Yahoo! News UK
Design
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Initial Reaction
The design is quite simple and is mainly white with different shades of light gray. It doesn't look very appealing.
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Aesthetics
The web site is very plain and doesn't use very many colours.
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Legibility
The text is very clear and has a lot of contrast, therefore it is easy to read.
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Layout
The first thing you see is the main story with tabs to access another two main stories which you can view without refreshing the page. Categories are listed below with the main story within each category and text links to other stories displayed.
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Presentation
The web site is quite simple, but is very plain and not very inviting.
Navigation
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Mouse Clicks
You can get to most articles in three clicks or less.
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Scrolling
Only the main story is visible without scrolling at the screen resolution I viewed it at. You have to scroll down to see news within other categories.
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Where are you?
The categories are organised in tabs at the top of the page. The category you are in is highlighted. There is also a breadcrumb above the main content showing your location.
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Search
The search box is displayed at the top of every page under the navigation. It returns results sorted by relevance and worked well.
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Consistency
The navigation is consistent throughout the site.
Content
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Home Page
The home page displays the main stories from each category with links to other stories. The page is a bit long and requires quite a bit of scrolling.
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Updates
The web site looks to be updated regularly. The stories on the home page changed several times whilst I was doing this review.
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Quality
The web site does not write it's own news articles. It uses articles from several other news web sites, so the quality depends on the quality of the web sites it uses.
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Images
All the images I found within news articles where related to the article they were placed in. However, a lot of articles had no images associated with them at all.
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Syndication
The web site provides SMS news alerts and RSS feeds for categories which can also be added to My Yahoo!, Yahoo!'s personalised start page.
Functionality
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Interactivity
There isn't any interactive content, but there are forums for each news category where users can post discuss current news..
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Browser Compatibility
The web site looks and behaves the same in the three major browsers; Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera
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Resolution Compatibility
The web site is designed for a resolution of 800 x 600 pixels and will not expand past 800 pixels wide leaving a lot of white space on either side of the main content in larger screen resolutions.
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Errors
The only error I encountered was that a news story was put in the category of UK Weather when it had nothing to do with UK Weather.
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Accessibility
The web site failed validation of CSS, HTML, and an automated accessibility test. However, the site is still usable for the three types of colour blindness I checked for, but background colours and graphics were not very clear due to the low contrast of them.
Conclusion
The design is simple and uses mostly white and light gray, which is very plain and not very inviting. The navigation is consistent and keeps you informed of where you are, but the web site requires quite a bit of scrolling to see news in other categories. The content is kept up to date, but the content is sourced from lot's of other news web sites, so the quality will vary. The web site works in all the major browsers in any resolution above 800 x 600 pixels, however it isn't very accessible.
The Yahoo! News UK web site achieved an overall rating of 72%
