Inquirer.net gets redesign

The Philippine Daily Inquirer's site recently underwent a long overdue redesign and is now generally cleaner and easier to navigate.

Front Page

On the front page, the 8 main "channels" or sections of the site are clearly marked which makes it easier to browse the site. Ads are now also grouped together and not interspersed throughout content. Headlines are visibly promoted first before other news while the remaining sections (including breaking news) are given equal placement in a somewhat long series of boxes of content. Perhaps the problem with the new layout is that there are still too many boxes of content on the front page which may cause the front page to load slowly.

Down Below

After patiently wading through the rest of the mid-section contents, you get to much richer photo and video displayed in a long bar before you reach the footer. It was weird though that richer content are regulated near the bottom of the screen. Info boxes like weather is also strangely far from Lotto, Forex and Exam results and given far too much prominence than it seemingly should.

Further Reading

When you finally decide which article you want to read, you get into a nice layout of content with tools clearly marked for easy sharing on Facebook, Twitter and other sites. Articles are now also given a wider column for easier reading (unlike before where ads took up most of the space on the right and navigation on the left). Those who like discussing Inquirer's rich content of news and features will find a now more prominent comment section which seems to be far less moderated than before.

Image sources: Images are taken from screen shots of the Inquirer.net site.