PAULINE'S PICKS: A Closer Look at the BaltimoreSun.com Redesign

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By: Pauline Millard A number of Web sites have been relaunched and redesigned this week. Today I'm taking a look at BaltimoreSun.com.

On a purely aesthetic level, the site looks great. After years of tinkering with different designs, newspapers, like BaltimoreSun.com, seem to be leaning towards a clean, simple look. Gone are the days of cluttered interfaces, such as what search engines Lycos and Excite looked like in the late 1990s. They're also keeping ads in designated areas and not mixing them in too much with the copy. BaltimoreSun.com places most of them on the right side of the page.

The site is staying true to its local readers, but not at the expense of ignoring the rest of the world. In addition to local news, BaltimoreSun.com is taking advantage of constantly updated news feeds for both news and video. Readers can also rate and comment on stories, which is a trend in online content that users seem to like.

There is one problem, though: the video on the front of the site is slow to load, if it does at all -- at least today on my Mac via a Mozilla browser. It's a shame because the video was touted in a lot of the press releases prior to the relaunch as one of the site's key features. I'm sure it will be fixed soon.

All in all, it's a great upgrade with all the tweaks that readers are coming to expect from online news.

Has your paper redesigned its site lately? I'd love to see it. Or any other tips about any Web innovation or fancy feature.

Here some of my recent Picks:

NKY.com Focuses on Local News And Little Else

A Closer Look at Brand-New 'Wash Post' Hyper-Local Site

Newark 'Star-Ledger' Revisits The 1967 Riots

How 'Financial Times'Brings Business News to the Web

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