Whoa! What's happened here? The site looks weird!

4 March 2014

124 years ago to this very day, the longest bridge in Great Britain, the Forth Rail Bridge, was opened by the Prince of Wales.

It seems singularly appropriate that, on this historic anniversary, we are relaunching the Channel 4 Digital Press Centre. Both are astonishing feats of technical accomplishment that will be seen as iconic examples of design for many hundreds of years. Both were opened by the Prince of Wales (seriously, he was here this morning, cut the ribbon and everything. Camilla wore blue.) And both take constant bloody maintenance by heroic and undervalued staff working in almost intolerable conditions (for them, freezing winds and 200ft drops into icy water, for us an occasionally broken sparkling water tap and… er… actually that’s it).

Anyway, would you like to know what’s changed on the site? You WOULD? Damn, I was hoping to have a cup of tea and a lie down.

 

What’s new?

Right, well, the observant among you will have noticed that the whole site looks different. We’ve had an image overhaul, like Miley Cyrus only with less twerking. The site’s had an upgrade. A refresh. A sprucing. It’s had gallons of toxic Botox injected into its hideously deep wrinkles, and now looks shiny, smooth and expressionless. Hurrah!

But it doesn’t just look different. Like Miley, it behaves differently too.

For example, the site is now reactive, meaning it changes shape and layout to work better on mobile phones and tablets. That means you can follow us not just from your desk, but from the bus, the pub, the loo or your marital bed.

You can navigate to any part of the site using the 4Press Menu dropdown which appears at the top of every page. This should help users pinpoint exactly what they want and locate it more quickly and easily than before.

On the homepage (which you can locate by clicking 4Press at the top left hand of the page any time) the big image at the top of the page now changes every few seconds, AND you can click on it to get further information (where available) or to find more images.

In the Listings section, users can now navigate using a dropdown calendar rather than the old carousel. Users can either click on a specific day, or select the entire week to see at once. This represents a revolution akin to France in 1789, only with better dentistry and less beheadings.

In the pictures section of the site, um… the layout’s changed a bit. Yes. THE LAYOUT!

(NB We are experiencing a couple of little teething issues. The image search is only returning broken thumbnails, and our twitter account isn’t appearing in the allotted slot. Sorry, we’re working to sort this out, and whipping the poor IT people with barbed wire).

There are other little changes that you may notice if you’re a geek, but otherwise won’t. Obviously, it will take a little bit of getting used to. Obviously you will probably hate it for a while. But in years to come, you will wonder how you ever managed before the refresh, much like those 19th century Scots trying to cross the Firth of Forth by floating on a raft of haggis.