Designing a news site

In chapter 6 of Williams and Tollett's NON-DESIGNER'S WEB BOOK, several strong points were made on the functionality and appearance of a succesful website. I personally felt, however, that leaning towards a "clean" look is not always the best choice for a website and that links and a relative amount of "clutter" is a part of any website and probably should be compartmentalized rather than deleted alltogether.

In Online Reporting (J4700), I am looking at news websites specifically. There is a special consideration for news sited like NYT.com or CNN.com; most of the information that is intended to grab your attention, like headlines, is reserved for the top of the page, or as in print, "above the fold." The smaller chunks of information and links go to the bottom, as the reader scrolls down--a task that the average web surfer may be too lazy to bother with.

As said by Williams and Tollett, uniformity and alignment are important in desining a basic web page. When it comes to a news source, however, the reader's eye is guided by varying text sizes and pictures. While the basics to a good web page are helpful, once you create a news website with A LOT of information appearing on a single window, some of these rules are to be broken.

Francisco Fisher 968907