±«Óătv

I don't have the ability to view/listen to Video and Audio content, so the new banners are just a rather annoying waste of space as far as I'm concerned.

I'd far rather see the headlines from different areas of the site in a single glance, as I used to be able to - instead I now have to scroll the front page down to get past lots of red boxes full of links that are no use to me.

Amongst the many 'versions' of the site available, could we not have one that turns off these new 'features' and makes the page look more like it did a month ago?

I understand and approve of the reasons behind your changes, but I'm afraid I'm not persuaded by the way you've implemented them.

Shunting the name of the site into a box in the top left hand corner diminishes your authority and personality. You should be pushing the ±«Óătv News "name" in the main banner - it's your biggest selling point, after all.

The size of the text in the top banners is odd as well. By making it the same as the rest of the homepage, it's like you're almost trying to *not* call too much attention to them. You're giving out a mixed message here, as if to say, well, these services are important enough to go at the head of the page, but not so important as to enjoy any more space and attention as anything on the rest of the site.

Finally, I'm afraid I really don't like the video and audio links you've put in the centre of the homepage. It disrupts the entire geography of the page, is confusing on the eye, goes against your instinctive and intuitive browsing of a web page, and just clutters up what is already a necessarily busy layout.

The audio and broadband elements of the ±«Óătv News site are fantastic, but this form of presentation doesn't do them any favours.

I am impressed by the new customability in terms of the regions in the drop down section.

I would like to request the original form of the Sport headlines banner as access to the sports pages. This was much clearer (as withthe weather pages).

Thanks,

Carl

I think the new page looks great and the local news section works really well. One gripe though - I find the fact that the "Video and Audio News" section (about halfway down the page) insists on opening whenever the homepage is loaded very, very annoying! Does anyone else think this or am I just being irrational (I have a feeling it's the latter!)

I'm a huge fan of the ±«Óătv News Website and refer to it continuously... in the past I've enjoyed the redesigns, but I have to say in this instance I'm not sure you've got it right. It's just way too fussy. There's so much gubbins about how you access the stuff, some of the types of stories that I used to see on opening the page have now disappeared off the bottom of the screen and I have to scroll down to find them.

Rather than advertising a million other things to do could you prioritise the NEWS (ie what you are here for) and just have one options button for all the other stuff?

hi there,
I like what you've done.
I especially like the "most emailed" and "most read" direction. This is a very "Web 2.0" kind of thing which is definately a good move.

I would say you could try and make a whole section of the site dedicated to content that has proven popular. So something like "most linked to" "most read" "most emailed" "highest rated" "most readability" (how long people spend reading the story),

Try and give more power to the viewer, I guess that's what I'm saying. www.digg.com have a very democratic system, try and be influenced by that model to an extent.

thanks for the improvements!
mark

A Google-style customisation system would be great for people who regularly visit the website.

With most people having high bandwidth connections these days, I think it's a good idea to promove the audio and video .

The postcode personalisation is a useful addition, but I do not like the additional banner at the top of your page. Toolbars and banners now take up about a third of the page and leave less room for interesting "reads".

I don't think I can put it any better than Ian Jones - apart from the fact that new banner is taller than the old one and it shunts the actual news further down the page... (i.e. less physical impact space for the news, more space for the fact that we already know it's the ±«Óătv...)

Well done for keeping the site fresh and current.

Shame you couldn't manage to fix the 'Disapearing Comments' problem though...

:-(

This new ±«Óătv website layout is SO much better - well done on the recent improvements! It now complements the existing excellent content. Keep up the great work ±«Óătv!

I like the new link at the top for audio/video - very clear and does what I expect.

I would disable the link from top left - ±«Óătv News as all it does is refresh the page.

I am all for personalisation but feel the local news link is very much lost on the page. Perhaps an alternative colour in the same vein as the other 'expand/hide' sections would suffice. Also I was expecting 'local' news when I selected this, I chose Football for Surrey/Sussex and was offered links for Newcastle/Man U and Liverpool. These stories were of no interest to me.
Overall I think the site does a great job but still feel it would benefit from some tighter standards. For example the Sports headlines on the right hand side is in red, whereas on the left it is in blue. This might seem minor but consistency within such a large site is important for the user.

Nice to see you using the common feed icons now. :)

The header looks taller now, with version toggle above the logo and the logo taller to keep '±«Óătv' and 'News'. I'd probably have put the audio/video link on the top of the right navigation instead of the header.

It's still probably the best news site out there, and it's only a few added links after all.

The new local news and audio/video elements on the website are an improvement. However I can not help but feel when looking at these pages that contain these elements that they have been squashed in. I wonder if the would look better stretching these elements across all three columns in place of the first "In Brief" section.

Additionally could the audio and video content be done as flash video/audio so that we don't need to rely on either Windows Media Player or Real.

I also find the centre bars irritating. I often prefer to just browse through the site and am often uninterested in the video feeds. However, I find that even if I "hide" the video box in the centre of the page, it re-appears after a refresh of the page. This sort of defeats the object and for myself, it just adds unecessary extra clutter.

How about a link to a seperate page which could be devoted to all video and audio feeds? That way, the main page would be clearer and those who prefer some of the videos would have them all together in one place.

Don't like the new look; it doesn't fit my screen; there is this blank bit at the right where there should be some text.

I have a normal Dell PC, normal 17 inch screen; why does ±«Óătv Online News come up looking weird?

I live abroad and can't see much of the new content. If you can't let me view it, why offer me the link?

The new header is fatter than the old - which takes up screen space the red bars in the centre of the page are distracting and of little use to me. They should - at the very least - become "white" when they are all closed - or preferably we should be allowed to remove them altogether.

Basically the changes have reduced the accessibility of the core written content of the site and made it more cluttered and distracting.

Personalization is fine - but one of the personalization options should be that we can hide all personalization options.

I don't like the "VIDEO AND AUDIO NEWS" bar and the two other bars below it, especially as the former doesn't stay collapsed when I re-load the page, or the next time I visit. Funny, because the local news section does stay hidden!

I'm also not sure of the value of the "Most read" and "Most emailed" sections - all they do is draw more traffic to the most popular pages, diverting attention away from less-visited pages that may be equally deserving of attention.

Other than that, keep up the good work!

I still think that the opportunity to comment on all stories and not just blogs/Have Your Say would be a massive improvement. So far so good though!

It's great to see emphasis on other ways to get ±«Óătv news content, but disappointing that those other ways haven't really improved in quite some time.

So I can get a pod-cast of a week's worth of newsnight - why do I want week old news. Where's the pod-cast of last night's newsnight so i can watch on the way to work?

Even the online streams are lacking - why can't I watch the ten o'clock news after it has shown like I can with newsnight? Why is there no live feed of News 24?

I know I can select the video news panel and watch the clips one at a time, but you're the professionals - why am I expected to play video jockey?

It's even worse when you're overseas - there folk are expected to pay 1/5 the UK license fee for three minutes of broadband news - still no access to newsnight / the 1/6/10 o'clock news, news24 or the local evening news bulletins even if they're crying out to pay for it.

Overall very positive changes - i particularly like the localisation of the news & weather options and the most read options.

My main irritant is as observed by Emma - this is really annoying - having to close it every time...

I'm afraid that the new front page just strikes me as plain ugly. While I like the ideas behind the changes I'm afraid the implementation leaves something to be desired.

I do wish things could stay the same. Why does everything have to keep changing? To give those employed/commissioned by the ±«Óătv web site team a reason to exist, perhaps? All that the changes have meant to me is I no longer know immediately where everything is. It is cosmetic enhancement at the licence fee payers' expense. The whole ±«Óătv web site must cost an absolute fortune to maintain. I dread to think how many hundreds of people are employed doing it and how many hundreds of thousands of pounds are being spent from the licence fee on basically what is an exercise in self-aggrandizement. "Oh, everyone else has a flashy web site so we, the ±«Óătv, MUST have one, too!" Why not spend some money on making Search work for example?

I'm afraid I don't like the show/hide bars in the middle of the News home page for video & audio etc. The bars are tacky and unworthy of the ±«Óătv's previous great style & design standards. Please move them off to the side or something.

Got to say I don't like it. The new banner at the top is far too big - it is a precious waste of space. I check ±«Óătv News often at work, and would never use the audio and video sections.

I sort of like the idea of the customisation on the front page, but the way it loads the content externally disrupts the flow - all of a sudden the bottom shifts down an inch or two. I also want to remove the audio and video options totally - not just close them this time. Again - a waste of space.

If I wanted to watch the news in video, I'll switch on the TV. News 24 anyone? I'm no technophobe, but I just don't see the point.

Most of the extra stuff you've added I like with the exception of the video/audio bit in the middle. I only really look at your site from my office where i can't watch or hear internet stuff so it just gets in the way as it can't be properly closed lie the other new sections.

Love the new regional links part, not so keen on the video bit as it refuses to remain in "closed" mode and I rarely watch videos. Would prefer the video part to be swappable with another item from the selections in the regional list.

I hadn't noticed any changes. Is that a good thing?

With most broadband connections now being around 2mb and screen resolutions for these users being 1024x768, how about better quality video for broadband users?

I'm a text man through and through. As such, it would be really nice if, when I hide those video options, they stay hidden!

It's rather pointless to go to all the hassle of hiding them, only for them to re-appear the next time you visit the page.

As for the new masthead area, well it's a big angular... Or is the idea to fit in those forthcoming adverts on the international site! ;)

While it all looks a lot sleaker than before, I'd prefer to have a bigger ±«Óătv News logo at the top, rather than the video link as it's both easier to click on and I use the site for the site alone, I'm happy to watch the videos on TV.

Sorry, but if you continue to muck up what used to be a very clear site, you'll just stop people using it.

I don't use the audio and video feeds, so I find the obtrusive and insistent way you scribble them everywhere to be really annoying.

After all, when I watch ±«Óătv News 24 on a television set, you don't take up the first third of the screen with the URL of the website.

Hire some people with knowledge of user interface design, not just programmers who have discovered a new toolbox to play with

If I wanted to watch the news in video I would turn on the TV! Why not have a "medium graphics" version for those of us who find half of their screen taken up by features they have no interest in but cannot get rid of.

Hmmm...not too sure about the white keylines that you've introduced into the home page header. A design feature that's a bit chunky/unnecessary for me. The rest of it's looking good...

I have to echo the earlier comments about the new sections in the middle of the page. It looks hideous and cluttered.

When I work on websites I always try to remind myself of the mantra "keep it simple, stupid". You don't have to push everything to the front of the site. People are capable of navigating around without having links thrust in their face all over the shop.

Indeed, I think it's only because I've been using the site for a while that I'm able to find my way around the homepage with ease.

It's just way...too...busy.

I have to agree with Emma who posted earlier on. I typically access the news site from work. As such I won't be watching or listening to anything during the day. So, why does the audio/video insist on re-expanding itself every time I come back to the home page? This is typical of design which is trying to 'push' something so hard it's ignoring the user's requirements; something you do at your peril.

I know it's there. If I need it I know where it is. I'll come and get it. Stop screaming about it at me!

I don't like the new banner/headers, it instantly feels clunky (sorry designers..) and as if an image has failed to download and that I should be waiting for the space to be filled and the real estate to be resized. News content both in spelling, grammer and content is not up to the standard it was back in 2001. They also tend to feel very one sided, especially when it comes to subjects such as the housing market and finance.

I'd be very interested to know how many visitors use the website for audio/video on the main stories as opposed to humorous/minor stories.

Speaking personally, I want to use the website to read key information as fast as possible. Loading a player to give you a news clip is never going to replace the speed of skimming text in an article.

I agree with previous posters that a huge red banner with a narrow line of text saying '±«Óătv news in video and audio' is a bad idea.

Why not have the ±«Óătv branding in that bar and have the video/audio in the box on the left?

All the other upgrades have been great (local news/most emailed/viewed etc.), but this is the first one I think really should go.

Have to agree with all those who think that the middle bars for video/audio are a little too much, and I wish they'd stay collapsed when I asked them too.

Much as I appreciate video/audio online, if I wanted video/audio ±«Óătv, I'd turn the television or radio on. As it is, I don't look at the website on a computer I could download different information.

Please move them to elsewhere in the page so they don't disturb the flow of information.

Another vote against the 3 ugly red bars in the middle of the page for video and audio. They don't fit in and as I'm not interested in that feature, they annoy me.

Most of it's great - the video/audio bars should make a speedy exit, though.

The Content for sites (i.e. "Headlines for your site") would be even better if you allowed a higher degree of customising and defining the content offered as well as the layout and scrolling options.

A good example of this can be found here:

We use them for our site currently and customised the colour and layout and specified Celebrity Fashion in the UK as the main content...

If you could provide that sort of offering we'd switch (and I'm sure lot's more would) to the ±«Óătv and the drop of a hat ...

I always like to see improvements being made to the ±«Óătv news site, and appreciate that the greater integration of video and audio is part of this process. I've got to say though that, for me, it's a step too far. When I want to see some video, hear some audio or listen again, I'm really pleased to see the appropriate links. But that is quite a rare occurrence when I go to the ±«Óătv site - what I really want are more, smaller links so that I can scan the page and quickly get a feel for whether I want to follow something up. The fact that the apparently customisable panels default to showing audio/video links just wastes space.

I am going to have to think about the "most popular" list. On a technical level, I think it's great. However, I'm not sure that it doesn't just concentrate attention on fewer stories. I'd struggle to come up with a coherent argument for why I'm not sure that this is a good thing, but it worries me slightly.

I don't expect my comments to affect things too much - I can see from many of the comments that the changes are quite popular. I'll just have to accept that this particular layout isn't for me!

I love the ability to customise elements of the page (I had liked the old My ±«Óătv pages, RIP - though this arguably has more potential). As I can't access the Audio/Video content at work, and am not interested in sport, it would be good to be able to eliminate them (or replace them with other content, eg business, entertainment, or any other section/linked elements). The local bit is great, and will perhaps encourage your local editors to update their content more often! Keep up the good work - whilst it's still not customisable enough to become my homepage, I long to replace My Yahoo...

Perhaps you could tuck the links to audiovisual content away somewhere (like in the left hand list) where they can pop up or spring out when we are interested? I agree with previous posters that they do upset the page's feel a bit being right in the middle, even when you have them 'collapsed'. ±«Óătv is still by far and away the best news website in the world though.

Changes to the site make it very slow to load and look very cluttered. The icons and banners all add to the time taken for the page to load, even on a fast LAN connection. Also, the new sections could be better placed. One key aspect of web design is putting main content "above the fold". However, apart from the top 3 - 4 stories, I must scroll past a "don't miss" section urging me to read stories about seaside holidays and urban planning. Are stories on the Magazine section are really more important than the main news?

The new audio and video sections would be better placed in the space currently taken up by the redundant "most popular stories" section. This provides peripheral background interest but it would not be missed. Also, if I want to hide these sections, I want them to stay hidden when I return to the page

Finally, the "products and services" section is not only misnamed (what products and services do ±«Óătv News sell?) but it would also be better put on a separate page.

I am another one that dosn't like the new audio/video section. IT spoils the flow of the page.

I usually browse the ±«Óătv News site from work, so can't use this functionality anyway (I also get annoyed by seeing an interesting sounding story, only to realise that it's an audio/video item). I'd also like a personalised site, much in the same way you can personalise your google homepage.

I also don't like the white lines in the banner, I think it would look much better without them.

The new 'local' section is fantastic though well done on that!

Like most of your changes, except the new banner at the top is too thick - needs to be slimmer like the old one. The new ±«Óătv News logo is now very dull and boring too.

However the one thing that is REALLY annoying is the fold out Video and Audio news section in the middle of the homepage and most other section index pages - when I shut it I WANT IT TO STAY SHUT! I don't want it open the next time I re-visit. I wouldn't mind so much if I could push it down the bottom of the page, or even to the bottom of the section which allows personalisation, but I am not interested in what is in the Video and Audio section at all, and it is REALLY grating.

I understand it's there to promote your video content, but when I want video (not often) I will look for it. Please shut it, or let it be shut and stay shut by the user's preference.

I like the local news section on the front page. However it's knocked down the screen by the audio/video section, which doesn't remember having being shrunk during the last session. A minor annoyance, but still...

The other gripe is the weather link. Clicking on a five-day forecast link used to take me straight to the forecast for my postcode. Now the site only gives me a list of possible choices based on the first half of my postcode, which it remembers well enough to display in full on the same page. Weird!

Otherwise, pretty nice.

I think the website looks great, but just like it uses cookies to remember which region's news I wish to see in the middle of the page, so should it remember that I'd like to Hide the video news section. A minor niggle, but a niggle nonetheless.

It's a shame money is being spent on style when there is substance in need of sorting out. I'm talking about the weather section which is:

1. often out of date (5 day forecast starting with yesterday) or

2. inconsistent: 5 day forecast says current day is predominantly rain yet when you look at the 24 hour forecast only one 3 hour period is shown as having rain

3. inconsistent in as much as the bigger picutre will show sunshine in the south-east but every area within the south-east will independently say rain

4. at odd with the other ±«Óătv weather channels: that on ±«Óătvi or the man on the telly.

I had dinner last year with the lady responsible for this stuff in the ±«Óătv. I was expecting an argument but when I started with "your weather pages are really bad" she just said "yup, I know"

I think the new changes are awful. I would much prefer to be able to scan a complete list of headlines (like The Register for example) than navigate a maze of banners and data bars.

If you are going to be pushing audio/video in such a strong way, does this mean that you will be adding subtitles (particularly to the slideshows)? Not only for those of us who are at work, and don't have sound cards, but also for the ±«Óătv News readers who are Deaf (but who still have to pay their licence fee...)

I really like the new features of the website. We're rapidly approaching a point where the different media of information delivery are converging and it's fantastic that I can watch a live ±«Óătv news report on the Internet if I'm not at home to see it when it's broadcast. The localised news feature is also good, allowing me to see at a glance whether there is any local news I want to know more about - there usually isn't - without having to visit a different page, which I never used to bother doing previously.

Only this weekend, as I sat in a campsite in Anglesey, I marvelled at the fact that I could read the latest sporting news on the first weekend of the new Premiership season on my mobile phone exactly as I would have done if I was at home on my computer. This kind of 'one site, many media' approach is brilliant.

I think the ±«Óătv deserves great credit for the way it continues to innovate and I hope it continues.

As with several others, I find the big red bars incredibly ugly, and a waste of space - especially the one at the top. And the fact that settings aren't remembered, so that people have to keep choosing which sections to open or close, is simply unforgivable.

Moreover, remember (even in this brave new world of Web 2.0, customisations, etc) that the vast majority of your users wont ever actually use any of these snazzy new features. Those who are comfortable with that sort of thing love it - and are the sort of people likely to leave comments here. But most people will only ever look at the default setting, so that has got to look good and work well on its own terms.

Why not adopt Google's solution? They have a basic page that works for most users. If people want to add extra content, there's one single button to allow them to do so, but otherwise all the various customisation options are kept out of the way of the actual content of the page.

The ±«Óătv News home page is a victim of its own success. There's simply too much content - even with all the extra tabs closed, there are over 130 links on the news home page, divided between at least 16 different sections. It's cluttered and awkward - only the familiarity of it allows anyone to find anything.

just please return the ±«Óătv News logo to one line...I can't stand the way it looks squished into the top left. I echo what the others have said about the prominence of the mid-page red bars: I find them distractingly annoying.

Definitely enjoy the most emailed/most read bit - brings back the concept of "browsing" the news. Surprising how some old news stories surface in this section!
I am surprised that you dont have transcripts available of video and audio content - surely this should be part of your accessibility standards?
Look forward to the tabbing - which seems only to be on the international version, to be introduced on the UK version too!

It's ok (not much more), but there is definitely too much clutter. Two things I don't like: too much focus on video and audio news, and the "most popular stories" concept. I know the ±«Óătv feels it has to keep up to date with new media technology, but there is a reason why I and others use the internet - because we want easily available news as text. We can watch the TV and listen to the radio if we want audio and video. As such, please don't stick the audio and video bit right in the middle, it's not the main reason why we come to this site. The "most popular stories" bit is as equally irritating, especially when in the banner at the bottom of the page, telling us what the most popular story in north America or wherever is. Another reason people use the internet is because we can select our own stories, not have some kind of supermarket promotional offer telling us what we ought to read. Yes, it's an interesting feature, but why not put it on a separate page, instead of clutter the main page up and make us feel us though we're in a news consumer meat market.

Bastardized design-by-comittee look to it. "Show/hide" function surprisingly unintuitive. And what's with "DON'T MISS!"? - this is the ±«Óătv not the Sun.

I'm still disappointed at the quality level of the pictures when playing back video news clips.

Have you been to ABC news site in America and played back their clips.

Far superior quality, noticeable even on a slow old machine like mine! Sort it out ±«Óătv!

As much as you want to promote your audio and video material, does it not strike you that putting it in the banner of the site makes it look ugly?

It's also interesting that you've deduced your audio and video material doesn't get enough views as it's too difficult for people to access; is it not possible that people can access it clearly but are simply not interested in watching and listening to it?

I rarely use the audio and video material mainly as I have access through digital TV to Sky News and ±«Óătv News 24 and if I need to watch news I'm interested in, I use those means.

The new bars for video and audio content are not for me so I would like to save the screen space and always have them hidden. The 'hide' button works, but when I return to the page they are open again. Conversely I would like the 'programmes' alway open, but that also does not have a memory. Unless the buttons are 'sticky' they are pointless. Please give them a memory or get rid of them.

OK but too much banner (by far) and miss easy access to weather for UK cities.

The ±«Óătv News section shouldn´t become a part of Web 2.0.
The most popular section should not be in focus. E.g You said you didn’t lead the site with the impact of cold weather on the basil crop in northern Italy. This is a lie it was on the mainpage. The ±«Óătv is not only biased in reporting, but also loves entertainment stories. From Madonna to Tom Cruise to Rolling Stones, Robbie Williams, also the Kidman Wedding, Paris Hilton and much more entertainment placed on the ±«Óătv News CENTRAL FRONTPAGE. This is absolute senseless and stupid. There are important news out there. Plus there should not be links to the not reliable, misinformative Wikipedia.
±«Óătv= Biased Broadcasting Cooperation

Adding new features is a welcomed improvement. I would like to suggest the web design keep more of the feel of the old ±«Óătv website and avoid the CNN model.

I like the changes, the new heading really grabs your eye, but that's not what we're here for.

I think the whole ±«Óătv News website needs a whole new facelift. As a webmaster myself, I understand the grueling process of this. But with a company as huge as the ±«Óătv and with I'm sure a huge team behind you, that shouldn't be a problem.

You guys are doing a great job, though. Keep it up!

The ±«Óătv news site is my home page. I very much value the relatively impartial, up-do-date coverage of news around the world. I don't even bother to read the Times or the Daily Telegraph any more, let alone the other papers, they are so skewed to pushing buttons. With regards to the site changes, I'm mildly in favour of video, but the rest - podcasts etc. - is surplus to my requirements. My worry is that the cost of these new features will end up risking the thing that really matters, which is quality, impartial news coverage. But thank you for a great site - it wouldn't be my home page if it wasn't.

Using more flat colour on the top banner makes the page feel a bit harsher and visually poorer. The red 'show/hide' bars seem unpopular and I agree - they're not nice. The tension between text and audiovisual content seems to be growing as you seek to promote the latter. I'm not comfortable with the present format and feel you need to zone things more so it's easier to see what you want rather than having to make too many decisions. I think there's too much visual competition on the front page.
Aside from that - this is one of the best sites in the world - but I don't need to tell you that!

Hi:

I'm with the individual who stated that he consumes news primarily in written format, and so finds that the space devoted to ads for video and audio content is wasted. Can we not have a version of the front page without these annoying ads ?

I have found the changes rather annoying. Mainly stuff I don't want and it has slowed everything down so I am not even looking at the stuff I would like to see as it takes too long. A no frills version please.

There are literally tens of millions of people out there who aren't ready yet for "on-demand video","podcasts" or "blogs" - ordinary people who just want a well-written, properly-spelt and punctuated story, accompanied by a good news photograph (not a dog-eared library image). The ±«Óătv should go back to writing the sort of creative, original and distinctive news stories that built their now sadly-declining worldwide reputation for accuracy, trustworthiness and authoritativeness. The ±«Óătv always did the basics better than everybody else. That's still the right formula for a truly great ±«Óătv news service of the future - not gimmicky broadband video players.

I have not read the comments, but the first one caught my eye as "my sentiments exactly" - I am not very interested in the flash of video and audio. The banners and collapsable sections are wasting valuable and excellently used real estate for showing a global audience a lot of headlines.
I used to show news.bbc.co.uk to my colleagues and friends as an example of how a website should be designed. This new layout is an example of "Let ME (the ±«Óătv) tell you what you want." The old layout said "This is what the ±«Óătv knows, browse as you wish."
The ±«Óătv is blitzed by viewers who want reliable, reputable information which can be read on their lunch break. If I want razzle-dazzle I'll watch US FOX news.

Please, please, use more of the white space on the right! I can understand that maybe 2 years ago some monitors were still using the standard 800x600 resolution but surely that is no longer the case? If the plan is to add more feature-rich content then it would seem to me to be a good idea to use more of the space.

Like many other people commenting, I am annoyed by the video and audio collapsible sections. They always appear expanded in my browser. Although I can collapse them, it is a chore to do this every time I visit the site.

I'd rather have more links to stories. I know all about your interactive and streaming content. I use it occasionally. I don't need the site to keep advertising it to me.

In your obvious drive to utilise the latest technology and keep up with the fashionable trends of the web, you have abandoned that which made ±«Óătv News the best on the internet.

The website used to be filled with excellent journalism: well-written, interesting and accurate stories. This was easy to browse, thanks to the organised, clear and uncluttered layout of the page.

Your recent changes fail in two ways. Firstly, the features you are highlighting (video, audio, podcasts etc.), for me at least, are not as useful as good written journalism. Secondly, the way you have introduced them makes the page cluttered, ugly and slow.

I am sure your usage statistics show that these gimmicks are used by some, but please allow the rest of us easy access to good written stories, either by a separate version or increased customization.

I agree with David M's message 87.

Surely with all their expertise the ±«Óătv's team of designers can make their content resize to fill the screen. Then, maybe, we wouldn't have the many complaints about the cluttered look of the news page.

Oh, and add my name to the list of people who want to hide (permanantly) the 'video and audio news' features. If you want to make the page customisable, then make some options optional.

I'm not usually a fuddy duddy, but I don't like what you’ve done either - as most people are saying, the site is now far too cluttered; and the three red bars in the middle are intrusive and won't stay either open or closed when you refresh or go back (get rid of them please!).

Why not scrap all the changes and do just three simple things:

1) Put a large button called "Video News" on the left hand menu (which will take those who are interested to a page of all the video available).

2) Put a large button called "Audio News" on the left hand menu (which will take those who are interested to a page of all the audio available)

3) Along the top of the screen there is currently a "UK Version", "International Version" - so why not have an additional "Local Version" which just displays all the news, weather, audio and video for your region (and get rid of that silly red bar in the middle of the screen which only has three stories a picture of a cloud in it)!

I also don't like the Products and Services banner along the bottom of the screen - it takes up loads of space, but the content on the pages it links to rarely change. Please use that space for something more useful.

Finally, do you ever ask viewers/readers what they want BEFORE you make changes? Will you take action based on everyone's comments on here now? There was a storm of criticism over your changes to the ±«Óătv Weather, but the ±«Óătv arrogantly refused to listen, apologise or change it back to how it was. The result is that ALL my colleagues and friends now think that the website weather is useless and inaccurate and the TV weather unwatchable and confusing.

Please don't make the same mistake with the ±«Óătv's most valuable asset, the news.

Lots of lovely new features, but they appear to have slowed the site down dramatically. Every connection I have used (work, home, friends; none of them dial up) since the additions were implemented as been much much slower than the previous site. The low bandwidth, quick loading, instant access front page of essentials was one of the great things about the ±«Óătv News site. It's no longer the same.

Well, Changes are required to suit everyone taste, but in doing so, the touch of clarity which had been a +++ point of your website has been lost to some extent.

I fully appreciate and understand, what you would like to present, but please be sure to carry the same high standards in the changes made.

The front page is definitely slower to load (esp when using the back arrow)and the TV and radio bar is always out of date probably due to caching, so is therefore of little use. eg it is now 23:52 and the box is showing News at 10 and the World Tonight.

The rest is fine but there seems to be less news content.

So I suppose this all means I prefer it as it was.....

I don't like it. The three red bars which run across are U G L Y and should be shunted down further. I want to see an overview of the news around the world, not the news in 2 minutes. The bottom toolbar should join the sidebar.

I like the local news addition, but like many I think you need to add the ability to completely remove and customise the new video and audio sections and such.

To me, having the video and audio in the middle of the page just doesn't work. When I'm looking through the news, I'm looking for categories of stories that interest me; before I'd look at the headlines, the local news, then the science and technology headlines (because that's what I'm interested in). The layout made sense.

With the video news, a news story doesn't suddenly become interesting to me just because it's in video format. Thus when looking for stories that interest me, this box just becomes a hindrance. It makes far more sense to find a story I like, and then when reading it add a link to the side of the story with related video and audio.

Basically, I choose my news by subject, and then choose which format I want to see that story. Don't mix up the two categories by placing a format-specific box in the middle of the categories.

I too am annoyed by the imposition of the useless audio/video links in the middle of the real news links- I would also encourage forming a page with only text+optional image story pages, devoid of AV-type links. Real news only!

I like the following:

a) By and large the site update looks good, it still loads quickly on a slow connection and the content is excellent 99% of the time.
b) I wouldn't change the fixed-width layout as some commenters have suggested because for those with a screen size greater than 1024*768 the site would difficult to read without resorting to columns. Typographers will know what I mean.
c) Streamed video content is fine. For those that want better quality: More bandwidth costs more money. Do you want to pay extra for this?

But not happy with (and some old issues):

a) Content blocking for Licence payers that live overseas - As mentioned by others, much of the A/V content is unavailable to overseas readers (me!) so it's a waste of space on the International version.
b) Too dependent on JavaScript - The new features are a non-starter for me and about 5% of Internet users (quite a few if you do the sums).
c) Too dependent on cookies - Switching to the International version relies on cookies so that's another non-starter for me and many others.

Er, that's it other than letting some of the coding talent at the ±«Óătv develop a good Gecko-based stand-alone RSS reader. For this they would be considered true immortals.

Over the course of a normal week I work in two government departments and 1 private sector office. All have very different internet policies and access arrangements. ±«Óătv News is one consistently accessible web site. None of the three offices allow any sort of streaming content.

Therefore the video and audio streaming is totally useless to me and clogs up the page. I want to see as much of the current news as quickly as possible so I can decide what to read further. Remove the video and audio banners in the middle of the page the rest can stay for those who can access streaming material.

The local content is useful but I still check my local ±«Óătv news page for full details about what is happening in my area and the weather page for the full 5 day forecast (If I want to know about today’s weather, I look out the window!).

The search function has also changed in recent months. Before when you used the search box on the news page it brought up the news results first and then if you wanted “all of the ±«Óătv” you had to click the tag. Now it’s the other way round and means that when you want to search for a news story you have to make that extra click. Rather annoying as news stories are never in the top results of the “all of the ±«Óătv” search results.

I use Firefox for Mac and the new design does not show up properly at all. The headlines are all of the place in the middle of the page. The top and bottom of the page are OK but the middle is impossible to use. Who ever designed this technically, did not design it for all users. This did not happen with previous designs. The ±«Óătv has been my home page for years.

This biggest problem with the site at the moment is readbility. Why does the ±«Óătv persist in preparting copy comprising a series of one-sentence paragraphs? This makes the context hard to discern and is simply sloppy writing.

Because I thought the previous design was the epitome of good webpage design, I'm a little jarred by the redesign, I think the middle bars are a little troublesome, I understand the need to show more content without increasing page size but they seem well ugly, and I'm a typical lazy User, so I just don't use them to show/hide their stuff. Outside the UK the video is a hopeless dialup quality "mush" of pixels - I'd be happy to pay to watch broadband quality ±«Óătv programs, especially if it included not just news stories but docos and even drama (see "CBS innertube")!

This is just another one of the ±«Óătv's stealth policies - the banners are there for future advertising, probably initially for overseas visitors.

Why doesn't the ±«Óătv concentrate on providing content - the website's content is woeful and updated far too infrequently, much like News 24.

Let's have more news, updated more frequently. The ±«Óătv should also do more to promote grass roots sports and amateur clubs in the Sport section - yes, the Premiership etc. are important, but there's too little information and news on semi-pro and amateur sports, where the future stars are born, e.g. Amir Khan.

I pretty much agree with Ian Jones' post earlier on.

I understand why the masthead banner has been divided up, but it has seriously diluted the impact that it had and actually makes the column layout look worse. It is definitely too deep and is not a great use of screen real estate. The central auido/video menus are also problematic, looking pretty intrusive. The colour scheme is not even consistent with the localised content section (which I actaully quite like), which makes that whole region quite jarring. The show/hide behaviours are annoying too (you're using javascript to do it so why not add do the state handling with a cookies?).

The problem with making evolutionary changes like this is that there is a sense of them being rather haphardly bolted on. I think in the medium term a thorough restructuring of the front end is needed. One particular bugbear is that now, in an age of bigger screen resolutions, larger monitors and more ability to relativise layout through CSS, do you still peg the width of the pages to one suitable for an 800x600 display?

The page is definitely too busy - it's much harder to read and digest.

The "Around the World" links should be before the "don't miss.." and the awful red bars linking to audio and video. I think news-in-text ought to be the prime content on the web site, with the media streams secondary. As many have said, if I wanted to watch or listen I'd head for the TV or radio first, and wouldn't expect a rash of URL pointers in the middle of the TV screen.

The ultimate in naff, though, has to be the "xx,xxx pages read in the last minute" footer. It makes me think of roadside McDonald's in America and cheapens the whole experience. I appreciate it's Cool Thing to do if you're a programmer/designer who's figured out a way of measuring and displaying the statistic, but really, do the audience of the web site need to know it?

I'm not against progress, and I'm not against trying out new things, but I'm really not sure about the way the new design is breaking up the page.

I've got a "Listen live" thing at the top, "Products and services" at the bottom, and audio and video clips in the middle, and somewhere in all that there's some news.

How about just a little "X" button on each of those things which not only hides them for the current page, but stores in my cookie the fact that I've seen them, I'm aware of these nice services you're trying to showcase, but no, please make them stop now?

the banner at the top is a complete waste of space. please get rid of it as quickly as you put it there.

You have a lot of wasted space at the top of the page now. An area which is your prime real-estate is given over to the single line trail of something I'm probably not going to be interested in.

And are there really that many people who want breaking news updates by SMS? It sounds dull.

I much prefered having the link for the video screen at the top right. It was easy. Now it's hidden away halfway down the page as if you don't want people to find it (are you trying to save bandwidth or something?). With so many people wanting video now, this seems an odd change.

I don't like the show/hide javascript things. Just put it all on the page and we can scroll down through it much more quickly. It doesn't matter that the page will be 4 cms longer!

Sorry, too much emphasis on video. I want stories I can read in 30 seconds -- watching a talking head for 3 minutes adds nothing and is an impossibly slow way to get the news.

If I want News 24, I know where it is. The website should exploit the advantages of the web.

When you have your meeting with the deisgn team, you should ask them what feedback they had from their user testing, since the responses here are so consistent and obvious. There is no excuse for wasting ±«Óătv time and money on trendy gadgetry that nobody wants, and it should have been apparent from the early stages of feedback that nobody wants this.

Like it or not, the ±«Óătv website has attracted an enormous audience as a website for reading, and as everyone here says, we don't wnat to dip in to video and radio. Personally I prefer to browse a text site to get the news anyway, since it then up to me whether to spend 2 seconds reading a headline or 5 minutes reading a full report; I never think 'now I just wish I could see a video report', since the good bits of TV news are the reporter's words in any case.

I've just read a story ("Jersey man claims royal parentage"), clicked on a video link hoping for more details, and sat through a report that was almost word for word identical to what I'd just read. What a waste of time.

By all means organise a separate site for video delivery. But the main site need to focus on information content and organisation, not delivery mode.

Links that lead to no additional information aren't useful, and they don't become useful just because they link to video.

Having scrolled through all the comments posted so far I think I am going to be in the minority when I say I like the changes that have been made to the site. I am a regular user of the audio/video links and am pleased that these have been highlighted although I can understand the frustration of people who cannot make use of these options. I find the local news/sport/weather section really useful as I live and work in 2 different counties and also like to keep an eye on events in a 3rd area where my parents live. I notice this application is just a Beta, will there be the option to have more than 4 feeds in the final version? I suppose if I had to find something to moan about it would be that it would be useful if the configuration of the show/hide audio/video sections could be remembered between visits plus I am not sure that the top right box highlighting the different news services is necessary or a good use of page space. All in all 8/10!

Too much clutter and too much wasted space now. The page is getting longer and longer, and every new feature detracts from the actual reason for my visit (ie NEWS) and seems to whore all your other services.

While my scrollbar gets smaller, the wasted white space on the left and right columns get bigger.

Until a few months ago the ±«Óătv News frontpage was probably the best use of space versus content online, now it is a messy mish mash of clutter.

I think a massive improvement to the search facility on the website would be to allow search by/excluding sections.

For example, I've just searched for "Galway" & got a VERY long list of sports results.

I'm sure they're fascinating, but they're not what I'm looking for.

Dear Editors,
Regardless of the minor design tweaks you have made recently, the front page website at the moment is hideously cluttered - probably because you've increased the number of things it can do without conducting a complete redesign. I know that you do these things every couple of years, but the time is now very (if not over-) ripe.

The biggest failure here is the bit beneath the audio-visual bars. Here the site is unbelievably cluttered with lots of different headings each containing just one story. "Americas", for example, a section covering two continents, gets just one story, almost invariably irrelevant to one of the two large land-masses. What is the point? Anyone wanting to know about the Americas will be obliged to click through to another page anyway.

The second area in which the site falls down really badly at the moment is that the section "Also in the News" - the human interest story - featuring a picture, is much more prominent than "Other top stories". In short, a story that doesn't quite make the top three, but is, say, fourth most important, disappears into a cluster of links on the top right, while a photograph of something far less significant stands out below. Today the question of whether my town is one of the top 10 "obesity blackspots" overshadows Iran's defiance of the UN's nuclear deadline.

Finally (as regards the front page) you cannot be insensible that the left-hand column, containing links to other sections of the site, is becoming worthless because it has so many disparate functions and because some of these (particularly the foreign language links) require considerable scrolling to reach. I think you need to be more selective about what you link to from the NEWS website. I use this (https://news.bbc.co.uk) as my home page because I want to find out about the news. If I cared about the ±«Óătv's other sites and services as much, I would set the ±«Óătv corporation website as my homepage. You should prioritise more.

---

While I am writing such a long list of complaints about the news site, I cannot help observing that the new "Have your say" section is a bit of a failure. Because it is no longer properly moderated, many of the opinions that appear are simply offensive. It is strange that a supposedly serious news reporting service should devote its space (with links on the front page) to the frequently racist, sexist and homophobic - and almost invariably ill-informed - rants of the general public. Why don't you leave this function to other websites? And if you must persevere with this chatroom section, it surely needs a thorough redesign and re-think. The lack of a system of threads and the tortuously slow moderation of sensitive debates means that there is even more repetition on the ±«Óătv than on other comparable websites.

Otherwise, keep up the good work.

With best wishes,
Patrick Driscoll

Having just read a summary of the comments, I see thet the Beeb has still missed one of the most important points to come out of the feedback - the question of why they still insist on only using 800 pixels (or just under, strictly speaking) for their news.

What is the point of adding all this whizzy content making the page bigger & bigger if you are still only using as little as half of the available space.

Is it too much to expect that a site can either detect an appropriate resolution, or at least offer higher res. versions that use more of the available space.

It's not like larger resolution is a new thing any more, so what possible reason could they have for not using it? After all, other big Websites like Amazon & John Lewis seem to have managed it.

Ant thoughts on this?

The white borders in the header are revolting, kill them now for a smoother look on the top bar. Moving the logos around etc is fine, but anything but those white borders. Have you considered using subtly different background shades to delineate these sections?

Also, how come the international users get a nice tabbed effect nav, whereas us UK users get the horrible gray tiles? Yuck.

***Variable Width***

By far the most important aspect still needs to be implemented.

Look at - fills the screen, and shrinks with the browser.

As a software developer myself - this is NOT difficult to implement. Consider using percentage values in your css file!

Please do something about the search! The colouring of the ±«Óătv News search box implies that the search will be performed on news stories, but instead performs a search on the whole ±«Óătv site, requiring extra interation to just get the News results. I know the ±«Óătv can do better than that...

Like some others, I hadn't actually realised there had been a major update to the site. The two things I did notice were the most read/emailed section, which is nice, and the audio/video section, which I don't use often as I look at the website from work, but just happily ignored so far. I didn't even bother minimalising it once, I just didn't look at it, and didn't find that too difficult to do! I do not have a tv however, nor a radio, and when I get home I am quite happy to watch videos, so it's nice there's a central place where to find them.

I'd have no problem with the enhanced prominence of the audio & video sections.....if the reality of these offerings in any way matched up to the promise, or what is available elsewhere. Is crummy, buffering little video clips (mostly Real Media the last time I checked - yeugh!) the best the 21st Beeb can muster?

Compare the video experience of YouTube, Google Video etc. and tell me you're proud of your service's performance.

And once again, because it bears repeating - Real? Is this 1998 or summat? It is a sad day when my wife's recent Dell laptop (all patched and up to date, but otherwise as it left the factory) can't even be bothered to render what is being trickled towards it by your "mighty" servers.

Other than that, the whole design is just ever so slightly worse than before. I miss the coloured sport, weather etc. links (still available on the Weather pages I see!) and the whole thing just looks a bit more cluttered (a popular word, looking at the other comments).

And someone might want to spread the word round the ±«Óătv that the average screen resolution is ever so slightly more than 800 x 600 nowadays. How about some dynamic resizing of your pages so my lovely 19" LCD flat screen gets more than about 50% usage on your site?

Positives? I like the most read and most emailed bit, it is interesting to see what people in various bits of the world view as important. And lets be honest, you still have a long way to go before your site design is anything like as bad as most other sites.

Just one question, is anyone else struggling with the speed the new pages are taking to load?

I've had the ±«Óătv site set as my homepage for ages, but now it really crawls and even when I'm just going back in my browser. Does anyone know how much bigger the files are these days, and could they be slimmed down at all?

Apart from that I realise that interactivity and video are bigger and bigger parts of online, but I think you're a little heavy on them right now and I think they take up proportionately too much space. Although in time, I don't suppose you'll have to promote them so much because users will become more savvy. Hope so anyway.