Smashing Magazine Comes Through Again

November 11, 2008 9:46 PM

Newspaper Website Design: Trends And Examples. News websites can be intriguing to examine from a design perspective. Regardless of what type of news they cover, they all face the challenge of displaying a huge amount of content on the home page, which creates plenty of layout, usability and navigational challenges for the designer. The lessons that can be learned from examining how news websites address these challenges can be valuable for designers who work with other types of websites, including ones with blog theme designs.
posted by netbros (9 comments total)

I prefer a blue background and puke yellow links.
posted by clearly at 10:04 PM on November 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

...and a side of super-censorship.
posted by clearly at 10:06 PM on November 11, 2008 [1 favorite]

Clearly, that was uncalled for.

It's more like sick phlegm color.
posted by rokusan at 10:07 PM on November 11, 2008 [2 favorites]

'Bile', appropriately, is the name of the colour you're looking for.
posted by genghis at 8:17 AM on November 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

Why does this "web design" site cram all of its content into a column that occupies less than half the width of my browser window? The article is pleasingly exhaustive from a descriptive standpoint but the uselessness of their own design makes me distrust any analysis they might make.
posted by monocyte at 8:28 AM on November 12, 2008

What he said.
posted by Zambrano at 8:39 AM on November 12, 2008

Why does this "web design" site cram all of its content into a column that occupies less than half the width of my browser window?

We seem to have lost this argument in favor of "liquid" browser text objects, but in print a narrow column is considered easier to read, because your eyes don't have to reposition themselves with every line of text.

Overall, the New York Times presents one of the better newspaper websites.

Perhaps true. But I've recently quit using My Times because they can't be bothered to fix this feed. I mean, c'mon, have the layoffs been that bad?
posted by dhartung at 5:17 PM on November 12, 2008

Why does this "web design" site cram all of its content into a column that occupies less than half the width of my browser window?

“Anything from 45 to 75 characters is widely regarded as a satisfactory length of line for a single-column page set in a serifed text face in a text size. The 66-character line (counting both letters and spaces) is widely regarded as ideal. For multiple column work, a better average is 40 to 50 characters.” – Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style

posted by Brainy at 12:30 AM on November 13, 2008 [1 favorite]

Their page also didn't set the background color; they probably didn't define the space outside the main body in their css.
I have my own default colors that show up if stuff is undefined, and you'd be surprised at the amount of big sites that never define text color or background color. I just think it's kinda fun to be all 'why're you hitting yourself?' to sites.
posted by zusty at 6:38 PM on November 14, 2008