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Online Journalism News

Telegraph looks to US for new web design inspiration

Posted: 06/04/06 By: Jemima Kiss
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Telegraph.co.uk is gearing up for a redesign this summer, and is looking for inspiration from the recent redesigns at NYTimes.com and CNN.com.

Writing on the Telegraph's Upload news blog, Shane Richmond notes the trend for a wider design, reflecting the popularity of new, wider monitors.

He also notes NYTimes.com's increased multimedia content, its new list of most popular stories and personalisation - a key element of the next generation of the 'Web 2.0' era.

Mr Richmond says that news sites have a tendency to crowd their front pages with too many stories.

"Is all this counter-productive? Can readers take in all those articles? It's a problem for the triumvirate of design, editorial and advertising to fight over," he writes.

"A print edition relies on two or three great stories on the front because the editor knows that once a reader has bought a newspaper, they tend to settle down and give the rest a good read. That's not what happens with websites, where typical visits are measured in minutes. The response from web designers has been to pack as much on as possible in the hope of luring people deeper into the site. Perhaps a re-think is necessary."

• New personalisation features are to be introduced to NYTimes.com later this month including 'My Times' pages that can be customised through different RSS feeds. There will also be more original, searchable video reports from Times journalists viewable through an embedded video player and 'Times Topics' pages, offering a combination of news coverage, archive material and reference tools on specialised subjects.

• The Wall Street Journal site last week introduced a 'livenews' feature that instantly updates the homepage. Livenews is based on Ajax technology which 'silently' updates pages with new data from the server.

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