The Bad

Anytime I see the word “beta” I cringe a little. Not only do I feel like they are calling me a moron that can’t tell a dev site from a live site, but I also feel like they are saying “Hi, I’m cool!” I don’t know about you guys but if anyone comes up to me and says that, my first reaction is “no… no you aren’t.”What the hell is this? Seriously, a major news provider is going to crunch possibly the biggest reason why people visit their site into this tiny box? That header and edit button area alone could have given me two more headlines! Now that I think about it, I really should have grouped this under “The Worst” section because this just shows a poor understanding of your audience, of design, and of common sense.Could they have made this any bigger (so big that I had to include the thumbnail with a link to the full image)? Now I’m not dissing the design, but the application of this to a news site… come on. I feel as if I’m being fed “cool” like I actually asked for it. I’d almost much rather prefer BBC to strip all design and whatnot and keep their site text only… I go there for content, not for gigantic fluffy space taking graphics.

The Worst

What the hell is this? Why the hell is this on the site? Why would I possibly want to click on this? It’s not even one of those curiously quirky ads that you just have to click on… it’s nothing short of completely annoying. Not only does the inclusion of this make no sense to me, but WHY the headings? Like the ad wasn’t big and crazy enough?Really? Really? I mean I get it, it’s a retro bring back of the old BBC clock they used to have… I feel as if this was a knife meant to stab me in the eyes. Do I really need a clock on my website?Please…

The Cool

The one cool thing out of all of this is I can add BBC news feeds to Google Reader and never ever have to visit their homepage again.