Leader: silicon.com - stepping up a gear

More content, same great price...

By silicon.com, 21 October 2003 17:30

Notice something different about silicon.com? Given you're reading this, we bet you can't help but have seen the latest - and we think greatest - incarnation of the site.

The new look silicon.com retains the best in breaking news, analysis and commentary, from both our in-house editorial team and a line up of experts second-to-none across the industry - only it adds plenty more besides.

Back come opportunities for you to have a say - Reader Comments returns by popular demand and we've added a wide range of on-site polls - and we are introducing new features which regularly take the pulse of those in the higher echelons of IT.

CIO Jury is one such addition to our stable of content. It's a unique, internet-based poll that asks UK-based IT chiefs at blue chip organisations to give their verdicts on the most pressing issues of the day. Make no mistake, there is no other snapshot like it around today, no other way of marrying the news to the industry's key influencers in near real time.

And if you want to know what makes those at the top of their profession tick, to know about their favourite tipple as much as their favourite supplier, then look out for our upcoming series of reports. The McCue Interview will share the insight of IT's greatest achievers.

And when it comes to honing the structure of our content, rest assured we haven't been resting on our laurels. Our new site allows us to share the most popular stories of the last seven days with you, while contextualised analysis and opinion adds depth.

Plus we have introduced some new channels to make finding what you want easier. In comes 'IT Pro' for the nuts and bolts of working in IT, complementing our more strategic 'IT director' categorisation. We are also marrying our 'Careers' and 'Skills' channels, making it home to the silicon.com Skills Survey, a comprehensive poll of around 6,000 IT and communications professionals.

Indeed perennials such as the Skills Survey and the Agenda Setters list of tech power-brokers will remain very much part of silicon.com's future, as will special reports drilling down on the hottest subjects of the moment such as IM and spam.

We will also continue to provide exclusive content from industry gurus such as Peter Cochrane, the best from other key commentators and of course our now infamous Weekly Round-Up email, delivered to your inbox every Friday afternoon.

And on the subject of emails, we have positioned a newsletter management centre at the bottom of each page - with the option of signing up to our upcoming bulletins dedicated to mobile, security and telecoms.

Our readership figures go from strength to strength. Our website has never looked better.

Thanks to all those who have told us what they want in the redesign, from the advances in look and feel to the new content types. Keep on reading, letting us know what you think. I have a feeling you will.

Tony Hallett
Editor
silicon.com

Comments

There are 9 comments. Join the discussion

  1. 1. Ian Wilson

    Looks good! well done guys... glad to see you're still innovating... and it's great to see reader comments back again...

  2. 2. Hugh Jorgan

    looks slick, nice to see, well done guys

  3. 3. Aled Herbert

    Fantastic job on the redesign guys, it looks crisp and clear. By far and away the best silicon.com yet.

    Great to see the return of reader comments and the news archive functionaliy is particularly useful.

    Nice one, and as another reader said: "keep innovating"

  4. 4. anonymous

    Nice new layout, shame the top tab menu is offset to the left, mostly out of the window and unclickable, in Safari on the Mac. It renders much better in, the soon to be unsupported, Internet Explorer on the Mac, but still has some alignment issues.

  5. 5. Mick Bonwick

    It's not just the readership figures that go from strength to strength. The web site does, too. My only regular read. Let's have more Peter Cochrane.

  6. 6. Andrew S

    The new look is excellent and I'm glad to see you've retained the editorial slant since merging with CNET. The Friday Round-up is a hoot, the Agenda setters is very interesting; great analysis, good content; keep it up!

  7. 7. Rob Penn

    Very pleasing to the eye, great job. Like teh others said good to see the readers comments back.

    Good job all round, keep it up.

  8. 8. Don Tregartha

    Welcome back comment - nice to have somewhere to rant again!

  9. 9. Jay Schlackman

    The new site design looks nice, but it is a mistake to use fixed point sizes for the fonts, especially now they are smaller than before, as this disadvantages readers with any visual impairment.

    Section 3.4 of W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/#gl-structure-presentation) encourages designers to "Use relative rather than absolute units in markup language attribute values and style sheet property values."

    Simple changes to the CSS file for the site would solve this problem.

    In April of this year, silicon.com covered a story on the Disability Rights Commission entitled "Will your website pass the disability test?" (http://www.silicon.com/management/itdirector/0,39024673,10003669,00.htm). silicon's own site would now probably fail as it stands currently.

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