Poll: www.foxnews.com redesign

Has anyone noticed the horrific redesign of the foxnews site?  I didn't particularly like it before, but now it's more convoluted than ever. 

So, the poll of the day is:

Who redesigned the foxnews.com layout:

A) An intern
B) The janitor
C) Bill O'reilly
D) A chimpanzee
E) A recently hired web developer with a resume containing every web buzzword known to man, yet had no portfolio to show at his interview.

//\
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

I heard it had been outsourced to India.

Bob
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Wow, that stinks!

Sassy
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Given the general quality of Fox "News", I'd say it's a rather fitting design.

Jimmy Jo-jo
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

I hate it.

I don't want to have to click around to find the news. Gimme one large page (I don't mind scrolling a bit) that gives me lots of headlines to choose from.

I'm not going to click a page just to read more headlines.

Mark Hoffman
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

I'm a big fan of Fox News, but yeah, the design sucks.  I hated the last design too though, so this one won't necessarily put me off more or less.

Interestingly, the question did prompt me to compare a few other major news sites, and it seems like they all suck in the same way: super busy design,  more links and adds than the brain can process with a trivial effort -- basically visual caucaphone.  CNN, FOX and MSNBC were the worst; ABC and CBS news were slightly better.  It's like they're trying to duplicate the visual excitement of the news room, oblivious to the fact that THE WEB IS NOT A TV.

Alwell.  It's not that big of a deal.  I'll still pick my news based on how much I like their style / choice of reporting / coverage, not their website -- since there doesn't seem to be much differentiation there anyway.

offMyMeds
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

How can you compare cnn.com to foxnews.com? CNN has a single ad at the top, while half of the "boxes" on fox are ads and they're randomly spread around.

Larry
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

I vote for B. I wonder if his name was Henry. And was he mild-mannered?

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

You thought CNN was worse?

I think CNN has one of the better news websites out there. Big story and photo at the top, more important stories directly below followed by a dozen or so links of other stories.

Mark Hoffman
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

A Chimpanzee.  Oook! Oook!

I'm very dissapointed with the new page.  I like to see a clean page, many headines, with a little "blurb" following each of them - good for scanning (I don't like CNN.com's "headline-only" style). 

The new page is almost unusable.  Ah well - there's always Google News ...


- Matt

One of the Matt's
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Bad. Worse, you gotta hava javascript turned on.  The ad flashing ... wow they really position it well so I'm just forced to leave the site. Morons. I like foxnews but that is a moronic web outfit there.

me
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

I'd say it's the same people that did abcnews.com, but they were told to "let your imagination run wild"

Mike
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

I think they were told "just put things wherever there's room"

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

It was probably redesigned by the unholy spawn of Bill O'Rielly and the chimpanzee.

Damn, I feel sorry for that monkey.  The chimp, too.

Cognitive Dissonance
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

I agree, it sucks.  But why do you bother with foxnews or cnn or anything like that when we have the wonderful http://news.google.com/ ?

saberworks
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Maybe the Fox site would be better if they added really bad MIDI music when the page loads?

Skagg
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Maybe the Fox News site would be more attractive if they had real news... all we hear is Bush good, Kerry bad..

Chizzel Dizzel
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

in addition to google, news.yahoo.com is not too painful.

tim
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

It seems to me we're looking at an opportunity here - a major news outlet just went from a bad web site to a worse web site, and eveyone knows it.

Perhaps one of you should mock up a better site and approach Fox with it?  You might get lucky.

Stranger things have happened...

Christopher Hawkins
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

I have just finished making a mockup with George Bush's portrait floating in the background with a waving american flag (animated .gif) and Bette Midler's "Wind Beneath my Wings" playing via MIDI ("harpsichord" voice), and the other news and ad stuff overlayed.

I really think they'll go for it. And I will charge them one THOUSAND dollars to use my stuff!!! I'll let everyone know how it goes.

Skagg
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

"Perhaps one of you should mock up a better site and approach Fox with it?  You might get lucky."

Hi. Here's my mockup.

http://news.google.com/

What? not good enough?

http://slashdot.org/

Still not good enough? How about the 1997 ABCNews.com

http://web.archive.org/web/19970530230537/http://www.abcnews.com/

www.MarkTAW.com
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

What the heck, fox news?, the same idiots who say "We report, you decide"...it should be more like "We Inform, You Obey".
Their news reporting seems to be of jerry springer quality, so sad. Switch to the BBC people !!!!! :)

http://news.bbc.co.uk

Jade
Wednesday, June 16, 2004

Sorry, I didn't mean CNN specifically was worse, but rather that of the five I checked, Fox, CNN and MSNBC together struck me as busier than the other two.  But hey, I only took a casual glance at all of them over the course of about 45 seconds; I wasn't attempting an in depth UI analysis.  Anyway, my point was not to compare Fox to CNN, but rather as several others had pointed out, that a) most of us just want headlines, perhaps with a brief abstract, on a clean page and b) my theory is that the people in charge of the "concept" designs for these sites do not get it.  Specifically, I wonder if they are people whose background in television influences them to instinctively design for the web like it's a TV.

I would like to get news on a page in a presentation similar to an RSS aggregator, although perhaps with a 5 -- 10 line brief under each link to the full story, rather than the common split pane style of many aggregators.  I guess I could switch to google or find some news feeds to subscribe to, but I guess that's where laziness kicks in -- I would have to dig around to find what I like, and that's more effort that putting up with what I already know.

OffMyMeds
Wednesday, June 16, 2004

I'm moderately amused that anyone would expect to get news from the fox news site, or that if they did it wouldn't take considerable work in order to get it.

Simon Lucy
Wednesday, June 16, 2004

What? We're supposed to get NEWS from foxnews.com?

www.MarkTAW.com
Wednesday, June 16, 2004

You mean fox news is for real? I always thought it was some kind of real clever spoof. Ah well.

e
Wednesday, June 16, 2004

Man, you gotta admit - Fox has the babes (with the exception of Gretta Van Cespool)!  Who needs news when you got babes?

Stoner
Wednesday, June 16, 2004

It is very unprofessional.  In fact I was just addressing the page thinking about the new layout when I spied this link.  Something is happening at FOX and I'm sure it's nothing good.  It is getting seriously repetitive.  Coverage on fluff "kobe,britney,peterson, etc." fills their agenda.  Where is the FOXNEWS I was used to???????????????

John Warner
Tuesday, July 6, 2004

Hey, Mark,
I don't know what you are smokin' but I disatree with your statement about the MSNBC, ABC, AND CNN SITES.  quite frankly, I think MSNBC AND NEWS WEEK have the best sites as far as news and info is concerned.  Howerver, I do get a lot out of watching fox news, but as far as the fox news website is, I do think it needs a little improvement.  It seems to give you dificulty when you try to click on to email a corispondent.

William Metro
Saturday, July 10, 2004

oops, miss spelled a word, sorry, must have been typing too fast.
that saposed to say "disagree" not disatree

William Metro
Saturday, July 10, 2004

I find it quite funny that there are people on this forum lambasting FoxNews.  Why waste your time here if you do not like it?  It's people like you that make FoxNews the #1 Primetime Cable News Channel.

Baba Oreilly
Monday, July 26, 2004

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