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'thelondonpaper' website review
I don't know, you take a couple of days off work to move house become homeless, and people start closing newspapers behind your back. My commute home will shortly face one less obstruction when I'm walking down York Way. It was only at the end of May that doomed free newspaper thelondonpaper was advertising their free website for London - thelondonpaper.com - with a big wrap-around spread that reproduced the newly re-designed site in print. Free seems to have very...
A painless way to file your tax return
Very often when I'm writing about some online application or web site or the other, I'm making a list of things that could be improved. It is always much nicer to be able to write something completely in praise of a system - in this case the HMRC's online tax self-assessment application. Well, I can't completely praise the system, since it is designed to part me with my hard-earned money. And you know they are only going to waste it...
FIFA 2010 World Cup qualifying website review - England
England started their attempt to qualify for the 2010 South Africa World Cup at the weekend, with an away game against Andorra. Tonight, they face what is expected to be by far their toughest test in the Group 6, an away match in Zagreb, Croatia. Although I can't say I fancy the Ukraine, Belarus or Kazakhstan away matches much either. During the course of the qualifiers, I'm going to be reviewing the websites of the FAs opposing England. However,...
FIFA 2010 World Cup qualifying website review - Andorra
England begin their attempt to qualify for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa today, with an away game against Andorra, held at the Olympic Stadium in Barcelona. Cue the "there are no easy matches in international football" cliche. England will be trying to qualify from Group 6 which, alongside Andorra, features Croatia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. It has all the hallmarks of a group which England will struggle in, and which they will be berated for by a...
The Mirror re-design review: Part 4
I've been reviewing the recent re-design of Mirror.co.uk. I've been impressed with some things, like the organised site map in the footer of the page, a forgiving tag 404 page, and the RSS feeds of tags. I've been less impressed with the gambling strip design, colour-coding and lax taxonomy. Yesterday I looked at some aspects of The Mirror's site search. Mixed horoscope feeds The Mirror has made nearly all of their online content available via RSS, including the full content...
The Mirror re-design review: Part 3
Over the last couple of days I've been reviewing The Mirror's recent re-design. I've looked at some of the good and bad in the navigation, and examined their use of tags. Today I'm looking at some of the aspects of the site search design. Lack of detail I noted a distinct lack of detail in the way that The Mirror presents search results. In Amsterdam in September I'll be giving a Euro IA presentation about the ways that you can...
The Mirror re-design review: Part 2
Yesterday I started a review of the recently designed Mirror.co.uk site. I was impressed with the way they had organised links to content in a site map at the footer of the page, but less than enamoured of some over-enthusiastic colour-coding, and a 'gambling strip' across the top of every page. Today I wanted to look at the site's use of tags. Story tags The Mirror applies a selection of tags to each story to provide lateral and related navigation....
The Mirror re-design review: Part 1
Earlier this year The Daily Mirror re-vamped their website, giving it much more of a visual-led magazine feel. At the time I didn't get the chance to do a review, but as I recently reviewed the re-design of The Telegraph, I thought I would have a look at how the new Mirror design has settled in. Old Mirror design New Mirror design Global navigation and mouse-over As seems to be the fashion at the moment, The Mirror has gone for...
Reviewing the Instablogs 'citizen journalism' platform
A couple of week ago I was contacted by the team at Instablogs, asking whether I would be interested in having a look at their site. I normally shy away from this kind of promotion, but I was rather intrigued by the premise of the service, so I did have a look, and had a bit of email to-and-fro with the PR manager. In one sense, Instablogs is just another simple blogging platform. However, it combines the regular concept of...
How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 9 - Daily Star
Although I originally only intended to review 8 newspapers in this series of posts looking at the accessibility of Britain's online newspapers, The Daily Star has recently re-designed. I therefore thought that it would be worth running my eye over the new design for accessibility features, in the same way that I have tested the Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Guardian, Independent, The Sun, The Telegraph and The Times. Text resize Sadly it seems that the new Daily Star...
How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 8 - The Times
I've been looking at how accessible British newspaper websites are, testing the most popular online papers against a set of criteria. So far I've looked at the Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Guardian, Independent, The Sun and The Telegraph. Today, I'm looking at the accessibility of The Times website. Text resize The Times, along with The Mirror and The Guardian was one of only 3 out of the 8 newspapers I tested who allowed users to resize their text...
How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 7 - The Telegraph
Over the last week and a half I've been looking at the accessibility issues surrounding British newspaper websites, and testing some of the most popular against a set of criteria. So far I've looked at the Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Guardian, Independent, and The Sun. So in broadly alphabetical order, provided you count the 'Daily' bit but don't count 'The'. Sometimes. Anyway, today it is the turn of The (Daily) Telegraph. Text resize Allowing your users to control...
How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 6 - The Sun
I'm writing a series of posts about how British newspaper websites perform in a series of accessibility tests. These include simple things, like whether the text on a site is re-sizeable within major browsers, and more complex issues like how the site is rendered by screen reading technology. So far I've examined The Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Guardian and The Independent's sites. This post looks at the accessibility of The Sun's site. Unfortunately for me, after I'd done...
How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 5 - The Independent
Last week I started a series of posts testing British newspaper websites against various accessibility standards and issues. So far I've looked at The Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror and The Guardian. Today it is the turn of The Independent. Text resize The Independent appears to be almost almost alone amongst the major newspapers in the UK in having a stylesheet 'widget' on the page to allow users to adjust the size of the text that they are viewing...
How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 4 - The Guardian
I've been doing a series of checks on British newspaper websites to see how they match up to their accessibility responsibilities. So far I've looked at the Express, Mail, and Mirror. Today, in the last of this week's reviews, it is the turn of ex-broadsheet The Guardian. For each set of tests I have been looking at the homepage of a site, and then the top story from that day's paper, in order to access both types of template. For...
How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 3 - Daily Mirror
This week I'm looking at the level of accessibility built into British newspaper websites. I started with the Daily Express and Daily Mail, and today I want to look at The Mirror. I'm assessing the paper's homepage and top story page against a number of accessibility criteria. Text resize One of the simplest tests for accessibility is to see whether a site uses relative font sizes or fixed font sizes. Relative font sizes means that users can control for themselves...
How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 2 - Daily Mail
Yesterday I started a series of posts looking at the accessibility of British newspaper websites with an overview of the accessibility performance of the Daily Express website. Today I'm continuing the series by looking at the Daily Mail. I'm testing each newspaper homepage, and a subsequent story page, against a range of accessibility criteria. Text resize The Daily Mail is one of the newspaper sites that uses fixed font sizes in its homepage and story page display. This means that...
How accessible are Britain's online newspapers? Part 1 - Daily Express
The 1995 Disability Discrimination Act put the force of law behind the principle that businesses should not discriminate against people with disabilities in the provision of their goods and services. Although yet to be tested by major case law in the UK, it is generally accepted that 'services' includes a business web site, and that therefore businesses should take care to make sure that their sites are as accessible as possible. In theory, this is trivial to accomplish. All that...
Gatwick Yotel not quite so swell
Anyone who has been following my trips on Dopplr will know that I've been stomping my carbon encrusted feet all over Europe in the last couple of months, with six flights in just over as many weeks. I've been dragging my better half around with me, but last week she headed back to Crete slightly before I did. She had an early check-in at 5:15am at Gatwick. We decided, instead of travelling through the dead of night, that we'd go...
5 quick usability wins for the BBC iPlayer beta trial installation process
Having spent two of the last three weeks sitting very near to the iPlayer development team in the BBC's Future Media and Technology department in White City, I'm aware that there is no shortage of people telling them what they ought to have done with the product. And that is both outside and inside the BBC. From the Open Source Consortium's 'rip it up and use video codec DIRAC instead' vote, to Guardian journalists patiently explaining to commentators on their...
Playing with the Virgin Radio player beta
"Schmap: Zaragoza Photo Inclusion"
Catalog [sic] your books at Library Thing
Search across photo-sharing sites from Kodak, Shutterfly, Snapfish and PictureTrail
Searching for pictures on ImageShack and Yahoo! Photos
Using image search on Photobucket
How Vox handles audio, books and photographs
Looking at Six Apart's new Vox service
Searching The Sun online - part two
Surveying search across British online newspapers
Searching The Daily Star and The Sunday Sport
Searching 'This Is London' from The Evening Standard
Usability issues with OTEnet's On Wireless wifi service at Athens airport
Trying out T3h Blox0r - part two
Trying out T3h Blox0r - "The best online aggregator ever!" - allegedly
Testing Google Reader - part two
coComment - a solution to a problem I didn't know I had? - part two
coComment - a solution to a problem I didn't know I had?
Taking a look at FeedLounge - part three
Taking a look at FeedLounge - part two
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Talks & presentations
"Journalism in the digital age"
I'll be appearing on a panel with Sarah Hartley and Iain Hepburn at the Edinburgh International Science Festival on Sunday April 11th. More details...
Posts of the moment
Day of the Triffids
If everyone suddenly went blind, how long would the Internet survive, and could you still publish news on it?
With professionals of this quality, who needs 'citizen journalist' enemies?
It is hard to argue that ethics and quality set the 'professional journalist' apart from the amateur blogger, if the 'professional' keeps publishing articles so wrong that they have to be deleted.
Read more about...
- The future of news
- IA and UX events
- Local and hyperlocal news
- Martin Belam talks and presentations
- Media policy and regulation
- New media best practice
- Newspaper website design
- Notes and quotes from media and web events
- 'Old' media relationship with 'new' media
- Site search management and design
- Working at the BBC (2000 - 2005)
- Working at The Guardian (2008 - now)
Also on the site
or any current or former employers or clients.
Contact: martin dot belam at currybet dot net. © Martin Belam where appropriate.
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