The BBC has recently launched the Beta version of their new homepage. Having studied their last redesign this template comes as a major disappointment...

To be fair the widgets are nice, always handy to customise your own areas and the opening and closing draggable sections are a nice touch, however designers have been using these for years and we have all seen it done a lot better elsewhere (facebook).


My initial impression, apart from the possible overuse of garish colours, was the size of the text. For a split second I thought I had accidentally slipped on a pair of magnifying glasses! Accessibility is always paramount for such a large scale public service site and it's good to see they are catching on to the web 2.0 style guidelines (large text) albeit a little too literally. The large amount of white space around the headers seems too spacious and ends up giving the site an impression of 'padding out the content'- ironic really for a site that is spilling over with quality resources.

Now the clock-well I am in two minds here. I like to know the time when I am working away on sites- checking my timesheets and planning out my projects. But to have a analogue clock as such a major part of the header seems almost pointless. When was the last time you were on a computer that didn't have the time somewhere on the screen!? Answers on a scroll please. Even the clock looks old fashioned. It's like I have stepped back into the 80's but with cooler gradients.

I guess I never expected anything too 'cutting edge' from the Beeb but I was expecting something that would set a benchmark for corporate design and one that would make all us tax payers proud!

Got any thoughts- let me know