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On The BBC 2.0 132

Posted by Zonk from the autie-beeb-gets-new-clothes dept.
novus ordo writes "BBC has been exploring the 'Web 2.0' approach in its future plans 'to keep the BBC relevant in the digital age.' They have also put an experimental catalogue online. 'This will allow you to find out about any of the one million programmes that the BBC holds in its archive, going right back to 1937. It's a window onto an amazing cultural and national resource.' They have also opened up a competition to completely redesign its home page."
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On The BBC 2.0 More

On The BBC 2.0

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  • No search results found for
    blake's 7

    No search results found for
    q

    No search results found for
    crystal tips and alistair

    etc.

    But hey, they have a great disclaimer :

    The catalogue is not comprehensive. It does not contain an entry for every programme broadcast by the BBC on TV and Radio since the 1920s. The main exclusions are sport, feature films, other non-BBC copyright programmes (e.g. TV series imported from the USA), some regional programming and programmes which do not exist.

  • competition rules (Score:5, Funny)

    by tverbeek ( 457094 ) on Saturday April 29, 2006 @02:13PM (#15228741) Homepage
    "They have also opened up a competition to completely redesign its home page."

    The catch is that they want it to have the same color scheme, font, icons, and certain design elements from the Slashdot home page.

  • A thing I really think they should do 'to keep the BBC relevant in the digital age.' is to make xmltvfiles of all their tv and radio programme info. This would make them very useful for a lot of people, and sure wouldn't be very hard.

  • There's also the RadioListings web site (Score:3, Informative)

    by Larry Lightbulb ( 781175 ) on Saturday April 29, 2006 @02:17PM (#15228759)
    Although the catalogue is a great source of data it needs interpretation, and that's where sites like mine - http://www.radiolistings.co.uk/ [radiolistings.co.uk] - come in.

    I take the data the BBC (and other stations) list, edit it it for readability, and include things like series and episode numbers - things that are essential for any collectors.

    Yes, this is a blatent plug for my site.

  • The BBC's Website (Score:5, Interesting)

    by spectrumCoder ( 944322 ) on Saturday April 29, 2006 @02:18PM (#15228763) Homepage
    The first and possibly only thing they should change about the BBC home page is the fact that it's designed to be viewed at a resolution of 800x600. Surely a company as big as the BBC is capable of producing a web site that utilizes all of the screen space available in a browser window?
    • Just to play Devil's Advocate here (I'm at 1600x1200), firstly as pointed out by other replies a lot of people don't have screens that are that huge. Secondly, the BBC website is designed to adhere to certain standards of readability, and this involves presenting information in a primarily vertical fashion. People tend to lose track of text that flows over more than around 60 characters per line (cf Latex).
      • "that huge"? Hasn't 1024x768 been a standard since about 1993? I hate static width websites as it is, but ones made for 800x600 just kill me on my 1920x1200 display. Even at the increasingly popular 1280x1024 it's pretty wasteful.
        • Sure, I'd be surprised if anyone was running below 1024, "huge" was referring to our kind of screen sizes, which really are the exception rather than the norm. I think my second point still stands.
          • Well, my browser window is almost always less than 1024....

            But then, I see very little reason to make windows take up the whole screen.... I usually have 2 or 3 that i'm watching in the background and I want some of them visible.

            This is why static sized pages of any sort suck. Fix a narrow column or two, let the browser size the rest based on how much is left. It's not that hard.
        • Offtopic, but in your sig... er... isn't "content restriction annulment" a good thing? Why would you want to stop it?

      • a lot of people don't have screens that are that huge.

        He said "utilizes all of the screen space available in a browser window". He didn't say "utilizes an area larger than 800x600". Web design isn't like print media, it can (and by default does) dynamically reflow into whatever space is available when the web designers don't intentionally stop it from doing so.

        So if a visitor has a small screen, that's not a problem, and visitors with large screens (or in this case, average-sized screens) can act

        • Well, if you set a max-width property, aren't people still going to complain if their resolution width is higher than the max-width?

          The problem with autoresizing layouts is that you lose a lot of editorial control over content layout. For pages that are just straight-forward single-article documents, this isn't much of a problem. However, most home pages of large, content-rich sites follow a magazine/newspaper-frontpage layout. So the content is divided up into several columns and panels with custom graphi

      • People tend to lose track of text that flows over more than around 60 characters per line (cf Latex).

        Possibly true for dense print, but looking at some books on my desk we have

        • O'Reily DHTML Definiative Reference: 100 chars wide
        • Raskin, The Humane interface: 75 chars wide

        And Im sure Ive seen data that shows putting text into newspaper-style columns reduces comprehension, but cant find a reference.

        And people who quote this, possibly mythical, eyeball flyback effect seem to completely miss the effect

    • At some point, believe it or not, the world moved away from tiny monitors. Following your line of thinking, why not format everything to 640x480? Surely some people use that? It's not fair to them that websites default to twice their screens is it?

      They don't print books on cash register paper, so why make every website on that? It's not like I'm saying make it 1200x1600 default.

  • BBC on /.'s revamp? (Score:5, Informative)

    by jbn-o ( 555068 ) <mail@digitalcitizen.info> on Saturday April 29, 2006 @02:24PM (#15228797) Homepage

    An interesting point from the BBC "Reboot [bbc.co.uk]" Q&A considering /.'s recent webpage redesign contest:

    [...]To kick-off, jay left the following comment on the blog: "What you are really asking for is numerous submissions of what is in essence a $million rebranding. Not a bad exchange for an apple laptop."

    I think it's worth pointing out from the very beginning that we are not asking people to provide million £ rebranding for us. Indeed we are NOT going to use or commission any designs for the final front page. Yes, we will turn the winning design into the homepage for a day - but that's as a prize and as recognition for the winning producer's efforts (and if they really don't want us to, then we won't).

    I would completely agree with jay that we would be ripping people off if we were going to turn entries submitted into the final homepage design. But that's not the objective of this competition.

  • Online archive (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 29, 2006 @02:29PM (#15228824)
    The French institute called INA (institut national de l'audiovisuel) has opened online archives, with free video and audio content (you can also pay for high quality versions).

    It's available here : http://www.ina.fr/archivespourtous/index.php [www.ina.fr]

  • In Sweden as well... (Score:5, Informative)

    by isecore ( 132059 ) <isecore@NOSPAM.isecore.net> on Saturday April 29, 2006 @02:44PM (#15228876) Homepage
    The Swedish government-owned TV networks are exploring similar options. SVT [svt.se] (as they're called, sorry, not sure if their site is available in Anglosaxon) are working on making available all of their archives over the internet.

    A small(ish) selection of the historical archives is available, and shows are available online up to a week after having been aired - but the plan is that one day all of the archives will be indexed and digitized and viewable over the intarweb. There's also rumors that this will be completely free for everyone who lives in the country and pays the state-imposed TV-license.

    • Re:In Sweden as well... (Score:1, Insightful)

      by bheer ( 633842 )
      > (as they're called, sorry, not sure if their site is available in Anglosaxon)

      You know, I'm American, I'm not 'Anglosaxon', and I can speak English pretty well. I know its hard to realize when you live in almost-lilywhite Sweden, but race does not correlate to language.

      Or maybe you were just playing to the Euro Slashdot audience that thinks its cute to talk about le anglo saxon and their ghastly language. It'll be pretty freaking funny when these guys get the memo that more people speak English in Asia
  • His "We will never surrender" speech seems to be listed, but darned if I can get it to play or download... I wonder if there's to be a cost for downloading the old clips.

  • Web 2.0 (Score:1)

    by pen ( 7191 ) *

    It seems that, if BBC's web designers are to be believed, "Web 2.0" really just means "make all your fonts huge".

    From a big fan of the current bbc.co.uk [bbc.co.uk].
  • It really is experimental, all it does is give the tv listings for the programme, a bit like an old newspaper on the bottom of a drawer. I was hoping they'd put "The Computer Programme" online, so I could look at those hulking great modems with the suckers for the earpiece and receiver.

  • Javascript... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Less of this:
    onclick='Element.removeClassName($("js_sucks"),"hi dden"); Element.show("js_sucks"); return js_sucks;'
    More of this:
    onclick='BBC.switchStreamingMediaFormat("rm", "ogg"); return real_suck;'
  • "No results found" searching for ISIRTA.

    ('Spose I could try Angus Prune as well ...)

  • bbc 2.0 = snookr snookr snookr (Score:3, Funny)

    by Bazman ( 4849 ) on Saturday April 29, 2006 @06:12PM (#15229584) Journal
    And it will look like this [msn.com]...

    yes, its the world championship snooker at the moment, so BBC2 stops everything for green baize action...

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