Website Critique
Posted by Matt Cloud
http://www.fwaphoto.com
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com
I'm a fan of both of these site, though the latter is the only one that can really be considered a multimedia site.
Let’s start with visible flaws with NYTLens. The layout is clunky. It isn’t organized well. It almost feels like a middle page in the Times itself – lots of text for a photo-oriented site. This leads to navigation issues. Where do I go next? Where are the archives? They are there, the just blend into the text of the page.
That being said, the content is routinely fantastic and often current. It’s remarkably interactive for a non-user focused webpage. Links aren’t too easy to find, as stated earlier, due to the fact that they look like the 12-point Arial text of everything else on the page. There’s also not much flash, but plenty of video and slideshow content that correspond with current newspaper headlines in the NYTimes itself. The text color is too close to the background color, too.
It looks as though it implements tables, but I’m not certain. Actually, it looks like a converted Blogger or WordPress site, which wouldn’t be a stretch considering it IS their blog. I think many of the style problems and layout crunch could be solved by a renovation with a much more coherent stylesheet.
