MSNBC Site Redesign

Congratulations to everyone at MSNBC, where they launched a new site redesign last Friday.  It's a little hard for me to get used to it, but there are many things that I like: more top sections on the news menu (for years we struggled with how to fit all of the top level menu items we wanted into the existing page structure), the square edges (all those curves made for a complicated table structure), and especially the new typeface for stories.  You can read the editor's note from Dean Wright here. There's also a new media player that's pretty cool.  Choose launch under Free Video on this page to check it out.  I miss the fly-out menu and my personal home page, but am assuming that these will be back after the Sadam-got-caught traffic bump.

Not that it makes any real difference in the site redesign, but I also noticed that they've switched over to the msn domain.  What was previously https://www.msnbc.com now resolves to https://msnbc.msn.com.  It's the end of an era, I guess. But perhaps this switch will allow them to prevail in getting news added to the top msn banner -- that would be nice. 

I've always loved MSNBC's Week in Pictures and Picture Stories features.  (But wow, there sure are a lot of ads on that launch page!)  The photo editors at MSNBC are really top notch, as I'm sure you know if you've ever visited the site.  The most compelling evidence of this is during big news events, when all the news outlets use, for example, the first AP images coming in.  Two or even three sites will sometimes have the same image, but the MSNBC image is always the most compelling because of the cropping and framing they do.  They really are amazingly skilled.  Last night I watched the America 24/7 Picture Story and really enjoyed it.  I notice that they've also added the ability to purchase a print of the images -- very cool. 

Originally posted to my temporary blog home at https://www.geekswithblogs.net/lauraj