I'm never going away again...

NYTimes.com

First off; I guess you've all fallen in love with the NY Times redesign, already. And to be quite honest - it was quite overdue... I mean, this is the guys that own IHT.com..!

Now, I think Khoi has said all there is to say about the redesign; but allow me to make some personal remarks...

The general look and feel of this site is terrific. No doubt about it. It manages to stay classy, clean and comfortable, without trying too hard. It's like a Garamond of webdesign.

It strikes me as kind of odd, though that the somewhat conservative design isn't optimized for at least 800 by 600; rather than having a fixed width of 970 pixels... Where does that number come from?

It's nice and liberating to see more and more designs discarding the need to design 800x600; but I still feel one, ideally, should.

Media what?! Honestly; I do think NYT should implement more stylesheets. At least print, and preferably handheld as well.

Not only do I use my palmtop a lot, and don't want to remember what the URI for every single mobile-adapted site is...

And the thing is; I usually connect through WiFi or 3G, so speed isn't really the issue either; so the mobile-only version is more hassle for me than what a media="handheld" would be...

As for the missing print-sheet: I could forgive you, if you had a really kick-ass print-page. But you don't! It's okay, sure... But I'd still prefer larger margins, a little bit smaller type, and a nicer way to show links.

One thing is that links in text can be underlined and blue; if you are to slave to the users of MS Word et cetera; but the byline?!

I understand that this is a work in progress - and so here are my thoughts on how to progress from here:

1. The print-situation:

   Make a print-sheet - use good right-hand margins, and a little bit more visually pleasing header graphics. Then link it to the 'print this'-button, like so:

   <SCRIPT>
document.write('
<a href="#" onClick="window.print()"> Print this </a>');
</SCRIPT>

<NOSCRIPT>
<a href="Current printpage“> Print this </a>
<NOSCRIPT>

   I'm thinking of doing that on my CSS Reboot-design as well, so any feedback is welcome!

2. Hover?
   

   The ”Inside NYTimes.com"-bar is one of my favorite design-features of this design. It's only too annoying that it doesn't have a :hover effect. I'm not saying that it should light up in bright fancy colors; but something like Veerle's block-effect in a light grey shade would definitively make some good pageporn for this site...

Cameron Moll

Then there's the redesignrealign of Cameron Moll's portfolio pages. Now Cameron has long been among my favorite designers and bloggers; and this design is so close to perfection, that I cannot possibly say how excited I was to read the following lines

There’s some disparity between this page and the rest of the site[...] But I have plans to update the rest of the site accordingly, so I can live with a temporary disconnect.

(Emphasis mine, all mine!) in the article he wrote on the redesign

 

UPDATE

My opinion of NYTimes.com was formed based on viewing the page without ads.. (Go Camino!) It DOES look a bit more cluttered with the ads, I'll admit, but still, I think it's a pretty sexy site...