Source: ShutterstockA big Slovenian media house is announcing a relaunch of the biggest Slovenian web page (according to Alexa). Since they own two TV channels they’re advertising it with a short commercial that shows a glimpse of the new design. Another hint is a very very small, almost unreadable banner on their front page which “reads e-volution / evolution continues / next stage in [4] days”. What I want to know is whether it is to be an evolution in technology. That’s why I’ll list a few things I’d want if I was the client:
Semantic use of HTML (tableless layout)
The current page sports a fat table layout. The time of lame browsers and the need to create such a layout has passed and using semantic HTML for all the elements is the standard now. As a fan of XHTML Strict I’d also opt for that, allowing users to use the page as a source of content.
Width
The current page is 800px wide with a skyscraper banner on the right. I think a wider default with a hint of elasticity (that would make it almost or completely useful on smaller screens) would be a great choice. If elastic is too difficult I’d opt for 960px.
YSlow
The current homepage needs more than 180 request and more than 700kB to download. It takes about 5 seconds to do all this. I’m sure that with a little smarter use of CSS and image sprites these numbers could be much lower. A smart thing would be to move the static content to static.24ur.com so the browser could download all the resources faster. I’d also want the styles to be on the top and the scrips on the bottom. And since they use their own system to deploy banners I would expect them to use WEDJE to deploy them without stopping the site.
Microformats
Since all the content on a certain page is actually a news feed I would want them to use the hAtom microformat, with hCard for people and hCalendar for events and the TV schedule also possible. There’s no need to use propriatary format in the age of interoperability.
Blogs compatibility
I don’t think they should offer blogs, but it would be nice if they had a way to embed their content into blogs commenting on the current events. It would also be great if news posts would allow trackbacks so other people could see who blogged about the news.
Screen saver
I’ve noticed lately that when they have a few heavy banners that it’s important to close the tab the page is in to get the full power out of my computer. This could easily be solved with a screen saver JavaScript that would hide all the banners when a user doesn’t interact with it for some time.
OpenID
With OpenID providers around every corner I really don’t see why anybody would want me to register on their page anymore.
Can you think of anything else?
I disagree with you on width. I often browse web on devices that don’t offer such a wide resolution and I believe this practice will only become less common.
I would like to see a page that is context aware. Context of browsing a website isn’t the same as coming from a search engine. In later case they actually know what I’m looking for and should format page according to that (local search results in a sidebar maybe?).
Learn about regular readers. They should know what they like and don’t like and format website accordingly. They could also let visitors rearrange site according to their needs.
This list could go on…
Markos,
the 24ur.com has a special page for “pda” layout at address http://24ur.com/pda and it is great for reading news on phone.
Thanks for info. By devices I didn’t mean phones exclusively. My 770 tablet does 800 wide just fine.
[…] I’ve had a redesign planned since day 1, but as usual it took quite some time to get here. Since I’m not a design I couldn’t just create a fancy look with everything else left the same. The idea was to shake everything up and try to come out with a layout that would be worth redoing everything. When I posted about what a TV network / news page should have when being redone I was also setting my own targets. […]