Welcome to the first episode of the Nifty Design Solutions series. In each episode I will take on a certain (interaction) design problem, and try to gather a series of solutions. Some of them might be ingenious, some of them might be pure eye candy, but they will always be nifty.
Todays episode: Flash Headlines.
Lately this concept has been emerging as a solution for presenting headlines as an attractive rich media experience. It is mostly used by sites whose main focus is news or entertainment, although other branches are catching on quickly. Large visuals, semi-transparent sections, animation, video and audio are combined into an appealing impression of what the site has to offer, with the nice side effect of creating the feel of being a good quality content website.
Click the screenshot to visit the site it was taken from.
Yahoo! Movies
When dealing with movies, one needs visuals. Large visuals. Yahoo! uses Flash Headlines to instantly pull visitors into the experience and persuade them to move on to the trailer, which is probably what most visitors will be looking for.
Sportingo.com
Large visuals are attracting us by showing action and emotion. Aware of what attracts visitors most, no excerpt text is displayed, but instead a clear call to action in the shape of a green “read now” button commands the user to move forward. The voting buttons look nice but seem silly; why would I want to vote before reading the article? Also, including the number of comments here can be risky – headlines are usually the latest articles and therefor the ones with little or no comments. And “(0) Comments” does not look like a quality article.
New York Post
This collage of huge fonts and (again) large visuals combined with the page turn effect make the headlines for the New York Post look like the paper version. Obviously much effort has been put in making this section stand out. Wow, they even have blinking elements.
Daylife.com
What makes this application of the flash headlines concept remarkable is that this component is HUGE. It takes up pretty much the entire above the fold section. And with all text but the headline itself left out, this is a very unorthodox and brave way of opening a news site.
The Denver Post: Media Center
The Media Center for the Denver post goes it all the way. The entire page is one gigantic rich media component. Actually, they even let the headlines out. What I especially like from this example is the way the headlines are ordered, and refreshed into new headlines on at the time.
Bild.de
Again very magazine-like headlines for German tabloid Bild. Interesting how the flash component is combined with static headlines to the right. This example sure does a good job at grabbing attention; when the screenshot was taken it showed a bleeding bombing victim, boobs, football and Adolph Hitler.
Comcast.net entertainment
Comcast uses the concept to bundle together text and multimedia content dealing with a specific hot topic. Play/pause/slow controls are something you see in many Flash Headline components. Although I doubt they are used much, they do create a feel of dynamics and liveliness.
More examples?
Of course, there are many other websites out there that use this concept. And, being a nifty design solution expert, you probably know a whole bunch of great examples. Please share them with us by posting them in the comments below.
Comments (4)
July 7, 2008 (9:36 pm)
Nice Site layout for your blog. I am looking forward to reading more from you.
Tom Humes
July 16, 2008 (6:34 pm)
Okay, but how do I make such a thing for my site? Build it all in Flash and then just plunk it in?
July 16, 2008 (7:30 pm)
Interesting question. I guess you’d build a flash front end, but with something on the back end that talks with your database and/or CMS.
Although many of these examples look like they’re manually build every day. I guess that’s not much of a problem if you are a worldwide newspaper. After all, the newspaper tiself is manually designed every day as well.
March 18, 2010 (8:02 pm)
very nice Flash Headlines