Today, Philly.com debuts a new navigation bar and a few other tweaks to the look of our news and features pages. We’d love to tell you why we made these changes, and we want to hear what you think about them.
Our new navigation has one primary goal: To help you find more to read and do on our site, more quickly. We have debuted drop-down menus so you can go directly to more of the great content of Philly.com, The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News with a single click. Popular blogs and inside sections are easier to find. And common search terms are listed right on the search box.
The topper itself is much shallower than it used to be, which allows us to showcase content higher on our pages. Popular stories, chats and other content can be linked from the home page navigation bar.
And the design is simpler, which helps content take center stage. In addition, we’ve lightened the look of some of our other pages.
We consider this a step forward, not a redesign. There’s still a lot we want to do to improve Philly.com and to make it easier for you to use. But it’s a big step, and we want to hear what you think about it.
There are three ways you can respond. You can:
- Take our survey about the new navigation
- Comment on this blog post, or
- E-mail us at feedback@philly.com.
We are certain to tweak and adjust this new navigation – and make other site changes – in the weeks ahead, and your input will help guide our decisions.
Finally, thank you, for both your readership and your input. We are committed to continually improving Philly.com, making it better and easier for you to use. And we’re grateful for your help as we do so.
Sincerely,
The Philly.com team
Ryan Davis, president
Wendy Warren, editor
PS: Big thanks to all the folks who had a hand in designing and building the new navigation: Chris Corter, Jill Hoover, Gregg Meyer, Nadya Harvey, Radu Metente, Amanda Gilanyi, Bob McGovern, Joe Friend, Ian Krantz, Kevin Burkett, Chris Meares and the Philly.com content team.
Colors are ugly as can be, and I do not need "simple;" I need in depth. Please, use some sense and consider that your viewers/readers have brains!— philly1reader- Two suggestions... (1) Both the Daily News and the Inquirer should have "Today's Paper" pages where all of the sections of the actual paper shown and the stories that are in each section are linked to (like how NYTimes.com does it: http://www.nytimes.com/pages/todayspaper/index.html?src=hp1-0-P) and (2) each story on the website that also appears in print should have a line of text at the bottom that says on exactly what day and which page (and which of the two papers if it's ambiguous) the story appeared. As someone who does a LOT of research on the web and as someone with little time to read news for pleasure, these two things would go a long way in enhancing my experience of this site. Admittedly the first request is more for the web editors of each of the papers than it is for philly.com but you guys could run with it.— Dixon
- I second Dixon's comments. And what's with the Redskins color scheme?— Echo
Thanks for the feedback, folks! Dixon, we are working on something like you describe, but your point about a line defining the papers is an excellent idea. I really like it.
I like the improvements so far. But beyond that I also like the interaction between the developers - in this case Wendy Warren - and us users. Normally I'm not a big fan of design-by-committee but obviously Dixon seems to have made a valuable contribution and it's encouraging to see it was enthusiastically acknowledged. Breathed a major sigh of relief yesterday when I first noticed the chocolate side strip seemed to have gone the way of type setters. Today it appears to be gone forever. Thanks, Rob- Thanks, He Visto Todo! We don't miss that brown bar either...
- So at Philly Newspapers despite constant complaining about money they some how gave $30k in bonuses to Finance department people a week ago! Talk about outrage!— MMillercold421
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I have three comments for the moment. First, I'm not a fan of obligatory pop-ups like the section menus in general. But it's especially irritating when I use those menus to navigate to section main pages (e.g., if I want to click on the "Sports" button).
Second, it would be nice if the comments feature could be modernized a bit. I can't reply to comments, I can't ask to be notified when new comments are posted to an article I've commented on, etc. Unless I remember to check back (and unless others do so), there's no opportunity for discussion. It looks like the comments to this story have some special features, so perhaps changes are on the way.
For a long time, I've been irritated by the clunky flash-based photo galleries. I haven't checked for a while, but I believe if I turn flash off, a much nicer javascript-based photo gallery is used. It would be great if this could be a user preference. I'd be surprised if many people who tried both chose flash.
Speaking of user preferences, it would be nice to have more than four visible lines for editing comments.
There are things in the redesign I haven't discovered yet, but I don't think any of these have been obviated yet. I'd love to hear I'm wrong, although unless I remember to check back...- Comment removed.
- Comment removed.
- Why does the same story link often show up on the same page? Like today, there are two headline links on the front page of philly.com to the story about the septa attack. I can't believe there is no one at philly.com has lamented this as well. I can't recall any other newspaper that does this.— travelhombre
- What's the point of having a page where you politely ask for our feedback, yet you ignore our biggest complaint? So many people have complained about the videos that run automatically on page load. Its such a basic and obvious usability flaw. You will lose visitors because of it. Given the state of newspaper revenues these days, I understand if you think it matters more to keep your advertisers happy than some whiney customers, but don't be surprised when we stop getting our news here. Don't humor us by asking for our opinions if you are just going to ignore them (or delete them as you did when you removed all of the previous comments).— teddy_lowe
- Count me as another viewer who has often navigated away from this site in search of other sources solely because of those videos. My other issue is your inconsistency in allowing comments after articles - I still can't figure out the pattern.— CrotchetyOldMan
Some very good suggestions above. My 2 cents:
1. Stop the auto-loading videos, and anything with audio
2. Find a new way to show photographs. THEY ARE FAR TO SMALL, and often at a useless resolution. The photo slide shows on philly.com are risible.
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