Independent.ie relaunch
Wednesday, May 16th, 2007The Irish Independent has just relaunched its website, Independent.ie, which heralds the end to registration and the beginning of a far more interactive site for the national newspaper.
This follows the relaunch of The Irish Times website Ireland.com which happened in November of last year and is another step forward for the online presence of Irish print media, which has been lagging way before its international counterparts.
The most striking thing about the site on first arrival is the thick red banner that sits just below the now neater site logo. The banner contains a single image and strapline relating to a particular story, but does seem perhaps a little bit bare given the size of it - that said, having too much text and image on it would probably make it even more distracting so that may be the logic there.
The very top of the page has some nice information like date, day and weather gauge / temperature (does this relate to the reader’s location, using IP as a way of placing them? Mine seems to always say Dublin, anyway).
The newspaper content runs down the left-hand side and seems to sit well - not looking too squashed but still allowing for plenty of space to its right. Beside this there are some novel features on the front page - an “editors choice” column, a breaking news box with independent tabs for various sections, a “most popular” and “most emailed” article list, a “Today in Pictures” section and some linked quotes to they day’s opinion pieces.
The links on the main page to IN&M’s classifieds websites makes sense for the company and adds a nice interconnectivity that The Irish Times has attempted to do on its own site. That said the Loadzajobs search box, while a good idea, takes a whole column to itself despite it being quite small… why not put search boxes for the other classified sites too?
The drop down menus for the main site and the newspaper itself are a little easier to use than before and bring you to the same clean layout for each of the paper’s sections (business, world news etc.).
The Entertainment section is the only one that breaks the site’s format with a colour scheme of black, pink and grey as opposed to white and red (and I do like the scrollable images for that particular section on the main page).
One of the better additions to the site is the ability to comment on articles - although it doesn’t seem to be activated on all articles at the moment, including some of the opinion pieces, where it would probably be most useful.
Damien’s request for RSS feeds on the main page has also been granted, with a button at the bottom of each section.
Overall the makeover moves Independent.ie back in direct competition with Ireland.com which had been steaming ahead until now… both sites have their unique functions - Ireland.com ahead of the fold with blogging and Independent.ie ahead with comment-enabled stories - but Independent.ie makes up for anything it lacks by throwing open its doors completely, dropping even the free subscription that existed before. I wonder if they’ll continue to block Kevin Myers’ weekly column from the website, however.
Hopefully this is just the beginning of changes there - I expect Independent.ie to keep adding features to the site just like The Irish Times has done recently.
Fingers crossed those at Thomas Crosbie will take note of this - their sites have been in need of a makeover for some time and The Examiner and Sunday Business Post are now the only two national broadsheets with very dated websites.
Blogs elsewhere
May 17th, 2007 at 12:32 am
Jaysis. You wait ages for a post, then three come along at once…
May 17th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
Tell me about it!
Had a really busy few days and completely neglected the blog - things seem to work here in waves - a week of loads of blogging, a week of nothing!
Good to see your own blog back up - must add a link…
May 17th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
When flicking thought the three of these I’m getting confused about which site I’m on…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/
http://www.independent.ie/
I think the three main pages of the sites are far too busy and lack the structure of sites with… [ menu | content | menu ]
And just because you can fill the whole screen up doesn’t mean you should.
The story pages and the section pages look ok, my main problem is with the main/front/homepage.
The use of so much small text on the Indo’s site is a joke (so is such on Village.ie).
May 17th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
I agree - The Guardian and Indo sites look very similar - I think the colour scheme on the Times site gives it some distance even though the format is quite similar.
I don’t agree that the sites are too busy - there’s a lot going on on them, but that’s just reflective of the service they’re providing. I think everything is well organised enough to stop it becoming too confusing. I don’t think there’s any content for the sake of it, either.
I can see the small text being a problem for people with poor eyesight though - at least the IT has a built in text increase/decreaser.
May 18th, 2007 at 1:45 am
I’m going to get bad eyesight with the increasing number of sites using below the normal text size!
The homepage of the Indo is far too busy - mainly down to layout, far too much content on the one page, text size (the smaller text allows more to be bunched in), and moving averts as well as the number of ads and their placements.
Excluding menus there is more then 60 text links to articles, if that not too busy I don’t know what is.
Including drop down menus, there is over 300 links on the home page.
Is this Myers’ weekly column on this page?…
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/
May 18th, 2007 at 11:25 am
I don’t think counting the number of links means anything to be honest - it’s a website and the links can be spread out over a mile or squashed into 10cm of page.
The menus themselves are well organised and I don’t think they’re too busy. The columns on the right (bar the complete waste of space on the far right) are well managed and seperated and while the text is small the actual sections are not bunched up too much. The same applies on the main column of the day’s news content - the text is small, no doubt, but the division between articles and sentences is large enough to make each piece obvious, to me at least.
Not sure what you mean by moving adverts (the entertainment thing? If so, that’s move manually and wouldn’t be the same as a flashing banner).
That looks like Myers’ column alright, but it’s from the 10th - not sure if he’s had one since then but if so they seem to be putting them up a week late.
May 18th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
There are more then 60 text (ie headline) links to articles alone – could you image sixty headlines appearing on a newspaper’s front page? No and one of the main rules in web design is keep it simple. With the Indo, there’s simply too much content swashed into the one page of its current size.
You’ve agreed that the text is too small, if the text was the normal size you’d be scrolling down for a while to get bottom. Thus, again, much content swashed in.
As for the adverts, I’m talking about how the advert are Flash and contain movement rather then their position moving. It adds ever more nose and clutter to the page in a way that decreases the user experience.
I think a lot of it has to do with focus of the eye – just because most users now use 1024 x 768 doesn’t mean it’s best for websites to fill as much as possible. For me at least, the Indo’s homepage looks better when I shrink the browser to about 800 across (ie until I can’t see the vertical ad).
I would say it’s just me but the feedback they are getting is mixed at best…
http://www.independent.ie/service/we-have-changed-677653.html?startindex=0
May 18th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
There are more then 60 text (ie headline) links to articles alone – could you image sixty headlines appearing on a newspaper’s front page? No and one of the main rules in web design is keep it simple. With the Indo, there’s simply too much content swashed into the one page of its current size.
You’re comparing a newspaper to a website - that doesn’t make any sense. A website is not limited like a newspaper is and its very nature allows for additional content.
The rule of web design is to keep it simple, but that doesn’t mean limiting content, it just means presenting it in a simple way. I think they’ve done that.
The amount of links on a page is irrelevant as long as they’re well spaced and well planned - the only poor planning is the text size.
You’ve agreed that the text is too small, if the text was the normal size you’d be scrolling down for a while to get bottom. Thus, again, much content swashed in.
Don’t mean to be pedantic, but what’s “normal size”?
Having to scroll a little more isn’t a big deal and it would at most double the length of that page, which isn’t too much. I don’t think they’d need to cut content if they increased text size.
As for the adverts, I’m talking about how the advert are Flash and contain movement rather then their position moving. It adds ever more nose and clutter to the page in a way that decreases the user experience.
I’ve looked at the site in Firefox and IE7 and I can’t see these ads. If there are flash ads then yes, I agree that they’re a pain, but I haven’t seen them so far.
May 19th, 2007 at 2:15 am
The more I look around the site the more I release, my main problem with the home page is probably just the text size. But the text size can and is having the knock-on effect of making the homepage cluttered.
Websites and print may both allow for additional content on the one page; however, that does not mean such is always of benefit.
I think the newspaper – news website comparison is actually a valid one, when you think about it a huge amount of basic design rules apply to both – simplicity and clarity in design and layout, black text on while background and images generally improve articles in both.
The amount of links on one page is very relevant; anybody who has ever made half a decent job at a web directory or database could tell you that.
“The rule of web design is to keep it simple, but that doesn’t mean limiting content” – it might not mean limiting the content but it does mean limiting the amount of content on any one page. For an extreme example, Google’s homepage design is simple because of lack of content. Anyway, simplicity goes out the window when they use such a small text size.
As for what I mean by normal text size – I mean the normal text size used for the majority of text on the majority of webpages around the world. I mean the main font size used on Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo etc.
Again my main problem is probably just the text size.
May 19th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Websites and print may both allow for additional content on the one page; however, that does not mean such is always of benefit.
Well the way I see it, until now the problem with Irish newspapers’ websites has been the practice of making them a carbon copy of their print editions - the belief amongst editors/management for a long time seemed to be that having a website means transcribing each day’s edition verbatim on the internet and nothing else. One look at any TCH website shows you that with only the Breaking News links offering anything unique.
While the absolute freedom of the internet should not encourage designers to put absolutely everything onto one page they should not feel as confined as subs do and should be more willing to experiment once they’re not just piling it all in there.
I think the newspaper – news website comparison is actually a valid one, when you think about it a huge amount of basic design rules apply to both – simplicity and clarity in design and layout, black text on while background and images generally improve articles in both.
Well a news website should be more straight forward than, say, an entertainment website but I don’t think the Independent has crossed that line at all. Yes, there are a lot of links but they’re well defined and sectioned, many are backed up with images and not even the “most mailed/popular” article list is too cluttered - yes it’s not the prettiest thing but it’s clear where each link starts and ends and as a quick reference list rather than an indicator of the paper’s entire content it serves its purpose well.
The amount of links on one page is very relevant; anybody who has ever made half a decent job at a web directory or database could tell you that.
But the only time there are any more than three links without additional text or images is the most popular lists and while the text is small they’re well spaced enough to avoid being bunched.
“The rule of web design is to keep it simple, but that doesn’t mean limiting content” – it might not mean limiting the content but it does mean limiting the amount of content on any one page. For an extreme example, Google’s homepage design is simple because of lack of content. Anyway, simplicity goes out the window when they use such a small text size.
But Google doesn’t need content on its front page - its purpose lends itself to such bare simplicity and adding content to it is just gimmicky and distracting from the purpose of the site itself - Google is a search engine unlike Yahoo! which attempts to mark itself as a hub.
As for what I mean by normal text size – I mean the normal text size used for the majority of text on the majority of webpages around the world. I mean the main font size used on Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo etc.
Fair enough - as I’ve said before I agree that the text is too small, but I don’t think the site design needs to be changed along with that - a little bit more scrolling is fine with me.
May 22nd, 2007 at 7:52 pm
Anyone know where the archive link has gone?
May 23rd, 2007 at 12:49 am
Anyone know where the archive link has gone?
It looks like it’s gone completely, at least for the time being.
Shame really - although I hope it leads to a better archive system than they had before.
June 8th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
After more use, I’ve likened to the Guardian’s home page a good bit (although I still think there’s a bit too much content there), but I’m still not liking the mess and small text on independent.ie.