Recently in Redesign Category

Good news everyone.

We've got a new video page on the wider format page design. Included on the new page there's an updated large format player with tabbed sections filtering the video content. We're hoping that should make browsing through Flightglobal videos a more enjoyable experience.

One thing we're keen to emphasis is that our Video channel is not just for the clips and films that our journalists gather and generate. We're encouraging users to upload their own favourite clips and to aid the process Disco Stu has prepared a video tutorial.

We also aim to aggregate the best and most interesting of aviation videos elsewhere on the internet to ensure our users don't miss out on such gems as cow hit by biplane and the tipsy nipper. Class!

I'm glad to report that all of the Flight blogs have now made it onto our new look stylesheets.

The last of them were completed yesterday with this blog, the Flight Blog (which used to be called Flight Intnerational) and Airline Business all getting the same treatment.

On this blog I'll shortly be getting stuck into to making the most of the new widget panels (the columns on the left and right) to better highlight key Flightglobal features and content.

Meanwhile as the redesign bandwagon rolls on keep and eye out for an overhaul of the Archives, Jobs and Shop which are all imminent.

So the shiny new-look Flightglobal is live (with only a small number of bugs!).

Thanks for all your nice emails - all very well received.

Just a few housekeeping messages:

• The Shop hit a couple of snags but should relaunch tomorrow with the universal header/footer
• Look out for the new "Discuss this article" feature at the bottom of every story. Following that link takes you into the AirSpace discussion forums to participate in a discussion around that particular article that you came from.
• We have more goodies to come for next week, including a great Farnborough package and some really cool new pages which pull in related content from all over FG and the web and serve it back in a smart-looking format. We're calling them "dynamic landing pages".
• And yes - my blog is yet to go onto the new design. I'm promised it's coming soon!
  

Just a word of warning, today should (fingers crossed) see the delivery on a big change on Flightglobal.

One of the key elements in our journey towards a fully redesigned and architectured website is about to go live.

Today's changes include most notably a new look and feel, giving the site a more modern and fresher appearance.

Also at the same time we're introducing our universal header. This includes some horizontal navigation to Flight's primary online content (eg. stuff like our Premium Services, Archives, Images and Shop).

There's also a universal footer that serves much the same purpose, only for items such as Contact us and Subscriptions.

So if you're used to finding these items on the old left hand vertical navigation and suddenly can't, then chances are they've moved to either the header or footer.

Some elements on the site have already made this change to their design, such as our blogs. Other areas of the site are due to rollout the new features in the near future (this is known in the trade as an "iterative approach to development" which is basically online speak for "getting on with it").

Once the changes have gone live I'll post another update with some more information.

FlightBlogger is the latest Flight Blog to get the redesign treatment along with our Universal Header and Footer.

And it's heartening to see it so well received.

Within 5 minutes of deploying the new look comments were being left in praise of the new design.

We're more than a little pleased to have a new addition to our blog portfolio.

The eponymous blog is Learmount and its writer is Operations and Safety Editor David Learmount. David's extremely well known and respected in the industry and will be using his vast experience to help explore the key issues from his particular sector in aviation.

It's actually been a little while now since we've launched a new blog - prior to Learmount it was LeftField back in Feb.

The reason for this is not because David has been holding out of the rack for a record amount of time, quite the opposite. Rather it's that Learmount is the first blog to go live with our new look template.

Even more importantly it's the very first page to go live with our long (long long) awaited redesign.

And with a modern approach towards redesign we're rolling it out to the various parts of the site in stages, as and when we're ready to do so.

First will be the blogs, then the news channels and home page, plus a new shop, next comes jobs, then AirSpace and then to infinity and beyond ...

Probably the most significant element of the redesign at this stage is our "universal header".

This is the very top level of site navigation and functions (logo, search and login) and will be a universal feature across every part of Flightglobal.

We've also deployed the lesser cousins, the "universal footer" which contains navigation to the usual suspects such as T&C and Contact Us, as well as links to other Flight Services and subscriptions.

The universal elements have become a recent necessity, the urgency increasing through the explosive growth of the website over the last 12 months or so. Our rapid expansion added many different platforms, systems and interfaces to the website, such as blogs, AirSpace forums and our jobs service. Most of these varied significantly in look and feel and so contributed to "website disorientation", where visitors either get lost through inconsistent navigation or are simply ignorant of content's existence.

Hopefully this is first step to correcting that and also the first big step to delivering our mouth-watering redesign.

As ever, I welcome your feedback ... (email me or comments below)

Flightglobal is about to enter into an intense period of redesign and development.

The intention is to modernise the site, put it more into line with today’s user needs, and to tie all content areas together in a consistent, organised way.