A brief history of bbc.co.uk
Hello, my name is Andrew and I’m the picture editor for the bbc.co.uk homepage. I’ve been at the BBC since 2002 and along with Martin, Ben and Jem I’ll be chipping in a few thoughts to this blog.
Firstly, I thought I’d do a quick walk through the visual history of the BBC’s online offering, then about some of the day to day editorial issues we face and why they’re about to get even more interesting.
We’ve been online for over ten years now, Though I’d say the ’97 election and other events that year was our ‘coronation moment’. Here’s a grab of the homepage from around that time, a time of 14.4k modems, 16bit colours and 15” screens.
It was changed around 1998, to look like this, and was named BBC Online. By this time each department was in a gold rush to get some sort of online presence and the site was growing fast.
Sometime in 2001 it was updated again to this design With a much larger main image and an attempt to stop it growing down the page. That drop down programme listing lasted until 2002, and got so big as our complimentary online output grew. A few services were present on this version, including ‘have your say’ and the first introduction of search. This was also the creation of BBCi which saw the overarching brand cover online and interactive TV.
2002, saw what is referred to as ‘the glass wall’ redesign. This saw the introduction of the patina, where your clicks were tracked and added together so that area’s you used a lot got lighter and areas you did used got darker. It also had a swatch of 12 colours that could be applied to the page to compliment the main promotional image. Seach is expanded again as our content continues to grow, and ‘popular searches’ is added.
This was quite an extensive redesign and we put a book together containing all our thinking called ‘The Glass Wall’ [8meg PDF]
2004 saw the page rebranded to bbc.co.uk and a new logo was designed and it’s this design we had now. The page is now a light blue, though we’ve changed it for things like Children in Need to yellow and red.
Over the past two years I’ve been instrumental in trying to reshape the page for specific editorial events, from the culmination of Doctor Who, to England winning the Ashes, to the landmark planet earth series. Being topical and reflecting the voice of the nation is a key task the BBC is charged with.
Also here’s some things that until now haven’t seen the light of day. A 1945-ification of the page that we considered for WWII anniversary, and a Guest Editor idea that didn’t get off the ground.
So that’s a really brief tour around how we got to where we are. We’ve come quite far, but we’re looking for a paradigm shift in our thinking now. Why? Because I think the way we can offer content is starting to change. Here’s what used to happen. A show would go out to broadcast, and the homepage and other parts of the site would carry abridged versions of what happened in the show. So you’d have some images, and character biog, or a more in-depth look at the issues in the show. And despite all the redesigns over the years we still do that to a certain extent. What the 2.0 project is partly about is ‘what does the page look like when you can get 10,000 hours of telly through it’.
So, if you’d like some sort of editorial steerage to help frame your design thinking, consider how we’d handle say the World Cup, if you could have all the BBC entire World Cup output at your fingertips.. Now think that at the same time Wimbledon is on, and there’s a dozen other things happening like Chelsea flower show or local elections, all of these have past and live BBC output.. and people might want all, some or none of these things in different sizes and ways, from live HD video right down to portable sized chunks. And consider that ancillary content is now being generated, so there’s world cup blogs, head gardener blogs, interactive guides, player information, and a billion other things…. Makes your head hurt sometimes!
For more about what we’ve done in the past see my blog.
Good luck, If you've any questions or thoughts contact me via Ben
Andrew
- 28 Apr 2006 16:37
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to be completist you could go right back and see if you can get some grabs of the BBC networking club homepage, which i think was bbcnc.org.uk - or some of the very very first html put up at bbc.co.uk by the kingswood warren boys... :-)
Yeah I've a hunt on for that... The other story I heard a while ago off Tim was that the first BBC internet page used frames, as you can see in the radio example ffrom 97, but that at the time the BBC desktop only included IE 1 or something, which couldn't use frames!
Budget 96 used frames - http://www.currybet.net/cbet_archives/0039.php
I think Max Gadney has a CD with all that stuff on it, but it's so old no one can open the files on it anymore (old freehand mock-ups I think).
>> it's so old no one can open the files on it anymore
that's progress for you ;-)
The 'Glass Wall' PDF appears to be corrupted, spits out a 'damaged and could not be repaired error'.
Thank's Keith, not sure what happened there, I've fixed the link and the PDF so it should be fine now.
Why did you abadon the idea of the colour swatches depending on the main image, and your visits changing the box shades?
When I first read and saw the Glass Wall concept, I was amazed as it was so subtle and clever.
The layers idea too (of the caption box having a translucent background for the main picture) is more modern and contempory (a position you want). It is also good, because some of the image below can still be seen. Perhaps it takes more work (having to composite an image for outdated browsers), but it's worth it even if you have to compromise and make it only available to browsers that can support it (CSS).
The overall layout is much the same as in 2002, but the subtle attention to detail is missing. The current colour scheme is sometimes unsuitable for the images. Some variation and subtlety in the colour design would be nice.
One final thing: I presume the majority of your readership is Western, and as such reads left to right. Therefore more important content should be on the left of a site. Most people come to the BBC for News, Sports, TV and Radio, not to Browse. So why is the Browse area on the left?