I have been playing with the way back time machine on the Internet Archive.  I decided to create a web assignment where you pick a particular website to look at overtime.  I picked the New York Times to look at since 1996.  For the assignment, you provide screen shots of the website overtime, and then blog about how the site has changed for better and worse.  Basically, I want to get an idea of what makes a website strong or weak, and how that changes overtime.

October 1995

December 1998

September 2001

July 2005

July 2006

April 2011

The New York Times is a very effective news website today.  I like how it provides a large dominant art and story, and then within the first page you can still find opinions and other articles.  I like the left side which makes it easy to jump to different sections like Science and Politics.  My only complaint is the advertisements up near the top.  The New York Times does a good job of making the ads discrete, but still ads so high up are distracting.  I understand that this is the nature of needing to make money.  You will notice that the website has been almost exactly the same since 2006.  This surprises me and makes me think that the New York Times was slightly ahead of the online journalism world.  They found an effective website design five years ago, that still appeals to audiences today.

Back in 1996, the New York Times website was a lot simpler.  It still had the ads up high, but they were much brighter/distracting colors.  There are less links up at the top for readers to go to, but the dominant art is appealing.

In 1998, the website starts to look more like the modern version.  The sections go straight down the side, but the dominant art is not centered.  In 2001, I didn’t like the website colors.  The gray is not nice looking, and I’d prefer the white and blue that they use now.

For me, a good website allows readers to easily get to what they are interested in.  The New York Times website has done this by keeping both main news and section news high up.   Sometimes the website is distracting when you continue to scroll down because it is very busy at the bottom.

For me, it is interesting to look at the progression.  Way Back Time Machine is a great tool and will be especially interesting to look at further in the future.  I’m sure newspapers will have a greater understanding of website design and what readers are looking for.