New MSNBC.com live
Don Day November 11th, 2007
UPDATE MSNBC.com launched most of its new design Friday night, and it’s a fairly drastic change among news sites - with a raft of new ideas and techniques. “Though we are in a bit of a remodeling period as we continue through the weekend working to make sure the site works as it should, we have rolled out many of the changes we’ve been promising all week,” blogs editor in chief Jennifer Sizemore on AlphaChannel, MSNBC.com’s new blog.
The top of the home page features a flexible module that constantly changes format and layout - no more locked down poster graphic and eight-10 headlines like before.
The site’s navigation doesn’t start until after that top story module, giving more room across the top. An “Explore” box features several talker stories, with additional tabs for video, pictures and community.
A series of horizontal module boxes feature news, business, entertainment, health, etc. Users can change the order, and choose zero, five, 10 or 15 headlines.
Inside the site, the story pages feature the new wrapper and navigation, but the content hole is largely unchanged - with the same look as before the redesign. The site’s home page features very few ads - but that’s made up for here - with 15 ad units from my count (including text based ads, but excluding the marketplace box).
Overall, the site made big steps from a design standpoint, while keeping some of its core elements the same - which should make the transition for users fairly straightforward.
As with most any redesign, the majority of the comments left on the site’s blog are negative.
19 Comments Add your own
1. Greg | November 10th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
not a big fan of sites that have to fill every space on the screen. CNN has the best design and I wish every website would look that CNN. Then again it’s better than the 90’s everyone is on dail-up look. Not bad!
2. Uh-huh | November 10th, 2007 at 6:03 pm
“I wish every website would look that CNN.”
Kill me now.
3. Michael Gay | November 10th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
I like the new logo, although I think they will see a major drop-off of navigation usage with the dark top. My eye jumps right past it. Maybe that was their goal, but seems strange to split the page like that.
I really, really like the categories nav on the left. It’s a much improved version of the previous fly-out navigation. I love navigation that includes topical content, like headlines. Great design!
4. invitedmedia | November 10th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
hurry!
check out that tech crunch article that cites big blue’s contention that “the end of advertising as we know it” is only 5 years out.
frankly, it’s more like 2 years out (or less), but i’ve been waiting all year to use that “lack of customer touch points” line that some wit used when explaining why they wouldn’t participate in a self-serve ad gig that goog was putting together.
5. Anonymous | November 10th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Generally, I like it a lot. To nitpick, the side navigation is slow to fully load, the smaller headlines could stand to be an extra pixel larger, and somehow I managed to get it so that pressing the up/down/pgup/pgdn/home/end buttons just made the page jiggle and return to the same position. That hasn’t happened again, though, and I haven’t figured out how to replicate it. Overall, I think the site is colorful but professional, organized and uncluttered, dynamic and interesting. Good job.
6. discreet_chaos | November 11th, 2007 at 12:31 am
I have to say that I’ve never been a fan of the flyout headlines. It’s mostly because I look to menus for navigation and not for content, but other than that little pet peeve and the fact that since I don’t care about sports, so that little sports box at the top is a waste for me, I can’t really say anything negative about the redesign.
Of course, I guess that I also have to say that MSNBC has never really been the first site that I turn to for news and I usually only visit the site to get to specific stories or for the individual NBC/MSNBC shows, so maybe only time will tell if the personalization angle is enough to get me to turn to MSNBC more often or on a more regular basis.
7. discreet_chaos | November 11th, 2007 at 1:05 am
BTW: Is it MSNBC that’s trying to install the “Viewpoint Media Player” from an “unverified publisher” or are my AdAware and Spybot missing something?
8. Dave | November 11th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Not liking it… and I’ve been a HUGE fan of MSNBC.com for years.
For one, I don’t do the customized stuff. They have all of these customizable features yet I’m just too lazy to care. I log to browse the stories and what’s going on.
Also, it just seems too cluttered. Like it was designed by a management team that wanted everything and more thrown in. They might as well put NBC Entertainment programming and push Microsoft Windows Vista on there as well. I mean logging on to hotmail from the site?! Was that on the original MSNBC? I don’t remember noticing it if it was.
I get the whole “spectrum” positioning statement but seriously, the rainbow color spectrum looks very mid 90s. Granted, graphics are more matters of taste than usability but still…
The more I look at it, the more I realize what’s bothering me. The Top Stories section. I think if they moved the “categories” navigation up and organized the top stories section like the sections below it, I would really like the site.
I recognize people put a lot of work into this and had I been a part of it, I would be proud of the work, but as a user, I am not too happy with this update. Who knows, maybe this will work out and my opinion will be worthless. Congrats on the relaunch and I look forward to seeing the local news section.
9. Don Day | November 11th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
The Hotmail link has pretty much always been around (it was in the MSN strip across the top before), and the thing about the customization is that if you are lazy - it doesn’t matter. It’s passive customization… if you don’t do anything, you’ll still get content.
10. Anonymous | November 11th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Also, get rid of the rainbow peacock logo, it’s so 1986.
11. Dave | November 11th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Very true Don. I’ve been messing with the site a little more but I’m still not sold on it. It takes time for this stuff to grow on you.
12. Charles | November 11th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
Well, it definately looks like a MSN site now…
13. Greg | November 11th, 2007 at 11:41 pm
I like the customization but I wish they would do AJAX-style customization (moving items around) like Google does (then again, this is Microsoft we’re talking about). Also, notice the “NBC News Channel” under videos now, guess bye-bye MSNBC.
And earlier by what I meant by CNN’s style was that they have fixed-columns and the content is spaced out evenly, unlike many TV stations that use Internet Broadcast where you have-to-make- sure-there-every-space-has-to-be-filled. Better yet, CNN is a bad example, LR design is better.
14. Eirik Wallem Fossan | November 12th, 2007 at 9:26 am
But wait. Flash Video on a MSN site? What up with that?
15. Dave | November 12th, 2007 at 12:24 pm
Has Silverlight been adopted by anyone? I figured with the .net framework, that would bring in somebody.
16. Anonymous | November 12th, 2007 at 5:02 pm
Actually, the rainbow logo is more like 1966
17. Kzark | November 12th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Quote from Discreet_chaos: “BTW: Is it MSNBC that’s trying to install the “Viewpoint Media Player” from an “unverified publisher” or are my AdAware and Spybot missing something?”
Viewpoint Media Player is installed on user’s computers during the install process of many types of software (AOL IM, some Adobe products, Netscape, etc.) It is a ad media player. If you are getting a call to this add-on, it is because you already have it installed. You can go to “Add/Remove Programs” in your Control panel and remove it to have this issue go away.
MSNBC is not installing any add-ons or software on your computer, though an ad on the website may be making a call to it.
18. Jim Ray | November 12th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Re: the “Viewpoint Media Player” - this is actually a browser plug-in, commonly installed by other applications like AOL Instant Messenger, probably without you even knowing it. The plug-in can then be triggered by sites, however msnbc.com does *not* use this player in our site (I work at msnbc.com, btw). The most likely culprit is an ad that’s improperly coded, we’re working on tracking it down, killing it, and making sure that it never happens again.
However, if you’re seeing this message, Viewport Media Player is already installed on your computer, probably because you also have something like AIM installed as well. You can un-install from Windows using Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs > Viewport Media Player.
19. Anon | November 13th, 2007 at 9:40 am
I actually like it - compared with Google news and the now plain and non-comprehensive Yahoo news. I like the customizable feature.
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