Even if you are on the far end of regularity when it comes to reading news on the internet, you probably end up visiting the sites of the large news corporations every so often. Recently, the design of the BBC homepage (Link to BBC.co.uk) has been revamped. With this fresh and flauntingly 'web 2.0' update BBC also chose to increase the overall width of their entire site to utilize the current web standards for user resolution.

Their previous site was merely 770 pixels wide, which designers, developers, and probably most people involved in the web in some way or another would agree sounds dated. It's the typewriter of website widths, and crouched in left corner of browser window, anyone without a laptop (and an old one, at that) viewing the old BBC site would see a huge, empty and most importantly, unused space.

What impressed me most about this size increase and it's implementation is the execution of all the pages in their News section. Although the design and layout of the content is almost exactly the same, it has been molded to fit their new grid, sandwiched between their updated header/footer. A seamless update without a full out redesign. (So seamless, actually, that it took months for a homepage-skipper such as myself to notice.)

To drive home the thought and process behind their changes and implementation of this update, there is an available PDF outlining their decisions (Link to Visual Language 1.0 [PDF]). Top-to-bottom it's well written and thorough with a lot of great images showcasing the new grid and it's implementation. I'm impressed with how well the previous content was accounted for, both in planning and execution.

The legnth of the document, the language, the examples, and the justifications for decision are all spot on and clear. It's hard to not blindly trust everything in the document, and even be enticed to skim it rather than dig in and inspect it just out of faith. Anyone involved in our industry should certainly be taking notes.