The Guardian Goes Online, Again

Dave Hyndman pointed out that The Guardian has a new website. This presumably a result of their “guess who owns us this week?!” situation no longer making them eligible for inclusion in the Canada.com portal family.

The site is obviously a work in progress (although not as much as when Dave grabbed a screen shot). The “Bus Routes” link provides bus information for St. John’s, Newfoundland. The Classified section is “coming soon!” There are no restaurants in the restaurants listings. The photos appear to have been scanned with a 1932 Cockshutt tractor. And so on.

And then there are quality Microsoft errors like this one.

While the site is not “well designed” by any meaning of that phrase, it’s nice to see The Guardian break out of the Big Portal and into a smaller one. Although why exactly The Guardian should be part of a portal at all, especially one as wonky as Transcontinental’s, is beyond me (does Transcontinental actually expect that people will have brand loyalty to “Transcontinental papers?”)

Here’s hoping that Transcontinental holds on to The Guardian for long enough for the bugs to wear out, for the design and navigation on the site to improve, and for the paper to get used to this new medium. Again.

Comments

DerekMac's picture
DerekMac on July 23, 2003 - 01:00 Permalink

The Journal also has a new website, with an identical framework to the Guardian’s. It is a huge step backward from the previous Journal site, (which was done by revolution.ca), both in aesthetics and in functionality. Gone is the very useful article search feature, which let you search their story archives. It doesn’t appear that the new site has any capability to see anything other than today’s news.

By the way, I saw my first “Transcontinental” byline in the Guardian on Saturday. The article was written by a Journal employee, so it appears that we will be seeing more and more commonality between the two dailies.

Brian's picture
Brian on July 23, 2003 - 14:37 Permalink

Wow guardian/journal.

1997 called, they want their html back.

Christopher's picture
Christopher on July 23, 2003 - 16:59 Permalink

be kind guys. It is after all xWave, part of everyone’s favourite world class telco, themselves purveyers of fine code to the Charlottetown Smart Community.