after a change of the web design of salon earlier in the year is was the new york timesthat changed its design. here are the issues i have with the new site:
the times went with the wider, full screen space usage, which i already disliked when CNet started to use it earlier this year. while yes, many users have the screen real-estate but they might not want it all being taken up by the web browser; sometimes it is nice to have some space for another window.
the front page is just too cluttered. while most sites moved to three columns (navigation on the left, content in the middle, links and other stuff on the right). the new nyt site has if I count correctly five columns, but that is actually only true at the top, if you scroll down it ends up being four columns for a bit, then six columns for a bit, and then back to five. just very confusing, and on top of that lots of different font sizes and pictures and ads thrown in. salon (especially during the first week of their redesign) went the other way, kind of the google way, with less is more which i though was an interesting choice.
but what i think is the biggest mistake has nothing to do with the design, but the functionality. while there is a “most blogged articles” list available, and links to blogs at the end of articles, but there is no del.icio.us or technorati, or yahoo’s myweb2.0 integration. there is just no easy way to link and make nyt articles part of social bookmarking sites.
for me the The International Herald Tribune is still the best designed and functional news site. the times could have learned a lot, from the use of the three column view that doesn’t require a page reload when moving to the next page, and direct del.icio.us integration.
