Aside from reading a few dozen weblogs and commentary sites each day via RSS, the two main places I go for current affairs news are news.google.com and the local ABC news.
Over the weekend, the ABC website rolled out an update. It appears this is a new design and feature set across the board, not just in the news section. So program websites have been updated as well. All very slick.
A couple of impressions from using the news front page for a couple of days:
It's very "Web 2.0", both in look and behaviour. Somebody has put a lot of effort into keeping it functional, though. I don't have Flash on my normal desktop machine (64-bit linux, because I choose to live in the 21st century) and I don't lose out on anything there. Blue and green seem to be the new black for these 2.0 designers. Get's a bit tiring at times, but it's not too hard on the eyes, which is important.
A nice grouping of the top stories by recent items, popularity and state, under various tabs. Response time seems good. They've discovered tagging and used it well. Even a little (very tiny -- good eyesight required) plus symbol against each tag to easily add it to a watchlist of tags you're interested in. They've also gone back and put tags on older stories, so I can view stories from the last couple of years in my neighbourhood. Tags accessible both as a list and a cloud (a.k.a "actually useful" and "for the ADD types")
Most stories have a Google map embedded in them (one example). Unfortunately, the map is zoomed out to the maximum, but that at least places the story in the right part of Australia and you can zoom in as appropriate. That has to be a useful feature, particularly for non-local readers.
Other sections have mapping options, too. I can see Mr. Fleck getting some use from this page, for example.
URLs are sensible — the above story was http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/06/19/1955037.htm, for example. Section, date and slug. Removing the slug portion doesn't do the intuitive thing (a list of today's stories would be reasonable). Still, any big website and particularly one just after a new release is always going to be work in progress.
My only real complaint is that it's slightly less useful as a place to view the news right from the start. They've put so much effort into providing customisation and links to other content that the number and variety of headlines on the front page has decreased. It used to be there was a double-column list of eight sections ("just in", "weather", "science", "world", "sport", etc) and a few headlines under each one. So a quick scan of the latest stories in each section took five or ten seconds. Now, each section is only on its own page, so there is more clicking around required. Looks like that is fixable with the customisation features, though. There's probably a way to use the tags to get back the old functionality, so this isn't a real drawback as much as a "discoverability" (if I may invent a word) issue.
They get an A for this site. The web group have done a lot of planning and work to create something that is very useful. I'm normally a bit disappointed by new glitzy "new news" sites that are released all the time, since they don't seem to always manage to actually display the news very well (and, of course, there are exceptions to that). The ABC have avoided the traps and done well.
Topics: media, technology/web
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