Quartz’s changes include new navigation bar, story display

Quartz executive editor Zach Seward writes about changes the business news site has made to its website.

Seward writes, “Still, sometimes we make enough changes all at once that it’s worth pointing them out and, as we’ve done in the past, explaining our intent. Here are the major aspects of this release, officially version 4.0:

• Much of the code powering qz.com has been rewritten to speed up the site and give us greater flexibility in future development. Improving performance is an ongoing project for us and probably the site feature on which we spend the most time.

• The queue of stories that long-ago appeared on the left side of qz.com, then was collapsed by default, is gone for good. Our top, latest, and most popular stories can now be accessed more easily from the newly designed navigation bar.

• On phones and tablets, that navigation bar now appears along the bottom of the screen to save your thumbs from performing calisthenics to get around the site. This seemed particularly important as readers’ phones get bigger and bigger.

• We also changed some of our approach to displaying stories to readers who visit on their phones using browsers within social media apps. The idea is to give you a few more options and save you from scrolling too much to access them.

• With today’s launch of Quartz Africa, we now offer that edition, Quartz India, and Quartz proper, so we added new messaging to indicate what experience you’re receiving and let you opt in or out. You can always change editions from the menu.”

Read more here.