After the original announcement on June 23rd, and some revisions tested starting July 14th, CNET’s redesign is open to all as of yesterday, August 27th. See for yourself at CNET.com, CNET News, and CNET Download.com. Congrats to all who worked on it. I’ve had my say kibitzing from the outside; I also know how much work went into it.
I’m impressed by the deliberate, public nature of the changes, and the aesthetic is fine, if not as iconic as yellow and green.
One design quibble: I find the lowercasing of “news” and “download.com” to be affected, especially given that text references continue to capitalize, but whatever. But I’m grateful the unnecessary reflection on the sub-brands of CNET News and Download.com was dropped from the design. News uses the CNET favicon, as it has forever. I noticed that Download.com got to keep its favicon, a slightly smaller version of this:
One navigation quibble: the tour pop-up should have its own visible, linkable URL. It’s found at http://www.cnet.com/html/cnet/tour/tour1.html. Works well on its own, without need for scrolling.
I am still waiting, however, for the change of News.com to its broader CBS usage. That team must still be hard at work, not yet enjoying pizza and beer.