I hate it! Hell, my popup blocking software is working overtime. Surely they didn't create this absolute mess on purpose. Is this some kind of joke?? They should have hired Two Roads Media to do their site. Seriously, you guys could create something that would blow this away.
Easily THE WORST newspaper website by any Major city. Blog Watch? WTF Traffic? WTF Houston We Have A Problem
it sucks. Reminds me of when the Rockets switched from their old classic unis to those horrible ones.
Hmm, I think it looks alright. As long as I can access the information I really don't give a crap how pretty the site looks. Some of you seem to be getting way too upset with how a newspapers website looks.
The 21st century Bobo. Traffic links are great and probably more useful than half the crap in your typical newspaper. When you tune into any news radio station you hear traffic reports. During rush hour on television news, you hear traffic reports. Traffic has always been a part of the news.
Oh really? Hmmmm...Looking at the New York Times right now. I see no link to traffic anywhere. Now I am looking at the LA Times, they have a small link to traffic, weather and stocks on the right hand side 3/4's down the page. Rush Hour? On television/radio? Why of course. That is where most people get their traffic reports. An Online newspaper is not the place to get traffic reports.
I don't like it at all. I liked the simple look and feel... I'm sure I'll get used to it, but right now, yuck.
Put it this way BobFinn - would you rather see a traffic report or editorials from the spectacular writers at the Chronicle? Think of the Chronicle as the Little League of Newspapers and then it will all make since.
THIS (http://www.baytownsun.com) is what a quality newspaper's website should look like . Headlines are easier to read, focus is more on info than advertising. It reinforces the paper's, and this city's, identity rather than detracts from it or confuses it. The Chronicle's former website was a quality product for a quality paper and has been changed significantly, this alone merits criticism. Perhaps Hearst should just pony up the cash to by the "houston.com" and "chronicle.com" domain names. Chron.com is a good shortcut link for those of us familiar with the paper, but I don't think new potential online readers will be able to associate the two (the website and the paper), and there is very little about this early-80s Astros-uniform inspired layout that will change that. As far as "the chron" goes, I think the Shortcuts section is a decent design innovation, but I don't know if it lends itself to news-content, I honestly think the idea was to minimize newspace and increase adspace. Furthermore, the "Going Out" tab does not seem to work at all. Fix (or whiten) the grayspace. Lose (or minimize) the Saturday Afternoon Traffic Update, or at least tell us what difference is between the yellow, blue, green and gray traffic lines. Another thing, try to push the "punch-the-monkey and win an I-Pod" adspace a little more to the side. The left-center adboard takes up a third of width and length of the front page. This is probably an acceptable ratio, but it should be less centralized, not as close to and not bigger than the "top stories" section. If the advertising were somehow more Houston-specific, it might be less jarring. Also increase the font size on the headlines and bylines, for goodness sakes, I write "donuts in the break-room" emails at work with more text editing than this. Then you'll have a website befitting a major news organization. http://www.nytimes.com/ http://www.dallasnews.com/ http://www.msnbc.com http://news.yahoo.com/
As someone that works in the Online Newspaper industry (Morris Communications / Savannah Morning News) I have to congratulate Chron for finally redesigning their website. The old one was an abomination. I really looked like something from 1996. Granted, visually the new one looks like a Starburst, but it certainly follows a growing theme toward the "modular" look a lot of sites are going for. It makes it easier for sites to change on the fly and try to keep up with the latest technology. Sites have to be flexible, hence the modules. The pages are tighter, using more DHTML to make the pages shorter, yet still provide information. And the adspaces are pretty standard with what the industry demands these days. More than ever websites have to bring in revenue and it is tough to get it on the internet sometimes. The Story pages are nice, with a lot of relevant information on the right rail. I think that is important. People want more from a webpage versus a hard copy newspaper. They want the website to be dynamic, so the more relevant links and multimedia content that is easy for the viewer to find, the better the page. I am not a fan of the color scheme of their site, and I am not sure the website visually identifies with Houston other than their use of a STAR, but in terms of layout it seems to be ok. One quick tech bug I noticed is their top level navigation drop downs on their Classifieds section dont show over their Quigo Text ads in the right rail. I am sure their ads are being served in an Iframe which is the problem. In any case, congrats Chron for stepping up with a new design. I am sure a lot of people will hate the change because they wont know where things are, but that is always the case with new designs. After time I think users will begin to appreciate the layout as more features are untilized.
i hope. the chronicle has been my homepage for as long as i can remember. you could glance at the first page and get all the major stories of the day. can't do that anymore.
Well, its about time they updated their site. Now they have a crappy, add loaded website to go along with the crappy, add loaded hard copy. Shame! Shame! Shame! Call me when they bring the Post back to town.
You guys are having trouble navigating the site? Wow. I think it's much easier and it just looks better. I don't see how anyone could have a problem with the redesign (with the possible exception of the ads at the bottom).
