Website Design Classics - New York Times
Arguably the most important Newspaper in the World, the New York Times has the highest readership of any online broadsheet. In a world of new media and social news, the New York Times shows why in some ways the old ways are the best while at the same time embracing the good parts of web 2.0.
The old adage, “Content is King”, rings true with the NYTimes. Every day the site is updated with new articles from the day’s newspapers. There is no shortage of news from any field, be it sports or food and drink.
5 reasons I like the New York Times Website
- Content- How much content do you want? Too much of the web is taken up by shouty amateurs giving their 2 cents on things they don’t understand. Now more than ever, the voice of a professional is a valuable commodity
- Look - NYTimes looks like a newspaper. You don’t feel like you are using a distillation of the paper equivalent. It feels similar to use as navigating a broadsheet newspaper. The proportionality and spacing is a thing of beauty. This version of the website brought serif fonts back into fashion on the web (Without them I probably wouldn’t be using them on my own site). Just like a real newspaper the important items are “above the fold”. Yes the page is long but so is the newspaper and for once this is a good thing.
- Quality - In the copy and paste world, the New York Times is a rich source of original quality images. You can’t fail to realise that money was spent on everything you interact with. Even the ad’s are classy (well as classy as banner ads get)
- Simplicity - How do you fit so much content on the page? You use bold headersm white backgrounds and blue links just like the early days of web design. Yes there are about 200 links on this page but it doesn’t feel overwhelming.
- Features - Video? check, User Polling? check, RSS? check Blogs? check
The screenshot is 715k so it’ll give you an idea of how much content is on board. Content is king but it does slow you down - The speed report shows that the website takes 100secs to load on a 56k line. I can’t be too hard on that because this post will take a bit longer than that again :-), however I can find fault with the coding quality.
The Validation Report shows a whopping 311 errors!
The New York Times - A bonafide design classic, but not an engineering classic. Bit like the leaning tower of Pisa I suppose.
Posted 15.10.07