The Whig's new website
I've been waiting for a while before commenting on the Whig's Web makeover to let the bugs work out. Everyone I've talked to has had trouble with switching over their login. But those difficulties appear to have been solved.
I find the front page extremely cluttered and uninteresting. The typeface of the story heads is small and monotonous. Your opening view is dominated by a huge contest entry promo and some randomly selected thumbnail-sized art. The reasons typical readers would have for visiting the website, in my opinion, would be to find the .pdf versions of the paper when they are away from home and to read the Web-only features, such as the blogs and updated breaking stories. So how do we find those things? Well, to get to the .pdfs, you have to scroll down to the "interactive toolbox" and choose from among several same-sized selections. For the blogs, hunt your way along a menu of 13 identical words at the top of the screen. In other words, those features are hidden in the wallpaper.
The blogs themselves, on the other hand, seem to have quite a bit of work going into them. Too bad there are only two news blogs. And no, American Idol and Fitness Challenge don't count as news.
Simplify, unify, and focus the design. Direct our eyes. Don't just fling a double handful of junk onto the screen and hope that some of it sticks. WGEM and KHQA suffer from the same problem. The Hannibal newspaper's website is substantially more coherent.
I find the front page extremely cluttered and uninteresting. The typeface of the story heads is small and monotonous. Your opening view is dominated by a huge contest entry promo and some randomly selected thumbnail-sized art. The reasons typical readers would have for visiting the website, in my opinion, would be to find the .pdf versions of the paper when they are away from home and to read the Web-only features, such as the blogs and updated breaking stories. So how do we find those things? Well, to get to the .pdfs, you have to scroll down to the "interactive toolbox" and choose from among several same-sized selections. For the blogs, hunt your way along a menu of 13 identical words at the top of the screen. In other words, those features are hidden in the wallpaper.
The blogs themselves, on the other hand, seem to have quite a bit of work going into them. Too bad there are only two news blogs. And no, American Idol and Fitness Challenge don't count as news.
Simplify, unify, and focus the design. Direct our eyes. Don't just fling a double handful of junk onto the screen and hope that some of it sticks. WGEM and KHQA suffer from the same problem. The Hannibal newspaper's website is substantially more coherent.
posted by Allthenewsthatfits at 5:44 AM
3 Comments:
And you still have to pay for most of it...or be a subscriber.
Agreed. It's a mess. Again, like the previous effort, this is at least 6 years out of date. What crap.
If only they pretended to inform the 25% of Quincy that gets the rag.
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