CNET's News.com has a new
broadband beta site
that features some homepage design components I really like. Instead of
just one dominant piece of artwork to accompany the top story, there
are several. To the right of the artwork is a headline and descriptive
blurb describing the story. Below that is a list of "Top Headlines."
Mouse over any of those headlines, and the main artwork and the
headline/blurb change to one of the other top headlines.
Below the area for the top stories is another horizontal strips of
smaller article promotions. The header above those is "Daily
Spotlight," and there are "Next" and "Previous" buttons to the right;
click those and the four featured articles change in a rotation.
This idea of featuring "hidden content" on a webpage is controversial,
but count me in the camp that likes the concept. Let's face it, the
computer screen does not give designers a large canvas to work with
(unless they're willing to require users to scroll down a lot to find
stuff). So I think we do need to find creative ways to "get more" out
of the initial screen that a website visitor sees.
News.com isn't the first to try such an experiment, but it's one of the better implementations I've seen to date.
Good day - The Major League Baseball site has an...
