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JavaWorld's new look

Introducing JW's fresh design, better navigation, and expanded community

By Athen O'Shea, JavaWorld.com, 10/06/08

Today marks the launch of the new, improved JavaWorld look and feel. Walk through the changes to the site with JavaWorld Editor Athen O'Shea.

While JavaWorld has benefited from many upgrades over the years, it's safe to say that the user interface you're seeing today represents the most dramatic change to the site since its premier in 1996. I'm very proud of the improvements and looking forward to building on them in the coming weeks and months. Our goals with this upgrade were to give the site a fresh, more modern look, update the topical navigation, migrate our popular Java Q&A forums (and more than 18,000 registered users) to the new community platform, and improve the site's search indexing and functionality. Oh, and we needed to do it all in just over a month.

Well, I think we've met our goals -- and then some. Here's a quick tour of what's changed about the site.

Fresh, new look

The first thing several hundred thousand visitors will notice about JW this week is that it looks fundamentally different from how it has for more than a decade. We've obviously re-worked the site's logo and color scheme (same basic colors, very different tone). We've also updated the presentation of the main content areas on the homepage: Featured Articles, News & Views, Podcasts, and Community. The community area (JavaWorld's Daily Brew) now encompasses both JW Blogs and the Java Q&A forums. We've replaced our static forum blurbs with dynamic updates, so that you can see at a glance the most recent activity in all of the forums.

We've also re-worked the article template for a cleaner, sharper look, and we've added social bookmarking to our story tools. You can still get a printable view of every article, give us direct feedback at the click of a button, and use the Comment form to discuss JW articles (and the solutions they propose) with the author and other readers.

Better navigation

Many respondents to JavaWorld's ongoing user survey said that the JW Site Map was one of its most helpful features. Some suggested, though, that the topical index was outdated, and we agreed. We've revisited the site map with attention to how developers are using Java technology today. Our top-level index hasn't changed, so it's still easy to search broadly on topics in Enterprise Java, Core Java, and Mobile Java development. Drill down one level, however, and you'll find new research centers dedicated to more focused topics such as Java Web development and Client-side Java. We've also made it easier to research areas of current interest to our readers, such as Ajax & Web 2.0, Concurrency, and Scripting.

Another top-level research center that hasn't gone away -- but has been renamed and expanded -- is Java Tools & Methods, where you'll find product-specific tutorials, comparisons, and reviews. Added topics in this area include Java IDEs, Testing & Debugging, and Data Management. Look around and you'll find a lot more!

 

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