The LA Times website used to remind me of an old-fashioned hardware store – things were plopped wher

The LA Times website used to remind me of an old-fashioned hardware store – things were plopped wherever there seemed to be space. That changed when Meredith Artley took over as editor of the site in early 2007. Under Artley , latimes.com quickly became a leader in design and in featuring content that celebrates the special qualities of its metro area. So why is the site's new design, despite some welcome improvements, specked with so many user-unfriendly mistakes?
broadway show chicago tickets The new typeface is Georgia, a serif version of Verdana, which Microsoft commissioned early on for its online readability. Georgia, which was inspired by Times Roman, is fine, but not when, everywhere, it is uniformly presented in regular font.
" Gutenberg would be proud," the Times presumptuously brags about its new Web typeface choice. But even Gutenberg used boldface and other typographical devices of contrast in his Bible , the first example of printing broadway show chicago tickets with movable type.
To achieve its hyper-cleanness, the redesigned LAT site often eliminates information that would be an important broadway show chicago tickets cue to the browsing user. In this strip of three homepage promos (below), the browser is not told that authoritative Hollywood staff writer Claudia Eller was the author of the first promoted piece.
The redesign has earned plaudits from commenting users ("magnificent change! much more readable, and elegant." "Oooh! broadway show chicago tickets Nice, very nice," "MUCH BETTER") but there have been dissents too. Stephen wrote on Aug. 12:
A final suggestion: To help users wrap their heads around all the news the LA Times serves up, the site should hire what I would call a "Web maitre d'," who would, broadway show chicago tickets each day, in a one-minute video, summarize what's featured – from the biggest to the quirkiest stories. Talented would-be presenters – we're talking LA here – would be lining up at the Times' Spring Street entrance for auditions. The overview would be delivered with a soupçon of drollery broadway show chicago tickets (no Daily Show stuff) – just enough to encourage users to keep coming back for more.
I write about hyperlocal grassroots sites regularly for Online Journalism Review. What I've seen checking out proliferating sites has not been encouraging. The content is generally dull "happy news" or aggregated wire stories and doesn't seem to tap into what's special broadway show chicago tickets about the communities being covered.
Earlier in my career, I was managing editor of news for Digital City/AOL and before that co-founder of the free-circulation weekly Connection Newspapers in Northern Virginia. Earlier yet, I was a reporter and editor at The Washington Post. For more information, consult, Who's Who in America (2008 edition). I'm reachable at TomEditor@msn.com.
Until all the various forms of custom font embedding being considered by Web standards bodies and programmers shake out, Georgia and Times New Roman remain the only two Web-safe serif font families. That s because they re the only two that are almost always resident on almost all versions of Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.
The best way to use Georgia in Web design is to apply sufficient contrast in size, not in weight. So there I agree with you, the site could use a touch more size contrast. At the same time, default body text is a tad too small for my eye, at least.
(Incidentally, the designer of Georgia considers it a brother to Verdana, but not the serif version of Verdana. The two families have very different characteristics, beyond just that one is serif and one is sans serif.)