15 Dec 2003 | Tk said...

How is it that a major media outlet can’t find a way to set a default background color on their webpages? Is it really that hard?

15 Dec 2003 | The Scholar said...

Just by doing a quick lookover of the site I wouldn't miss anything about it if it disappeared. It seems like it was more of a tweak job than anything. I would be interested to see if they even used designers or their interns to change the site based on "customer feedback".

15 Dec 2003 | Mike B said...

Looks to me more like they tweaked the site to fit into the new design format that's been rolled over all the online MSN services (ie: XP colour scheme, a folder tab line across the top of the main content area, inter-MSN links at top left, intra-site links down the side.) Hotmail's new design came out a couple of weeks ago, and now this.

15 Dec 2003 | Benjy said...

I find the arrows in the left navigation to be confusing because they do not designate rollover expanded menus, as I'd expected them to. That seeems to be the norm for such icons, and MSN itself even utilizes it on their Slate site.

15 Dec 2003 | SU said...

Still riddled with tables and does not validate in the least... For a site with such high traffic, leaner HTML could certainly have a huge impact on bandwidth usage. The current HTML weight is around 39k, even before the graphics have loaded.

15 Dec 2003 | Mike said...

Another example of a big news site going all XHTML...

Oh wait a sec. Its not.

They don't even bother putting a doctype on the top of their pages. Forget XHTML, I couldn't even get the site to validate under HTML 4.01 Transitional. I mean, really, how difficult is that?

And (surprise, surprise), it doesn't even pass Section 508 guidelines. Forget about WAI-WCAG Checkpoints.

Well okay, it doesn't validate, its not accessible, does it at least behave well across browsers? Umm... no. In fact, out of the three browsers I tested it on (Mac IE5, Camino, Safari), it looked the best in Safari. On all three there is an unneeded an unneccessary horizontal scroll bar, elements cut for no reason, spacing and text issues, etc. etc. And in all three browsers the DHTML menus on the left don't rollout. Well, that's useful.

I took the liberty of posting screenshots of the site in Safari, Camino, and Mac IE5.

15 Dec 2003 | Darrel said...

No crazy flyouts! Yay!

Forgot a background color! Blah.

As for those of you complaining about a lack of consideration for web standards, let's not forget what the 'MS' in MSNBC stands for. ;o)

15 Dec 2003 | sergio said...

Unsurprisingly, they've managed to screw up the most basic of layouts. In Firebird, the message from the Editor shows up under the left nav bar (and is fluid rather than fixed width as in explorer), and the red rollovers for the links on the top of the page don't work.

I know MSNBC belongs to Microsoft, but it's like they're actually making an effort to break stuff in other browsers.

MSNBC has always had pretty decent journalism without a marked pro-Microsoft bias. Too bad their design team doesn't equal the professionalism of their Editorial staff.

15 Dec 2003 | pb said...

While the old home page was pretty awful, the rest of the Roger Black-designed site was as good or better than the redesign, imo.

15 Dec 2003 | Brad Hurley said...

Norhing related to Web design, but just something I noticed: A couple of the pictures of Saddam Hussein that were on the NY Times today had red-eye. MSNBC used one of those same pictures on the home page of the their site today, but the red-eye was removed.

Maybe it was just an oversight on the part of the Times, but I'd like to think that they wanted to show the photos exactly as taken in the field, without any manipulation, an unaltered record. Someone at MSNBC, on the other hand, must have made a conscious decision to remove the redeye, favoring aesthetics and commercial concerns over journalistic accuracy.

As photo manipulation goes, removing redeye is about as minimal as you can get, but I still think it was interesting to see how these two news organizations dealt with the same picture.

15 Dec 2003 | Brad Hurley said...

Actually I just checked again and his eyes in the NY TImes don't look as red as I remembered them this morning...maybe it was the angle that I was viewing the photos on my laptop. But the MSNBC photo is actually quite a bit lighter than the NY Times one, suggesting that they brightened up the photo as well as (possibly) removing red-eye.

15 Dec 2003 | Will said...

Underwhelming.

It's like Microsoft wants to waste money on bandwidth, flaunt the standards they helped write and make their design team look like amateurs.

I just don't get it.

15 Dec 2003 | One of several Steves said...

Not much there that I'd say is an improvement. Home page isn't quite as busy as it used to be, but I find the navigation arrows annoying for the same reason someone else did - especially in light of the way their nav used to work (which I rather liked for quick access to stories). I miss the large-type lede too.

15 Dec 2003 | pb said...

I'd like to think that they wanted to show the photos exactly as taken in the field, without any manipulation, an unaltered record.

Well, introducing red to the eyes is a bigger manipulation than taking it out.

16 Dec 2003 | Elaine said...

Opera 7.22 screenshot -- there's no design there!

but y'know, it does kinda look like a blog that way.... ;)

16 Dec 2003 | JD said...

They also didn't bother to do redirects for existing pages, so previously bookmarked pages just get sent to the msnbc home page. This seems to be a particularly Microsoftian trait.

16 Dec 2003 | Ian said...

For those who wonder how Opera can render MSNBC so badly, the answer is simple. MSNBC browser-sniffs and sends Opera content different to most other browsers! This is a rather dirty tactic, and REALLY dumb way to build web sites.

If they actually used (much simpler) standards properly this silly game wouldn't be necessary...

16 Dec 2003 | Benjy said...

MSNBC also has decided to stop supporting MacOS and Linux with it free video, according to Boing Boing.

17 Dec 2003 | c3o said...

Finally. I think it is definitely an improvement. MSNBC used to be one of the ugliest, looks-like-1997 high profile sites (especially since the addition of the nearly empty, space-wasting MSN tab bar a couple months ago) on the web, and it certainly won the prize of the most horrible flyout menu in the history of mankind (dozens of levels deep, covering just about the entire screen in some levels). I'd link it, but the wayback machine seems to be down.

In fact I used to cite MSNBC as one of the worst web sites of all, right next to icq.com, which has recently redesigned just their front page in CSS, but as a site is still a pretty horrible mess.

I agree that the arrow next to the menu items is confusing, since it's not a flyout menu anymore.

19 Dec 2003 | Know how said...

Anyone here know how to read, or, oh, I don't know... click a link?

This from MSNBC.com (how ironic):

The news menu is an integral part of MSNBC.com, but it has been temporarily disabled as we finalize the rollout of our design and publishing tool. We are in the process of enhancing the news menu to dynamically update whenever a change is made to a story on the site. This is an improvement over our old system that was updated once an hour.

22 Dec 2003 | Clark MacLeod said...

Does anyone like, what did someone call it, a "fly-out menu" to display news headlines? There is a news site here in Taiwan that uses the same function and I just don't get the value of using it. I know many of the engineers that manage the projects I work on love it but is it in anyway advantageous over simply putting the headlines on the page.

Otherwise, the site seems so under-designed and just plain ugly. It must have been painful to be a designer on that project.

23 Dec 2003 | Don Schenck said...

I like the flyouts.