The new BBC homepage

Matt's spot-on with the 2002 classic. This, however, looks exceedingly retro. Hopefully it's something to commemorate the current 10-year anniversary of the thing.

I'm reminded of the wonderful song "Make the logo BIGGER":

www.creativetechs.com/iq/make_the_logo_bigger_the_song.html

Even with big logos it's 100x better than the current version

Looks like I've had my fifteen minutes of fame by being snapped in the photo on the left :) Otherwise this was a great design I think, and though I did have some further comments that time ran out for, I think an admirable job has been done on a very difficult task of 'opening up' such a vast website.

@gareth langely if anything I would probably make the logo a smidge smaller - it looks like it's breaking exclusion rules for the marque there. But, yeah this is peanut gallery stuff. Let's see what it's like to *use* (if anyone really uses homepages anymore???)

yeah, homepages shomepages.... Of far more importance is who's the lovely lady trying to sustain interest in the bottom left of the photo?

@adactio. er, hang on. the colour of the mast head is pulled from the image? What about the blue box next to Her Maj the queen? Does that change as well?

Now I know a thing or two about putting images in that flipping box having done it for 5 years, and somedays you have to go with some Cbeebies neon extravaganza.. what's it gonna do then?

Bring back the Glass Wall!

Good job I never go to the BBC homepage proper - as far as I'm concerned, news.bbc.co.uk is it.

I like the clock. It's cute - takes me back to Programmes for Schools nostalgia. Though... what's the point of it? My computer, mobile, desk phone, watch and wall clock tell me what time it is.

uhh........ why is there a clock?...... well 1995..... i bet it's a java aplet!

Thanks for all the comments :) We, of course, welcome your feedback.

We hope to be doing an open beta in the very near future. Then you can click and play to your hearts content. ;)

@ simiant - Nope its Flash.

@ eyedorpper - there is a predefined set of palletes, ~16 I think. There's also a feature we've put in that you'll like and used to wish for ;)

Hi Frazor, hope you're well. Flash eh?

16 palettes eh? that's 2 less than it had in 2002 ;-)

A feature that I'll like and used to wish for eh? Blimey, there were so many? Well, lemmie guess. Erm, Flash Video, a next generation rotorvator? Proper user customermisable areas and suck in promo's from other areas of the site? Free beer? come on, tell me.

Interesting stuff.

Personally, I would have liked to have seen a Netvibes/iGoogle style customization on the front page - allowing me to snap in and out the parts of the BBC (and maybe even non-BBC, but a secondary feature) that I want to stay across.

Maybe that's what is there -- it says "customize this page". reminds me of:

* No customization on BBC
* MyBBC
* Close MyBBC = no customization
* Now Customize on BBC front page...

it's a veritable tennis match of site specification switcher-roo!

I'm not sure what resolution Ian's (and I'm sure it's Ian's desktop, as he's running Ubuntu) laptop is running at but I think there's too little above the fold.

Finally, the search is nice and is reminiscent of internal suggestions of having the BBC homepage "just like Google's homepage" (ie just a search engine). However, BBC search engine needs to be radically improved to make this a feasible user flow.

All good, though. I was not a fan of the current site - other than the changes in hue when you clicked on various blocks. Never sure whether that was an easter egg or not??!?!

PS: When will the BBC News Website be re-done? It's still the same design I helped create and produce back in 2002 --- eeek!

@ eyedropper - Its still very much a work in progress... considering we've developed this inside of 3 months, we achieved a lot. As for those features, stay tuned ;)

@ dotben - its not Ians laptop and its projecting at 1024x768, there is indeed a fair bit behind that 'customise' button, and we are working heavily on the future content behind that. Equally the search team have a lot of work going on too, so hopefully that will be folded in later.

Of course, actually USING this homepage would be rather better than seeing a poor-quality photo of a projection of it. That would give you rather a better idea of whether it's any good. (All BBC staff currently can use it. Hit that 'feedback' link, folks.)

There's a lot of really neat stuff in it - I love the clock and other nice retro touches. I'll blog about it when I'm able to. But I'm not. Not yet.

Easy on the clock people.... Personally I think its more about style/heritage than function.

Please note: Being the author of the clock has no impact or steer on my comment! :-)

I'm overjoyed to see the clock on the top-right hand corner. I hope it changes its colour scheme on weekend mornings, for old time's sake.

Actually - when you click on the clock, does anything happen? Just wondering :)

If that's a 1024x768 projection, then does that mean that the layout is liquid? (The BBC wouldn't dare drop 800x600 support, surely?)

Am playing with it now- some neat features, but some that are either tricky to get into, or offer a little less than you'd imagine, especially around customisation.

I liked the glass wall too- excellent booklet came out about it.

Thanks for the info Keith. Seems odd that they drop 800width support on the homepage, even though every other page on the site is made to fit that width.

The semi-liquid (background image and nav) layout of www.bbc.co.uk/earth/nature/uk/ is pretty nice, and it would have been good to see the BBC lead the way to a new generation of liquid design.

Wonder if the lack of BBC banner (grey top nav) is an indication that this will be dropped site-wide too?

As an aside, when I was at Virgin Radio, I dropped 800width support in 2004, when less than 10% of their visitors were using 800x600 or smaller.

The beta for the this new layout is live and worth having a play with.

Having the content change the underlying colour scheme of the whole page is rather disconcerting, but the clock is a nice throwback.

BTW, what's happened to the OSX menubar?