Mediapart has changed! A new visual style and structure to the site was put in place on the night of July 2nd with the aim to provide a layout that is cleaner, highlights stories more clearly and makes more use of multimedia.
This is the first time that Mediapart has changed the look of the site since its launch on March 16th 2008. It was felt that the previous layout had become too restrictive, given the wealth of content in many different forms that it had to contain.
The new design has four main goals:
1. To give more prominence to the top stories, including Mediapart's investigations, exclusive revelations and commentary.
2. To make the site's content more accessible and more visible. This also means designing the site so it can now easily be read on smartphones and tablets, based on the principles of what's called responsive web design.
3. Improving access to the content of The Club, the section that contains blogs written by you the readers.
4. Making more of Mediapart's multimedia content, including ebooks, photojournalism, films, documentaries and audio reports.
Not all of the changes will impact directly on the Mediapart English pages, but the aim is to improve the reader experience right across the site.
A few practical points: Readers will notice that the left hand column has disappeared altogether. This is to allow stories to be displayed more fully. The login area for your account meanwhile remains at the top right hand side of the site, and though it looks a little different in format in works in just the same way as before. The search box, however, has now moved to the top left hand side of the page. Another change is that at the bottom of the home page of the main site there is now a Multimedia section where Mediapart's ebooks, films, audio reports and so on can be found.
Finally, the editorial policy itself remains unchanged. Mediapart English continues to bring a varied selection of the site's reports, translated from French by experienced, professional journalists from the Anglophone press, and offering an essential insight into France and French society today.
We hope you will find our new 'face' an improvement (and you can let us know your opinion via the comment box below).
With best wishes and thanks to all our subscribers for your contued support of this fully-independent, ad-free website,
The Mediapart English team.