the hartford courant
March, 1999.
By Molly E. Holzschlag. (Link to original article.)
"As is often the case with online newspapers, content drives this site."
If content is king, then the Hartford Courant is a crown prince among online newspapers. The Courant has the unique reputation as being the longest continually published newspaper in the United States. On paper. It's been around on the Web for quite a few years, too.
A recent redesign of the site brought it to my attention, and overall, I'm very impressed with the Crown Prince's new clothes.
Figure 1. The front page of the Hartford Courant Web site.
As is often the case with online newspapers, content should, and often does, drive the site. But without effective navigation, an attractive look and feel appropriate to the audience, and a sense of style, the content can quickly fall, without grace, from its royal place.
Navigation begins on the home page with the standard left-margin, text-based approach. Okay, it's not innovative, but for large amounts of data, it's extremely effective and well-understood by site visitors. So, if you're going to introduce this kind of navigation, it should remain consistent. It does not.
Figure 2. The Hartford Courant's Destinations page contains offsite links.
Instead, the internal pages have left-margin content largely comprised of off-site links. This is innovative, but I am concerned that people coming through the main site or familiar with left navigation could lose their orientation and mistake these links for internal navigation options.
Fortunately, this bit of confusion has been offset by an excellent, combined tab-and-mouseover JavaScript approach. Centered toward the top of each page, this navigation serves as the primary method of getting from here to there. There are also handy text-based links at the bottom of each page.
"The look and feel of the site is clean and crisp, with subtle and consistent use of color, type, and space."
The look and feel of the site is clean and crisp, with subtle and consistent use of color, type, space, and well-designed headers and clip art. The broad-spectrum general audience should have no trouble managing the design, although older or vision-impaired visitors might struggle with the small font sizes.
Figure 3. An interactive forum gives readers a voice--but only if they can find it.
Functionality could be considerably improved by providing gateways to the Courant's interactive forum on each news page and a separate marker within the navigation. As it stands, plebian readers have to drill down and look around if they want to give the Courant any sass, an opportunity that could make this kingdom a bustling, plebian-driven experience.
critic's rating
Usability
Navigation
Graphic design
Content
Compatibility
Load time
Functionality
Overall
designer's interview
Molly: What was your role in creating the site?
Matt Straznitskas: In the case of The Hartford Courant, I served as both project manager and lead designer. I established all of the review dates and managed client communications, as well as developing the individual layouts and graphics that comprise the site.
Molly: How big was the team, what was its composition, and what was the relationship of the team members like?
Matt Straznitskas: Because of my long-standing relationship with the Courant and intimacy with the courant.com Web site (I had designed components of the site since its inception), the team was kept to two people: myself and an HTML/Javascript programmer. The programmer and I worked closely in defining how the interactive navigation would work, as well as the page design templates.
Given the short time frame we were working under, keeping the team small was essential to meeting the project's deadlines.
Molly: How long did it take from concept to going live?
Matt Straznitskas: It was roughly a sixteen-week process, from beginning to end. The first four weeks were spent defining the architecture of the new site, the next eight weeks were spent developing a look and feel for the site, and the final four weeks were spent developing the page templates and working them into the Courant's publishing protocols.
Molly: How did you plan the design and functionality of the site?
Matt Straznitskas: The design and functionality of the site was developed based on the clear objectives set out by the Courant team. A new brand identity was created for the site, which incorporated the courant.com URL. And, the design was new from top to bottom.
Molly: Did you start with an idea of the existing market and demographics?
Matt Straznitskas: Yes, because the previous design was up for 24 months, we had significant amounts data from both user and internal (the team publishing the online paper each day) groups.
Molly: Were there any limitations imposed by a client or someone else that constrained your development of the site?
Matt Straznitskas: Because of the way the paper was published, the client wanted to stay away from a frames-based approach, which we endorsed. The users came from a wide-spectrum of technologies (browsers, plug-ins, CPU, bandwidth, etc.) and it was essential to serve up this ad revenue-based site to a maximum number of users. Thus, a low-bandwidth, table-based site was deemed a must-have.
Molly: What did you have to leave out of the design that you would have liked to include?
Matt Straznitskas: We all (agency and the client) would have liked to include more multimedia (Flash, Shockwave, etc.) in the site, but the low-bandwith/dated browser audience, as well as the demands of daily publishing, ultimately led to a decision to delay a richer user experience.
Molly: What feature on the site are you most proud of?
Matt Straznitskas: Presenting commercial information (selling books, collectibles, etc.) in the same space with editorial content is a major issue to reputable publishers like The Hartford Courant. By running commerce-related information in the left column on a different colored background (termed "Specials" on the Web site), we were able to maintain the separation of "church and state" and make everyone happy--a major accomplishment given the different forces at work.
While there are other features of the site that I'm very excited about (the JavaScript tab-based navigation will surely become adopted by other information rich online publications), maintaining the editorial integrity of the online version of The Hartford Courant--the nation's longest continually published newspaper--is the feature I am most proud of.
Molly: Is there anything you'd change on the site now that it's live?
Matt Straznitskas: Recently, the home page was altered to include a number of new links in the left hand column (under Features). This has helped users more easily find the sections of the site they may have missed.
Molly: What was the most important lesson or tip you learned while building this site that you'd pass on to other Web builders?
Matt Straznitskas: Provide immediate access to as much information as possible. Users, myself included, have little patience for navigating multiple screens to get to the content for which they are looking.
Molly: What's your favorite Web site?
Matt Straznitskas: For pure cutting-edge aesthetic enjoyment, Auriea Harvey's Entropy 8 is always worth a look.
Molly: What site do you wish you had designed?
Matt Straznitskas: Although I have some reservations about the site's presentation and organization, in researching other newspaper Web sites I came to love the header/navigation design of the Washington Post. Very sleek and compact.
Molly: What was your background before becoming involved with Web site design and development?
Matt Straznitskas: I was a fine artist and traditional graphic designer. A lengthy illness provided me with the impetus to learn how to use a computer and design Web pages.
Molly: When you're not busy building sites, what do you enjoy doing?
Matt Straznitskas: While site development is still a focus for me, most of my time is spent growing my interactive agency, BrainBug. At this point, I find managing and marketing the agency to be as enjoyable as the actually developing Web sites.
