New MS home page

[francis]

Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/) have redesigned their home page. Apparently the code is much better (I haven't looked yet), but what of the design?

Personally, I think it's far worse than the previous page - it's fixed width with a whole load of slightly-too-bright blue on the right. The content seems really sparse and the image at the top of the page is a bit too large for my liking. One good thing is that they've stopped serving different content dependant on the user agent.

What does anyone else think?

[David]

For my money, if you are going to design a fixed width page, it ought to be centered. That way, the background is balanced left/right. Francis mentions the blue on the right and this is the result of a non-centred fixed width. The higher your monitor resolution, the worse the issue becomes.

They have obviously chosen to give it a more "XP" feel than the previous page and to that end they have done well but it's debatable whether the style is better at conveying information than the previous one. I think this is why there is less information there - more style and less content - it's a reasonable balance.

They have obviously decided that they needed a more "visually" accessible (small "A") home page and to that end I think they have done a good job. Whether it's "accessible" in the sense that we have all come to understand now is questionable. I'll wait to see what Francis has to say about the code.

[Tom]

I agree. And one could see this as a further sign that MS is losing its way:

(1) the non-profitably of all MS ventures, except Office and Windows

(2) giving back all that money to shareholders, which they once hoped they could invest profitably

(3) the lack of any credible response to the open source challenge (my son is now running almost all his software under Linux - I think Photoshop is the exception)

(4) the share price is no longer rocketing and its p/e ratio is no longer sky-high

(5) Longhorn delays

(6) other companies are offering the vaunted 'search your own hard disc' function [but I downloaded Google's Picasa image-indexer and its a pig]

(7) .....?

The used to say that MS owed its success to Bill's combination of technical and business judgement. I suspect this no longer quite the asset it was, because both issues are so much better understood than in, say, 1995.

[francis]

As was all over the internet news yesterday, Longhorn has been delayed. They've also scrapped, or massively reduced WinFS (http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/story/0,10801,95538,00.html), the revolutionary file system that would have done, as far as I can understand, the searching. Quite a good interview with Gates on CNet (http://news.com.com/Gates%3A+Longhorn+changed+to+make+deadlines/2008-1016_3-5327377.html?tag=nl) that explains what's going on with SP2, Longhorn, the relationship with PC manufacturers etc. There's also a developers' reaction to the changes (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104-5327536.html) article that was quite interesting.

But getting back to the subject in hand, I gree with David - the page really needs to be centered. Also, as David said, the higher the resolution the greater the amount of blue on the right. And, oh dear God, it's stopped looking the same on all browsers. Still, not to worry, it's only the very top of the homepage...

http://www.websitearchitecture.co.uk/storr/forumimgs/ms-home-page-3shots.jpg

[James]

I don't think it's an improvement, possibly a step backwards. I thought the old Microsoft site was OK actually - certainly not stunning, just OK.

If you use Francis' IE link he posted:

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documen...s/appendix.mspx (http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/ie/6/all/reskit/en-us/appendix.mspx)

You will notice (if you're quick) that initially the page loads without frames, then presumably some JavaScript forces the frames in. Fair enough.

However, if you then click on the Microsoft logo in top left to go back to the home page, the frames do not disappear and the page is half homepage, half previous frameset. You can try and close the old left frame but that confuses the site even more. I ended up locked in to a framset and never got back to the homepage.

No doubt the internet community have panned it, because I think they would hate anything Microsoft do, because it's fashionable. I think it's OK, not bad, etc (as the TV advert for something I can't remember says!).

[francis]

Originally posted by James Barker@Aug 30 2004, 10:10 am
No doubt the internet community have panned it, because I think they would hate anything Microsoft do, because it's fashionable.
Actually, of the things I've seen, the reaction to the design has been pretty much the same as ours. The reaction to the code has been pretty favourable as, and I still haven't looked at it, a whole lot better than before. Shame about that whole frameset thing, though. Another basic mistake from people that should know better.

[francis]

WaSP write-up of the MS re-design (http://webstandards.org/buzz/archive/2004_08.html#a000416) with links to articles on the same by Eric Meyer and Douglas Bowman