“… but a massive percentage of the userbase of the BBC homepage don’t and regular purging of your computer’s cache of cookies certainly isn’t normal behaviour for ‘many users’ just because you ‘understand’ that it is.” May I suggest you read the comments from users who have submitted to the varios BBC blogs? And in my years of experience people DO clear their caches.

“Again I have no problem with constructive criticism, but frankly the comments you have left definitely suggest a bias.” A bias? Yes I am biased… I do not like the design nor the functionality of the new BBC Homepage. Yes, I am biased toward the previous homepage (call it the ‘old homepage’ if you like - no apologies for the ‘incessant’ use of single quotes, for they are used to indicate emphasis)

I really don’t understand where the blind hatred of the new BBC website is coming from, but it certainly isn’t coming from a useability or web design point of view. As for ‘fully customisable’ (where does the incessant need to put single quotes around things come from?) I haven’t seen a single mention of this phrase anywhere, just because you infer the term from your understanding of the word customisable doesn’t make it so.

It’s great that you understand cookies, but a massive percentage of the userbase of the BBC homepage don’t and regular purging of your computer’s cache of cookies certainly isn’t normal behaviour for ‘many users’ just because you ‘understand’ that it is. You yourself have shown that you’re anything but the average user by your admission of having Firefox, Opera, Netscape Navigator AND Internet Explorer all installed… lengths that a normal user certainly wouldn’t go to.

Again I have no problem with constructive criticism, but frankly the comments you have left definitely suggest a bias.

FYI Steve, I do use Firefox, as well as Opera, NN, and IE. They all have their merits and drawbacks. I don’t limit myself to one browser!

And Adam - I do understand cookies. I also understand that many users delete temp files and cookies as a routine part of their computer management. My point is that with cookie based ‘customisation’ many users will have to either not bother with customising, or they will need to customise every time they access the BBC homepage. Cookies do have their place, and are very useful, but the BBC homepage is a place where they shouldn’t be used.

Also, you can simply specify not to view the football in your sport widgets.

“but even in IE7″ …LOL
propper browser —> http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

1. Click EDIT on the Sport widget.
2. Untick the checkbox next to ‘Football’
3. Click SAVE

It’s literally THAT EASY!!!

I suggest you research on cookies (and not the baking kind) before leaving idiotic comments!

The page navigation is attrocious (the main ‘Explore the BBC’ navigation is right at the bottom of the page.

The page is huge and the fonts way too big. Yes you can resize the fonts and make other minor changes, but even in IE7 - the result of font size changes is a disaster.

And then… having set your page to make the best of a bad job… you close the browser. You do your routine ‘housekeeping’ on your computer. You delte rubbish files (temp files, cookies and the like). You decide to check something on the bbc site and …. and…. the homepage has returned to the state… all that ‘customisation’ has gone!

The new homepage is totally awful. It can not be customised, the ‘widgets’ are pointless, the navigation clumsy, the overall appearance is amateurish and shoddy. And if you check the various comments sent in on the BBC blogs, youwill see that not too many users are in favour of the new ‘design’.