New BBC navigation
Posted Dec 07, 2005 in Web Design.
The British Broadcasting Corporation has performed a minor redesign to the header and primary navigation of their website. The changes are particularly obvious on their news site. Here's a partial screenshot of the older version:
The new version alters the primary navigation to give the appearance of tabs, and there are now radio buttons to control whether the user views the UK or World editions of the site:
I think the new version is much better than the old. Some of the wishy-washy links, such as “Where I Live” have vanished. The old A-Z index has been dropped from the navigation, presumably because the search facility makes it largely redundant. I'd like to see some sort of hover behavior on the tabs, but otherwise I think the new look is great.
Comments
The Beeb seems to have got this web thing figured out quite nicely. In this case I couldn't care less about validation issues, it would be a nightmare for a collection of sites as big as theirs anyway. The whole point is that it looks great and works well. It is one of the few corporate sites that I have always felt right at home on.
Nice work Aunty!
Posted by Adrian on Dec 08, 2005.
Certainly more obvious that they are links now. It would appear that after some serious reshuffling a couple of years back (I left when the online dept brought in shift patterns!) the design team are being allowed to pretty the place up a bit.
Posted by Marc Jones on Dec 26, 2005.