January 21, 2002

Wall Street Journal Redesign
The WSJ Online has redesigned their site...and it appears they are moving in the right direction. The redesign "tour" hints that they are moving their online layout to be quite different from their print heritage:

"Newspaper readers and Web users don't always have the same needs. So we've reorganized our navigation in a way that works better online. We've moved some sections and pages, and given some of them new names that more directly describe the subjects they cover. "

They seem to have improved their article format by adding a related links sidebar -- a much under-used feature on most web sites. After all, what is the web without links? You guessed it...without links it's pretty much newpaper content trapped in a browser. :-) Great "related links" can add tremendous value (see Strategic Linking Techniques by John Rhodes of Webword.

Another change is the move to 2 site maps. One is really an index that they call an alphabetical site map. The second is a typical site map (if there is such a thing) listing the site's sections and primary pages under them. See Jakob's recent Alertbox article for a good discussion of site map usability.
[thanks to Christina at ElegantHack for the WSJ pointer]

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