One of the local businesses sites I visit most frequently has just undergone a massive cosmetic and user interface upgrade.

Features such as RSS, commentaries and podcasts is finally available.

A few noteworthy features introduced with the new site is the availability of RSS, User Commentaries, News Podcasts, and Tag Clouds. I remember asking the webmaster for the RSS feeds back in 2005, and finally someone decided it was time.

The new layout introduces multiple ‘mini-windows’ for each main news categories, and I find this a rather ineffective design for a news portal. Newsreaders prefer to get their news fast and they normally ’scan’ through the headlines, clicking only on the ones that interested them. With these mini-windows, The Edge Daily has made it impossible to scan through the major headlines without having the readers to scroll through each mini-window one by one.

Also, the advertisements could have been placed much more strategically with a more consistent theme. Right now, you have the vertical leaderboards and rectangle ads placed beside each other awkwardly, causing an eye-sore to the site’s layout, especially when all the content in these ads are animated. You just don’t know which one to focus on. Less is more.

Next, the headers for each news categories are a bit too colourful. Since headers are part of the major formatting element in the page layouts, the colour scheme should be kept to the minimal, as each different colour would suggest a different importance to the categories they represent. Major news categories, non-major news categories and multimedia content should each belong to one colour scheme.

Other than that, this new layout has really improved the site’s usability, compared to the previous rendition. Maybe the webmaster was trying to add too many new gimmicks with the limited timeline he had, and had therefore ignored the look-and-feel aspect. I hope the site will continue to undergo continuous improvements because this site has got very timely news content.

However, I just can’t help but to compare the new site with Business Time’s. It’s quite obvious the Business Time’s layout is much cleaner, less cluttered and the ads are less annoying.

Still, it’s good to know that I can finally read The Edge Daily’s news updates in my Bloglines.

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