.com/ (aggregator, IP-based local news, interactive/commentary)
http://ca.reuters.com/ (international & Canada, good accessibility support)
http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews (international, focus on Scotland)
http://www.theregister.co.uk/ (best in technology news hands-down)
http://www.upi.com/ (up-to-date international, very good impartial reportage)
http://m.upi.com/ (upi textmode. a must for accessibility..the best source if you're elderly or have disabilities)
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Why don't you ask your readers what they prefer?
Each day you could trial one variation in the site, e.g. smaller fonts, e.g. modified layout, e.g. fewer horizontal lines, e.g. more images, e.g. smaller icons etc.
You could offer users a link to switch in/out of the alternative view and to vote on what they think of it. How better to evolve the site than by harnessing your millions of readers?
You may have a few key people in the BBC saying "we like this ugly black box on the home page" but if 95% of millions of readers disagree maybe it will get changed....
Your readers are an asset...
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So Auntie is not for turning. Bye bye then
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"I hope you will grow to like it"...
What if we don't? Is there a plan B? Because apparently we don't like it and you refuse to change it! How very childish!
To all my fellow readers, I suggest:
1. Sign the petition here: http://www.gopetition.com/petition/37916.html
and please spread the word
2. Send a complaint here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/
3. Try a different news website. Post #85 has a few great ones.
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I'd like to explain again, as clearly as I can, what my thinking is:
I won't use your website again for reading news, only for posting comments here trying to make you realize what a big disaster the new design is.
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I very much doubt the BBC has done a major redesign without considering any legal issues. No information appears to be shared with Facebook except for when you click the button yourself.
Any redesign the BBC does is hailed as a disaster and hated by the vast majority, when in reality the vast vast majority of users won't comment on this blog, because they don't mind the redesign. It's just the very vocal minority who complain on blogs and massively overhype the issue.
I'm not used to this site yet, and the video slows down my browser massively, but I'll get used to it. I'll keep using the site because I like the quality of the news, rather than just the design.
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In post 57 dotconnect wrote: "Which is why I think you're right in not relying entirely on blog comments."
Unless, of course, they are made by Stephen Fry in which case they are loudly trumpeted (see Steve Herrmann's post 3 from last Thursday).
Still 'n all, it's nice to see Dot's views changing over time. More recently she's been emphasising in each post that there really is LOTS wrong with the site, but the main problem is the rest of us posters on HYS who don't adore the changes (or should I say "improvements", as claimed by Steve). We've reached argumentum ad hominem.
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For those interested in alternatives while the BBC site manages to produce a look pleasant enough to read (or puts back the exceptional old design): besides others suggested above, you may want to try the global edition of The New York Times:
http://global.nytimes.com/
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"Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering"
Complete and utter arrogant denial. Like many others commenting here you have done me a huge favour. I have explored - and liked - other news websites and the BBC is no longer bookmarked, let alone my homepage.
Shame on you for not listening; such arrogance is worthy of Marie Antoinette.
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Further to my comments at 62, you might like to give us a bit more of white margin to the left of long copy. That'd also make your stuff easier to read.
After all, books have margins too.
I suggest that most readers have a preference for serif faces - they make whole word recognition so much easier.
Have you noticed how newspapers with articles of a similar length usually adopt serif faces? Books usually print in serif faces too. Could it be that those faces are easier on the eye? NTR is good.
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xTunbridge (78)
You are just making it worse my friend!
You claim in your post that I...
"...categorize people into "mobs" for questioning the arrogance of a public authority that changes things in the way this change has been implemented."
For one thing, picking up on the mob mentality of internet discussions (my point 5) is not the same as "putting people into mobs." For another, I certainly don't dismiss people in that way merely for questioning. I think you'll find that's either a complete invention of yours.
You then go on to say:
"...That you try to score some kind of imaginary point by saying my response to you proves your point 1 is laughable."
Actually, I'd say it's precisely this misrepresentation, this (apparent) inability to recognize a nuanced position that lies between two polar opposites, that rather demonstrates my point about the nature of internet discussion.
It's further compounded by the most remarkable statement of all...
"You seem to favour style over substance"
Quite stunning in its falsehood, not least because I have categorically stated that I do no such thing. Being able to read lines of text comfortably, being able to quickly navigate to parts of the site - these are all issues of substance that require DESIGN decisions and TECHNICAL knowledge. (Substance to me, by the way, is content, journalism and so on.) This is a blog about a website redesign, about usability and, yes, to a certain extent, aesthetics. My point about "dark grey text being better than black text" (on a white background) had nothing to do with style and everything to do with substance (or, in this context, usability). My point about line-widths - ditto.
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So its no change with the replys to our comments. FAQ's have most of the answers and you will get used to it in time. Err no Steve, no chance!
It is still the same rubbish it was a week ago, a week in which for the first time in the twelve years I have had a computer I have not searched for news on the BBC. It was a tough habit to break, but there are sites out there that provide quality news, be it local, national or international. Some will require me improving my Spanish and German to get the full benifits of the sites but so far so good.
Of all the critism and comments made the most damming come from those with an IT background, having talked with some myself the comments were the same, none liked it. And for the same reasons those like myself dislike the new layout and loved the old.
Now the BBC news habit is broken the next big step is to replace the BBC as my home site, this will take a little more time but will happen.
The reason for my leaving the BBC web site is not because of the website changes alone, but because of the response to the critisms made by people like me. People I suspect who value the many services the BBC provides, and who rely on the BBC because we think we can trust them them for quality and honesty. Only to see a reply that can only be described as a complete lie to describe the level of critism levied.
And to continue the denial of the truth with each subsequent update. The jhist of which is we are not changing and you will get used to it. Given such a reponse the only conclusion can be that we can not trust anything Steve nor the BBC says.
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I really like the redesign, thumbs up. It was long overdue.
I'd just ignore the keyboard bashers, some people just don't like change and love to slate anything new.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
90 Matthew
My shoes hurt like hell but I will keep wearing them because I like the look of the leather ?
So the change affect you in a retrograde way, but you will get used to it
And all of us who will kick and scream until this thing is put right are a minority !
Have you seen how many of the thousands who have comained on this and other blogs have prefaced their post with the phrase "I have never posted on a blog before and had to go through the tortuous BBC registration system to do so but..." and variations of words to the same effect.
This change is so drastic, so fundamentally flawed technically and as a news service that it has brought out people who have never complained before.
And as for the quality of the News, well Abseiling donkeys, Lindsey Lohan and Dizzi Rascal, yeah. Also todays front page has hardly changed all day when Yahoo which I have moved to has changed 20 times in the last 4 hours.
But keep on putting up with a service that slows your browser , keep paying the licence fee. Please Why ?
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June1989 (91)
"Still 'n all, it's nice to see Dot's views changing over time. More recently she's been emphasising in each post that there really is LOTS wrong with the site..."
Ever stop to consider you were just plain wrong in your initial assumption, June?!
(It's ok, no need to apologise. Really.)
"...but the main problem is the rest of us posters on HYS who don't adore the changes"
Is it?
People who don't adore the changes are not the main problem in my eyes June. They're not even "a" problem. One of the problems I was choosing to highlight (and not even the main problem) was something else. I'll give you a clue - I wasn't being half as generalising about people as you are about my view.
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I feel the need to add my voice of support. Having worked on redesigned for large portals I know that however much consultation and testing you do, there will always be some who feel hard done by. I'm sure the analytics show millions of users silently browsing the site and you'll adapt the site inline with their activity, but sadly the contented user hardly ever comments. Best of luck to you.
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I haven't commented until now because I wanted to give the site a chance, however I think that the site is lacking news content compared to the old edition. There simply doesn't seem to be enough news, particularly on the front page. There is a lot of everything but news. I come to this site for world leading content, not extra baggage.
Secondly I'm very disappointed that despite the mountain of negative feedback the consistent response is that the redesign was the right thing to do and to re-state the reasons why. I don't believe the BBC News Online team is listening to the feedback, so I'm complaining via the complaints process using the online system at:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/
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An amazing, contemptable attitude.. "Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering."
We ouselves have to consider also, of course, the competence and character of staff who would put such a badly-designed shambles into production. This comment simply confirms that character.
What I don't understand is why higher management have not stepped in, ordered a rollback of the site and dismissed those responsible in the first place. Something is seriously wrong when (in the light of such record adverse commentary from so very many who are clearly more equipped to judge the new version than those who created it) you are so determined to avoid admitting a huge error of judgement has been made, and revert the site without delay. This attitude is, frankly, astonishing! It simply brings further disgrace and contempt upon yourself.
You go on to say "... but building and continuing to improve on the changes we've made certainly is." To accomplish an "improvement" should be easy indeed... any change that more resembles the old site would be an improvement! Even something so simple, but so obvious to a competent designer, as removing the ridiculous whitespace from within article text, so we can easily and comfortably read it once again, would be an improvement! But, of course, anyone with the competence to assess the matter fully will know that to improve the new version to a position where it conforms to sensible and accepted page design, once again having the excellent usability of the old, will entail a virtual rewrite -again- wasting even more of OUR money; remember WE pay YOUR salary, OUR money has been wasted on this debacle.
I suggest in all seriousness that instead of attempting this route, the only sensible way forward is to revert the site and then investigate those small areas where genuine improvements can be made. They will be very few. When this process is started -and it is the only cost-effective way forward- it will be essential to ensure employment only of those competent in webpage design. Whoever created the new version did not demonstrate this ability.
I have attempted, during the past several days, to use the site as I previously did, usually on a number of occasions each day. I have to say I admit defeat. It is now so difficult 1. to navigate and 2. to actually read (yes, the fundamental reason for visiting the site is to read!!) the widely-spaced and poorly fonted text that using the site is actually stressful on the eyes. It is a TIRING design to use. Occasionally a related link, when I found it, took me to an old-design page. The relief to the eyes and concentration was profound and only emphasised just how very bad the new actually is. I have gone elsewhere for my news feeds.
Does anyone know email for senior technical management at the BBC? It may be that the only way this mess will be resolved is to have the restitution of the site forced by higher authority.
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Update: In post 98 the a.href URLs lost their translation prefix
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=
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I did not like the redesign at first, and considered commenting on it, and was aware of the amount of adverse comment it has generated. I have used the site daily for several years.
Having tried to use the new site since its launch I find I spend less and less time on it, and usually quit with a sense of frustration rather than satisfaction.
The new page design just seems chaotic, incomprehensible.
I had not previously looked at many other news sites, but now I have done so and can see very clearly what a poor job has been done by the BBC (or whoever it was).
Many others have listed the technical and aesthetic issues: it is very galling to an ordinary licence payer like myself to see how dismissive the BBC have been concerning these very valid points.
I shall vote with my feet and get my news digest from elsewhere in future.
In addition I have taken the view that the BBC has no business spending public money on this kind of enterprise. This web-site budget should be cut quickly and the licence fee reduced accordingly.
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95 & 100 dotconnect
You know what, I bet you dont see yourself as others see you.
If it wasnt impolite I would describe your style as patronizing and elitist, but it takes all sorts and all are welcome here.
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James, in response to your question about how to get to senior management, the process isn't quick. You need to complain first to BBC Information (using the link I posted), then wait for them to respond. Eventually you work your way up to the BBC Trust. Which considering how much the person ultimately in charge of BBC News Online is being paid, I think the complaints deserve to go to the Trust. But you can't go straight to them, you have to follow the process...
This is a complete nightmare. It's our online news service, not the BBC's, and we don't appear to have any real say in what happens. I agree: heads should roll if not for the redesign then for the disgraceful attitude of the editorial management towards the views of the users.
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Not good enough.
We know what your thoughts are already. Reiterating is not going to help.
This continued stone-walling/ignoring/riding roughshod/whatever you chose to call it is quite worrying from the BBC.
If this is the sort of cavalier attitude we can expect from the BBC - which quite frankly I think is evident from the likes of BBC 3 - then I think its time we all wrote to our MPs asking for a cut of the license fee.
Clearly they are not feeling the pressure to meet consumer demand, and so from that I am inferring that they've got too much money!
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"Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering"
Well I am glad you have totally ignored the thousands of comments. So if you're not going to roll back to a far superior design then are you going to do something about the size of the fonts and the garish colours you have chosen, the huge amount of white space, the paragraph length, not to mention the poor navigation, the vast amount of scrolling needed and removing some of the pointless features?
Maybe even you could style it like the home page of the BBC, so that I can move the dross further down the page, so that in 1 screen view (I have a 19" 4:3 monitor) I can see only the stuff I actually want to see instead of 4 full screen views to see the whole news home page.
What I really hate about the whole design is the size of the fonts, why for instance does the numbers for the top ten news stories have to be so big? Who is this designed for? People who can't count?
The same applies to the Headline of a news story, just because it's bigger doesn't make it any more important.
Also the paragraph and sentences in news stories, what's all the extra line breaks for?
Do you know that if the fonts are smaller then the amount of white space will also be smaller. Just a suggestion.
What I suggest for the designers and developer is to look at other news sites like The Guardian, The Telegraph, Yahoo News, Sky news and even Google news and follow their lead as they seem to know how to present the news in a readable fashion unlike the people who dreamed up this pointless and awful update to the BBC site.
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Thank you for the 5th blog. It was an absolutely standard "BBC" type response where you "note" the criticisms and then embark on a bit more "explanation" to help us "understand" better what you are doing. You see the task as one of "explanation" - instead of understanding that what is required is repentance (that wonderful combination of "sorry" and "start again" that can change lives). Of course there is an almost total absence of the S word (although you did apologise for not being able to answer all the queries - a token, unnecessary waste of the valuable S word where it wasn't needed!!). BBC don't really do apologies - or retractions.
The S word would have been appropriate in discussing the Helvetica CSS mistake. The S word would have been appropriate in discussing the privacy issues that you took for granted. Why do the BBC as a license funded service theoretically answerable to its license holders, find SORRY such a hard word to utter?
I'd love to be a fly on the wall in BBC Worldwide as they discuss the Alexa stats. Because it is the stats that will kill this new design. Someone will have to say sorry to one of the commercially minded BBC Worldwide advertising "suits" for those, even if you don't apologise to US.
I've spent much much less time on the BBC news site, and it used to be my home page and my trusted source of world, national and local news. But no longer. The trust is gone (the dishonesty about the commercial driver behind the whole thing), and the site simply isn't worth my time any more, from a privacy point of view, from a web design point of view (makes me feel ill - and really - you seem to have gone mad on arty design concepts, and completely lost touch with what ordinary people actually DO when using the net) and from a journalism point of view (those brief headlines, and those one sentence paragraphs).
I'm sad - because I am losing a much loved friend. I'm sad because I passionately believe in public service broadcasting but the BBC doesn't seem to do it anymore.
Bye. I'm giving up until things change drastically for the better. One license paying Brit not getting his money's worth and with little will to defend the BBC next time the politicians take the axe to you. Which they will.
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Am I the only person that likes it? It uses the real estate better than the last one did. The only thing I would change is to tone down the red a little.
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In post 100 dotconnect wrote: "People who don't adore the changes are not the main problem in my eyes June. They're not even "a" problem. One of the problems I was choosing to highlight (and not even the main problem) was something else. I'll give you a clue - I wasn't being half as generalising about people as you are about my view."
It was kind of you to give me a clue, because I'm still totally unable to guess what you are referring to. A little less cleverness and a little more clarity would be helpful. Plese try and explain again.
Actually, those last two sentences could also apply both to the redesigned website and to the editor's explanations.
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Wow...nearly FOUR THOUSAND negative comments posted on your last few blogs and the message still doesn't seem to be getting through.
You know that the feedback has been overwhelmingly negative.
You know that we are paying for it.
You know that we know it was changed for the ads on your international site.
And yet, you continue to do the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and singing over the noise.
I've just registered to add my voice to all the others. The site worked perfectly fine before and it was so much more easy to navigate compared to this ghastly and ill-conceived redesign.
I've always been a staunch defender of the BBC and I dread the thought of the Murdoch alternative world of reporting. So please, please fix this mess and stop telling us we're all just too simple to see what's best for us.
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I see one of the reasons the Mr Herrmann gives for not doing a beta run was that the editors would have had to do everything twice with added concern that this could affect the quality of the news.
Well the second part of that seems to have happened anyway.
But surely many large organisations when doing a large IT system change run both systems alongside each other , just in case, for a while. Certainly the concern I used to work for called it parallel running and paid extra to recognize the double entry workload.
At least if the new system was lacking/faulty/useless the old one was still there and up to date and could be used until the new was dumped or fixed. Why is this an impossible concept for the BBC ?
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20 second ads before a 22 second video? In the words of an infamous American tennis player, you cannot be serious...
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I'm scared and confused. Please revert back to the 2002 site so I don't have to deal with change.
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xTunbridge, #106
"If it wasnt impolite I would describe your style as patronizing and elitist, but it takes all sorts and all are welcome here."
You oversimplified and misread my position, xTunbridge.
I called you on that.
You didn't like it, so resort to the classic old "charge of elitism" tactic.
Simple as that.
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Personally I quite like the new design overall, though it took a couple of days to get used to the change. From a coding aspect I thought the old site was broken, in that it was still using tables to create the layout, which was bad for accessibility.
The 'More' drop-down in the new global header is rather messy looking. Might be worth moving the 'Full A-Z' link to the space in the bottom right, and then perhaps add an 'England' link seeing as links to the other nations have been added.
I think the breaking news items on the ticker would benefit from having a darker red background. The current red background appears to be identical to the sub-menu background, which I find makes the text difficult to read.
The 'My News & Weather location' section is currently still has problems in delivering the correct local news. Living close to a border my nearest forecast is in a different county, resulting getting the local news for the neighbouring county and not the one I'm in.
With regards to video clips & loading how about using an image place-holder (perhaps a still from the video) which when clicked on loads up the video clip in place of the image (via JavaScript). It would presumably allow the page to load quicker, and look nice for those who have JavaScript disabled.
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Dear BBC
I have not received a daily email message since:
Thursday, 15 July, 2010, 18:00 GMT 06:00 +12:00:Pacific/Auckland
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Sir/Madam,
The daily news email has been turned off for now, due to technical
problems with updating it.
We don't know at this stage when the service will be resumed.
We apologise for any inconvenience.
Regards,
BBC News website
__________________________________________________________________
Now I am forced to conclude that the projrct management team are just plain incompetent.
I wonder how much more of your infrastructure is not working?
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For a smile, see post 291 on the HYS subject "How should higher education be overhauled?" which can be found at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/haveyoursay/2010/07/how_should_higher_education_be.html#P
Here's the relevant extract --- "By the way, to those turning their noses up at 'mickey mouse media studies' degrees - who do you think brings you this stunning website onto which you contribute?"
I think the writer has just proved the accuracy of what many have unkindly thought of media studies degrees!
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I'm interested to know how these changes will be evaluated. At the moment you have:
1. These blog comments. Nobody would expect them to be representative, though I expect you hoped that they'd be a lot more positive.
2. Complaints. Presumably all of these are negative, but again nobody would expect them to be representative.
3. Traffic stats. However, unless these dive (or soar) wildly, it would be really shallow to suggest that they're telling anything very important - they're just telling something that is easily measured. (For example, the council could cut down all the trees in my road, but just because the traffic count doesn't go down doesn't mean that they haven't caused huge amounts of harm and dissatisfaction).
Surely the only way is to measure satisfaction - and as time ticks on the opportunities for doing that with a large proportion of your regular readers will disappear, as the makeup changes, and they forget how good things used to be. The lack of any kind of quick feedback option on the main page gives the impression you don't even _want_ to know how people feel. It could be anything from a quick like/dislike, to a multiple choice survey (like on the uk parliament page), to something that allowed optional comments.
So what specifically are you doing to measure what the "normal" user thinks of the changes?
---
A comment on the blog post:
The way that todays blog said almost nothing new at all was bound to be seen as rather insulting to those who have spent considerable time here posting what was mostly intended to be positive criticism (i.e. not just what they didn't like, but what might be done to fix it). No mention of fonts, of the mid-grey font colour, of the glaring red, of the 2-3 word wide paragraphs on the main page, of the huge amount of white space that remains, of the massive grey box that occupies the centre of the main page, of the way that the "more from" sections have been bumped right down and displaced by non-news etc.
Comments on the facebook/video problems are welcome, but they also made the lack of comments on the above even more prominent, and give nobody any confidence that their suggesitons have been considered.
I find this strange - it would have been so easy to have given people the impression their comments were valued and going to be evaluated even if you had no intention of implementing them!
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117 dotconnect
Your position is difficult to ascertain as you say one thing and then when challenged your defence is to claim you meant something different to what you said ! Or it was a try on/wind up to gain reaction.
Perhaps the lady in Stairway to Heaven who knew that words sometimes have two meanings could be an intermediary ?
I still find your style is to talk down to anyone who differs from your opinion.
It is plain that your technical knowledge exceeds mine by light years but you seem stuck in the isnt it good, isnt new , isnt it fine, just needs all these tweaks and it will cook dinner as well mode.
It may well be a trendy bright site but to me and thousands of others it no longer delivers the news in the way it should and that is the prime reason for a news site, not to look cool man.
My now preferred site Yahoo is rather dull format wise but my God it delivers the news and it updates constantly. I dont care that it is dull, it does what it should, the new Beeb site no longer does it for me and 1000s of other posters, which saddens me.
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http://www.dw-world.de/ (very good reportage)
http://www.euronews.net/news/ (international with special focus on Europe, those who like video reports will enjoy this site)
http://www.france24.com/en/ (outstanding arts/culture section at par with the most professional art websites)
Alex, you should also consider that there are millions of discontent users who don't care about complaining or don't believe it will achieve anything and will just walk way..
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"I'd like to explain again" - thanks, Steve.
At least it's clear now
what your position is.
Ignore the overwhelming
number of complaints
regarding the changes
to the news website.
The changes which have
made the whole site
harder to navigate
and individual articles
harder to read.
No apologies, and no
proper explanation.
Just telling people to
read the FAQ, which fails
to address any of the major
issues, won't make the problems
go away.
It's unfortunate that
you're not addressing any
of the problems that have
arisen due to this
rather unpopular
redesign - there's
a bit of tinkering
around the edges,
but unfortunately
the problems are
more major than
that.
There are simple things
that could be fixed
simply.
Like short single-sentence paragraphs.
The width of the text in news articles.
The oversized right-hand column which shouldn't be the major focus on the page but which is very distracting (presumably that's where the ads are on the non-UK version(s).
There's a massive grey block on
some of the index pages which
looks totally out of place
and breaks up the page badly.
A few things are good.
Like the new picture galleries.
The news in video is OK.
However the majority of the site
is a mess, I'm afraid.
There is just too much
scrolling.
And too much
whitespace.
To re-iterate the overall effect
is a site which is hard to navigate
with articles which are harder to
read than they should be.
Please don't fob us of with another
post which says words to the effect
of "we've read your comments, thanks,
but we're not going to fix any of
the the site and we think it's just
great as it is". Please, instead,
do something to fix the changes
that have turned what was one
of the better sites on the
web for news into one which has
plenty of good content, but
which also has squandered
a great deal of money (it would
seem) on a design that is at
best mediocre, and is in part
terrible.
The BBC is certainly capable
of doing a great deal better
than this.
Thanks.
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Two thoughts:
1. Can you imagine Tesco messing up their website like this then ignoring well-intentioned feedback from their customers? No, I can't either.
2. Hasn't the story now become Mr Herrmann's obtuseness and somewhat disingenuous comments, rather than the redesign of the website. That can't be good can it?
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I held my breath and reinstalled Helvetic Neue (I do have uses for it else where), in the vague hope that the bug had been fixed, i.e. PC IE8 shows Helvetica Neue when it should show Arial (fonts).
NOPE... still bust. This is truly shameful.
One thing is to take issue with the design, but love it or hate it... it looks like rubbish (or even worse) when Helevtica Neue is the default font on a PC which has that font installed.
Come on, what are you waiting for? Someone to get back from holiday who knows what they are doing is my guess.
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I've switched to www.itv.com/news.
1 For some reason my PC won't play Flash content from the BBC News website but it works fine on ITV.com.
2 I've disabled access to Facebook on my PC via the hosts file. This causes problems on the BBC New website (the browser Back button won't work) but no problems with ITV.com.
It's ironic. The ITV website works better eventhough ITV don't receive funding from the TV licence!
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I quite like the new design and have noticed reading the comments that it seems a fairly limited number of people who dislike it.
Those of you wanting to revert the site, if it happened, would I be allowed to complain that I preferred the new site and want it reverted back to that? Surely it's better to leave the new site up and keep tweaking it, especially for the less computer literate who have probably just adapted to the new design
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Personally I love the new look.
What's happening with the Market Data page http://news.bbc.co.uk/news/business/market_data/overview/default.stm as it still is mainly the old version?
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I just wanted to give a constructive feedback regarding this "new" look.
Many have pointed out the short paragraphs and although I tend to skip paragraphs on occasion myself it is just to much. You often seem to have around 30 almost incoherent paragraphs per article. Honestly this doesn't even look natural for reading. It's ok to skim but at least have your staff write 10-15 paragraphs per article and the stories will make some connected sense, otherwise reading or even skimming that is just tiring.
Another is all the wasted space, there is much less information available now on your main page and it takes to much browsing to get to any real meat. Why is features and analisys so large? It's just one story? Then there is that gigantic gray box separating information even further, while providing little in return considering its size. Now that you got rid of the convenient side bar menu its just a royal pain in the rear to move around your page.
"Also in the news" only has one or two articles below it? Is there really so little additional news besides your main headlines? Perhaps getting rid of that huge gray box would allow for more direct links below that header, that would be quite practical for your readers and the ease of navigation around the page.
Finally I have to say there are some worrying signs of BBC changing its identity overall. Here in the US we have Public TV and Public Radio(PBS)(NPR). They both receive a meager amount of funds from the government and there is no license fee. What does keep them operating is the good will of those who expect excellence and non trivial programming. And they have not let us down yet.
I'm not sure why the BBC is venturing into the commercial side of things,(Facebook, flash over substance, even lindsey Lohan video at the top of the page as if it were some major story)particularly by using the British public finances as leverage to expand and cater to our American culture. This does not seem to go hand in hand with excellence but rather with compromise and catering to the lowest common denominator.
My point is, in the end if the BBC ever needs support for funding in the future you may find that you alienated your core audience and I seriously doubt your average tabloid reader or most Americans(well we don't pay the fee's) or folks from Facebook will care much if your funding is slashed to nothingness, after all there are hundreds of other places they can go to replace the trivial.
On the other hand people who expect excellence are very loyal and this is why they are posting here to you. So don't ignore them, because most likely your future depends on them more then any other group your attempting to cater to with the "new" look.
Thanks and have a great day!
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"Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering"
Wow! What an attitude!
The licence monies roll in anyway huh? Plus it's not private sector, so...whatever.
Just don't mess up the sports side.
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I'm really struggling to understand the depth of the disgust displayed in most of the comments? Just to get things into a little bit of perspective, this is a website where we've come to consume a little news, nothing more than that - our livelihoods don't depend on it, no one is going to get hurt by it, and to be fair to the chaps who designed it, when you stand back and look at it without an angry head, it's actually not all that bad. I even think it looks prettier than the last incarnation and have been caught saying 'wow' and some of the nifty new features. And if you really can't stand it, and all the fonts, red boxes, white spaces and whatnot happen to induce blood boiling fury in you - not a problem, get an RSS reader and consume the content without redesign getting in the way!
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@ 122. At 10:22pm on 21 Jul 2010, xTunbridge
Take my tip... don't feed the troll ;-)
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Blimey, what an angry crowd!
I actually really like the new site, but you'll never be able to please everyone. Pages in the 'old' format now look really dated.
Put in perspective, a few thousand complaints equates to a very small percentage of the number of unique visitors to the site.
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"Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering"
Thank you. Goodbye.
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Less news appears on the front page of the BBC News site than was the case on the old site. How is this an improvement for people who are looking for news?
I'm just hugely disappointed that one of the best websites in the world has been deliberately vandalised in this way. And then the guy responsible for that vandalism has the brass neck to say that we'll all get used to it.
I don't think I will get used to it.
It glares.
It shouts.
It confuses.
It uses vast amounts of page space to promote things that I'm not interested in.
It has less of what I am interested in - news stories - because it is too busy plugging all the ancillary stuff.
The best news site in the world has been transformed into a glossy Sunday supplement. News stories are just there to fill in the spaces between "Watch this video", "Read this person's opinion piece about something vaguely connected with the news" and "Here's a huge grey box slap bang in the middle of the front page in which you can tell us where you're from, rather than a simple drop-down list of regions discreetly tucked away at the side".
So much space is wasted by irrelevancies, IMO, so the news gets less room. That's the bottom line, for me.
And the sheer glare of the site makes it almost unreadable. It looks as if it was designed by someone who habitually wears sunglasses all the time!!
Change the colour of the horizontal menu. Grey would look better.
Make the unused space at either side of the page light grey, or cream, instead of brilliant white. That would cut down the glare considerably.
Change the fonts to Verdana.
Get rid of the aforementioned three bug boxes on the front page. Put more news stories in their place - this is supposed to be a news site, after all.
If none of these happen, I am genuinely sad to say that I won't be using the site again, except to come here and moan about the desecration of this national treasure.
If some of these happen, I will have a look and see if the changes make the site bearable, to me.
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same here - I like the new site and the old one looked dated anyway so I think this is an improvement. Of course there are a few glitches here and there but overall it is definitely an improvement. I hope you won't go back to the old site!
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I like the new design. However, I'm still waiting for the "LATEST / BREAKING NEWS" scrolling headline ticker. Thanks.
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When Auntie began making TV programmes with ad break points built in, in order to sell worldwide (is anyone else driven mad by the fact that every 20 minutes, programmes summarise what has just happened before the invisible ad break?) I stopped paying my license fee.
It appears a similar commercial greed has now destroyed the News website.
Why make people pay the license fee for content that is not designed specifically for them?
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134. At 10:58pm on 21 Jul 2010, howarthcd wrote:
Blimey, what an angry crowd!
I actually really like the new site, but you'll never be able to please everyone. Pages in the 'old' format now look really dated.
Put in perspective, a few thousand complaints equates to a very small percentage of the number of unique visitors to the site.
-------------------
Indeed... but then when you break down how many people have posted that they like it.. that percentage is even smaller
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122, xTunbridge
"Your position is difficult to ascertain as you say one thing and then when challenged your defence is to claim you meant something different to what you said !"
I really don't - but either I'm not explaining myself well enough (though I'm sure I'm putting in more than enough caveats and qualifiers), or you're just not reading carefully enough. I doubt we'll reach agreement on that!
"I still find your style is to talk down to anyone who differs from your opinion."
I'm sorry if it comes across like that; it's never my intention. Certainly not for those whose opinion merely differs from mine.
My main bugbear are those who are sneery and sarcy themselves first. If I'm speaking down to anyone, it's simply those who are combining their errors with rudeness in the first place. And in most cases (I think with one exception, on the other thread) I'm replying to other posters rather than initiating remarks at them.
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Hello Steve,
Thank you for your extensive explanations and justifications about the site changes and to bring joy to your heart, I am actually o.k. with it - honestly. It takes time getting used to, of course, which is I think what most people need.
I would like to make a small suggestion, please. In the lower middle of the news home page (underneath your lead story) you have seven single line headings. I have been acutely aware that I am not at all attracted to read (or click) onto those headings.
I am no psychologist but found that on www.france24.com (French or English version), the headings which are in a very similar space to yours, immediately draw my attention - may it be through the insertion of publishing times or the fact that you are able to read two lines (rather than one)...... who knows? I just found it an interesting observation and wanted to bring it to your attention.
Thank you for all your hard work in bringing us what is still pretty much unrivaled.
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The BBC's stance on refusing to go back to the old version of the site is right in my opinion. sure, there are many problems with this new site but simply scrapping it and going back would be a bad move and would have a knock-on detrimental effect on all future BBC web content. Lots of people simply don't like change and if these people had too much of a say the web would still be stuck in the dark ages.
So we must accept the fact that BBC news has changed, and what the BBC and everyone must focus on now is refinement of the new design to address the main issues people are raising here. Lets be constructive with feedback rather than shouting for it to be changed to the old format.
I for one had been thinking for a while that the old site needed a refresh - the left hand vertical navigation thing was something that just looked dated and took up too much horizontal space, so going to a horizontal nav bar is a definite improvement.
Areas on the new site I think need addressing are improving the front page and its density (tone down headline font size and the "features and analysis" box), improve discoverability of the "more on this story" and related stories sections which appears somewhat lost at the end of an news article (this footer area is quite poor at present), and tidy up the right-margin area of the news articles.
I hope the BBC are transparent on the process of refining this site to address the issues, and report back on their conclusions and action plans after taking all feedback into consideration. Doing so will hopefully help calm things down here a bit!
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Just to add Steve, I really like how you've made use of the room for imagery on the 'Astronomers detect 'monster star'' page. ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10707416 )
It's working really nicely.
@Gface (133) - no need for that remark. Calling someone a troll is itself considered troll-like behaviour, you know. Those in glass houses...
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Well the news website has always been my homepage as it did show all good selection of news stories on one page which didn't need to be scrolled at all on my display. Why are we not using the complete width of the screen? All new computers are being sold with widescreen displays so don't put huge margins down the sides it is a waste of screen estate.
I am off to find a better news page, don't bother replying I will be gone, in fact it doesn't look like anyone's opinions are being taken note of seriously.
bye!
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Oh, for goodness sake, dotconnect and xTunbridge, you are beginning to sound like a couple of petulant children. These comments were meant to be about the site re-design not about scoring points off one another. Remember the old saying 'United we stand, divided we fall'. I suspect we all want the same outcome from this, a site that satisfies its intended audience.
Now, I don't like the new site but I think it could be made infinitely more usable and would willingly give a lot of time putting forward suggestions for improvement if I thought that anyone would listen and actually do something. And that is what is now obviously annoying a lot of people - that those responsible seem to take the attitude that they know best and consistently talk down to us.
So, enough of the flame wars please.
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Why have you reverted to Arial on the news pages? In my view this is a retrograde step. Fonts like Tahoma and Verdana were designed specifically to be read on screen and the previous use of Verdana was a wise move.
The BIG problem with Arial (which is, I believe, only Microsoft's version of Helvetica) is that the upper-case I and lower-case L both look the same, something which does not occur with Tahoma, Verdana or Franklin Gothic, another excellent sans font. Also, Arial/Helvetica has too much vertical emphasis and this gets tiresome to read after a while.
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Would it be possible, please, pretty please, to stop bickering and actually comment on the blog and the News site? All the infighting is doing is distracting, and yes I recognise this comment is contributing.
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I disabled the AdBlock Plus plugin on Firefox to see what the problem was about the adverts, they really would be quite annoying for an overseas visitor. Imagine the uproar caused by the advertisers if they realised most overseas viewers remove them so easily.
(By the way, the spell check on this is using an American dictionary, very apropos.)
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Hello Steve: as a "consolation", I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who is deeply unhappy to see my forever favourite, respected news site converted into a horribly boring page--I find the "new" site is a terrible, cheap downgrade to a classic website which was a "refuge" to go back to after browsing many other websites, including CNN. I absolutely hate the upper menu with the huge red/burgundy bar on top and if I decide to stay with a news piece I want to read, I try to hide the named bar manually, scrolling down the news piece.
In addition to being hard on a specific eyesight problem I have (and I didn't have these problems with the classic so-called- "old" page), I find the layout totally unappealing and I have to *FORCE* myself to go to that upper menu to find sections I'm interested.
I've been reading Steve's explanations and justifications and I agree with the following reader's opinion:
"You are attempting to treat those with an opinion based on solid understanding of the facts like children who 'need to be told'."
Likewise, Steve, I don't mind to insult, but I find your explanations as poor as when a site I can do without, because it's just for superficial entertainment, Facebook, after changing their layout, the site managers "respond" with patronizing disregard for users, then doing whatever they want.
I'm really sorry to see BBC go this way... I REALLY hope there are some people at BBC who want to save not only the classic layout, but who can respect the readers/users opinions.
thank you, from Canada.
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130 PS991
I think I love you.
As one of the main suspect reasons for this change is to appeal to the US market and it is obvious from your post that it fails in this (also)can you please encourage your countrymen and women to confirm your points.
I dont like the new masthead, old newspaper term, but I dont really care so long as the site delivers the news, not celeb gossip,delivers it in readable, accurate detail and is navigable by as little scrolling and clicking as possible, ( like the old site used to).
You have a great day too my friend.
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#143 AledH: I agree, except for the left hand vertical navigation thing was something that just looked dated and took up too much horizontal space, so going to a horizontal nav bar is a definite improvement.
There is plenty of room horizontally for a menu; acres of space! There is less room for useful content when it's strung across the top of the page. I think the page header needs some work: it would help if the original designer's colour palette had been used a little more sympathetically.
Regarding Helvetica: even a rigorous change control procedure should have allowed the CSS to be changed by now so that Arial came first (Yes some Macs have Arial too, but they render it better than most Windows machines render Helvetica Neue).
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Please, please, go back to the previous BBC News layout.
At a glance I could see a summary of all I wanted to know and at a click, read more.
The new layout is just a drag I have to dig through several pages to be sure I've seen all the main news. Actually, not sure, I always have a feeling I'm missing something interesting hidden in some sub-section.
I may have to find a new site as my primary source of news - even Sky is far better now.
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Even posting this comment means going to the foot of a blog - which is a mile long...
This news site is a dead parrot, bereft of life it dies, and so does, unfortunately, its concentration on the market that gives it its revenue from the UK - its home.
If you cannot take good criticism from your users then you have taken a move beyond your remit.
Why should I pay a licence fee when you are not taking any notice of what is said here. When it comes to looking at live TV then you should be aware that your licence payer isn't American but UK and whether you like it or not - this is the audience that you actually tax to watch something that at the end of a programme is available on the internet.
This is the real world and your audience doesn't like watching you waste money - that you will no doubt come back to us to pay. Give us an option to use the previous version please.
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143 AledH
I would be interested to know in what way you see the BBC as having changed.
Its charter hasnt changed.
That it dabbles in commercial broadcasting in other countries should not corrupt its obligations to its home audience that has on pain of criminal charges to pay for its operations.
All of the things that you want tweaked are style matters not substance.
The purpose of the BBC news site is to deliver the news not sing and dance whilst it does it.
I keep saying I dont care what the site looks like so long as I can get the news, news not donkeys or rappers, without masses of scrolling and masses of clicks to select subsites when I could do all of this from the "dated" old page with no scrolling and one click.
I liked the left hand vertical navigation list. I have now moved to Yahoo which has the list horizontal across the top and I can live with it. It is much plainer and more symetrical to the Beebs creation so perhaps that helps.And the news is constantly updated.
I must confess I have difficulty with your thinking. When I used the site it was to seek the latest news and it never once crossed my mind that the peripherals were "dated". It gave me the news easily and quickly which is what I wanted. The new site does not.
To get so many thousands of people objecting, many who have never posted on a blog before , must say something.
As others have commented it has shown me that other news sites deliver the news just as well, currently somewhat better than the Beeb, so yes that is an unexpected bonus.
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Hi Steve,
I've read your most recent blog entry, and it's pretty clear that you & your team haven't taken much notice of the contents of the 4000+ blog comments which have been posted. From reading the comments, it seems to me that people are genuinely concerned that the BBC News website is now so inferior to its previous state, and that people who have been avid news readers, and who've checked it throughout the day, cannot bear to use it now - myself included. Please don't think people on here are complaining about change, just because they don't like change. Up until now the changes to the News website have always been good. It's just that the site is now nothing like as good as it was this time last week, prior to the re-launch.
There are some very specific and constructive comments on here, with regards to too much white space, very short paragraphs, non-news stories on the main news page, etc, etc. It seems to me that all these changes are to make room for adverts in non-UK countries, and yet none of your blog posts have referenced this fact. BBC license fee payers should not have to have an inferior news website just to make it easier for BBC Worldwide to develop their commercial interests.
Also, you mention that you will monitor what people think of the site and how they use the site. I don't see this happening as of yet, and as the days go by, your most avid fans will start to lose the will to comment and offer suggestions, and will just get using other sites, or will put up with its new set-up, even if they don't like it. The BBC news site was one of the most trustworthy, reliable and well-designed websites on the internet, please can you consider incorporating some of the advice/suggestions put forward on this board, so that the website can regain it's position as one of the best websites on the internet?
Thanks.
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147 gandalf-the-grey
I'm cool with that.
But just to pacify me tell me how the new site can give me all England news headlines with one click ? Or Wales Or Scotland. And then I decide what interests me to delve further. Oh yes and without having to scroll too please.
I dont care about the masthead that looks like it might be a hangover from pre glasnost Russia. I can live with the out of kilter horizontal navigation bar.
What I cant live with is the scrolling and multi selections that I did not have to do before. Oh and the lack of substance in the news items.
Previously one could select the Odd Spot for the frippery, now it comes as main news items.
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I knew you'd have a hard time admitting something was wrong, but to be this arrogant astounds me. Since I'm paying for this website, along with so many other people who are also unhappy about it, I think you'd better start listening to us!
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I like the new site - as I have said before. The majority of users do not post on these boards - just the same people complaining they do not like the new design, who say they want the old one back. The same people most probably who complained about the old design and wanted the original one back. To say you are leaving a website due to a redesign is so funny not to be true. Lots of signs go through revamps - some are a lot worse than the BBC news site. It is crisp and clear to read and not cluttered. To compare it with the cluttered look of CNN is also quite funny. Change happens - in a month or so people will get used to it. And when they next change the site we will go through this all again with the same people complaining how much they loved the old site. I wish I could archive all these comments just for fun.
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Awesome, you`ve managed to create a site that both sucks and blows, hats off to your minimum wage web " designers "
50 million quid of our hard earned licence fee well and truly flushed down the pan, I`m sure you`ll get a nice bonus from the rest of the licence fee.
Do you have any jobs going at the Beeb ? I`m really rubbish at web design too, so I`m sure there must be a position for me to fill ?
BBC news is now banished from my bookmarks and I shall lobby my MP for a reduction in the licence fee.
Keep up the good work !
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Overall I think the new design is an improvement.
Cons: The 'My News & Weather Location' being in dark grey for no apparent reason. Fewer stories 'above the fold' on the News home page. Still not enough space given over to the main content on the article pages (in this blog the main content is 125-130% the width of that on the news articles). The England page doesn't seem to notice that I picked London as my news and weather location.
Pros: The page structure offers more flexibility to show the article content (see the article on giant stars). I find the home page and section pages easier to scan. I prefer the sections listed at the top rather than at the left (I tend to bounce from article to article so having sections listed on the left just got in the way, at the top I can mostly ignore them, but the links are there when I want them). I used to use the old right hand column a lot for moving around and in the new design I find I get more of what I want (Top Stories, Features & Analysis, Most Popular).
The one thing I would really like to see is the News home page respecting the choices I made in the News module on the home page.
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I'm sorry but I don't believe you when you say that the changes have been "based up careful research". There are so many basic usability problems in the new design -- egregious use of whitespace, meaningless colors, poor font selection, shockingly bad layout, peripatetic eye-travel, pointless scrolling etc -- that I genuinely can't imagine that any respectable level of properly independent research has gone into this at all. Arial for newsprint like some crowd called 'yahoo' does? Come on, folks, be a bit realistic about this.
The feedback that's been posted here and elsewhere over the week or so is the best "careful research" you could wish for.
My advice is for the controllers to admit they've messed up, then get over it and put the site back to the clean and efficient way it was.
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160 thejohansenfamily
You appear to be ignoring the many who have prefaced their complaints with the fact they have never posted on a blog before. That is how upset thousands of people are.
The old site was infinately better at providing the news quickly and easily. That is why poeople say they want it back.
Perhaps they should be saying they want the new site to deliver the news just as easily and quickly as the old plus none of the new frippery getting in the way and the news to be the news and updated constantly.
I add the last points because what some see as enhancements, more video etc, get in the way of what I want and the news has definately dumbed down since the change and it is frequently days old.
Currently other much better sites are available. And people are going to them.
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At which point was a site that is harder to navigate deemed by the BBC to be "acceptable"?
Needless to say the BBC makes a decision, implements it, sees that it is not popular and then justifies its' existence regardless and has no plans to change the decision.
Poor, very poor.
Awful, actually.
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The BBC News International Editions can be read in translation:
http://newsreader3.blogspot.com
Most of them seem to be using the new technology already but they look much better than "BBC News". Why is that? Try Indonesia, Turkce and Vietnamese.
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So, to paraphrase what you're really saying, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!"
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How do I get to the "Have Your Say" section? This has apparently been downgraded and de-emphasised on the site now. Why is this?
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It is looking better than it did at first. Less font sizes helps. But it still looks messy and feels fragmented.
The news is just not as accessible as it was on the old site. There is less news on the front page. And what there is, is much more spread out. I have to look at what is in boxes all over the screen. Those columns underneath the world tool look smart until you actually want to access the content. Having to read across so many columns gets in the way of finding what you want at a glance. A list format would be better.
In short - it is less painful on the eye that the lainch version. But it is
messy.
Fragmented and to try
annoying and read the content
The arrangement is poor
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I've thought about it some more and decided I am fed up of playing "hunt the news" on the redesigned site.
So for the first time in my life I have made a formal complaint to the BBC.
I just don't like the loss of functionality - access to the news I used to be able to get a quick overview of the news and drill into the stories that interested me. It is much harder to do both now. The layout does not lend itself to a quick scan. And there is simpley less news on the front page.
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The new website is excellent. It would be even better if readers could comment on all articles that are not sub-judice.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
for
"Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering"
read
"I never never never admit when i get it wrong!
In your FAQs can you please direct us to who we should write to in order to complain about our opinions being ignored.
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Since I discovered BBC news online roughly three years ago, I have consistently and constantly utilized this website. I have used no other news source, and recommended it to most of my close friends to the point of annoyance. I truly loved this website; in America its hard to find any news site with integrity, helpful (and responsive) moderators, sensible comment sections (not on every article), and concision in its articles and photographs. I just want BBC to know that its initial choice to change the site (along with its horrible quality, which according to this blog may seemingly be fixed to some degree in the future) and its discourse with core and non-core reader's comments was an irreparable error for me due to it's shocking resemblance to such discourse in America, which, we all know, does not go smoothly.
I love my country with all my heart, but for a few years I truly believed this website would uphold the British standards of intellect, good,vivid, concise writing, excellent humor, and the desire to complete projects and articles wholly and not half-assed. I really believed the British had contributed a substantial intellectual,informative milestone to the internet, but now I see that anything good can be ruined by a handful of people, I will be back if this site changes from its current look entirely, perhaps temporarily, perhaps I will stay if its changed back or into something that time was invested in.
Give us details of this "research" on users online habits, if you have any, I do not believe any was conducted. This is not just a case of adjusting to change, it is a failure outright, and who wants to build on a failure. I can put some fools gold on dog excrement, but even if I put a thousand karat ring on it, its still dog excrement, I can't put it on my wife's finger. Even if I polished it to the point where it did not look like dog excrement (which is possible, look it up), if someone asked me, I would tell them what it is, and the smell is still there. This may be an odd metaphor but it is quite accurate.
Goodbye BBC, I hope I can come back to something less representative of bad American ideals, maybe you should swipe some of our half decent ones and run a focus group, the outcome would surely be better than this.
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Sorry I missed the ;ast part but in there you say
"The additional horizontal space that removing the left-hand navigation has given us also frees up space for bigger images, embedded videos and links to some of our in-depth content. "
On my machine I see the web site with plenty of horizontal space but no vertical space. I never have to scroll left-right but do vertically. the old design was better because it made use of the horizontal space with a menu and I had to scroll less to see the text. My screen is a NORMAL widescreen so so I could easily make my browser wider to allow you to add your new videos etc but I cannot increase the vertical space
Note that I use browsers with addins so that the list of tabs are at the side so I can see more vertical space anyway.
All other news services seem to agree with you putting loads of menus at the top whilst the BBC used to have menus at the side thus making it easier to use than other sites. I still use BBC Sport as that still has good menu design (and other white spacing) but news is used less often here.
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The 'new' site is pretty much identical to that of France 24
http://www.france24.com/fr/
So 'new' and 'improved' is someone subjective
How about fessing up BBC and saying we have copied our competitors
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If I was a British paying license fee, I would sure not let this issue go. Something really dirty and deeper must have went on between old design and new design. I can't find any explanation to this ignorance. The money involved is way past billion dollars. Don't blame us, "foreigners" since we _pay_ for BBC World service (at least, TV) and BBC Entertainment (aka Prime) with our set top box/cable billings. Funny thing is, BBC Entertainment is in fact a very expensive channel and its site got a bit "infected" by "new global language" too.
A news site, in size of BBC News with such a prestige, lacks... Europe weather?
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I have rarely seen such utter arrogance.
I am switching to a different News service.
You should be ashamed- of your designers and yourself.
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So, still telling us that we're wrong? Still waiting for us to "get used to it" ? So far not one thing has worked better, or easier, or faster. It's only gotten slower, harder to navigate and harder to read.
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Dear BBC, I know that the redesign has caused a lot of noise - but it is a massively retrograde step in terms of ease of use. With the old site I could get a overview of what was happening across the world themed by politics, business, etc. just by opening the page.
Now I have to scroll down miles (even on a 21" monitor) and when I initially open the site I am confronted with lots of large garish boxes that contain lots of wasted space (presumably where the US ads go) and only a handful of headlines that cannot convey the sense of what is going on.
Please can you take another look at this and get us back to something more user friendly.
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I'm put in mind of Freshmeat, a software repository site with an emphasis on Free and Open Source software.
Last March, they did a significant redesign. The backlash was immense. (Sound familiar?)
Over the next several months, criticisms were listened to. Changes were made, albeit to the new design. (sound familiar?)
By the end of last year, the site was a lot better than the initial redesign. It looked a lot more contemporary than the old version. And many of the real sticking points brought up were addressed.
The site's actually pretty usable these days.
However...
They never did revert to the old site. The way the site worked was fundamentally changed. The way the site worked was what had kept me going back and looking through it several times a week.
The new version just doesn't do what I needed it for, so I check back every once in a while and always wishing for the old method of navigation back. But it never was the same site again.
(Now that sounds familiar)
The old BBC news site was pretty much the only news outlet, in any form, that actually made me give a damn about keeping up with the news.
The new one sums up exactly why I usually don't bother.
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As a long time homepage user of the BBC I am extremely disapointed with this new web page. I feel like the BBC has gone back in time. It's looking more and more like an Americanized version of the news, not to mention the flurry of ads all over the place.
-When viewing an article more than 50% of screen real estate is the BBC banner and ensuing ads, which is extremely frustrating. Not to mention that the Flash ads are a complete nuisance and distraction to reading.
-The world news section at the bottom of the page is really hard to get a nice overview with the Blue on Blue tone. It might look trendy, but even as a young person, I don't appreciate it. It's not meant to be decorative wall paper. I liked the old lay out. The different column heights with Europe being higher than the rest looks really awkward.
-The Most Popular section is also difficult to scan: though you intended to make it easier with numbers, the text is much too big, and really what do we need the numbers for?? It's not a children's counting game.
-The banner of categories at the top, would be better if when scrolling over the category, a drop-down appeared of top articles or links for each category. It was easier to visualize and use on the side rather than on top.
-I now have to move 3 screen scrolls down to view the entire world news section, and 4 scrolls to get the Most Popular links and the Business, Technology, Entertainment. We all know that if it's too far down it doesn't get looked at (that's why people are making millions getting google search results to the top with SEO).
-The text on most of the page is too big and is spaced out too much. I could see the headlines before. Screen resolutions have improved a great deal, and it seems this site was made for low resolution screens. Let's try and get more on our screens rather than less. Ideally I would like to see a great world news overview in one screen and then scroll down for more 'other' info as needed, that is why I fell in love with the BBC website many years ago... It seems all I will end up with is CNN.
-It's sad to see the editor say sternly to the many dedicated users that the website will not change back. The users make this website succeed, not to say it needs to be completely reverted back, but if users hate it, then the company has to adapt, not insist on its own choice. Think of Facebook's privacy policies and the new Iphone, companies that have done a lot of focus groups and user testing, still have to go back and adjust if their clients aren't happy. The bottom line is testing is done with limited samples, though they can provide some feedback the real test is now, and if users aren't happy are you aiming to please only the focus groups or yourselves?
I hope these comments are taken into consideration. As a devoted BBC News user, I guess I will have to consider other websites.
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One idiotic thing you can change quite easily is if someone is looking at the main headline story of a particular section of the site, and after they have scrolled and scrolled to the bottom of the page, finally coming to the 'More *section name* stories', the first thing you don't suggest to them to read is the article they have just read.
Seriously, I have to wonder at the real amounting of testing that went into the site's design.
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" Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering,"
Goodbye BBC News online!
Ditto!
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Have to agree with most here - it's a bit of a car crash. Feels like I'm reading a WordPress blog rather than a leading news site. It almost seems as if it's lost it's content. Take a look at the brilliant new Times website - to see a great example of a content rich news site. Please change back.
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I still prefer the old web design, but I'm getting used to the new one.
When will we have a personalized homepage, a la Yahoo or iGoogle?
I mainly head first to the Business section. So now, instead of using the main page, I use the Business page as my browser's home page. On the old website it was easier to jump directly to the sub-section, the one with the stories listed as opposed to the link that was previously on the side and is now at the top of the page. Now you have to go much further down to the "More From BBC News".
Now I dive straight into the business news, cheer or weep at the FTSE, and then use the top bar to click into the other sections that interest me.
Hmmm, I suppose what I'm saying is that I'm just avoiding the re-designed front page. Actually, that's probably not a good thing. I also miss being able to see my local news.
Tom - you might just give me an excuse to re-install Greasemonkey! If you have a webpage for this project please post it so I can follow your progress or see when the script is go!
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OMG, I just realised the local news is still on the main page. I've been completely blanking that square of blue background since the re-design. It never even registered with me that that was news. It's a bit incongruous. Now I've entered my home city it's a nice little "widget" to have back, now we just need those sort of options for the rest of the front page.
Also can I add my voice to the video option preview on regular stories being a resource killer on old computers.
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140. At 11:18pm on 21 Jul 2010, Gface wrote:
134. At 10:58pm on 21 Jul 2010, howarthcd wrote:
Put in perspective, a few thousand complaints equates to a very small percentage of the number of unique visitors to the site.
-------------------
Indeed... but then when you break down how many people have posted that they like it.. that percentage is even smaller
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True, but, as I've noticed on the web over the years, people tend post a comment only if they have a complaint.
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I don't believe the suggestion in the FAQs for setting a cookie to remove the Facebook button has been tested properly.
I can't set a cookie to remove the Facebook button because there is no button when I view the BBC News website on my PC. There is no button because my PC blocks access to the Facebook website.
It's very frustrating. I read a news item on your website and click on the Back button to return to the News home page. Your website attempts to access Facebook but it's blocked so it stays on the same page. I click on the Back button again but it's blocked so it stays on the same page, etc, etc.
The new website is unusable.
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There you are, the BBC's silo mentality in action -
"Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering"
even after hundreds, possibly thousands, of posts from annoyed visitors with valid criticisms.
The BBC will not listen. We are wasting our time here.
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One week later, and still not liking this assault on my eyes one bit better, I have just bookmarked my customized BBC home page, instead of the messy BBC.co.uk/news page
And now Steve you will be pleased to hear ... I am a happy bunny again.
Perfect example of " If you ask a committee to design a Horse, you end up with a Camel"
BBC you have made a monumental cock up in replacing an excellent "at a glance " news format with a cloned Camel of a layout.
Thankfully... clones are identical in look, but they lack longevity.
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"Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering"
In the "real world", not rolling back such a disasterous rollout usually results in very rapid issuing of P45s.
"if you would like to remove these Facebook buttons, then you can do so by clicking here to set a cookie"
Erm, have you ever SEEN a real world commercial workstation setup? The vast majority are very locked down and cookies a definite NO NO under most policies (Windows Policies that is, not "human" ones). So, that option is a total non-starter!
"Along with everyone else on the design, technical and editorial teams here who have worked together to try to improve the site"
Tried - and failed utterly. It's a disaster just you won't admit or accept it.
"I hope you will grow to like it"
Not a chance.
"This will be particularly true if you are using a slower connection"
Erm, mine is 20Mb and I've lost count in the past of the number of Flash Script Timeout Errors I've had with videos on the site - and you've just stuffed it full of even more and bigger videos! I take it you don't have much understanding of the way the underlying transport system of the Internet works? All it takes is ONE or TWO bottlenecks in the route from A to B and you get slow performance, of which the one to your desk/home PC is merely the last. If you want a better example, try the Radio Times website - where because of the crap ad servers everything frequently grinds to a halt.
"I'd like to explain again, as clearly as I can, what our thinking is"
Where's Alan (Lord) Sugar when you need him to point that finger and utter the words "Your Fired!"
Next stop everyone has got to be emails to the Director General (done mine) and the BBC Trustees.....
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This website has become a fag. I'm paying for it?!!
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First reaction when I opened the BBC site today: Ugghh... Ugly. What is that colour red they are using? Where are the familiar links? Somebody needs to tell them this is not a good idea. The old site was not perfect.. but it just needed tweaking.. not an entire revolution. And now I see there are many people unhappy with the "fresh" design, but the managers seem to like it, so "no dice". This is the psychological principle of over-investment in a decision. This does not even resemble the BBC look in any form!!
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The phrase "continuing to improve on the changes we've made" implies that you've made improvements.
You haven't.
The redesign is receiving substantial criticism all over the Web. You are beginning to look absurd with this ostrich mentality and your arrogant insistance that the new site is somehow an 'improvement'.
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@ RichardWeaver1953 (comment 55)
Thanks for the advice.
I have submitted a complaint.
It appears that comments on this blog stand a good chance of being ignored.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/homepage/
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So now the cpmplaints are coming in from abroad, especially the US where this new site was created to serve. 175 SadUSA puts it so well.
!
If it does not work for them either why not dump it and give us , and them, something that works more like the old site ?
Have your tabloid look to please the trendy fashion merchants but give us news and easily accessible news.
I am still perplexed by the one/twoline posts such as 172 John Barrett Rose, "The new site is excellent" . How , in what way ? What are these converts seeing that 1000s of us dont ?
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At post 151 ElenaVanTrel revealed:
I absolutely hate the upper menu with the huge red.. top and .. I try to hide the named bar manually, scrolling down the news piece
I have to *FORCE* myself to go to that upper menu to find sections
_____________________________________________________
As has been explained elsewhere the site design appears to be driven by BBC.com and BBC America Worldwide (owned by BBC Worldwide) and advertiser wishes, including a plan for more soft content away from hard news.
Therefore, this type of user manipulation, (encouraging scrolling), is precisely the sort of behaviour the site designers, who, in their need to satisfy the requirement to drive traffic to their advertisements, are trying to achieve.
As another said"All this scrolling about is by design. You see more ads that way.".
I have no problem with the BBC websites using ads to generate revenue, (indeed they have been doing so long before this redesign), as this supplements the license fee and so may reduce demands for increases in the fee and should lead to further development of the BBC website, which we all benefit from.
However, it now appears the BBC news site may be compromised by these commercial considerations and it is because of this I share the concerns of others who have questioned whether this redesign is in contravention of the Corporation's charter.
As BronWilliams wrote above"BBC license fee payers should not have to have an inferior news website just to make it easier for BBC Worldwide to develop their commercial interests."
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196 @george
Well said, i have commented already about the cookies policy, I would be suprised if the BBC staff with net access can play with their cookies unless they are directly involved with web design or system admins
I think the BBC forget that we are not all sat at home on our PC's and Mac's
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@ RichardWeaver1953 (comment 55)
Again, I too have felt that the only recourse of my voice being heard is through the following
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/homepage/
Steve, i'm sorry to say but if I owned a company and you treated my customers in this manner, you would be hearing the immortal line of AS "You're fired"
All you had to do was post a link or two to the stats and a poll tool.
If what you say is borne out then we are unceremoniously put in our place.
It would at least have allowed the voice of the majority here to be heard, since YOU are talking at us like school children...
Today :-
I quit this site & I cancel my license - the Website is the ONLY BBC resource I use and since you have removed the functional use for me, I am paying for nothing.. No More.
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It is sad for Steve Herrmann that his name will forever be associated with this farce.
I am unable to use this site anymore because the top navigation bar is so awful. IT is far quicker to scan a vertical list like in the old site. The horizontal list takes much longer to find what you're after.
The colours are also very bad, white on red? I mean, who could choose those dreadful colours.
IT is a bad day to be a BBC news online employee. They have taken a great site and destroyed it. And now they lack the humility to put it right.
If you feel the same way be sure to submit an official complaint
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So you don't want to roll back, you only want to evolve the site?!...
Calling it now; The site will slowly evolve back into something like the original site...
...Except with a slightly different font so that Steve can call the evolution a success of user feedback and site development.
Nice way to spend our TV license.
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I too have now submitted a complaint.
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Typical BBC arrogance. The customer is always wrong. Silly of us to have thought otherwise.
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Well I have just had a look at the BBC Charter.
Well when I have waded through pages of waffle about trustees, committess, remuneration, accounts etc I will let everyone know if there is anything in there that actually protects us mere mortals who finance the megalith and what if any rights we have.
Spotted that we have to be consulted prior to new protocols, whatever that means.
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"Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering"
Though its the overwhelming preference of your users. But they aren't the priority. Please be honest. You aren't going to do something about the size of the fonts, the white space, the paragraph lengths, the clumsy navigation, the ugly box in the middle of the front page - because you want people to scroll past adverts in the international edition.
"I hope you will grow to like it"
I probably won't, because I'm going to use it as little as possible. The latest tweaks do make it a bit less bad, but the premise that scrolling is now OK is fundamentally dubious. I like being able to scan everything on one page above the fold. I don't like being forced to scroll. The real reason why the scrolling and white space has been incorporated makes it even worse.
"continuing to improve on the changes we've made"
Thanks for the laugh there. I don't mind the horizontal bar. But there's the poor fonts, broken links, missing margins, gaps 'for future content'... I'm not even going to think about the ethics of Facebook tracking. This isn't about improving, its about money.
And this is not just according to the noisy few who post feedback. Talking to my friends and colleagues the like/don't like ration is about the same - 10/90%. There are always some who don't like a change but this is in a different league.
This has all the hallmarks of a project conceived and designed according to a hidden agenda and put live when the schedule said it should be done, not when it was ready - technically or ergonomically. If I'd done this at work I'd be getting my coat by now.
The Economist news site is good, and the Guardian. I wonder what their traffic figures are like this month?
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204 Jase
You may have hit the nail on the head my friend.
It is obvious all our complaints are being ignored but if we all cancelled our licences that would get 'em sitting up and taking notice.
The admin costs alone of that would drive them crazy and resetting them all again once we were happy, unless it causes the death knell of the licence of course.
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Have just registered an official complaint as well. Have also emailed the Director General and Deputy Director General.
Suggest everyone else who feels ignored does the same.
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I have been reading these comments and I to complained last week.
But is it me or has it got easier to use?
Yes there are lots of white spaces, but it seems to be tighter than it was.
Has the amount of scrolling you have to do lessened?
It seem different from last week and improved
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I would have thought that the number 1 objective of a redesign of any product is to be an improvement on the existing version.
Whilst the new site may be a technical improvement for you, as one of the many people whose licence fee pays for the site and have expressed their opinion here; for more than 90% of us, it is most definitely not an improvement from our perspective!
Your attitude seems to be a condesending: 'We know what's best for you'.
Surely you can see the redesign has failed if you to have to say: "...I hope you will grow to like it..."
Well no, after a week I still don't like it!
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Two soldiers die in Afghanistan, yet the first thing my eye was draw to was the massive facebook logo linking to a tragically asinine story which clearly doesn't belong on the front page.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
I really really hate it and as you keep saying, essentially, 'tough', I am going to have to find a new news source. I have spent my whole life trusting in the BBC to deliver quality reporting in a serious sensible way without dumbing down and following the latest fashion but it's finally failed me.
Bye bye Beeb
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Have started using Yahoo news (UK) as my home page after years of having the BBC news site as my home page. Same sort of layout as the new BBC site but better executed. And the news is updated more frequently. Noticeable omission from news sources is the BBC, I wonder why? If you want you can set up a My Yahoo news page with your own layout and content.
The Channel 4 site isn't bad for layout (similar to the old BBC site) but I suspect content isn't as extensive.
Hardly look at the BBC site now other than this blog and comments.
For those of you using Firefox and having trouble with the fonts, make sure your default font size is no greater than 16. This greatly improves the layout. I actually have no problem using Arial, in fact it is my default font on Firefox, and used it to override Verdana on the old site. If you want to enlarge the site you can also use the Control ++ and Control -- function on Firefox to expand and contract the site without screwing up the layout (any more!). It makes it more readable but does mean even more scrolling to get past that stupid large grey box in the middle of the news.
One final point. Why does the comment system spellchecker insist on highlighting words with correct UK spelling but happily accepts US spelling?
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It's amazing the entitlement complex that lots of users on here seem to have. "We don't like your careful designed, thought out and tested changes so immediately roll them all back!"
Does anyone seriously expect that to happen? From any company ever? Even if this website was as terrible as people make out (which it's not), simply "putting everything back the way it was" isn't as easy as clicking a button.
Any changes will take weeks of testing before they can be implemented, as small changes on the web can have lots of unforseen effects.
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I am confused, I just listened to the news on Radio 2 and it didnt tell me to visit face book with every headline, nor did they tell me how much better facebook is doing over June 2009.
You should contact the news team for Radio 2 they are letting the BBC's new image down.
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Sir,
This is my second attempt to communicate the following..
It seems to me that the most serious problem with the new BBC news site is the apparent dumbing down of its news coverage: news stories now appear much shorter and concomitantly superficial, forcing the reader to search elsewhere for anything beyond the most trivial of analysis. One can only presume that this change results from pressure from Murdoch and others at News International/News Corporation, hitherto alarmed at the esteem with which the old BBC news site was held and worried the site was detracting online news-consumers for paying for content from their own sites.
This is editorial cowardice of the highest order; not only has Mr Hermann got the technology of the new site wrong and the aesthetics of the new look wrong, but the fundamental rationale for the site's existence - high quality news coverage - has now been compromised.
Three thousand plus complaints suggest Mr Harmann and his team got this redesign badly wrong; [in any other business] in such circumstances a man with integrity would both admit the error and seriously consider his judgement and position; conversely those on a BBC web-media salary will undoubtedly simply continue to remind us that [they never make mistakes and hence] a rollback "is not something we're considering"..
Thanks for listening.
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I find it absolutely hilarious just how worked up some people are getting here about the new design.
The frenzy that some people seem to be getting themselves into is just incredible, and what's even more amusing is that some users seem to think that a thousand or so negative comments on the Editors' blog are genuinely representative of the millions of users who happily visit the BBC News site each week. The simple fact is that the majority of those that are happy with the site will not register their satisfaction - they'll simply use it and enjoy it; by contrast, those that are most unsatisfied, or who are simply looking for a fight, are the ones who tend to register their opinions most vocally.
To take a few hundred comments as representative of BBC News' global visitorship is just plain ridiculous, and to demand that the Beeb ditch the entire project simply because a handful of users have registered to complain (and let's not overlook the fact that many of the comments here come from those who have chosen to make the same points more than once) is ridiculous in the extreme.
Some people seem to think that their opinion is the only one that counts, and that because they've got a few other Daily Mail readers on their side, that there is no other way.
Quite simply, the majority of users - myself included - find the redesign to be quite pleasant and a real improvement on what came before. How do I know this? From the simple fact that - when you take a step back and look at the big picture - what you've got is a handful of people that represent only a tiny fraction of the totality of BBC News website users, who seem to think that if they make the same points over and over again, shout loudly enough, and be as pompous and sanctimonious as possible in demanding that there be no change to anything ever, they will somehow be vindicated.
Unfortunately for those people, in the real world, progress has to occur, and sometimes that means that things have to change. When I read the majority of comments on here, in most cases, what I read is not legitimate complaints about genuine problems, but rather the pious whinings of those who just don't like change.
Frankly, the IT, brand and web professionals that have worked on this project haven't made decisions arbitrarily, and they haven't chosen to do certain things just to irritate you people who delight in complaining and moaning about how good things used to be; they've made decisions based on feedback from users and on hard irrefutable website usage data that shows how visitors actually use the site, and they've designed the new site based around that knowledge.
The way some people are getting all hot and bothered about things, you'd think the BBC had made an active decision to redesign the site in the least convenient and most irritating way possible.
There's ALWAYS those who complain when a change like this occurs, just as there's ALWAYS people who complain when the BBC spends money on designing its television idents or on updating a logo for one of its networks. But the fact that there are ALWAYS complaints does not inherently validate those complaints, nor does it in any way mean that those complaints represent the views of every licence fee payer or international consumer of BBC content.
Sure, there are of course some issues that need to be resolved here and there, and the BBC has done a good job in recognising the need to address those issues, and evidently it welcomes the dialogue it has with its users and audiences to help make any changes that it makes even better. But when the dialogue descends into calls to reverse the course of progress simply because a few things aren't perfect - or worse, because a handful of people very obviously don't like change, full stop - then I'm afraid we've descended into utter stupidity.
Ultimately, some people are going to be unsatisfied. It is a simple reality that not every opinion can be agreed with, and sometimes a decision has to be made that some people will find fault with.
But just because you don't like it, and you're a licence fee payer, why does that make your opinion more valid than mine or his or hers, when we too are licence fee payers?
As in the democratic society, decisions are made and we all have the right to disagree with them and to voice our opinions on things. But when a decision is made, and only a small minority to choose to voice their disdain for it, it's time to take a deep breath, get some perspective, and be mature about things. Instead of calling for the change to be reversed and decrying the BBC for ignoring that call of the minority, how about some of you stop crying and throwing your toys out of the pram, and help to make the best of the way things are? Why not be constructive and proactive in helping to improve the new site, rather than whining like children about wanting everything to be like it used to be?
Change happens; it is necessary. Some people on here really need to get to grips with that fact, and - to put it simply - grow up a bit. Your complaints have been registered and acknowledged - and I'm sorry to tell you that you haven't got your way: the new site is here to stay, and the old site is dead and buried. Is it really the most productive way forward now to keep complaining about that? Or are you able to be mature enough to participate in a conversation that establishes the best way *forward* from here?
Sadly, for those that love to complain, we're not going backwards, and no amount of toddler-esque tantrums and hissy fits is going to change that. It's about time some of you stopped acting like little children, and accepted that fact like the adults you supposedly are.
My biggest disappointment with the new BBC News site is that the new design hasn't yet reached the BBC Sport site - but I look forward to enjoying the much-improved navigation, the fantastic new multimedia features and the better showcasing of content on the Sport site that the new News site has whet my appetite for.
Keep up the good work, Auntie.
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Hi Steve
"Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering"
Why not?
Thanks
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Still trying tyo find the best way to view this iste and have tried a few tweaks.
Laptop 1 - Vista SP2. If I INCREASE the resolution I can read the fonts in the masthead and the layout looks half decent. Problem, if I want to look at any other site I have to change the reolution back to previous setting.
Laptop 2 - Windows 7. If I DECREASE the resolution - continue as for Laptop 1.
Both have been set up to give best resolution for majority of use. I guess I will retain my settings.
PS The embedded video still doesn't work. iPlayer and TV no problem.
Its probably a Flash thing that I cannot install as my IT Director tells me that it is a security risk.
Good wholesome feedback.
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Oof, I just had to register to complain about this new formt, and what appears to be a lack of acknowledgement over the feedback. Here's wagering that this site becomes pay for premium access in less than a few years, and we'll be able to link direct into Twitter/Facebook/FriendFace etc. before long too.
Just like nobody asked for, but received anyway, it's a media trend, which is a shame to see from what was a pillar of online sensibilities, and information over teenager-aimed and gimmiky trends.
I just hope the cricket commentary doesn't have a similar overhaul and have the distinguished sporting gentlemen commentators replaced by Chris Moyles and James Corden
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@219 soulgrind
If the changes were "careful designed, thought out and tested", people would not be complaining.
Which part of the BBC do you work for?
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Soulgrind:
"It's amazing the entitlement complex that lots of users on here seem to have. "We don't like your careful designed, thought out and tested changes so immediately roll them all back!"
Of course we have entitlement complexes! We're paying for this site and service. If we don't like what we see we can simply take our business (ie content viewing) elswhere!
Similar to the cola debacle a decade or so back. I can't remember which company it was, but essentially they imposed a change to their recipe. Sales tumbled and they pretty quickly reverted back to the old formula.
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181. At 07:16am on 22 Jul 2010, dude_from_the_north wrote:
So, still telling us that we're wrong? Still waiting for us to "get used to it" ? So far not one thing has worked better, or easier, or faster. It's only gotten slower, harder to navigate and harder to read.
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There are 2 issues.
the first is that the Beeb, like any other organisation knows that people hate change. If they ,or any other organisation listened to feedback from their users they'd never change anything, people like consistency and newness unsettles them.
the second issue is one of culture within the BBC.
Anyone who reads the 'radio times' on a regular basis will be aware of the BBC stock response to any viewer criticism.
Be it background music in documentaries, squeezing the end titles to trail the next programme or even concerns about the graphic depiction of violence against women, the response from the management is always the same and goes along the lines of 'Actually we've done our research and it turns out that actually you enjoy loud background music/trailing the next programme over the top of the one you are watching/ graphic violence against women (delete as appropriate. Your'e wrong. We're right'.
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@ 222. At 11:16am on 22 Jul 2010, gcaw:
--------------------------
If the majority of users of the site prefer the changes, and all of us who are complaining are just a vocal minority, then it shouldn't be a problem for the BBC to stick a poll on the front page along the lines of "Do you think the changes to the BBC News site are an improvement or not" and for the results of that poll to be visible to all. But the BBC don't seem too keen to do this. I wonder why!
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I did not like the news BBC site at first (on this later) but can see their point now. Redesign is an understandable and inevitable step in the lifecycle of any website. However, how this is done and communicated is an altogether a different matter and there are clearly lessons to be learned here.
The problem for the BBC is that the old site was a true success in delivering news in an accessible and easier to find manner. Many people are genuinely angry about this taken away from them, and I understand that. Hence, all the criticism; including initially from myself.
In the nutshell, from my point of view, the main problem with the new landing page for the News section (and the subsequent subsections) is that content is not easier to scan. It is okay for someone with plenty of time on their hands (like a test group), but not ideal for many people who come to a site for a quick fix of the latest headlines. I think this was ignored to some extend.
Rather than keep going on about it, I’ve decided to mock up the top bit of a front page with a few tweaks that, I believe, might improve scanning of the page and an overall user experience. That’s all. I hope people will like it, or maybe, even the BBC will like it too.
http://i843.photobucket.com/albums/zz353/alex-online/bbc-news-BEFORE.jpg
http://i843.photobucket.com/albums/zz353/alex-online/bbc-news-AFTER.jpg
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"the first is that the Beeb, like any other organisation knows that people hate change. If they ,or any other organisation listened to feedback from their users they'd never change anything, people like consistency and newness unsettles them."
Thats not strictly speaking true though, lots of us (myself included) have been praising the international sites and other BBC internal sites saying how good they look and feel to use.
Its not change a lot of people are moaning about, its the manner of the change and the style of the new site.
Personally myself, I am still using the sports site (until it changes) and this blog, but other than that I really am struggling to use the new news site.
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222
Why do you require more than 1000 words to mock people who have submitted justifiable adverse comments about the new website design.
You like the sound of your own keyboard, or maybe you work for Auntie.
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#222 Gcaw:
The majority of users I've talked to don't like the redesign either, but simply do not feel inclined to comment, for various reasons.
"Frankly, the IT, brand and web professionals that have worked on this project haven't made decisions arbitrarily"
They certainly didn't. It's what was behind these decisions that has provoked the frenzy as it has been uncovered. The decision was been made to force scrolling to maximise exposure to advertising on international editions. The layout philosophy of white space and big headlines follows. Combine that with a glitchy GVL implementation, Facebook trackers and a deliberately austere 'look'and you'll get resistance.
True, some people will always oppose change. But many, me included, have changed to alternative news sites and got used to them. If you look at the complaints about the previous re-design they were predominantly technical in origin (the style sheets weren't working properly etc). This time there is growing indignation as users realise the issues are driven by BBC politics and policies and we have no voice.
Yes, the usual bash-the-licence-fee brigade are out in force. But this time they may have a point. Have commercial considerations compromised the news site and the Corporation's charter?
For me the key point is: Will anybody in the BBC discuss this?
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@downhome and margee:
I don't work for the BBC, but I also don't expect them to be at my beck and call. People complaining about the site clearly have no idea about how either (a) business works, or (b) what is involved in changing a website of this size.
Months of user testing, feedback, iterations of improvement. To expect all that to be undone at the whim of a few people who complain isn't living in the real world. If I DID work for the BBC I certainly wouldn't be considering it.
The coke thing is hardly a good example, as it's another one of people's resistance to change being greater than their acceptance of improvement. (as in that case all the blind tests showed that people preferred the new one).
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Why has there been (perhaps only seemingly) a sudden proliferation of video content, I access this site from work and therefore have no interest in the video content, when I want my news in video form I watch BB1 at 22:00 and when I want video I go to youtube.
Can you provide some indication when the news story is a video, especially in the RSS feed.
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@gandalf_the_grey:
Are you seriously saying that you prefer Yahoo UK News to the BBC news, despite the fact that the design has the exact same layout, but Yahoo's one is horrendously ugly and dated? Seems a strange choice to switch to a site that's the same as the one you're boycotting.
And the BBC doesn't have a spell checker. It's built into firefox and works on all sites. And so it's up to YOU to set it to the right variation of english for you.
@barnband
The font should be the the same size in both browsers and operating systems. If it isn't then something is messed up somewhere, probably on your end.
(of course, something as simple sounding as making a font appear the same size in all browsers and O/Ses is actually a real pain, taking large amounts of sweat, blood and testing, and never guaranteed).
--
Seems like half the complainers are just jumping on the bandwagon and complaining about things that aren't even connected to the redesign.
And while some of the other complainers have raised a couple of valid issues, they are blowing it all out of proportion. Boycotting a news site because you don't like some (relatively minor, to be honest) changes to the layout is like boycotting a tv news channel because they changed the set.
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234 Soulgrind
From what Harmann has said there weren't months of user testing and feedback. There was a beta at the beginning of July, by which time it was unlikely anything was going to get changed.
And the New Coke isn't a good example. Research afterwards showed people had liked the first mouthfuls they were given in the test tests. But when they sat down to drink a whole can they found it too sweet.
Hopefully somebody will do some reseacrh into why the BBC's inital feedback looked positive.
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I actaully really like the new design. I think it is clearer and easier to read. Many people simply take time to get used to change. However, the real test for me will be if I can see the 7 day quiz without having to go search for it. If not, my Fridays will never be the same so please don't disappoint.
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In light of the fact that the BBC is largely ignoring readers' legitimate complaints, I feel compelled to suggest two alternative courses of action.
1) Unless someone's beaten me to it, I'll set up a petition on the Number 10 website once I'm home from work calling for an enquiry into the BBC violating it's charter by prioritising the US ad-brigade.
2) As a corollary, I encourage anyone who finds the new design as unappealing and unusable as I do to write to their local MP, and ask them to raise the issue of the potential charter violation and abuse of taxpayers' money.
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@229 - Polls of that nature are almost completely pointless as they're entirely open to abuse. There's nothing to stop users from voting over and over again (usually, it's as simple as removing a cookie from your computer), and the simple fact is that such a poll would do nothing to change the minds of those who are determined to hate the new design.
If they were vindicated, and the poll showed that a majority of users did not like the new design, we'd return to the fact that those who are pleased with something tend not to make their thoughts known. How many times have you called Amazon or Tesco to tell them how happy you were with their service? When people are happy, they tend to shut up about it; it's only when something goes wrong that people pipe up and start registering their thoughts. So a majority vote against the new site design would not really be truly reflective of the totality of the site's visitorship.
Conversely, if somehow a majority did indeed vote in favour of the new site, those making the biggest complaints here would cry "foul" and accuse the BBC of rigging the poll to represent their own viewpoints.
Even the polls that BBC News includes in some of its articles are provided under the caveat that results are merely indicative, and are not to be taken as representative of wider societal opinions.
Those are the reasons that such a poll wouldn't be considered. You are obviously choosing to believe that the reason such a poll isn't being offered is because the BBC 'knows' it would be proved wrong, when the fact is that what the BBC knows is that this kind of poll can't be taken as a reliable indicator of public opinion.
That's why they, like any other large organisation, conduct audience research behind the scenes instead of trying to condense the massively complicated task of designing a state as huge and complex as the BBC News site into a "yes/no" poll. It's also why they don't rely exclusively on opinions, and look at raw data to show how the website is actually used.
I personally own a brand and web design agency, and I can tell you that website analytics is an important part of designing or redesigning a site; user feedback is valuable to a point, but users' opinions can only get you so far. There's extraordinary value to be extracted from the data of how people really use the site in practice; for example, in a focus group, 90% of users may tell you that they think it's important for religion to be represented on your website - but the raw data may show that less than 5% of visitors actually go to the religion sections, and that they don't stay there for very long.
So you can look at the way people use the site, and by analysing the data, you can make informed decisions on whether or not to improve the site - for example, it may be that users just can't find the religious content, so you need to improve navigation - or to simply ditch the religious content entirely, as the data may indicate that the navigation is as good as it can possibly be, and that while people may *say* that religious content is important, the fact is that they don't actually have much interest in reading stories about religious matters.
So, user feedback - including the kind of conversation that these comments boards offer - can only get you so far, and at some point, you have to make a decision based not only on what people *say* they want, but on the raw data that shows beyond doubt what people really want in practice.
The comments that have been raised in this discussion will no doubt inform the improvements that will be made to the site in the future, but they are not the only factor that is considered when designing a site, and people should really get that into perspective on here.
Some people also need to understand that just because a decision has been made that doesn't directly gel with their opinions, it does not mean that their opinions have been ignored.
If you, or others, are unable to accept that simple reality, then you're really not mature enough to be participating in this kind of debate and discussion.
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The revamp is very disappointing.
What a missed opportunity Steve. Your comments are bland corporate gobbledygook. All you seem to be doing is giving excuses for the numerous errors & omissions, (outlined a length in other comments) or explaining why the changes are such a good idea under an all encompassing "progress" banner.
It is clear from the roll-out time-line that short of catastrophic failure there was never any intention to make any changes based on initial feedback - the roadmap was already had a pre-determined pro-commercial agenda regardless of what the viewing British public wanted.
This is unfortunately another example of a large corporate saying we know what is best for you. It is such a shame that all this does is undermine the reputation and credibility of the BBC.
Out of interest I wonder just how many of the "little" people, i.e. the viewers have to complain, (or stop regularly using the site), before they get listened to and action is taken.
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Helvetic Neue problem is still not fixed, Helvetica Neue is not intended to be seen on a PC in IE.
This is not a design feature, it is a bug.
I think this is a reasonable thing to note, then complain about, and to expect to see fixed.
If this bug were not there in the first place I doubt there would be so many complaints, but making the body copy very hard to read on PC with this font installed is a definite tipping point which I am sure has spurred many people to register to complain.
Why has this not been fixed?
I personally am not asking for a redesign, or a roll back (although that may have been a knee jerk reaction initially). I am sure that the new design can and will be improved.
But this ONE single bug has anoyed so many people, many of whom don't even know that it is a bug, they think that is what you (the designers) have deliberately chosen.
As I said 3,000 posts ago, if you could see what I see, you would blush.
Please fix the Helevetic Neue bug.
Is that too much to ask?
PS.. The american spell checker is part of Firefox, not the BBC website. I think they are innocent on that one :-)
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soulgrind
I don't work for the BBC, but I also don't expect them to be at my beck and call. People complaining about the site clearly have no idea about how either (a) business works, or (b) what is involved in changing a website of this size.
Months of user testing, feedback, iterations of improvement.
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"Months of user testing, feedback, iterations of improvement." should mean having a site working and fit for purpose...it's patently obvious that people do not think it's fit for purpose...the few brains-out chnages that have been made to the site would show that basic thinghs were missed.
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Regarding the epic in post number 222, you failed to copy the heading from the document "Editors initial response to adverse comments from its readers"
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Well, my first idea in 239 is jacked since E-Petitions is not currently accepting new submissions. I have however followed up on contacting my local MP; he's been very helpful in the past chasing down underhanded behaviour in public bodies on my behalf, so I hope for more of the same.
Mr. Herrmann, this is the end of me commenting, complaining, or making improvement suggestions here. Your refusal to move from a company viewpoint I consider indefensible renders any further comments from me here completely redundant. This is not an "acceptance" of the change, merely a resignation to the fact that the only way to pursue this productively is to take more forceful measures.
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#226 soulgrind said "And while some of the other complainers have raised a couple of valid issues, they are blowing it all out of proportion. Boycotting a news site because you don't like some (relatively minor, to be honest) changes to the layout is like boycotting a tv news channel because they changed the set."
Hmm. Just so. In fact I hate moving backgrounds, they make me feel ill. So I don't watch BBC News or ITV News, and would like to use a website I can get on with.
I think I'll end up using the BBC news feeds and building my own, though.
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I'd just like to thank the moderators of this board, 24hour shifts, that is impressive. Have your say usually shuts down for the night.
The moderators may have been a bit heavey handed blocking internal BBC links on the odd occasion, but all in all job well done.
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Well the negative feedback's getting less and less with every post. People will tell me that's because others "have given up and moved to other sites" but, let's be honest, compared to the other posts people now are enjoying the BBC News site more.
The contra- arguments are also getting weaker. Half of it is repetition of familiar complaints - which have been addressed or Mr Herrmann has said they're working towards addressing. The other half are new conspiracies and controversies, such as Facebook tracking and the BBC having ulterior motives.
As for putting a poll on the front page - in this situation, a poll would prove nothing. They can be nullified easily, the sample won't be fair since not everyone will vote, and they don't take into account how much thought people have put into their opinions. Even if it were fair and complete, it would only prove how many people are currently satisfied with the site and how many aren't. And you can't make decisions based on that.
Besides, the same people would only complain that the BBC was "dumbing down" by putting useless opinion surveys in place of real news.
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gcaw: "Quite simply, the majority of users find the redesign to be quite pleasant and a real improvement on what came before"
How do you know that? How does even the BBC know that?
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@233
I acknowledged that there are genuine issues that need to be resolved. My point was that those users who have registered their complaints now need to accept that their comments have been acknowledged, but that things have now moved on. Rather than making the same complaints about being "ignored", those people now need to understand that they haven't been ignored, but rather that the decisions made do not agree with theirs. If the decision was made to revert back to the old site, then I and many other users would be unhappy - is it more valid to "ignore" our opinions?
Of course, the fact is that no opinions have been ignored here, but some level of maturity is needed to accept that at some point, a decision has to be made, and that decision also has to be accepted, and rather than banging a drum to make the same point over and over again, how about entering into a dialogue to make real improvements that make the site more enjoyable and more usable for everyone, and which - hopefully - will address many of the legitimate complaints (i.e. not the "i hate it i want the old site back" complaints) about specific issues with the site?
@232 - If you'd bothered to read the "more than 1000 words", you'd know that I wasn't mocking people who have raised legitimate complaints about faults or issues with the site; I was mocking those who believe that because some elements of the site do not meet with their individual tastes, that the entire redesign should be abandoned.
There is nothing reasonable in the belief that because you don't like it that the whole thing should be binned.
I have no problem with people discussing specific issues, and indeed I encouraged people to participate in a productive discussion that focuses on specific issues that can be resolved and improved upon. What I take issue with is ignorant nay-sayers who believe that change must be reversed because they don't like it.
The fact that you accuse me of working for the BBC just because my opinion differs to yours and happens to support their stance in this instance is a testament to your inability to participate in a mature discussion.
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@TallBlondJohn
Hmm. Interesting about the new coke thing. I never got to taste it ;-)
The main beta was in july, but i'd imagine that they'd been doing focus testing and a lot of planning all throughout the process. I'd imagine it was positive because they used testers who went in cold and compared both sites, rather than using hardcore fans of the existing site.
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@239 - I literally spluttered my tea back into my cup and burst into uncontrollable laughter at that post. Comedy gold.
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Can you imagine buying a newspaper and getting a pair of scissors with it so you could cut it up so that it was in a readable format ?
No ?
Well that is effectively what all you clever so and so's are doing who are telling us all how to adjust this and that on our PC's so we can use the site.
On Yahoo, my choice now, it is a dull looking site, dated one has called it, I dont care it gives me the news without excess scrolling and it is one click navigation to see all the country's news and it works, with continual updates throughout the day, 23 updates in the last 3 hours.
I dont want singing and dancing in sequined spandex, I want the news. I am really sorry that I can no longer get this from the BBC and that the change is income generated by advert inclusion provision for other countries from which the same complaints that you see here are now starting to join the tide of protest. Ironic or what ?
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So basically, by saying you aren't even considering returning to the old site as an option, you are basically saying to hell with what anybody but your design group thinks. You welcome feedback and then dismiss it out of hand. What's the point in asking for feedback, then?
I'm happy to move to Google News now, since your site is basically now an American News Site clone. I welcome anyone else to explore other options, too, since your voice doesn't matter much here anyway.
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The strength of feeling expressed by the comments above are because we actually care about the BBC News site. The new layout has failed its objectives, judging from the many measured (and infuriated) comments above) from both detractors and supporters of the site.
I understand that there are people who like the new design. There are two methods to determine ultimately what users prefer: first, offer a CHOICE of the old and new designs. Second, offer us a VOTE, without the complications of registration/email confirmations/etc that would put many users off from responding. I can confidently say that this "minority" of a few thousand angry comments will reflect the actual sentiment of all BBC readers.
The whole response by the BBC of burying their heads in the sand and hoping for the storm to pass is unprofessional, and frustrating. I spend more time on this blog than on the news site.
I have lodged a complaint re. management's response on
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/homepage/
First time I've ever done this.
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I was pleased to see that after the dreadful revamp my post code (RG8) was still showing the correct local Berkshire news. However your recent new changes have diverted the news to Oxford and actually asks me to choose between Oxford or Oxford! It would seem that the so called improvements you proudly trumpet are a farce and your team have no idea what they are doing. Resignations are called for.
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240
gcaw
You do go on.
Just one question, why have we not had a single post on this blog, on the way to 5000 now,from someone who was involved in the testing , thousands were according to Mr Herrmann, not one post to confirm it.
Ok to emulate your lack of trust in such things I would now be very suspicious if we start getting lots of such posts saying it was all fine and dandy when they were on the test team of thousands. Unlesss that was tempered by others saying it was rubbish then and nobody listened.
But up to now, not a peep from these thousands.
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The new BBC news web site is awful.
My eyes are distracted by the fussy layout, everything tightly crammed together.
The huge boxes at the side dominate and it is an effort to drag my eyes across to the new headlines. These are in fact not headlines just small titles mid way down the page. THey are not obviosly hyper-linked until the cursor is moved over them. It took me a while to find links to other regiosn / topics.
Everything has a squashed feel and is somehting I would expect from a child. The "reader" is not lead in any direction to give a suggestion of moving to sepcific areas / dominant topics/ fun items - all compete for equal space.
Why does the website it not fill a whole page side to side?
Having several family members with dyslexia the typical ignorant choice of black on WHITE BACKGROUND is hugely disappointing from an organisation such as the BBC. As someone who has no difficulty reading, I find the whole lay out tiring and unappealing - how does someone with visual difficulty cope?
I doubt I will visit this website as often (previously daily) since it is not at all user-friendly.
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236 @soulgrind
You are probably right, but I am trying to find out what that elusive 'something' actually is. Nothing wrong with font sizes, its a readability issue. Changing resolution makes reading white on red so much easier, but the reverse when I go back to other sites, more so on the Windows 7 machine than on the Vista SP2 laptop.
I'll cope until I find that 'something'.
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.....Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering...?
Really Steve..? I mean, really..
If really, then here's to ya kiddo, I'm off...to find another news source.
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Comments on this blog are now being removed if they may upset those responsible for this travesty. Well done- a new level of incompetance. Bye bye BBC News
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Here's a thought - stop using the BBC news site altogether and buy a newspaper instead! (I'm sure this has already been voiced by some of the other thousands of commenters on this blog)
I got one today and it had loads of news and sport, it was well-presented and made good use of space, the stories were really easy to find (there were even related stories on the same page!), you could turn the pages without waiting for videos, and the shopkeeper didn't even ask for my name to sell on to Facebook. Another plus is that I haven't once felt like re-checking it to see if the stories have changed in the course of the day.
I did have to pay a pound, but this seemed like a small amount for all these benefits (it even came with a crossword which I can do with all the time saved browsing the BBC site!)
Not for everyone I know, but if like me you have been really annoyed by the changes, maybe it's worth considering whether you really need what the BBC offers (even if they hadn't made a pig's breakfast of the redesign).
Thanks BBC for making this change, and setting me free from the tyranny of constantly-updating news websites!
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@steve:
You are going to write to your MP because you don't like the page layout of the BBC website?!
Ok, now this is just getting a bit too ridiculous.. what next, demonstrations in the street outside number 10 and broadcasting house??
The news is the news, the bbc is the bbc - the page layout isn't that important people! The content is still the same!
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"Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering, but building and continuing to improve on the changes we've made certainly is"
I thought the customer was always right and most of us do not like the changes.
At last Mr Herrmann admits he never intended to pay any attention to the overwhelming requests for the return of the old format
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gcaw: "Quite simply, the majority of users find the redesign to be quite pleasant and a real improvement on what came before"
Can I have some of whatever you have been smoking please?
As others have pointed out, the previous design showed more information and links to other areas on the screen at once. It was compact and easy to run your eyes over.
The new design has my eyes not sure where to look and the amount of scrolling to see any substance is silly.
The new design IS simply a step backwards in usability. It was also only messed with so that the BBC could show adverts to non-uk residents which has every right to upset TV licence payers.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
I have been a regular user of the web site for many years and have happily told anyone who would listen, it was by far the best news site on the web. While the new format is a complete disaster and i’m sure your hit figures will support this comment, i’m even more distressed about the amount of seriously old content which is now littering these unuser friendly pages. Many of the headlines are over a week old and are completely inaccurate.
You are now loosing supporters quicker than BP and Obama combined. Who ever is responsible for this unmitigated disaster should be sent to Guantanamo for some gardening leave.
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I love the new look, it is clear and easy to navigate - it is also easier to find the different sections than on the old site. I really don't see why so many people are complaining about the design.
Now the content, there's another issue............
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@gcaw You just registered to compliment the site, I think thats very sweet, pity more people have not done so.
But please your scatter gun approach branding every one as immature... I know they can't roll it back, but they could offer a couple of skins, thats what dynamic sites are made to do.. the seperation of content and sytle (good ol XML), they just need to offer a few options.
At this stage I have given up caring, I just want to see the Helvetica Neue problem sorted out. It is so easy to fix and it has not been done.
I wonder where dotconnect has gone... um let me guess.
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@beaubreant:
"So basically, by saying you aren't even considering returning to the old site as an option, you are basically saying to hell with what anybody but your design group thinks. You welcome feedback and then dismiss it out of hand. What's the point in asking for feedback, then?"
---
Returning to the old site layout was never a viable option. Did you think it was?
If Ford brings out a new model of the Fiesta, but it's not as popular as the last one, do you really expect them to just go back and make the old one again? They'd work on trying to fix any flaws with the new one, or work on a newer version that they'd hope would be more popular - but I can't imagine any situation in which they'd go back to the old design.
It's not as easy as "click a button, undo all changes".
Personally, I'm not sure why they asked for feedback either, but mostly because it was a pointless exercise as the only people who bother to give feedback in these situations are those who are unhappy - and those people are usually a small hardcore group who are too emotionally invested to see clearly.
Frankly, I think if they hadn't put these editor's blogs posts, and kept fanning the flames by adding new ones, very few people would have complained.
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I would like to add my opinions here, and unlike everyone else, I actually like the redesign.
Let me start by saying that as a part time web designer myself, this re-design wouldn't have been just about public userbility, but also for the reporters and writers and how they submit their stories.
You can go on for days about the lack of a public beta or mockup, but the fact is that these are usually only pushed straight through anyway, beta's are usually for identifying bugs and such like - and the redesign has not posed any bugs or broken pages for me as yet.
This is not even to mention the design - I much prefer having a wider layout to see more information, and the movement of the sections to a header bar is a good decision. I also like the adoption of the Helvetica font, it is much more natural for me to read.
The only complaint that I have is the fact the BBC are still using dead-Flash technology. Please, please, please adopt HTML5 video/audio embedding so reading the site on devices like the iPad are made more pleasing. However I know this is a huge ask and hasn't changed in the update in question.
Where praise is needed, I'd like to thank the team behind the design, for revamping what was a cramped, boring and out of date previous design. Don't listen to the complainers, just keep the good work up!
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@jessamarine
Your post doesn't make a lot of sense, as this website layout is much less fussy than the old one, has much more space and is less crammed together, doesn't seem to use black text on a white background (it's dark grey) and is the same width as the old website.
So essentially they've done pretty much everything you want.
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Interesting blog!
I frequent a couple of Editor's blogs, but I haven't really visited the BBC News online site for some time. Not because of the design, but because I think the content has dumbed-down (either because of a policy decision or because some dumbed-down editors moved into post). So I'm not going to comment on the site's visuals and ergonomics.
A lot of people are warning that when the Licence Fee comes under heavy and sustained attack, as it certainly will before long, the BBC's arrogance will have alienated those viewers, listeners and users who might otherwise have manned the barricades in its defence. The problem here is, I suggest, that the vast majority of viewers and listeners are only half-aware that the BBC even has a website and that this particular issue will not raise as much as a flicker of interest.
Is Auntie aware of this and feels that therefore she can do whatever she likes and damn the torpedoes?
Or is she aware of this and preparing for survival after the golden goose has flown?
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@249 - I know this because in the time since the design was introduced, there has been no national outcry, there's been no major campaigning or vocalisation from MPs or celebrities, and no national newspapers have decided to launch a campaign against the new-look site.
What has happened is that a vocal minority has voiced its opinions here on the comments boards, and done its best to massively overstate the impact of those opinions, AND done its best to present those opinions as being representative of the nation as a whole.
Considering how many visitors the BBC News site gets, and how strong a reputation it has across the globe, one would think that if the level of disgust and disgrace over the site was as great as some people are choosing to believe it is, the debate would have moved beyond the very narrow confines of comments appended to the Editors' blog.
People like to complain; people tend not to make their voices heard when they're satisfied. I'm certain that there will have been some complaints that will have been registered elsewhere - directly to the Director-General, emails to the Editors, phone calls to the BBC switchboard - but in the scheme of things, the scale and scope of complaints against the new-look site as it stands very clearly falls short of the kind of universal backlash that some people would like to present it as.
When people get really cheesed off about something, they'll make their voices heard, and some people have already chosen to do that. But I don't see the nation rising up, or the peoples of the world joining together in hatred against the site; I see a handful of complaints - some legitimate and about genuine issues and faults that need to be addressed, but many from those who very obviously just don't like change - that represents a very, VERY small proportion of the total number of visitors to the site, and from that, it's hardly an incredible leap in logic to surmise that the majority of users are satisfied with the changes.
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Been watching this blog closely and after reading SteveO's last update I've finally registered to say one thing.
It was good while it lasted but "So long, and thanks for all the fish".
http://news.google.com
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@252, I'm not quite sure what you're getting at, unless you're making a passing reference to the likely pointlessness of my actions.
However, I present some quotes from the BBC charter and supporting documents:
"It also demands a BBC which begins with the premise that the licence payer is right
and treats complaints and suggestions with the respect and seriousness they
deserve. A BBC whose independence is guaranteed by strong independent
governance – but governance which is separated from management and given the
power and resource it needs to hold the BBC effectively to account. Historically the
BBC has resisted criticism. And of course not all of the BBC’s critics are right or even
well-intentioned. But a responsive BBC should see itself the way others see it, and
where it finds shortcomings put them right. Should it hesitate or fail, a reformed and
empowered Board of Governors will make sure that it meets these standards."
"But public value will also mean full concentration
on the BBC’s existing services; the BBC must never neglect its immediate audiences
and duties in pursuit of the digital future."
"The BBC’s Board of Governors will subject every new service – or major
proposed development or expansion of an existing one – to a public value test
before approving its launch, including an independent evaluation of its likely
market impact."
"The BBC must be more transparent and open, particularly in how it listens to
audiences and consults on changes."
And most significantly:
"The BBC is committed to
introducing a system of public value tests to ensure that any proposed new
services or proposed substantial changes to existing services are subject to
rigorous and objective scrutiny by the BBC Trust, both in the light of audience
need and of possible market impact."
My post was not intended as comedy. I genuinely believe that they are guilty of misconduct and/or negligence with public money, and are in violation of each of the points/guidelines set out in BBC documents that I have quoted above.
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@263
No Soulgrind - I'm writing to my MP because my licence fee has been used to force my internet traffic through Facebook's behavioural profiling system, and to develop a service designed for and aimed at a foreign market, to the detriment of the UK users.
I have no objections /in principle/ to these things occuring, but I do object to them being funded with our money.
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The problem is with any change, you're going to get folks that feel alienated because they're not familiar with what they were so used to.
This is a typical occurrence with Facebook. Every time they roll out a new change there are threats to leave and protests and Facebook groups. After two weeks all is forgotten and everyone can continue to use the service.
I'm loving the new BBC news website. The layout is clear and very functional. I'm not sure if I would consider it to be as pretty as the previous, but there's no doubt in my mind that it's a vast improvement and long awaited.
If others are so offended by the change, let them "leave". After all, I don't visit the BBC news site to bask in it's aesthetics, I'm here for the content.
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@soulgrind:
"Returning to the old site layout was never a viable option. Did you think it was?
If Ford brings out a new model of the Fiesta, but it's not as popular as the last one, do you really expect them to just go back and make the old one again?"
Subaru released a second generation of their extremely popular Impreza about 10 years ago. It looked like a pig, sales went through the floor and in the next generation they reverted to a design very similar to the original.
Poor example, regression happens all the time in design. Forward isn't always the only way
*ahem* Retro *ahem*
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"or maybe you work for Auntie."
Like Godwin, this old chestnut surely needs its own internet Law for BBC discussion areas.
The idea that some of us who don't share this blanket scorn for the new website, who don't join in with the "I'm-writing-to-my-MP... GOODBYE! (Harrumph!)" brigade - might not work for the BBC (and hey, might even recognise that there are some actual problems with the site) is just too much for some people to grasp, isn't it?
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@269 - I haven't just joined the site - I've been a member of the site since H2G2 first arrived on the scene many years ago, and I was also a registered member of the ill-fated "myBBC" project back in the day.
Also, at no point have I branded everyone as immature.
Not sure what you were hoping to achieve by presenting those little distortions of the truth, but I'd be grateful if you could stick to the facts. Lies add nothing to the debate, and undermine the points that you're struggling to make.
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#279 Jack wrote After all, I don't visit the BBC news site to bask in it's aesthetics, I'm here for the content.
That's exactly the same as everyone else. Trouble is, the content (especially local news) is far less easy to get at. At least, it is for those who don't have the luxury of a 24" screen turned portrait-style, and even then there are more links to click.
Bring back the text-only site and those who just want to get at the content will be satisfied. It is a pity, though, that all that money and effort was spent on changing the aesthetics.
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@277 - I was mocking your staggering over-reaction to this situation. The very idea that the Prime Minister would intervene to reverse a decision that an infinitessimal fraction of the total userbase of the site does not agree with is absolutely hilarious.
Your excerpts from the Royal Charter are perfectly valid - but you seem to be ignoring the simple fact that you can't please all the people all the time. Some people won't like what you do, and that's a reality that has to be lived with.
To suggest that the BBC is failing to respect its audiences and failing to meets its obligations under Charter because a very vocal minority - but a minority nonetheless - do not agree with a design decision, is ludicrous enough; to actually believe that the Prime Minister would step in to order the BBC to review its decision is, quite simply, absurd.
Finally, you should note that the design of the site comes under the remit of an editorial decision - the fact that this is being discussed on the EDITORS' BLOG should have given you a clue to that effect - and given that the BBC is bestowed with editorial independence from Governmental influence or interference, I simply don't know what you expect to happen here.
But hey, good luck with your petition - I certainly look forward to watching the million-person march through London to Downing Street in protest of this appalling state of affairs.
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soulgrind said: "Personally, I'm not sure why they asked for feedback either, but mostly because it was a pointless exercise as the only people who bother to give feedback in these situations are those who are unhappy - and those people are usually a small hardcore group who are too emotionally invested to see clearly."
You hit the nail on the head. There was exactly the same uproar the last time there was a redesign, yet now everyone's saying how wonderful it was.
These people should feel lucky that the BBC even solicits comments on a redesign. Most other government and public bodies don't bother. Unfortunately the result is that everyone suddenly becomes an expert in web design and sits there making melodramatic comments before claiming they're going to use Google News and flouncing off in a huff (you know they'll be back within a matter of hours).
If I was the BBC I would simply stop posting blogs on the subject, take the huge amount of feedback into account, make changes where/if appropriate, and leave it at that. There's no point perpetually arguing the toss over whether the design stays or goes.
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For pity's sake, could you please just add a simple skin selector using CSS, so that people can select a different header and colour scheme? I want to read your news, I honestly do, and I can learn to live with the ugly, clumsy layout and navigation bars, but I simply cannot bear to look at the blood red/orange tan/purple grey colour scheme you've foisted on us. It is uniquely hideous, and just totally offensive. The globe graphic in the header is THE single most objectionable piece of artwork I have ever seen on a mainstream web site. Loud, obnoxious, ugly and pointless. If I could just remove those items from the page, I could continue to use the site.
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Shame the news site has been trashed.I come back now and again as old habits die hard but the site is now so hard to use and so offensive to the eyes that I can only stand to look at a page or two. My interest in the news seems to have disappeared. I liked the old style so much as it was so easy to use and there doesn't seem to be another news site out there that I can find that is as good as this used to be.
It really does look like a poor version of a tabloid news site.
The best of both worlds would be if we could choose which version we wanted.
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I held my nose and looked at the site again today - you have made some improvements!
But....
.The huge "advertisement" column on the right is still there, and obviously you are determined to retain it.
.The big grey-blue thing in the middle is still wasting much of the useful space. I suggest that it could be shrunken slightly and moved to the top of the ads column.
.The mess at the top of the page is still too red. Why do you insist on this?
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Oh dear, oh dear , oh dear.
Its a truism that we all get comfortable with what we know so, when someone revamps OUR website, we take a while to get used to it - and lots of people get upset in the meantime.
But when the revamp is botched, obviously hasnt been PROPERLY market or beta tested and just doesnt work smoothly, then we have a right to get angry.
Then along comes someone from the Beeb who tries to explain everything to us in idiot-proof language and the temperature reaches boiling point. Really, the tone of language used in your blog is condescending.
In the real world, those responsible for screwing up a company's interface with its customers would be given a good old fashioned bollocking (if they were lucky). Presumably at the Beeb, such old-fashioned but effective management methods are frowned upon.
Do yourselves a favour, switch back to the old format, then go away and do the job you should have done in the first place: Improve and test the new site fully and THEN bring it back.
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222. At 11:16am on 22 Jul 2010, gcaw wrote:
As in the democratic society, decisions are made and we all have the right to disagree with them and to voice our opinions on things. But when a decision is made, and only a small minority to choose to voice their disdain for it, it's time to take a deep breath, get some perspective, and be mature about things. Instead of calling for the change to be reversed and decrying the BBC for ignoring that call of the minority, how about some of you stop crying and throwing your toys out of the pram, and help to make the best of the way things are? Why not be constructive and proactive in helping to improve the new site, rather than whining like children about wanting everything to be like it used to be?
250. At 12:31pm on 22 Jul 2010, gcaw wrote:
The fact that you accuse me of working for the BBC just because my opinion differs to yours and happens to support their stance in this instance is a testament to your inability to participate in a mature discussion.
-------------------
If that is not calling people immature I'd like to what is. Yes, I have been registered to all those BBC sites too. Funny, I consulted in the early 90's on the building of the first BBC site as well.
I am not struggling to make any points, if you don't understand what I am saying then I guess your claim to owning a web design studio is exactly that, or you have not actually read what I have been saying, which yet again goes to prove your generalisations. An empty claim, like another verbose poster whom came before you. You have not sung the praises of the site, you have just had a go at everyone else who does not like it.
Funny you know coz I quite like it. Nothing a greasemonkey script can't sort out, (other than the sloppy content).
Is that enough food for you?
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Is it me or is the site suddenly looking better? I'll be very happy to retract my criticisms if this continues!
Sections and articles now seem more ordered on the main homepage; paragraphs in a few articles have more than 1 sentence in them; white-space has been significantly reduced.
It seems as if this period has been the redesign usability testing and, perhaps, comments in this blog have been listened to!
Odd that this didn't come out of the prototype feedback though... and that only parts of the site were changed, rather than all of it together.
I'm hoping that Mr Herrmann et al soon look into:
* Difficult navigation to local news.
* Decreasing heading font sizes.
* Better placement of all the related links at the bottom of article pages - they currently all seem like a bit of a disordered after-thought.
* Reducing the size of the huge homepage grey box.
* Changing the "services" icons at the bottom of article pages.
* Refrain from posting stories that predominately consist of a huge single image: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10719042
Thank you!
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"or maybe you work for Auntie."
I have to support dotconnect and anyone else, just becuase they don't agree with those whom don't like the site or the design, does not make them BBC stooges. Be fair. :-)
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I thought it was time to say how awful I find the new website layout.
While waiting for my registration to come through, Mr GCAW has appeared out of the woodwork with his patronising comments.
If this is typical of someone who claims "I personally own a brand and web design agency", then I think we are all hitting our heads against a brick wall.
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Re comments about this being a minority responce, I suggest you read "Nudge" by Richard H. Thaler which will explain quite clearly that the majority of people will not complain even if they don't like what has happened.
So to assume that the 2-3000 people who are complaining are a minor minority is fallacious, it is more likely that they are a significant minority.
Please note that few will find this blog (hidden away as it is now to the uninitated, I have never paid it much heed till now and was using the news site several times a day for many years), even fewer will want to register, even fewer will make the effort to register (as I have now done)and fewer still will make much in the way of comment.
Think iceberg if you will.
Last night I registered a complaint on the BBC complaints page and placed a FOI request, and guess what, I've had a reply saying it would be investigeted and I would get an answer.
Now that's what I call an appropriate way to deal with its customer base
Thanks BBC for responding and fingers crossed for a better responce that we have had from the Editor
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@275 gcaw: "@249 - I know this because in the time since the design was introduced, there has been no national outcry, there's been no major campaigning or vocalisation from MPs or celebrities, and no national newspapers have decided to launch a campaign against the new-look site."
I doubt if the way that MPs, celebrities or national newspaper journalists use the BBC news website is very representative of the way a significant proportion of people use it - people who don't have much of a voice, or people who are not sufficiently bothered by the changes to use what little voice they have.
There's been a lot of constructive criticism - i.e. what's wrong, why, and how it might be changed. However, anybody saying "it works for me and Stephen Fry so live with it" is really being no more constructive than those who say "it's rubbish, revert back immediately".
Also - there have been changes, which have been really welcome and promising. I wonder if they would have happened without the passionate feedback. That "Social not working" article link has shrunk for one thing!
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How has the site's traffic been affected by the redesign? Please tell us in your next blog post.
I'd be surprised if the figures have gone anywhere but down.
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In post 98 I put links to the BBC International News sites (non English). I ensured all the links went through google translate. Unfortunately either the moderators or the posting process removed the google translate prefix from the URLs. I registered a complaint on my own post to ask the moderators if they could fix the links. What did they do? They deleted my own post! Idiots.
You can see the international BBC News sites in translation here:
http://newsreader3.blogspot.com
It looks like several of those sites are using the new system, however, the international sites look MUCH better.
Why? They use smaller fonts. They have higher density of news links. They do not have excessive white space. They have smaller paddings and margins. They do not have huge a local/world news black box breaking up the index. Why is the main BBC News site not designed in the same way as the international editions?
They treat the page much more like a newspaper of limited size rather than a "scroll" of unlimited depth...
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OK, a week later and I still don't like the new layout. There have been some subtle changes, but not enough to make it feel comfortable to me. May main criticisms are:
1) The headline text size is too big; in default mode they wrap onto two lines for me, when they did not before. Hitting Control-minus reduces them to something sensible, but that only works if I set the minimum font size the same as my normal font size, otherwise the text of the articles is also reduced..
2) There is still no margin to the left hand side, so looking in a narrow window means text is crammed up to the window border.
3) The masthead uses a glaring red background that looks cheap, and is very distracting.
4) The background is set bright white, so when viewing in a wide window it is uncomfortable.
5) Text in articles does not use the width available for it. There is an ugly wide gully down the middle of the page, sometimes partly filled with boxes of semi-related text. Why cannot the text of the article properly flow round these to the right border (less a decent margin of course), to leave a body of text the same width as in this blog (which, for me at least, is a comfortable reading width)?
6) I come to the news site to read the news, video on the front page is inappropriate. To put a resource-hungry video widget in a prominent position on the right hand column is unnecessary. By all means have a link there, but allow users the choice of whether they want to see videos. Those with slow connections do not want the hassle of loading a page only to find it takes ages to load because of a video that was not obvious from the link to that page.
7) The Local news/Weather dark grey box is intrusive, and should not be where it is. Either remove it altogether and put a link to a dedicated completely customisable page on the right hand side, or shift it to the bottom of the front page.
8) The layout is not conducive to easy navigation. Previously, I could load the front page, and immediately see the headline news, and the main news stories of all the other sections, without scrolling. Now to see the Science/Environment news, for example, it is three clicks of the PageDown key, and then try to read a column of text one, two, or at most three words wide. This is not Chinese: the English language is read from left to right, not top to bottom, aligning the text that way makes it very difficult to read.
It would be nice if you could arrange to have alternate style sheets, so for example users with wide displays could choose to have menus to the left hand side where there is currently a blank space (because the content width is fixed) while those with narrow (1024 pixels or less) could use the default menus on the top bar.
Meanwhile, I have gone to the bother of installing the "Stylish" add-on for my browser, and am using the "BBC News Fix" and the "BBC News Ticker Remover" style add-ons from http://userstyles.org/ This at least sorts out items 2 and 3 above, and I can deal with item 4 by editing the contents of the BBC News Fix style, and set the body background to a pale grey, just like this blog. It also deals with item 7, by simply removing it; it was something I never used before anyway.
I have also installed the NoScript add-on, to block scripts from sites I do not want. This, for me, deals with the Facebook issue.
Regarding the Helvetica font issue: I don't really care what various sites set as their font, I always over-ride them anyway in my preferences, because I personally prefer a serif font for reading text.
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In various posts GCAW wrote:
Post 284 "because a very vocal minority - but a minority nonetheless - do not agree with a design decision"
Post 275 "a vocal minority has voiced its opinions here on the comments boards, and done its best to massively overstate the impact of those opinions"
Post 222 "Quite simply, the majority of users - myself included - find the redesign to be quite pleasant" and "To take a few hundred comments as representative of BBC News' global visitorship is just plain ridiculous,"
Who are you trying to convince with these fabricated figures? Yourself? Or the majority of HYS posters?
Or do you have access to some feedback/polling which has taken place. If so, perhaps you might care to share the actual figures with the rest of us ...... or are you just kite flying? If you are, why?
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FONT FONT FONT FONT!!!!!
Please revert back to verdana.
Even if you have made your mind not to go back for whatever reason, consider trialling with verdana font.
Earlier it was this font that made BBC news website different and easy to read compared to other news sites. By adopting Arial/Helvetica BBC has gone from being unique to one among the crowd.
Please revert back to verdana.
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@291 - Not really much 'food' there, no - in fact, once we peel away the lies and distortion, there's very little left to your post at all.
Again - and I really shouldn't have to repeat this point - nowhere have I called everyone immature; my comments were directed specifically towards those who whine and cry because they haven't got their way in getting the site design to revert to the previous version, rather than accepting that a decision has been made, and contributing to a constructive discussion that moves things forward and improves the site for everyone to enjoy.
I've also repeatedly acknowledged that many valid issues have been raised about problems with the site, and I encourage people to continue to discuss those specific issues further, so that the site can be made better in the days and weeks ahead. I have not at any point called those who raise those points immature. So again, please stop misrepresenting my position and skewing the truth to suit your arguments, because it really does undermine the points that you're struggling to make.
Given that there are some glitches with the site as it currently stands, and that these will take some time to fix, and that there is no simple 'switch' to flick to revert to the previous design, and that the BBC does not have unlimited resources to dedicate to its web services, the suggestion that the BBC should now fragment its efforts to create an option to use the old version or the new strikes me as utterly foolish. That code would need to be written and extensively tested; if they just threw something together and chucked it up on the site without proper testing, then people would be flooding these comments boards with more rants about how incompetent the BBC are, how they've made a pig's ear of it etc etc etc.
To create the kind of skinning option that you suggest is not the instantly available solution that you make it out to be, and would likely raise any number of other bugs and glitches that would need to be resolved to everyone's satisfaction.
"Greasemonkey script" may be appropriate for amateur web projects; there should be no place for them on a professional website with the scale and scope of this one.
As for your claim that I "have not sung the praises of the site" but merely "had a go at everyone else who does not like it", I in fact made this statement in my first post today:
"My biggest disappointment with the new BBC News site is that the new design hasn't yet reached the BBC Sport site - but I look forward to enjoying the much-improved navigation, the fantastic new multimedia features and the better showcasing of content on the Sport site that the new News site has whet my appetite for.
Keep up the good work, Auntie."
So in summary, while it's entertaining to misrepresent things and skew the truth to support whatever point you're trying to make, I must again ask you to stick to the facts.
As for your opinions on web design, the fact that you believe it appropriate for the BBC to throw together some half-baked script that would create a fragmentation of its design language, and undoubtedly throw up any number of bugs and glitches (as tends to be the way with any significant change to a website as large and complex as this one), and to do so without a period of proper testing, speaks to your ignorance of the complexity involved in managing a website of the scale of the BBC News site.
You may well have consulted on the first BBC website back in the 90s, and I'm sure you did a wonderful job with helping them to put together the twenty or thirty pages that made up the totality of the site back then.
However, I'm sorry to be the one to break this to you, but things have moved on a bit since then.
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I am now as just fed up with the superior I-know-more-than-you lecturing of Gface and dotconnect as I am with with the histrionics of those who are publicly flouncing off elsewhere. I just want three things:
1. I want the site to work. I want to be directed to the correct county for my local news when I enter my town or postcode. It doesn't. If basic functions don't work properly (and certainly if the flaws are so deeply embedded that they can't be fixed in the week you've had) the site should not have been launched.
2. Irrespective of the aesthetics (which I admit I don't like) I would expect the site to look and behave more or less the same on each of my three computers as always used to be the case. The fact that it doesn't (and on my laptop is barely legible) also suggests that it hasn't been implemented properly. Get it fixed.
3. I want some honesty. There was no groundswell of opinion agitating for change so it is clear that the alterations are for the benefit of you (BBC) and not us (customer). Please don't pretend otherwise. Come clean and tell us that it was done to make your life easier and to accommodate the adverts on the international edition. Also tell us in plain language what deal you have stitched up with Facebook and what the practical implications are for user privacy. The present lack of transparency as to what has been going on and continued evasion is far more damaging to the BBC than the unpopularity of the new design.
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I do apologise to gface. I think my bile in 303 should have been adressed to gcaw. It's the legibility, you know.
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There _is_ too much white space, most other pages on this website and web that are narrow column have greyed out sides, except the new front page that has too much white on screen, that why you getting such a visceral negative reaction to the redesign,
you need to grey out the sides simple.
and please respond to criticism rather then continue with your huge straw man about putting the site back the way it was
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@anthont_j_smith:
"Subaru released a second generation of their extremely popular Impreza about 10 years ago. It looked like a pig, sales went through the floor and in the next generation they reverted to a design very similar to the original."
----
But what they did NOT do was immediately cancel the new model and go back and start selling the old model again.
The newest model took on board the reactions, and may well have returned to the style of the beloved previous one. But it wasn't the previous one, and it wasn't rushed out in 2 weeks because the immediate reception was bad.
The next iteration of the BBC news website may well include elements from the last one, and may take on board criticism about this one if it continues - but the people expecting them to just dump this one and roll-back to the old one are clearly not closely acquainted with reality.
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Could you please tell me why the blogs are so much easier to read than the main news sites? The font is too large and it's not wide enough. Also some of the side content sticks out and makes it really difficult to read one line to the next. The blogs section is really nice and readable, can this be mirrored across the entire site?
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@296 - I think you've misunderstood my point about the MPs and celebrities, and made a lot more out of it than was intended; my point with regard to those was that when there's an opportunity to get some publicity or some mileage out of a campaign with massive public support, MPs and celebrities are quick to come out of the woodwork.
The many MPs and celebs who went on record with supporting 6Music - and in the case of MPs, some of them had quite obviously never listened to the station before in their lives - is a good example of that.
The fact that the opposition to the changes to the BBC News site have failed to gain any kind of traction in that respect, and that the negativity is confined very much to these comments boards (and the hilarious petition that - when I last looked - had managed to scrape together a truly pathetic 64 signatures) is a pretty good indicator that this rather lively debate on these comment boards is about as big as this whole 'scandal' is going to get.
I certainly wasn't saying anything like "it's good enough for me and Stephen Fry, so live with it" - that wasn't even close to the point I was making, and I hope I've now clarified what I meant when I made the celebs/MPs point previously.
@294/ccs - I certainly feel like I'm hitting my head against a brick wall when I read comments like yours; clearly, you've decided that those of us who do our best to put together websites and brands and marketing literature that people will enjoy and appreciate just aren't listening to the voices of a minority who register their dislike of the stuff that we put together.
Frankly, there is always - ALWAYS - a vocal minority who doesn't like the kinds of stuff that my company puts together. You can't please all the people all of the time - it's as simple as that.
But we do try to listen to everyone's opinions, even if we don't agree with them, and even if we can't reform the designs or products to meet the individual requests of every single person, and we often try to explain the reasoning behind our choices and decisions so that at the very least people can understand why we felt that certain things work.
The BBC has done the same thing here in trying to explain why it's made its decisions, and why it believes they are the best way forward. The fact that you and a handful of other people disagree does not make the decision wrong.
It's not arrogant to make decisions that not everyone agrees with; every single organisation in the world does it, and the vast majority of them don't give their end-users the courtesy of detailed explanations and comments boards. What is arrogant is to assume that YOUR way is the way that things should be done.
There's a lot of back-seat drivers and armchair executives here who seem to share that belief, and who simply refuse to understand that sometimes decisions are made that don't please everyone, and sometimes decisions are made which don't please YOU.
But for goodness' sake, why can't you understand that that doesn't make the decisions WRONG?
*bangs head against brick wall*
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I have really, really tried to get to 'like' the new BBC website, but I'm not getting on with it at all. I used to log on to get all the news, but that's seems harder to do with the new design.
If I want just the main news stories and a bit of local news, I can watch the TV news, so I don't need a dumbed down website version.
Please make it easier for me to see what's going on in the UK as a whole, without having to click through umpteen different pages just to access the news stories.
I'd also much prefer a front page without the box for 'My News & Weather Location'. I actually live near the borders of three counties, so look at the news for all three areas, rather than just one. I'm also quite capable of clicking on 'Weather' when I want a forecast.
As a result of your changes, I'm spending far less time on your website and can't see that changing unless there are some alterations soon.
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@300/june1989 - My use of the "few hundred" referred specifically to the comments in this thread, and didn't acknoledge the totality of comments made across the five posts on the redesign; including those comments, I believe the total number of comments is around 5000, as someone else mentioned a few posts above.
Two points to make: one is that that figure of 5000 does not represent 5000 people or 5000 individual complaints - many users have comment numerous times or made the same point on more than one occasion. I don't know what the total number of individual users who have commented is; perhaps given how strongly you feel this is an issue, you can count them for all of us.
However, even if we ignore that fact and say that 5000 people have commented, and even if we ignore the fact that not all of those comments have been negative, a total of 5000 'complaints', we need to consider that figure in context.
Yes, 5000 is a big number, but the BBC News website gets MILLIONS of visits each day, MILLIONS of individual users visiting each week.
Now, I'm sorry, June, but I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything with "fabricated figures" - whichever way you cut it, 5000 'complaints' out of millions of users is a minority.
A vocal minority.
So... what exactly was your point?
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Actually, I can't see why people are getting so hot under the collar about this.
So the website has changed. Nobody died. It takes a little time to get used to it as it is so different from the old format, but really guys, a small child could navigate their way around the site.
Why not relax a little and get upset over something really important? There's plenty to choose from.
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gcaw (#302)
--------
"Again - and I really shouldn't have to repeat this point - nowhere have I called everyone immature; my comments were directed specifically towards those who whine and cry because they haven't got their way in getting the site design to revert to the previous version, rather than accepting that a decision has been made, and contributing to a constructive discussion that moves things forward and improves the site for everyone to enjoy. I've also repeatedly acknowledged that many valid issues have been raised about problems with the site, and I encourage people to continue to discuss those specific issues further, so that the site can be made better in the days and weeks ahead. I have not at any point called those who raise those points immature. So again, please stop misrepresenting my position and skewing the truth to suit your arguments, because it really does undermine the points that you're struggling to make. "
--------
I *so* feel your pain, gcaw ;)
It seems nuance is (for some) a lost cause around here.
Unwilling, or unable - I'm not sure.
Still, some constructive criticism being offered by a few.
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Looks like the mainstream press are starting to pick up the story.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2010/jul/22/website-bbc-news-redesign-grief
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Ok, I've solved my own problem with the help of Firefox! For people who can bear to use the site if it looks something like this:
http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/3269/bbcnewshome.png
Check out my guide for producing that result:
http://sparklecreek.blogspot.com/2010/07/bbc-news-site.html
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#304, BarkingP
"I do apologise to gface. I think my bile in 303 should have been adressed to gcaw. It's the legibility, you know."
Perhaps you shouldn't be "addressing bile" at any individually-named posters, BarkingP.
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@304 - "The legibility"? Are you aware that this page is using the *old* site design and the old font, and hasn't been affected by the design changes?
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Steve - will the rest of the BBC websites eventually be adopting the same style masthead and top navigation bar?
Maybe it'll work better with different branding applied, but I still think for the news site, that "globe" is contributing to the cluttered feel. Can you fade the white orbital curves or make them transparent?
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LoLz, you are funny Gcaw... god only knows how many paragraphs you would churn out if I offered you some real food to chew on.
You still have no idea what I have been complaining about have you? You are rather too concerned with your own ego.
You don't even know what greasemonkey is do you? If you did you'd not come out with that nonsense. Greasemonkey is a client side script, never suggested that the BBC should use it.. it's DIY fix for crappy websites that I like, it's an addon for firefox. It is also used to write scripts to improve accessibility / usability on the client side by the client, it is not served up by the web site.
I am sorry, but that's the end of the debate with you mate, you're just offensive and I suggest ill informed.
As for your disparaging remarks about my involvement in the 20 pages of a BBC web site, things have moved on, and guess what? So have I. Dream on mate... I have always remained on the cutting edge, but I don't need to get my manhood out to prove it, as it would appear you do.
I have read every single post since the first blog, far more fun than the actual news, which at the moment, regardless of the new design, is depressing.
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I get the feeling that a lot of people (myself included) are having their irritation at the actual design magnified by what's basically a few fairly simple errors in communication.
Take one of the opening statements in this particular post:
> 'Most of you commenting here on the Editors blog have been critical, with many urging us to change the design back to the way it was. Given the strength of feeling expressed in some of the comments, I'd like to explain again, as clearly as I can, what our thinking is.'
If I'm honest, this isn't actually too bad a post. Even 'Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering, but building and continuing to improve on the changes we've made certainly is. ' Isn't offensive in the slightest. it might be the opposite of what I want to hear, but it's actually put over quite professionally and politely.
So why are many of us not taking it?
That's fairly easy, actually. There are two related reasons, both of which apply to post 2.
> 'Taken together, it's a mixture of responses - some pleased, some unhappy and many simply taking note of what's different and getting used to using the site.'
Coming after well over two thousand mostly negative posts, in about a one-day period, thhis just didn't sit well. It came over as massive spin, and ignoring what was out there. Regardless of whyether you agree with the validity of the complaints or not, nobody can really claim that 'some unhappy' really covers it at all.
Post 5 is a lot less inflammatory. But as post 3 didn't do much for credibility, it still doesn't go down very well.
But the real kicker is that this would have made a very good third post.
I still disagree with the changes and the justification, purely as it goes agianst my personal preferences. However, had this been the third post it would have gone down a lot better. It did not in any way avoid the fact that most blog replies have been highly critical, like the third post came over as doing. It's just a shame that post 3 came first. It left a very sour taste in my mouth and, judging by many of the reponses, I'm not alone in that. Which, in turn, makes the current post just seem too little to late.
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@ 303. At 4:40pm on 22 Jul 2010, BarkingP wrote:
please accept my humble apologies... I just want the font to work! And like you, that the site should be as far as possible consistant from browser to browser.
I have done my level best not to get involved in the troll style I know more than you do ping pong... it's yawn a minute for me, really it is.
heres a greasemonkey script which was quite popular a couple of thousand posts ago.
-------------
// ==UserScript==
// @name BBC News Fix
// @namespace kill helvetica
// @description Changes BBC News article text color and font
// @include http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/*
// ==/UserScript==
function addGlobalStyle(css) {
var head, style;
head = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0];
if (!head) { return; }
style = document.createElement('style');
style.type = 'text/css';
style.innerHTML = css;
head.appendChild(style);
}
var css = "";
css += "body { font-family:Arial,sans-serif; !important; } ";
css += "p { font-family:Arial,sans-serif; !important; } ";
css += "* { font-family:Arial,sans-serif; !important; font-color:#000000 !important;} ";
css += ".story-body p { font-family:Arial,sans-serif; !important; font-color:#000000 !important; } ";
css += " * .container-geographic-regions-generic { visibility: hidden !important; height: 0px; width: 0px; padding:0px 0px 0;} ";
css += ".adsense_mpu { visibility: hidden !important; height: 0px !important; width: 0px;} ";
css += ".layout-block-a #bbccom_adsense_mpu { visibility: hidden !important; height: 0px !important; width: 0px;} ";
//css += ".other-top-stories { overflow: hidden !important; } ";
addGlobalStyle(css);
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I am starting to wonder if the "new" BBC website is designed to be bad.
The BBC has for some time been accused of using its public service mandate to fund Superior websites such as news.bbc.co.uk.
So did the designers get a requirement to reduce the number of subscribers by taking a "classic" design and producing a me-too website.
If cutting the number of users of the news site was the objective I can understand why the Editor thinks its such a success.
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In post 310 gcaw wrote:
@300/june1989 - "Now, I'm sorry, June, but I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything with "fabricated figures" - whichever way you cut it, 5000 'complaints' out of millions of users is a minority. A vocal minority. So... what exactly was your point?"
My point, gcaw was the part of my post you felt unable to respond to. Since my post 300 was perhaps too long for you to maintain concentration until the end, I'll repeat it for you.
"Or do you have access to some feedback/polling which has taken place. If so, perhaps you might care to share the actual figures with the rest of us ...... or are you just kite flying? If you are, why?"
So do you have any additional information, or are you just assuming that anybody who hasn't stated in writing they do not like the new site, are therefore supportive of the changes? That sort of logic won't work!
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
I reserved my initial judgement and gave the new look a go.
It is not nice, not pleasant.
Paragraphs are no longer aligned to one another.
Some articles have a short summary some are only a title.
It all seems very random and without logic.
There was nothing wrong with the much missed previous layout.
Terrible miss.
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Just popped back to give the new layout a fair chance. Still find the news page format too tiring to look at for more than a few seconds.
Yahoo gives a suitable news source - with a far longer list of accessible articles throughout the day. It even covers the same items from several different news sources. What's more I can read their layout without discomfort. In-depth news I'm getting from Guardian, Independent, and Economist - with other broadsheets yet to be explored.
So I'm a happy bunny outside the BBC silo. As the saying goes "It's an ill wind that blows no-one any good". I always believe in voting with my feet rather than keep trying to persuade someone from a course they are obviously determined to follow.
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I like the new design, Steve - especially the horizontal menu bar.
I am sure that the few who have left never to return will be more than replaced by new readers.
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I find the new look BBC pages hard to read. It seems its all over the place. Someone once said..if it broke..dont fix. I think you guys have been too clever and forgot what your readers want.
By the way..why is it..that shopping malls in Gaza are never featured in the news. Are you afraid to show it to the world..that the are not starving....but instead enjoying all the riches of modern life.
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Text and colours overpowering a poor design. The content and useability are far more important than the 'look'. To much 'scrolling' involved in using the site how about a font size option as used by some newspaper websites.
Why ask for comments and then make your first statement that you will not consider changing the site following the overwhelming comments. I am afraid it is a case of too much money and not enough commonsense.
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I know I dislike the new page design but I I'd forgotten why. Fortunately the HYS page in the old format reminded me. Vertical menus, sensibly laid out, a font size that doesn't SHOUT at you, easy to scan quickly to find relevant stuff without getting RSI from scrolling, easy to read, good to use. Shall I go on?
Can I suggest this format is used for the rest of the news pages?
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Google did a redesign, but if you sign in, you can have the old page structure back. I'd guess they'll remove the functionality if less than a certain proportion use it.
Steve - I had no opinion on until I read how you responded to your readers. My formal complaint to the BBC wasn't about redesigning the website, as I think that's a matter of personal taste. My complaint was about the arrogance being displayed dealing with your customers. First blatant misrepresentation ( ... from a news room ... ), then the tired BBC "ignore them - they'll get used to it", which shows what you all really think of our opinions.
If you said "We really cannot change it now because ... " that would come over so much better than "Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering" "Given the strength of feeling expressed in some of the comments, I'd like to explain again,".
You're painting yourself into a corner. Show some humility, and win some respect back. The people telling you to tough it out don't seem to be very representative.
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gcaw - your comments imply very strongly that complaints in general are the representative view of a minority, which is the justification for ignoring them.
This begs the question; why bother collecting commentary at all?
I feel that your remarks are hopelessly ill-judged and that you seem to have adopted a very defensive, anti-complaint position in order to support your view. If my business adopted that attitude it would not last long. Perhaps, in the 'new media' world, you 'creatives' can afford to scoff at criticism. You certainly can't in mine.
I remain wholly unimpressed and annoyed by the redesign and neither your extreme views or those of any protagonist have offered the slightest justification for it. Feel free to label me as a whinger - I couldn't care less what you might call me - but if I had anything to do with a website that was being so comprehensively flamed I would do something about it instead of sitting on my backside and wagging my finger in such a pompous manner.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Please revert back to the way it was. There was nothing wrong with it before, and now the website is much more cluttered and confusing. This is change for changes sake. Some heads should roll for such a bad decision.
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What is the point of asking for people's opinions if reverting to the old style - something that majority of people here clearly want - is something you're "not even considering"?
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I appreciate that all new designs take getting used to. I also appreciate that graphics have a life-span.
However I really dislike the close grouping of the various section tabs on the top bar. It looks clunky and makes the site less easy to use.
Like others, I have found myself lingering less at the BBC News site. I just feel pushed away and am looking much more at the Google News page than I used to do.
Are you sure you piloted this with a good sample of non BBC (and non media industry) users?
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I've tried to like the new website over the last week and I can't honestly say that this new design is an improvement.
I prefer to run with my windows sidebar on the left hand side of the screen, which means that when the site is viewed in 1024 x 768 (a very standard screen resolution) the site has no left hand margin and the right hand side is off-screen. Having a fixed width website of such proportions, seems very presumtious of you. I much prefer websites that resize to the screen resolution.
No doubt this new design has so much money invested in it, I doubt the BBC would revert back to the old one. Steve Herrmann is going to keep on trying to justifying it untill it is accepted.
The Facebook tracking script should not be there by default. I should not have to go and set something on my machine or install extra software/scripts to stop what I consider spyware. Just remove the damn thing, PLEASE!
The old design was classic. It had its own look and feel which I considered world class. The new site just feels mediocre and unengaging.
Seems like you've sold out and are just setting your greedy eyes on profit before customer service/satisfaction.
I find the editors responses to the negative feedback quite arrogant, which is another reason I wont be browsing these pages so often.
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How arrogant are you?!! I'm of the understanding that the license fees fund the BBC News website and that as a result you're obligated to deliver what the license fee payers want. Therefore if the majority of the feedback on the new site is negative and asking for it to change back then you should listen to your audience and respond accordingly. If this were a private enterprise that wasn't listening to its customers, it wouldn't be a private enterprise much longer, it'd go under, with all the people who made the stupid decisions left to line up at the job centre. Not sure they'd get jobs as marketers or web designers though if they put the new BBC news website on their CV.
You say everything we see is as a result of careful research. Clearly you didn't ask the people who read the old site as they're now overwhelming posting negative comments about the new site.
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225 Pseudo_John_Savage
I endores your Yahoo experience and I nam now using it instead.
I realldo wish I could like the new BBC site but after trying I cant.
It is perplexing though that so many like it when it is , ignoring its format and colours, a pig to navigate compared to the old site.
If it was just the colours and new trendy updated whatever and I could still access the news, real news not some of the junk that has been on lately, without scrolling and multiclicking I would have stayed.
Please all you who like it tell me why you dont mind all the extra work to get what you could get so much more easily before.
I could live with the format which you like and I dont but I cant live with the navigation changes.
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@322 - I love the sarcasm there June, thanks for that. It's a shame that you focused more on the sass and less on reading my post and using some common sense, but if you need the explanation to be rammed down your throat here, I'm happy to oblige.
The point you claim you were making was lost in your curious choice of focusing most of your earlier post on reproducing excerpts from my comments that focused on the use of the word "minority", and your subsequent question regarding "fabricated figures". I explained where my figures had come from by pointing out that I had referred only to the number of comments in this discussion thread, without acknowledging the other four discussion threads that had come before it, and then referring to the total number of around 5000 comments in total.
I really expected anyone with a shred of common sense to understand that that meant that I hadn't got the figures from any polling data or privileged feedback information.
In fact, I would have thought I'd made it very clear where my figures had come from, but since you didn't get it the first time around, I'll reiterate: I got the figures FROM THE NUMBER OF COMMENTS.
...and since you are evidently incapable of making even the smallest leap in logic, let me make absolutely clear again that I HAVE NO ACCESS TO POLLING DATA.
I hope you've got that now.
I have no idea what on earth you're asking with "are you just kite-flying? if so, why?", but I do know that there's nothing faulty in the logic that if only a tiny minority of users have complained that the overwhelming majority are either satisfied or indifferent towards the changes.
If people have a reason to complain, then by golly, they'll complain. The number of complaints so far is from a tiny, fractional, infinitessimal minority of the total number of visitors. The Guardian puts the total number of comments on the Editors' blog about the BBC News site redesign at around 4200; let's round this up to 4500 to be generous. I believe the BBC News website gets around 14 or 15 million unique users (i.e. that's the number of people, not the number of visits made by people) each week - let's err on the side of caution and call it 14m. That means that the total number of comments made here amounts to around 0.0003% of the total number of visitors. That doesn't allow for the fact that many of the comments made here have been made by the same users, and not all of the comments have been negative. If we say that 2500 individual users have complained here, the percentage goes down to 0.00018%.
Even if we allow for the fact that complaints will have been registered through other channels, such as via the BBC Switchboard, Points of View, letters and emails to the DG etc, we're not looking at anything other than a tiny minority of users here.
And even if there are those who aren't happy with the redesign but haven't complained, are you seriously suggesting that the proportion of users dissatisfied with the site would jump significantly from 0.0003% to anything approaching an actual majority if we included those who haven't registered their complaints directly?
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@332 gcaw
Actually, I find your long winded comments quite irritating and you do not seem to offer anyting constructive to the discussion. You just seem interested in knocking peoples comments that don't agree with your opinion.
Why don't you just let the editor respond to the comments rather than sticking your oar in and winding people up.
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Hello all,
I have the first version of my greasemonkey script to clean up the new layout - it is a work in progress.
Here's the link - http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/82064
Regards
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You have wasted an enormous amount of licence payers money on probably the worst website ever designed. It is so bland and boring, it is like a one way street to a maze.
Please do the right thing and quit.
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www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2006/05/welcome_to_the_editors.html
Says: You should also bear in mind that e-mailing us, or leaving a comment on the blog, is not the same as making a formal complaint. If you want to do that, this website will help you - and this way, you're guaranteed to receive a formal response.
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@343. I filled out the compaint form. It only took a couple of minutes. You can tick the box that says "No reply wanted". That will save the BBC time but should get the complaint counted.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/forms/
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Now this mess is being reported elsewhere too. Check this out on The Independent from today:
"BBC website sticking with 'chaotic' new look" at:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/bbc-website-sticking-with-chaotic-new-look-2032973.html
I thank DSM4g61t and others for the alternatives suggested. I´m moving on and hope this arrogant editor brings our site back. In the meantime (or forever) I will stick to The Economist and The Independent.
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The Anti Change Mob still in full effect I see!
Good on you for holding your ground against them. Its quite hilarious that the angry mob think that only their views are valid, never considering for a moment that they are self selected group and in no way a representative sample.
Just because a few idiots say they don't like it, that still leaves millions who have not expressed a preference, and in the main, people who LIKE the site have no motivation or reason to come on here and tell you.
Those who don't like it - you know where the address bar is.
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Why are you ignoring the wishes of thousands off bloggers in that we do not like the new lay out.....tired of being treated this way......not visiting your site again......tara!
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What does the extra scrolling mean?
Compare old:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/default.stm
with new:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/
The old page can be scrolled in 8 clicks of the wheel mouse. I can navigate all the way from top to bottom by rolling a finger. The new page requires 20 clicks of the wheel mouse. My finger is not long enough to do 20 clicks! I have to scroll the wheel, reset my finger and scroll again.
Little details like this show the difference caused by excessive vertical space. The old page can be moved vertically to any position with a single gesture. A user hint repositions the page. The new page can not. The new page requires the user to turn turn turn the scroll wheel...
What about keyboard navigation with PageUp and PageDown. The old page requires a single PageUp or PageDown to move to top or bottom. The new page requires four. That is the difference between x1.9 and x3.2 of a window height.
This test is on a high resolution desktop monitor. The window is 952 pixels high. On short netbooks the problem will be much worse...
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I hate your new BBC news website so much I've moved my browser home page to Google News. I hate your horizontal navigation bar, the vertical one on Google News is much clearer, lists of categories are far more accessible when organised vertically like this, in the way you used to organise them. On each category page I hate the seemingly arbitrary sub categories like "Other Environmental Stories", "Other Science Stories" and "Expert Views". You seem to be hung up on a needlessly excessive hierarchy of categorisation for some reason, with lots of different arbitrary heading sizes, which seems to be why you've gone for the less clear horizontal navigation bar. Why can't you just list the stories within a given major category, such as science for example, at this point, as they do on Google News, with a little thumbnail to the left? I don't need to know which subcategory a story fits into when on a major category page, thinking about that is a pointless chore. The structure of your website should be invisible to the user, instead it's just in the way, I don't want to think about your arbitrary structures, I just want to scroll VERTICALLY through a list of available stories in a major category, so I can pick out the ones that are of interest to me, as I can on Google News.
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Folks, can you please stop the ad-hominem attacks. It puts you and your opinions in a very bad light.
On to my second post:
If a revert to the old design is out of the question can you please fix what is wrong with the site.
This list is just a start, in no particular order:
1/ The font is broken for Windows - especially with Firefox!
2/ The colours are garish and difficult to distinguish between section headings, headlines and links
3/ The blue box in the middle should be at the end - and it's broken
4/ Remove the Facebook scripts. There is a definite risk of privacy violation. This and setting/clearing a cookie is reminiscent of the phorm debacle - do you want a repeat of that?
5/ You don't need a huge box linking to iplayer on the news home page
6/ Fix the main RSS feed
7/ Give us options to customise the site
Dave
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I have waited to try and get used to the new site before commenting but sorry, I'm not a fan of the new design. It looks unfinished and is much harder to navigate than the previous version. It is now poorly structured and much less efficient in it's layout.
I just wonder how much it cost to re-design and from where did the impetus come to change it?
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gcaw - At least get your maths right. 2500 out of 14 million is 0.018%
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Since the "BBC News Online redesign" has become a news story will we see it covered by an impartial BBC News journalist? I have hardly read the BBC News this week. Maybe I already missed it.
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solidsteel makes a valid point in comment 346 above:
"Just because a few idiots say they don't like it, that still leaves millions who have not expressed a preference, and in the main, people who LIKE the site have no motivation or reason to come on here and tell you."
Steve Herrmann PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE put a VOTE button on the News Front Page and ask if people like the redesign.
But you haven't got the guts have you...
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It's perhaps worth pointing out that, from those that I've seen, most comments on articles (like the neutral independant/guardian ones just posted here, as well as the positive ones linked to in last week's blog) have been negative about the redesign.
I think everyone would expect a negative bias in the comments here, because this is where people would naturally come to express their opinion if they're not happy. However, I wouldn't really expect there to be so much bias in the readers/commenters of articles on other websites.
So can anyone give a compelling argument why the ratio of approve/disapprove in the comments on those other articles wouldn't be much more representative of the ratio of BBC website users as a whole?
Assuming people from here don't just go and post over there of course :/
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The new website design is much better than the old. It is cleaner and takes full advantage of the new wider screens found on laptops, netbooks and increasingly desktops.
I also like the menu bar across the top as I disliked having to scroll down to access Sport. Radio is immediately accessible too.
Well done!
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Stick to your guns Steve. You've done a great job of redesigning the site. The layout is much clearer and more transparent. Ignore the naysayers!
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Are you asbolutely nuts? The old BBC website was a daily little treat at work, a quick check to see, at a glance, what was happening.
The new design is visually incoherent and a complete mess, and don't tell me it's like the 2012 Olympics logo and I'll get used to it.
Am off to the CBS News website. It doesn't have much news but at least it's clear.
This design is just horrible and irritating.
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What I can't stand are the blocks of white space down the centre of most pages - only occasionally broken up with text. Why would anyone design a page to look like this? It might be ok if there were adverts in them, but given that they are not going to appear on the UK version it looks bizarre, as if half the page has failed to load. Who thinks this is an improvement?
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339 - Excellent post - no doubt it will go over the heads of those it is intended for.
Totally agree - a few thousand complaints on a blog is a tiny tiny fraction of the millions of users who are actually really happy with the site - but they have no reason to make comments on here.
MY only complaint is that the moderators keeps approving these rants by the anti change bully boys.
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When you go into "Have you say" and see the old clearer font style and layout it's much better... the new version looks like someone's copied the .css from Telegraph.co.uk - because some bright spark at the BBC thought it was better. Sounds like lots of regular visitors to the BBC news site don't think it was.
It wasn't and now the BBC news site looks duff as the Telegraph site. Sounds like the ugly new version is here to stay... pity we have to still stump up for it though.
The BBC home page still uses the old style cleared font and the whole page looks well designed... the new news page doesn't match the elegance of the homepage - is confusing even though there is more white space!! Wow - to do that really that is some design fail...
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LOOK JUST BLOODY CHANGE IT NOW
FOR GODS SAKE
EVERYONE HATES THE WEBSITE
ITS KRAP KRAP KRAP KRAP KRAP KRAP KRAP KRAP KRAP KRAP KRAP KRAP KRAP KRAP KRAP KRAP
WILL YOU CHANGE IT OR NOT..
WE WILL CONTINUE COMPLAINING UNTIL YOU CHANGE IT.
WE PAY YOUR WAGES REMEMBER.
SO YOU WORK FOR US
THEREFORE AS YOUR BOSS. WE ARE TELLING YOU TO CHANGE ITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT NOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!
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If the facebook tracking beacon offends you, then you will probably know the BBC has previous form regards leaking user data on it's public service sites.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/06/bbc_omniture/
In this case the BBC backed down although all you overseas readers will still be tracked. The Register article mentions the NoDPI website, where there is now a thread discussing the latest tracking fiasco.
https://nodpi.org/forum/index.php/topic,2980.0.html
These blog comments will eventually close so the NoDPI site would be a good place to continue discussion on the tracking issues.
The BBC knows that this facebook tracking will have to go from it's public service sites and the cookie opt-out is the first knee-jerk reaction.
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Well, it's obvious this blog has run its course and we are left with a lot of people who like thumping their keyboards playing ping-pong with each other over what they have all said.
What is interesting is that some of the ping-pong players spend a lot of time rubbishing those who complain and making carefully veiled ad hominem attacks on them while adopting a pro-change stance without actually explaining why the new design is better. Now whether these are genuinely held views, contributions by trolls or propaganda from Beeb fifth columnists is open to debate for those with the inclination to do so. Any conspiracy theorists here might wonder why the posts in question often adopt a very pro-change line and are of such great length that they must be from someone who has a lot (and I mean a lot) of spare time with nothing better to do, like running a successful company for instance.
As far as I'm concerned the new site, which has shown some improvement, still does not meet my needs so I have given up using the BBC News site and have turned to others that better satisfy my needs and preference.
Now before anybody stereotypes me as someone who doesn't like change let them contemplate the fact that in adopting this course I am changing. They might also reflect on the fact that it possibly indicates I'm a person who is capable of handling fairly tightly packed information on a page and don't need a lightweight page suitable for those without the capacity to process information because of a limited attention span.
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It's very simple! I not interested in a big debate or the BBC telling me what to think. The site is rubbish. This is not what I want from a news site. I used to look at theBBC News site 4 or 5 times a day. Now I use Sky and Yahoo UK. The shame is I pay my TV licence and I'm not getting value for money. I think it's time that some highly paid people resigned!
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What a load of control freaks! Why on Earth would you moderate something I'm posting in my real name. Shame on the BBC!
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It's a real shame that we've fallen to the levels of "if we can brainwash you a little more maybe you'll forget what you were thinking". Unfortunately we won't because the poor website reminds us every time we visit. As they say, there's nothing like listening to your customers and this is nothing like listening to your customers. Sorry but my home page has been changed and BBC News will soon be a distant memory, just like The Times.
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i think it's time to start voting with our fingers....
we should stop reading and posting comments on this blog,
switch to different news pages,
and wait for the press to report on the demise of auntie's ignorant new website!
the independant is leading the way (in more ways than one)
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/bbc-website-sticking-with-chaotic-new-look-2032973.html
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To the moderator; I see arbitrary moderating has made an appearance again, what on earth was wrong with my post at 351?
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http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=138492022845485&ref=ts
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Shouldn't the invasive Facebook buttons be an opt in feature? What's the point of them? Drive more traffic to articles? Waste of time as the redesign as caused a loss!
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I was invited by the BBC website team to comment on a test design of the new web site a couple of weeks ago. The test site was almost identical to the current version being used. I commented very strongly about all of the issues which other correspondants have mentioned, eg too much white space, oversized graphics and images, too little information on a single view of the screen, the need to scroll down and up the front page to find most of the features and the loss of the left side bar which is much easier to use than the horizontal bar below the mast head. It is disappointing that despite my criticisms and clearly many others who feel the same, no attempt has been made to revert to the more user friendly version used before the 'upgrade'. I urge the web site team to recognise that this upgrade has not been successful and reinstate the best features of the previous version.
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Thanks SevenOfMark for the site heads-up regarding the Facebook privacy issue. I'll read through the thread in more detail, get my head around the technical intricacies and file a complaint to the BBC Trust.
Also, Tom, cheers for the greasemonkey script. If I combine it with my own, the site becomes nearly usable again...apart from the copious amounts of whitespace, which I am working on removing.
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I just wanted to bring attention to the flawed logic behind reasoning that people who do not complain (or majority of them) are happy with something that is being complained about.
Fo example, the BBC had about 5,000 complaints about lewd messages left on actor Andrew Sachs' answerphone by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/oct/28/russell-brand-jonathan-ross-andrew-sachs-ofcom
Going by that logic the rest of the BBC users, who did not complain, perhaps thought that it was a jolly good thing to do. Somehow, I do not think this was the case.
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374. At 9:07pm on 22 Jul 2010, alex-online wrote:
I just wanted to bring attention to the flawed logic behind reasoning that people who do not complain (or majority of them) are happy with something that is being complained about.... etc
---------------------
Thanks Alex, exactly. It took 54 complaints for a radio interviewer to lose their job the other day... funny how it all works isn't it?
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As I've posted before, I don't like the new layout; I'm not anti-change, I just don't like what they've changed it to. That's a personal preference, and I'll either live with it or find an alternative.
One question that hasn't been answered in all of these blogs and feedback posts:
how much did this change cost us, the license fee payers?
If the change really was made to help bbc.com sell more ads in the USA, one might hope that bbc.com paid for it all.
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Not been visiting the BBC news web site as much since the 'improvements' due to having to scroll for 10 minutes to read anything and shockingly bad design of the site (which started to give me headache) but thought I would pop back to see if anything had been fixed... need not have bothered... still a shambles of a web site.
I have a lot of friends abroad who regularly use the BBC for news and they can't believe that such a respected news institution has messed up so badly with the new design. Not a good image to present to the rest of the world.
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When asked to see the new site, a meagre week in advance of it going live, I really didn't like it. I found many problems similar to the hundreds of issues mentioned above.
However, it has grown on me: it is clearer and easier to read; the switch to Helvetica Neue is much appreciated; I prefer like the horizontal navigation bar; it feels more elegant and functional; the better integration of video and radio is much appreciated and the pale grey boxes on the right tidy a lot of the old mess up. I would however like to see the other sections of news like technology and science feature more prominently like they used to be.
I didn't like the new site initially because, like with everyone, you need to adjust to change. But once you get used to it, you can really see the benefits. It's like with Facebook: each time there is a site change, there is uproar. A week in, people are happily using the new features and have forgotten about the old already.
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Regarding my greasemonkey script - one user had problems with it, I have updated the instructions (you need to install the noscript addon for firefox)
One (or more) of the many third party scripts running on the news site interferes with my script. I think it's the doubleclick one.
@neilly - can you please share your script?
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Well, despite my first (very negative) reaction I thought I'd give the BBC the benefit of the doubt and see if I could get used to the new design... but a week on I still find it as awful as I did when the changes were first made, and I now use the site a LOT less than I used to... I really just use it to check if the world is still in one piece and then go elsewhere. It's the scrolling and all the waste of space that are the main issues for me. The site is just SO user-unfriendly.
There seems to be hardly anybody out there who likes it. Why don't you LISTEN?
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I've finally been driven to comment on the new design...mainly because on my macbook, using 0sx 10.4.11, it is virtually unusable due to the extremely slow loading ( back to dial-up speeds on fast broadband ! ) for any page with video on it. Obviously teething problems I thought but since this problem first occurred with your world cup site at the beginning of June , your comment about trying to sort out this problem rings a little hollow six weeks later especially as there appears to be no explanation for why it happens anywhere. is this a problem for us minority mac users only, for example ?
As a result, I can no longer have BBC news as my homepage and I spend less time on this site and more on The Guardian site (win some lose some I guess) but, as a license fee payer, I feel that if I am correct and part of my fee goes to pay for this site, I am a) entitled to be able to expect to use it and b) entitled to a little more than vague reassurances that the problem is being addressed ... six weeks after it first occurred.
P.S from what I can se of the new re-design it appears to be more of a magazine than a newsy style, with far too much white space, far too much wasted space giving the impression that the focus has shifted from content to style, in the process subtly undermining the BBC's authority as a trusted news provider.
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378. At 9:55pm on 22 Jul 2010, Daniel wrote:
However, it has grown on me: it is clearer and easier to read; the switch to Helvetica Neue is much appreciated;
-------
Hi Daniel, purely for bug fixing purposes, may I ask if you are using a Mac or a PC?
Also which browser you are using.
Thanks :-)
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I don't like the new styling at all.
There is too little information on the main page. To find interesting news items I am forced to start searching in sub pages, which I find inconvenient and time consuming. Buttons for Europe, Asia, etc are so small that they are difficult to click on. I do agree with others about too much white space, too much scrolling, and the disproportional size of some fonts and graphics.
I think he BBC with its high quality image deserves better than this.
Please revert to the previous styling.
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