Surely it's to Binform, Beducate and Centertain (that's what BBC stands for).

Call this an embryonic, ill-conceived, poorly-designed folly, but: it sounds to me like a three-column layout would be apt.

→ Posted by: Greg K Nicholson at November 27, 2007 1:32 AM

Not substantially different from what's there now, semantically-speaking.

Anything which gets rid of that POS half-done 'bbc.co.uk' "logo" is fine by me, I guess.

I'm not wildly enamoured of the idea that they're doing these pages without ads on them, since the way they've been subtly using crowbars and trowels for the last couple of weeks hasn't been working thus far.

Obviously since it's the homepage, really we need to wait for Martin to tell us what to think.

→ Posted by: genghis at November 27, 2007 1:56 AM

Hum... looks good, and technically good too. But aren't there better customisable homepages out there now?

If you wanted a customisable draggy box homepage, why would you want one with only BBC content on it? Seems a little strange.

→ Posted by: Jason Cartwright at November 27, 2007 10:58 AM

Does anyone know what the BBC's site is for?

Exactly! It certainly needs to work out what its core content objects are (may i refer to the most splendid Tom Coates and his previous presentations 'Native to a Web of Data' and 'Designing for a Web of Data' )

Personally i think it's 'programmes', as made by the divisions Audio & Music and Vision, and 'stories', as made by 'Journalism', and that's it.

To get a little more Weinberger on it, the small pieces are the 'episodes' and the 'articles'. That's what i want my BBC homepage to be, one list of programmes and one list of stories with some filtering and recommendations based on my 'logged-in' behaviour and consumption across the site.

Any service, channel, product, marketing campaign, season, event, talent, location is just a slice across these two objects. Is that too simple?

→ Posted by: Jamie Tetlow at November 29, 2007 2:31 PM

What you didn't know was that that was only the first slide of what the crazy designers had done before the real work of designing the home page started...

This was the next slide in the presentation (and a lot more to my taste as it happens).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/everythingability/2075963568/

→ Posted by: tom smith at November 30, 2007 12:47 PM

As far as I know based on the presentation given at BBC Vision the new BBC homepage will be based along the lines of an iGoogle/Netvibes/Bloglines type site so the look of the site will be customisable.

Why would you want (a homepage) with only BBC content on it?

I think the idea is that you won't be restricted to using the BBC's site at all. The BBC site merely becomes a central repositary of all the widgets and feeds available and as a user you can choose to plug any of these widgets or feeds into Netvibes or another application that you might already be using. So "if a user entry point into the BBC site/page is now through a Vista widget then all well and good" according to the BBC.

Do a search on BBC Vision Multiplatform Day if you want more info.

The BBC are moving away from the old style portal approach where you need to visit the BBC sites to find out information. The key to the new strategy is create, play, share.

→ Posted by: woofer1975 at November 30, 2007 4:31 PM