WSJ.com redesign is coherent and thought-out

Felix Salmon of Conde Nast Portfolio likes what he sees in the redesigned Wall Street Journal Web site.

Salmon writes, “But overall the redesign gets a solid A. Every page looks thought-out and coherent, like it was designed by a really smart human rather than dynamically put together by a dumb computer. The index pages, in particular, have a lovely mix of stories and pull quotes and market data and video and other features: they actually add value, rather than simply being a regrettable stopping-off point on your way to a story.

“And today, on a huge day for the markets, the WSJ has felt no compunctions about having no display ads on the first screen that subscribers see: you need to scroll down a long way until you find one. That’s allowed them to devote the full width of the site to a lovely yet fast-loading interactive graphic, which puts the decline in financials into their proper year-long perspective rather than concentrating solely on what happened yesterday.

“I haven’t explored the much-vaunted ‘community’ features yet, and frankly there’s a good chance I never will. But I have a feeling I’m going to be spending quite a lot of time over at wsj.com from now on in, just because it’s so much of a nicer place to be than its competitors like ft.com or bloomberg.com.”