Passionate about technology, media and chocolate eclairs, I've worked in web and print for over twenty years and now run a digital media consultancy in Scotland.
In the real world, the Boston Globe is a hard-hitting broadsheet newspaper. It is the largest circulation title in New England and it has, for a long time, had a website that delivers content to an online audience.
Last week, it was itself in the news for redesigning its website. So what? Websites are being redesigned every day, that’s not a story I hear you say.
But what the Boston Globe has done is revolutionary, despite using a technology that is nothing new.
To date, newspapers have done one of four things with regard to the exponential rise in the mobile internet.
But a technology which has been around for 10 years, and recently finding favour with mobile web designers has been used to make the Boston Globe usable on any hardware and software from one single website.
The technique is called responsive web design, because it uses lines of code to determine the size of the browser and changes the layout accordingly.
This is good because it means publishers don’t need to develop a separate website for mobile and tablet devices.
There have been many examples from competent designers as to how a responsive site should be designed, but the Boston Globe is not only a good example, it takes the concept of mobility even further.
On a desktop, the Boston Globe is a full-featured website.
If we ignore for this review that from 1 October 2011, it will go behind a paywall, on a desktop the Globe is like any other (US) broadsheet online. It’s clearly laid out, with leads, headlines and tasters all positioned well. It has advertising, video and shortcuts to popular areas of the site.
What’s particularly notable about the Globe is the fact that you can save articles for reading later, by simply pressing a button. But more on this later.
When you’re at a desktop, you’ll get the full desktop experience, and that’s how it should be. You get a full width menu, with dynamically populated drop-downs.
The Boston Globe adapts differently for a tablet whether in landscape or portrait
Switch to a tablet and things change. In landscape mode, the only difference is the menu system is gone, due to there being no way to hover on a tablet, but the fact that all menu content is supplementary is good usability. You’ll never miss it, but you’ll enjoy it when it’s there.
Staying on a tablet, but twisting to portrait, things change again, all outer columns are gone, to give the content maximum exposure. The Globe’s journalistic style and high quality photography benefits from this layout, and the (perhaps) rather lengthy articles are not so daunting when given the full width.
With no ability to hover and not enough width to support the full menu, the Globe uses a side-by-side menu structure to minimise use of space, but could have gone a little further I think and used three columns – there’s a lot of white space in there and it’s not the kind of white space that aids design and readablity.
On a smartphone, all unnecessary distractions are gone
Now move to a smartphone, and you are immediately struck by the minimalism, all menus are gone, but you can access them though a single button. Next to that is a button to access your saved articles.
No videos, no ads and no pictures, so the site will load quickly and not distract users.
And remember… we are still on the same website, and it’s not just a case of the same site resizing, the layout is changing, the content is being differently prioritised, and it all makes consuming media more pleasurable for the reader.
The saved articles feature is something that is very valuable, and probably not new in newspaper websites, but needs to work differently than it does at launch. Currently, you can click a ‘save’ button and the article will be saved for reading later. Brilliant! Spotting an article when browsing the news on your phone and being able to mark it to read later is a godsend. But what if you want to read it in the office on your desktop, or while lounging with your tablet?
Currently, the features doesn’t save your choice to the web, only to the device, so you can’t save it on your mobile and read it on your desktop or tablet later.
Fix this, and it’s a killer feature.
Why have I reviewed an American news website?
The website is one of, if not, THE first to use the fashionable responsive design technique. The Boston Globe’s use of this technique will possibly herald a new way to design newspaper websites and deliver one content package to every device out there, without the need to develop costly apps or separate websites for mobile and desktop. It all works on one app, and an app which comes with every smartphone – the browser.
When content is your main online commodity, this makes it more economical for publishers and provides a better experience for readers than any technique before it.
When a publisher in the UK does this, I will be the first to congratulate them.
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See also: Newspaper redesign shows right way to design for mobile web
