Looks like the folks over at Wired launched a redesign of their site yesterday. I was just reading through an article about it written by their engineering director.
http://www.wired.com/2015/03/wired-dot-com-from-the-devs/
I’ll let you creative types comment on the actual design of it, but there are some interesting things they are doing developmentally that strike my…interest.
First, they appear to be using Flexbox, which is an awesome layout tool, but won’t really help you if you need to support older versions of IE. I’m glad to see a large company taking the plunge and using modern practices to take the web into the future and not being held back by older browsers. I wonder what their browser usage stats are; speaking with Perficient XD’s Manny Muriel, he made a good point:
That is interesting that they are using Flexbox. I just tried their site out on IE8, and it is completely broken. Maybe the amount of hits from old IE are too few for them to care anymore.
It’s a bold move, but it’s what we front-end developers like to see. If you don’t need to support out-dated browsers, don’t do it!
They also claim to have done some extensive tweaks in regards to performance and cut their page load time by half. I’d like to take a more in depth look at what exactly they’ve done, and how similar tactics could be applied to our client projects. XD is pushing performance this year, and this seems like a good case study.
The way they handle link underlining is intriguing as well. Not just your standard text-decoration: underline, and it makes for a neat experience. There’s a write-up about how they did it on Hyungtak Jun’s blog.
Thoughts? Leave a comment with what you think of Wired’s site redesign.
