As many of you have noticed, today we changed the default look of TMO's home page to be cleaner, simpler, and more headline-focused. This in and of itself is not new and, of course, has always been a user-configurable option. But we made the decision to default to "headlines only" as we realized the daily article count was getting high enough to push the morning's briefs "below the fold" by the middle of each day. This made it difficult to present you, our readers, with a snapshot of the day's activities and, as such, the decision was made.
But we didn't stop there. We wanted to still highlight certain articles and allow our great article images to continue to grace our home page. As such, Stephen Swift and Jeff Gamet collaborated on creating the rolling images you see atop the new page (depending on your browser width you'll either see two or three of them across). These will allow us to highlight stories from the past week that you may have missed on a previous day. The goal is to keep the content fresh, plentiful, and easy-to-find, and I think we've achieved that and more.
More, you say? Yep. The new headlines view is dynamic or, rather, it can be, based on what you want to do. If you just want to go to the article, click the link and you'll be brought there immediately. But if you want to see the news brief first, the "On Click" default setting allows you to just click anywhere else in the article's horizontal bar to expand it. The text below will slide down and make room for the teaser and related image. Try it out... it's pretty slick! You can also change this setting to "Hover," which means you'll get the news brief after hovering over an article link for a few seconds.
Lastly, if you're a frequent visitor and/or simply someone who likes to get the full news briefs right there on the home page without any clicking or hovering, no problem: simply choose "Always" from the "Display News Briefs" drop down and you'll have your wish granted!
Internet Explorer 6 users (all 2% of you... we checked!): this is the first (of what I imagine will be many) change where we had to leave you out. IE6 simply doesn't have the ability to handle the types of things we're doing. We have, however, set up a custom version of the home page just for you, and you should automatically be redirected there from now forward. We do like having you here at TMO, we just don't like your browser as much... and your browser doesn't like us!
There are more changes coming down the pike, too, but we're not quite ready to roll those out. Plus, doing things one piece at a time makes it a bit more fun for everyone involved, including you! If you have any questions or comments, please do share them in the article comments below. We want to hear from you, and I look forward to your reactions and thoughts!