Not as high-tech as most of the other ideas on here, but how about utilising the white space down the right of my monitor? I can't be the only one running at 1280x1024, and using it for more content, as I mocked up, or even an integrated video player would be great!
Funny, I've always thought that the narrow width of the bbc site was a great asset. It lets you have other windows open along side without filling your whole screen. I'm not a fan of super wide websites and I know I'm not alone. Also, legibilty goes down the toilet.
Alan, in answer to point (1): Have you ever seen the BBC site display incorectly on any browser on any platform? I haven't. Can the same be said of CSS/XHTML? No. I've seen CSS/XHTML scramble non-mainstream browsers/platforms many times (Like on Mac/Linux/Linex....). The BBC obviously have an awesome backend content management system that is rendering their HTML pages beautifully. What is the problem?
Ahh... accessiblity. I didn't read your post properly. Sorry about that. The rendering is still a problem though.
hi folks -
to answer some of these questions -
We will hopefully be looking at our structure and doing an overview of our information architecture soon. This will allow us to utilise css/cssp to provide a better experience.
It should also prove to be useful to us for future projects that will serve our products in new and useful ways. It should also help you guys help us too.(this is assuming that the project is done by us and no by audience-based organising/ folksonomies.
The question of space is an interesting one. Ben writes that he can use this window along with others.This seems to be common behaviour (from our user feedback). Even though folk have massive monitors they are not using them to enlarge One task (like getting a massive telly at home - rather they are using them for multiple tasks/ windows etc.
Chris' original idea is valid though. There are some who want more stuff on their screen and ideally we should serve them. This is likely to be a feature enjoyed by the more advanced users and so may be suitable for some aspect of a personal experience.(as it seems only these folk tend to customise their environment) I am cautious about using the 'personalisation' word as it often means everything and nothing at the same time.
Having said this, direct/ active customisation is the kind of 'P' that may be suitable for this - as opposed to the more latent/passive personal experience on amazon for instance. I believe this type of (wider)layout would better suit the 'overview/ index level pages where decision making/ story scanning is being supported.I imagine that there is less use for wider lines of text on stories.although further promotional space in story pages is more important than ever nowadays due to the large number of users coming in at story level as opposed to the home page.
Anyway thanks for your interest and i hope some of the above clarifies where we are with this at the moment.
And thanks for supporting backstage.
regards,
max.
Max Gadney.
Head of Design.
BBC News Interactive.
1280x1024?
Thats an odd resolution for a normal monitor (if its widescreen, i dunno).
The best resolutions for a normal monitor stick to the 4:3 ratio, 800x600, 1280x960, 1600x1200(which I use)
I personally dont see any problems with the site, anyway, in the sense of bad width.
Perhaps if an accessible version of the news pages were made then this could be accomplished. The use of Tables for creative design purposes is a problem. Making it accessible using a combination of cascading style sheets and XHTML would improve the situation. So I suppose the questions for the guys at the Beeb are:
1/ Why does the News site continue to be Table based design and not CSS/XHTML?
2/ How difficult would it also be to apply this to archived content also? (Does the Beeb store all the articles in an accessible way to allow a new presentation to be applied to old content? - eg. DB/XML/etc)
A good example, and the reason for posting my companies URL is simply that it uses CSS layout and the content is accessible via IE5.5+, Firefox, Safari, Netscape 7, Lynx, Konqueror... not necessarily because the audience will be using the more esoteric browsers, but simply as a result of making things degrade nicely using CSS.