I was going to have ‘invasion of the expressive red noses’ but changed my mind at the last minute.

You see, as well as the brilliant, if slightly confusing bbc.co.uk/rednoseday and the equally interesting rednoseday.com there are little snippets of the nose across BBC Online.

And I’m not just talking about stories from various parts of the BBC of their coverage or of the banner ads at the top of a number of pages.

I’m also talking about the special noses created for Top Gear (see Stig Nose), the Dot Nose for Eastenders and of course the Alien Nose (Who Nose was too easy) for Doctor Who.

Although there was a clear trick missed here as, surely, you could have gone down the Tom Baker route and given it a hat and scarf combo – one of the noses already has his expression.

Anyway – who nose, this could and looks set to be the biggest and best, as well as most successful (given the point is to raise money) Red Nose Day yet.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Outnumbered for Red Nose Day (upyourego.com)
• BBC Digital Services: Branding Changes (bbc.co.uk)
• The ‘Doctor Who’ fountain of youth, or The Curious Case of The Doctor (pfunn.com)
• iPlayer Day: The iPlayer Picture Desk (bbc.co.uk)

If there is anything missing from the list below – leave a message and I’ll add it in. I’m also planning on expanding the list so that it includes information and tags about each site to make it easier to search and find.

New launches since this article was written
Update (21 October 2008)

BBC Lifestyle
BBC Ouch!
Watchdog
Bloom
The One Show
Eurovision
Celebrity Scissor Hands
Spooks
Songs of Praise
Autumnwatch
The Real Hustle
Silent Witness
Blue Peter
Timewatch
History
Big Cat Diaries
British Style Genius
Weather Beta

Also:

BBC One
BBC Two
BBC Three
BBC Four
BBC TV
BBC Alba

And:
BBC 7
Electric Proms

The new BBC Local sites should be launching late this year early next – with Bristol moving first.

More links

Arts & Culture (website)

CBBC (website)

Entertainment (website)

Food (website)

Gardening (website)

Health (website)

BBC News (website)

BBC Sport (website)

Switch (website)

Archive (website)

Parenting (website)

Religion (website)

Ethics (website)

Help (website)

Drama (website)

Music Beta (website)

The Culture Show (website)

Topics (website)

Liverpool 08 (website)

Strictly Come Dancing (website)

Comedy (website)

Britain’s Missing Top Model (website)

Bonekickers (website)

The Wrong Door (website)

The Restaurant (website)

Be On a Show (website)

History (website)

Family History (website)

BBC Cymru (website)

BBC Wales (website)

BBC iPlayer (website)

Programmes (website)

1Xtra (website)

5Live Sports Extra (website)

6music (website)

Asian Network (website)

5Live (website)

Radio 3 (website)

Radio 1 (website)

Today (website)

Science and Nature (website)

BBC Bloom (website)

Oceans (website)

Newsbeat (website)

BBC Tickets (website)

BBC Three (website)

Massive (website)

Mischief (website)

Beauty Season (website)

Thread (website)

Lilly Allen (website)

Last Man Standing (website)

Heroes (website)

Spooks Code-9 (website)

Texx and Flipside (website)

The Wall (website)

A-Z (website)

Eurovision (website)

Who Do You Think You Are? (website)

Tess of the D’Urbervilles (website)

Merlin (website)

Last Choir Standing (website)

Doctor Who (website)

Casualty (website)

Britain from Above (website)

Big Cat Live (website)

The One Show (website)

Cambridge Folk Festival (website)

Genius (website)

Maestro (website)

Out of the Blue (website)

Gardeners’ World (website)

Dragons’ Den (website)

Chinese Food Made Easy (website)

Proms (website)

Glastonbury (website)

Reading and Leeds (website)

Radio 1 Big Weekend (website)

T In the Park (website)

Zombie Movie (website)

Annual Report (website)

Lab Rats (website)

Hampton Court Flower Show (website)

Radio Scotland (website)

BBC NI: Milk Cup (website)

Scotland Learning (website)

GCSE Bitesize (website)

Curse of Comedy (website)

The Passion (website)

Sunday Life (website)

Graham Norton Show (website)

Made in England (website)

BBC HD (website)

White Season (website)

Young Musician of the Year (website)

I’d Do Anything (website)

The Speaker (website)

Have I Got News for You (website)

Springwatch (website)

Chelsea Flower Show (website)

Languages (website)

Headroom (website)

Radio Foyle (website)

BBC Homepage (website)

The BBC has been gradually launching all its new websites and some of its older and more establishes ones in the new wide format.

In fact there seems to be so many new websites being launched on such a wide variety of topics (including a new site all about … topics) that I’ve completely lost track.

However at the bottom of this page I will try to list all the ones I’ve come across, ones that have been posted to the TV Forum pages and ones I’m sure everybody has found like BBC News and the Homepage.

But first a paragraph or two on the headline – Radio – this seems to be the first of the ‘broadcast’ areas to actually go wide – with the exception of BBC THREE which is a case study all of its own.

The first radio station to go ‘wide’ is the one with probably the youngest demographic BBC Radio 1Xtra and I think my terminology is correct when I say ‘It is well wide man innit?’



The site looks great, in fact the freedom the wider format gives designers to express themselves is fantastic but it does make sites in the old format (Barley) look pretty tired – even the very attractive Top Gear site (will it go wide for the new series?).

The next to widen up is 6music – my favourite music based radio station. It isn’t as in your face as 1Xtra but then it isn’t supposed to be BUT it is still really attractive and functional – even if the show pages are still half in the old layout.



As for the other radio stations – parts of their output have gone wide but not the whole thing. The Radio 1 Big Weekender site was in the wide format and the Today programme on Radio 4 has a new online look – it’s wide.

Eventually they’ll all be moved but I’m guessing the 5Live, Radio 3 and Radio 4 audiences are the most difficult to get to accept change of any kind – or maybe I’m just stereotyping.

There is a Radio 3 masthead floating around and again it looks pretty good but without the body bit underneath it’s hard to tell how it will actually work.



That’s one of the things I like most about the new designs – the way they allow for a large amount of content to be viewed, very easily on a single page – index pages are horribly difficult to design as they’re the window, the shop display, the first point of contact with your wares but so far I’ve liked all the new BBC ones.

So the list – I’ve decided I’m only going to list the ones currently open in my browser but if you find any others add them to the comments.





BBC Gardening (beta)
BBC Arts & Culture (ooo Lauren Laverne)
The Culture Show
Glastonbury 2008
BBC Topics (beta)
Springwatch
Liverpool 08
Languages
The Speaker.
Headroom
Chelsea Flower Show
BBC Switch
BBC 6music
BBC THREE
BBC Radio 4 Today Programme
BBC 1Xtra
BBC Thread
I’d do anything
Eurovision Song Contest
Doctor Who
BBC Homepage
BBC News
BBC Sport
BBC Help
Young Musician of the Year
BBC White Series
Out of the Blue
BBC HD
Made in England
/Programmes
Graham Norton Show
Have I Got News for You
Sunday Life
Gardeners World
Radio 1 Big Weekend
Heroes
The Curse of Comedy
The Passion

I think that’s more than enough links to be getting on with but if there are any I’ve missed and I can think of one about green issues but can’t remember the URL – post it in the comments.

The best way to talk about something is to show it working – so I’ve put a few screen grabs together that show the bits of most interest to me and bits that are most different.

I haven’t included a screen grab of the grey navigation bar that is currently on EVERY BBC website as it isn’t there – the grey bar has been dropped from the homepage – as has the bbc.co.uk logo – replaced instead with the three blocks across the top.

Most of the new homepage can be changed and moved around – the bits that can’t (below the top navigation area) are the main promotional box (that controls the colours of the homepage).

As you can see from the animation above – clicking on one of the promo items (coloured boxes) will not only change the image and text in the box but will change the colour scheme of the whole page – I’m not sure I like that very much. I do like the idea of being able to set the colour scheme but I want to set it permanently – not based on the promo I’m viewing.

Although, changing the whole page does draw more attention to whats being promo’d and should help drive more people to whatever is in that space – thus making it MUCH more valuable.

Which should help given that the directory (currently on the left hand side of the screen) has been moved to the bottom of the page and put in a dark grey box (similar to some blogs I’ve seen).

Now back to the bits in the middle. Every block (apart from the promo space) can be changed, you can turn them off or on and even change whats contained within them.

You can have them all on

Or if you fancy it you can have them all off

But I don’t really see the point in having them all turned off as it looks a bit silly – unless you just want a simple BBC search engine – in which case I suppose it works.

The new BBC Homepage is a sort of Google Homepage come Page Flakes but just for BBC content – although I’m sure there is scope to increase that and open it up at a later date.

Two things that are clearly absent from the current beta release is localisation – being able to pull in stuff from your home town only extends to the Weather widget and elements of news but I think more is coming. The other is the iPlayer – there isn’t a mention of it or much in the way of A/V stuff. Given that the Radio Player becomes iPlayer Radio next week – I’m sure there will be more to come.

Anyway – this also brings blogs to the front of the BBC – there’s a fab range of blogs from really talented people across all areas of the Corporation and the new homepage makes it easier to find them.

And finally the clock – god how I love the clock. I hope this isn’t a short term thing, I hope the clock stays and isn’t a nostalgia trip to mark ten years of Aunty on the web.

What am I waffling about? OK I’ll tell you – bbc.co.uk has lived in its current form for a fair few years now – the blue/white boxes and the large image at the top – people know it and whether you like it or not – it works.

But there has been calls for more interactivity on the homepage, for more flexibility and for more emphasis on what the BBC offers across the output.

Well this is what the new look bbc.co.uk will do when it’s launched, as a preview in December and then fully (with the old homepage being turned off) from January 2008.

As you can see from the image – everything is bigger and there is less to see. Well actually there isn’t that much less but it uses newer web technologies to allow you to view multiple things in each box.

It’s basically bringing the homepage into line with some of the stunning new designs being introduced across the rest of bbc.co.uk (see BBC Music, Nature, Lifestyle) and makes the whole things easier and more personal.

You even have a big link at the top of the page to customise the homepage – at the moment this just allows you to drop or add a selection of pre made BBC widgets but I’m sure this will increase in functionality over time.

You can even change the colour of the homepage – although not permanently.

The colour thing seems to be tied to the main promo space – so the colour of the page depends on which of the four options you choose – in this case Radiohead, Top Gear, Spooks and Robin Hood.

This is a nice touch and really draws attention to the main promo and in turn will make it a much more valuable place for promoting what the BBC is doing – across TV, Radio, Online and Podcasting.

The search box is also MUCH more prominent – mainly thanks to the top bar (that appears on every bbc.co.uk site) being dropped from the main homepage – this gives the site much more freedom.

The directory has moved to the bottom of the page.

All in all I think this is a great development for the BBC – but there is still a chunck of work that needs to be done in terms of adding functionality and being able to create custom widgets – say a features widget for your home town.

For example – in the settings I’d like to be able to put in my post code and have it customise the whole homepage to where I live – so news from the news online site for say Hemel Hempstead, weather for Hemel, what’s on in Hemel and stories from the Where I live site for the town.

But that’s not overly important – the functionality is there to customise things so its just a matter of time.

Nice one – and it will launch December as a ‘see our new homepage’ and then fully in January.