CNET’s new look Download.com
It's has so far gone largely unnoticed, apart from a brief mention by a member of the team involved: CNET's new look Download.com.
Celebrating it's 10th anniversary this month, CNET.com was also recently redesigned.
First impression goes something like this: wow!
What caught my eye, apart from the fresh greens, was the layout: fixed width for a 1000+ pixel viewport. That makes it the first dotcom top 10 (or high-profile) site that I'm aware of, to disregard users with 800px or smaller viewports. All of the others are 100% fluid or designed exclusively for 800. I think they've taken a gamble and pushed the limits, since I really doubt that a considerable percentage of their target market (pretty much everyone, really) have a 1000+ viewport. Ideally they'd cater for all their users, but it's reassuring to see nonetheless - pushing that limit is one of the major factors that advance and evolve this medium.
As a side-note, major surfing brand Quiksilver.com was last week redesigned for 1000+ by 65media. If you can think of other big names, give me a shout.
It's also worth noting that CNET.com is also designed with this layout, although it generates a horizontal scrollbar. Silly.
The design is my kind of style to a T: well communicated, easy to follow and navigate, clean and sharp, consistent, flexible, relevant... every page element is where it should be. The homepage isn't entirely balanced, but clicking through to other pages, it fills out very well.
Their page <title>'s are how I've recently decided to start structuring mine - with the title for the page first, followed by the title of the site. It's a habit that's been hard to break, particularly on this site with my blog posts and words which currently aren't very insightful or SEO friendly. It's a tough call actually, in some instances it works better reversed. So context is relative, as with most things.
Testing in IE6x, Opera 7x and Firefox 1x (under WinXP), it's skillfully cross-browser compliant. Looking briefly in IE5x standalone, it could be tweaked to work well in that browser too, but who cares really!
Their doctype is XHTML 1.0 Transitional, which doesn't validate. Does that matter - to their users? No. To you? Maybe. That's your preference.
It lacks a character encoding. Does that matter? Definately. An easy fix.
If you find the text size too big or small, adjusting it's size doesn't break the layout. Score one for accessibility. Oops, the A-word - making a lot of noise again these days (and where it matters). I'm curious to see what develops with that, since we've been preaching about accessibility for ages but with little or no real-world backing. I know I've used the word very loosely in the past. Worth checking out: GAWDS (Guild of Accessible Web Designers) - designed to both promote and protect accessible design standards.
I'm sure I have more to add to this review, but I'll leave it there as I'm short on time. I'm sure they'd love to hear if you like it too.
UPDATE [21/07]: I just found this: We remodeled, and here's why by CNET Editor in Chief and VP, Patrick Houston - which details their rationale behind their CNET.com redesign, which apparently happened as long ago as September '04! The article and interactive tour is accompanied by some 342 user comments - many unhappy with the wider layout. A worthwhile read.
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10 Comments
First thing I noticed when checking out that new design (which I actually stumbled across yesterday) was the extra width. I couldn’t work out what seemed strange about it, then thought to resize my browser and there it was, staring me in the face. Bold move. I like it.
hey coda. I mailed you about the ebucks.com redesign a couple of weeks ago… have you checked it out yet? it’s a HUGE improvement!!
Ok, coming from a ‘nice car, does it come in silver’ perspective, I don’t like the colours. Too Australian for my liking.
RottenTomatoes has always had a 1000-pixel layout.
Hi Damien, you appear to be the first blog to mention the Download.com redesign (the first that I’ve found, anyway).
I am the designer primarily responsible for the redesign of Download.com. I wanted to thank you and your visitors for the comments, and urge people to use the feedback form on Download.com for constructive criticsim. My bosses are reading each and every email.
I wanted to clarify a few things.
1. Your update on July 21 is accurate but does not apply to Download.com. CNET.com and Download.com are part of the same parent, CNET Networks, but we operate separately. Our redesign of Download.com was performed entirely separate (and many months after) CNET.com’s new look was launched.
2. We aren’t completely finished with the redesign of Download.com. There are some tweaky little things here and there on the site that still need to be fixed, and regular users may find some older pages have not entirely adopted the new look.
3. Regarding the new page width of approximately 960 pixels: Research indicated that the vast majority of our users have had a 17″, 19″, or larger monitor for several years, so the decision was made to stop wasting screen real estate and try to bring some of our content up higher on the page.
4. One big change you didn’t mention, that I’d like to hear people’s feedback on: We changed the category navigation from the Yahoo!-style heirarchy list to the left-side inverted-L type list.
I would feel remiss if I did not point out that I was not solely responsible for this project. We had a CSS wizard named Greg P. (I will refrain from using has full name without his prior permission) and a tireless development team, plus plenty of other people working on this project. Greg and I might find some extra time to write articles on our own personal websites about how we approach this sort of project, and I will try to return to your blog to let you know if we do. Also, the Weekly Standards has contacted us about an article, so that may happen soon too.
Hi espd – thanks for the insight into your great redesign.
My update applied to the CNET.com redesign only, I originally thought it had happened this year – sorry, I should have been more specific.
Although the majority have larger monitors, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they view websites with their browser window maximized. A bigger screen resolution for the user might translate to more desktop real estate. Or do you think it’s generally accepted that they browse with windows maximized? I’m curious to hear what you think. I’ve never come across any test data on this subject, although granted I haven’t really looked either. ;)
You’re right, a lot of people don’t necessarily have their browser maximized to the entire viewport. Including me. My browser(s) usually occupy about 1/5 the width of my 20″ monitor at home (1280×960), and about the same on my 19″ at work. I like to have a little room on the right so I can drag files and URIs and such to my desktop or to other application windows.
That does, however, give me plenty of room for the entire Download.com page (about 960 pixels wide) in my browser, plus about 1/5 of my monitor’s space left over on the right.
We didn’t specifically look for research on how many people have their browser window fully maximized versus how many have it smaller; that would be interesting research, but I’m not sure how it would be collected.
We did, however, perform usability testing prior to the redesign’s launch, by inviting a sample of real Download.com users in for interviews and to watch them use the new site. We used a standard 1024 x768 (17″) monitor, and not a single user changed the browser’s size; this was true regardless of whether they were relatively inexperienced or extremely savvy Net users.
Of course, I admit that we also weren’t entirely simulating a person’s normal daily routines such as opening their mail client or checking webmail, opening a spreadsheet or managing their files or listening to MP3s or what have you.
That said, the primary reason for switching to a 1024×768 page width was based on the fact that the vast majority of people are using 17″, 19″ and 20″ monitors, and this has been true for upwards of 3 years. And that’s something we certainly do have stats on, so it was a no-brainer.
Of course, we admittedly make a little bit of a leap there to the assumption (or the hope, anyway) that visitors to Download.com will find the content compelling enough to simply click their browser’s maximize button to view the whole width, but we thought it was a safe enough bet.
I suppose we’ll see how it goes. So far, pageviews are up, so it’s looking positive (although too early to tell).
Inside the Download.com Redesign at The Weekly Standards.
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21 July 2005
warrenski09:34 am
I’ve been populating my titles elements as [page title] – [site name] for years simply because when you have a million browser windows open on the same site, or you’re browsing through your bookmarks list and you have multiple pages from the same site bookmarked, it makes finding the right one easier.