[Zenith]

Looks like it's gone "live" today.

Time to find a new home page.

[stevvy1986]

There really is NOTHING positive to say about it as far as I'm concerned. Terrible. Ugly. Cluttered. Messy. An absolute complete waste of time. No need to change it into something so bad. I don't want to know what's on. I don't want to know what's popular with other people. I don't want some stupid 'carousel' that'll give me information on things I have no interest in. It was absolutely fine the way it was before. It's nothing short of absolutely horrific. I hate it. They should've left it the way it was before. Simple as that.

[Zenith]

Originally Posted by stevvy1986

There really is NOTHING positive to say about it as far as I'm concerned. Terrible. Ugly. Cluttered. Messy. An absolute complete waste of time. No need to change it into something so bad. I don't want to know what's on. I don't want to know what's popular with other people. I don't want some stupid 'carousel' that'll give me information on things I have no interest in. It was absolutely fine the way it was before. It's nothing short of absolutely horrific. I hate it. They should've left it the way it was before. Simple as that.

Agree 100%.

I used to have everything I wanted on 1 page, arranged how I wanted, with only the categories showing that I was interested in. Now that's all gone.

[Ginger Nut]

Originally Posted by Zenith

Looks like it's gone "live" today.

Time to find a new home page.

This. First thing I did when I opened my browser was reset to a new home page.

What a dreadful mess.

[stevvy1986]

Originally Posted by Zenith

Agree 100%.

I used to have everything I wanted on 1 page, arranged how I wanted, with only the categories showing that I was interested in. Now that's all gone.

Exactly the same. I had the news, local news, local weather, sport, football, and F1 headlines arranged in a nice easy way for me to see all of them without having to scroll down at all. That was it. That was all I wanted. Now it's just a mish mash of nothingness all over the place, full of junk that doesn't interest me in the slightest.

[allthingsuk]

Looks like a total and utter mess. What a shambles - the old homepage was great; why do people keep messing with things that ain't broke?

[slow motion]

Looks like pandering to tablet users.

[kdLeeds]

Originally Posted by Zenith

Agree 100%.

I used to have everything I wanted on 1 page, arranged how I wanted, with only the categories showing that I was interested in. Now that's all gone.

My sentiments exactly. Customised as I wanted it, everything at a glance on one screen, no scrolling vertically or horizontally, sifting through 95% of what I don't want to see.

I too will be looking for a new home page

[The Phazer]

Originally Posted by allthingsuk

Looks like a total and utter mess. What a shambles - the old homepage was great; why do people keep messing with things that ain't broke?

Adopting the same sort of idiot logic feel free to move back into your cave. Which wasn't broke. And maybe someone can bring around a 486 running Windows 3.1 (wasn't broke) to show you this BBC homepage (which wasn't broke), and you can marvel at your wisdom.

That's not to say that change is always for the better, and I think this new site has a lot of flaws, and is probably inferior to the old one overall. But I believe that as a society it's time for us to recognise that "it's not broke so don't fix it" is actually latin for "I'm such a dunderhead that I shouldn't be allowed to hold kitchen untensils."

Phazer

[Biffo the Bear]

Urgh, it brought on my vertigo for a few seconds when it loaded up - that's horrible

[Rocket Kipper]

It does not seem to be going down well

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcintern...ge_launch.html

[roger_50]

I'm actually laughing out loud at it. I mean, how could this possibly ever been considered as an improvement back in the design stage?

There are plenty of sites out there that change for the better, but I don't know what the beeb were thinking with this. A complete balls-up and rather embarrassing for them in my opinion.

[hungerdunger]

I've filled in the opinion survey here, and expressed my very strong negative feelings which appear to mirror most of the comments here.

I have also said I will be looking for another Homepage, but I wonder whether there is actually one that does what the old BBC page did. Can anyone suggest a page which allows the same level of customisability as the old BBC page did?

I have a feeling that we're just stuck with a sub-standard product, but one which is no worse than the alternatives.

[iain]

Originally Posted by Zenith

Agree 100%.

I used to have everything I wanted on 1 page, arranged how I wanted, with only the categories showing that I was interested in. Now that's all gone.

but as i said earlier, that was one of the reasons they made the changes.

they found that most people who used the site didn't really use the home page, they just went straight to the sections they did use.

the idea now is to make the homepage a bit more browsable to help people have a look and maybe find stuff they wouldn't normally look at.

and in that respect, i think it works very well.

am i right in thinking that when the homepage changed last time, it didn't go down very well either? i remember looking at it, thinking it was quite clever with the whole moving stuff around, and then never really looked at it again, as i just had the news and sport pages bookmarked.

Iain

[Arcana]

Quite a few pages I used to like have gone down a similar route recently, presumably to appeal to other users. For me it's a big step back and it's not just a knee-jerk reaction because I've been checking the beta for a number of weeks to see if I'd get used to it. Similar story to the Radio Times.

I haven't used BT Yahoo for years but looks like that's my new home page until I can find something better.

[stevvy1986]

Originally Posted by iain

they found that most people who used the site didn't really use the home page, they just went straight to the sections they did use.

the idea now is to make the homepage a bit more browsable to help people have a look and maybe find stuff they wouldn't normally look at.

But in response to that I'd say if I want to find out something or look at something I wouldn't normally look at on the website, I'd want to do it off my own back, not because the BBC forced me to look at it on their new homepage. They may say people generally went to the sections they wanted to use, but that's what people want to do. Being honest, why should anyone be made to see what's on TV next on their homepage? I don't want to see that. I now get less headlines on less things that interest me. Before I could get about 8 headlines or so for national and local news, and the same for general sporting headlines, as well as football and F1. Now I have less headlines, it's less organised, and it doesn't show me the things I want to see. For me they've dropped a massive clanger. The previous blogs were I'm certain anything between 50-70% full of negative comments, but they seemigly ignored them, and only listened to those who said it was either good, or it was good but needed improving, and now they've brought it out, out of the first 100 comments or so (not including responses by moderators), I think around 85-90 of them are negative, which says it all really.

[mossy2103]

Originally Posted by Zenith

Looks like it's gone "live" today.

Time to find a new home page.

about:blank has always done it for me in Firefox.

[iain]

Originally Posted by stevvy1986

But in response to that I'd say if I want to find out something or look at something I wouldn't normally look at on the website, I'd want to do it off my own back, not because the BBC forced me to look at it on their new homepage.

sure, but that's missing the point. they're not forcing you to look at the homepage, they're just trying to create a homepage that encourages people to see what's kicking around the site, rather than just list the stuff that people look at anyway.

They may say people generally went to the sections they wanted to use, but that's what people want to do. Being honest, why should anyone be made to see what's on TV next on their homepage? I don't want to see that. I now get less headlines on less things that interest me. Before I could get about 8 headlines or so for national and local news, and the same for general sporting headlines, as well as football and F1. Now I have less headlines, it's less organised, and it doesn't show me the things I want to see.

but if you're interested in news and sport, did you really use the homepage much? didn't you just tend to go to the news and sports pages?

For me they've dropped a massive clanger. The previous blogs were I'm certain anything between 50-70% full of negative comments, but they seemigly ignored them, and only listened to those who said it was either good, or it was good but needed improving, and now they've brought it out, out of the first 100 comments or so (not including responses by moderators), I think around 85-90 of them are negative, which says it all really.

i think that will largely be due to people being more vocal with negative views than positive views.

like it or not, with devices like the iPad and the idea of gestures to swipe through content, carousel like views here, where content is present horizontally rather than vertically is undoubtedly one direction that websites are increasingly likely to take.

Iain

[stevvy1986]

Yes, I had the homepage bookmarked, as what I generally did was look at the national and local headlines on the left hand side and open a new tab for any stories from there I wanted to look at, and the same for the general sport headlines, football headlines, and F1 headlines which were in the middle, and the weather on the right hand side, so I did use the homepage. They may be trying to get people to look at other stuff around the site, but I'd imagine the vast majority of people don't want that, they only want to look at the things they want to look at. If they want to look at something else, they'll go and find it.

[iain]

Originally Posted by stevvy1986

Yes, I had the homepage bookmarked, as what I generally did was look at the national and local headlines on the left hand side and open a new tab for any stories from there I wanted to look at, and the same for the general sport headlines, football headlines, and F1 headlines which were in the middle, and the weather on the right hand side, so I did use the homepage. They may be trying to get people to look at other stuff around the site, but I'd imagine the vast majority of people don't want that, they only want to look at the things they want to look at. If they want to look at something else, they'll go and find it.

that's the point - they knew that most people weren't looking at the homepage.

as for finding other stuff, that kind of misses the point that people won't necessarily know what's on the site that they might be interested in, and the idea was provide a better means to encourage them to browse, and possibly spot something that interests them, away from the stuff they would automatically look at.

i think the carousel that can scroll through three pages of stuff, and be filtered using the tabs under it, is a much better way of presenting a lot more stuff in the top half of a single page.

Iain

[stevvy1986]

Well I'm afraid, no matter which way anyone tries to paint a positive picture of the homepage, I honestly think it's absolutely terrible. Nothing will change my mind on that. Not because I'm stubborn or anything, but because I can find absolutely nothing positive about the new homepage compared to the old homepage. If I could find some positive things, it'd be different, and I could consider changing my views over a period fo time. However, for me personally, it's terrible, and my view won't be changing.

[omnidirectional]

I absolutely hate it. I'm not one who rejects all change; I think the new BBC Weather site is very nice. But the new BBC homepage is horrible. It looks like something designed for a tablet which has been forced on all users.

[slow motion]

Originally Posted by iain

i think that will largely be due to people being more vocal with negative views than positive views.

yes it's very easy to discard valid criticism on those grounds.

I wonder if the BBC will have its head in the sand, alongside yourself, on this and just ignore people's valid criticisms, viewing critics as the real 'minority' just as you do.

[sn_22]

Originally Posted by Rocket Kipper

It does not seem to be going down well

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcintern...ge_launch.html

Very few design changes - certainly not ones as radical as this - ever do. We'd still be stuck with the cluttered old news page crammed into a corner of the screen and needing a magnifying glass to use if development always stopped when people complained. Doesn't mean there's not valid complaints about this, though.

It doesn't really impact me, as (like the vast, vast majority of users) I'd never customised the old home page.

The News and Sport headlines are in a better position now, above the fold - and all the other links I use are right at the top. I like having the Weather on the front page too.

All in all, I prefer the visual style of this page - it seems 'cleaner' to me - and it still does everything I use it for as quickly as it ever did. Though I can see it'll be frustrating for the minority who'd spent ages honing their own customisation.

[Georged123]

Absolutely awful, like the press office site, they have changed something that was perfectly fine before and made it into a total mess.