Wednesday, April 09, 2008
New BBC Website for wider display
Ho hum. The BBC have delivered a new web site and it sits in the middle instead of ranged left.
I think this looks really good. It really is just plain simple and the layout is not too busy. The best feature has to be the customisation. It is possible to change the colour scheme and choose alternative categories for the site.
One important change; this is set up as fixed width - fitting into a 1024 pixel wide display. Most sites I work on are still kind to users with 800 pixel widths.
You can find the BBC web site here.
furthermore...
On a more technical note, this site is now delivered with validated XHTML 1.0 strict. These people now know what they are doing! I have always admired the BBC web site but for a very long time the code and layout has been poor.
The big question is justifing the 1024 width. One must presume that they have done some research on this but I have some first hand experience at being forced to use a, 800 pixel wide display; yes, I have been in hospital!
PatientLine
I had a minor operation and was a patient for a number of days. The hospital beds have a system provided by 'PatientLine' and the screen which delivers television also displays the Internet. I am told by an engineer at PatientLine that some hospitals do have more sophisticated digital systems but at the John Radcliffe Hospital the screen display is 800x600 and the browser (I am told) is based on Internet Explorer 4.1 CE.
