ABC's menu takes about as long
to download as the other two networks, so bandwidth comparison is negligible.
An interesting aspect of the ABC
home page is that the menu is the only object that appears on the page.
The graphic that NBC provides for its main
page is accompanied by the text equivalent of the menu items, so that users
can turn off the picture and still access the information. The NBC
layout is far superior to the ABC
layout in the amount of information provided to the user on the first page.
Being able to choose from more than twice the number of categories than
the ABC page, while downloading the
same size graphic, prompts users to believe that NBC
will be able to better serve their information requirements. In addition,
providing more information on sports on the first page, which is a niche
market that is not always interested in other types of news, is apt of them.
Sports enthusiasts do not have to also download another news graphic they
are not interested in to get to the information that they want. The CBS menu is definitely the most attractive
of the three. Since it is changed periodically, it also gives the most information
to the user. Unfortunately, the links that it provides are somewhat misleading,
especially the CBS Up To the Minute link that
provides little news information. As with the NBC
page, CBS does provide text links underneath
the main menu for those who are working in a slow bandwidth. The CBS
main page layout differs from NBC and ABC
in the way they display their main links. Although they all have comparable
menus, CBS puts their menu at the bottom of
the page so that the user has to read all about the Late Show with David
Letterman, along with other seemingly unrelated text links, to get to the
real information delivery vehicle on the page. This is unfortunate, and
gives the user the impression, on first glance, that there is nothing to
choose from but the text links at the top of the page. CBS
waits and puts the text links to go along with the menu underneath the menu.
The news page itself is extremely information poor, and requires the user
to download a large graphic to get to a pure text document of headline topics.
From the news delivery perspective, since all the news links are in one
category, and all the other networks provide links for at least sports separately,
the news page also gives the user the illusion that ABC
news has less news information to present, which is far from the case, and
may prompt them to look elsewhere for their information needs.
ABC's news page itself is full of
small graphics that take little time to download. All graphics include a
text explanation of their presence, making it very easy to navigate to the
news features in which the user is interested.
Back to the Table of Contents
NBC'sMain Menu
A nice attribute concerning the News page itself within NBC
is that it is not accompanied by a huge graphic that the user is forced
to download. As mentioned earlier, a user is given a choice of menus, headed
by small graphics, to take them to the choice that fills their information
need.
Back to the Table of Contents
CBS' Main Menu
Back to the Table of Contents
In evaluating the graphic design, then, of the three network's pages, the
one that wins out is NBC. NBC
furnishes a great deal of information on their home and news page, alleviating
the user going through several steps to get what they want. ABC
is severely lacking in number of links in their first page, and CBS
, although, providing a information rich graphic on the main page, does
not follow up with information on subsequent pages.