BBC News in-line text links trial out in the wild
I had my first brush with the BBC News trial of inline text links today - on a story about the discovery of a giant classical statue's head in Turkey.
To see the trial, you need to select to 'turn on' the links from an options panel that is embedded a little way down into the story.
The links then appear within the body of the text, preceded by a small icon - 'W' marks a Wikipedia link, a 'bookmark' icon indicates links to elsewhere.
The content opens up in a pop-up overlay on top of the BBC News site, and the system is provided by Apture.
According to the help page accompanying the trial:
"We are doing this trial because we want to see if you enjoy exploring background material presented in this way. It's part of our continuing efforts to provide the best possible experience.
In addition to background material from the BBC News website, we are also displaying content from other sites, including Wikipedia, You Tube and Flickr. We have done this to find out what you think about us offering you related material from other sources."
In truth, I suspect the motivation is due to the dim view taken by the BBC Trust earlier this year of the BBC's efforts to link out more widely from bbc.co.uk. Personally, I'm not entirely convinced that littering the web with yet more links to Wikipedia as the standard definition for everything does much to aid the BBC's role to be a 'trusted guide' to the web.
But then, as I've written before, I'm not convinced that either the BBC or the BBC Trust understand what that actually is anymore.
Posted by Martin Belam, August 14, 2008
Read more posts on currybetdotnet about: BBC, Web
The views expressed on currybetdotnet are my own, and do not reflect the views of my current or former employers.
Search
Download e-books
About Martin Belam
I'm a London-based internet consultant and writer, with 8 years experience in product management, information architecture, and user experience design for global brands like Sony, Vodafone, The Guardian and the BBC. I specialise in advising on search, widgets, RSS, online news publishing and bulk email delivery.
Martin Belam CV
email: martin.belam@currybet.net
tel: +44 (0) 7801 828718
twitter: currybet
About Martin Belam and this site
Recent posts
- Mail Online the first national to allow you to rate the comments on their news articles?
- 5 essential Google Labs features to improve your Google Mail experience
- The iTunes deauthorisation conundrum
- Running Windows? Why you should always have a Linux live CD to hand
- Top 75 British newspaper RSS feeds in Google Reader
Recent links
Recent comments
- Martin Belam on 5 essential Google Labs features to improve your Google Mail experience
- David Bradley on links for 2008-11-28
- malcolm coles on The Financial Times and "the worst online redesign I have ever seen"
Popular posts
- Protecting the identity of Baby P's killers: The courts vs the people vs the Internet
- Day #2 at Guardian Hack Day
- The BBC News linking policy is simply clumsy, not 'greedy'
- BBC fails the online Brand damage limitation test
- "The Former Scottish Constituency of Northumbria"
- Social media and www.bbc.co.uk
- Take-away facts and quotes from the 2008 Euro IA Summit in Amsterdam - Part 1
- Measuring UK newspaper success with social media
Popular categories
BBC, Doctor Who, Ghost Walks, Media, Music, Newspapers, Search, Social media, Web
Contact: martin dot belam at currybet dot net
©2008 Martin Belam where appropriate. Powered by Movable Type. Hosted by Bytemark.
Manufactured in Great Britain.
2 comments so far
Hey Martin
I would agree that linking through to Wikipedia alone doesn't particularly help move things forward - but that's not the point. Apture can be used to bring context from many different sources, and we're hoping to expand the system to allow anyone to plug their reference sources into Apture.
I'm pleased you're otherwise positive about it - I've been working with the Apture guys for a few months now, and I'm really excited about the product.
Hope all is well,
This is ever so strange. The thing that made the web so different -- and caused it to boom to fast -- compared to other information systems on the internet, was the fact that it was built around hypertext. Right from the very beginning, you've been able to embed links to another site into your web pages, and I'm not quite sure why News Online felt they had to invent a whole new Javascript-based pseudo-popup way to handle links, rather than using the venerable <a> tag.
Admittedly the eye-candy factor is fairly high, but it totally excludes anyone who isn't using Javascript on their browser, and I suspect it bamboozles screen-readers and the like, too.