Preview: CNET's new, improved look

The new CNET home page includes a carousel highlighting several stories across News, Reviews, and Downloads, as well as an integrated video player for CNET TV content. Click on the image for a full view.

After more than a dozen years of bringing you our content surrounded by yellow and green, CNET is getting a new look. As you can see above, the carnival of colors is being replaced by a cleaner look that pivots off our content and our updated red CNET logo.

From CNET to American Idol: Ryan Seacrest was one of the TV hosts in the early days of CNET.

Our designers and engineers have been at work on this site revamp for many months, incorporating feedback based on the activities of millions of users and scores of alpha testers in our labs. Now we are entering the first phase of our beta release. A small percent of random visitors to CNET.com will be presented with the new look on the home and Reviews pages. Revised CNET News and Downloads sites will be in beta test in a few weeks.

Why redesign the CNET site?

Web sites are in a state of continuous evolution, and over the years, CNET has undergone several minor facelifts. We decided it was time for a more substantial change that did a better job of presenting our content to 17 million monthly visitors (Nielsen/NetRatings, May 2008).

CNET started out in 1992 as c/net, meaning Computer Network, a 24-hour cable network about computers and technology with original online content. CNET online launched in June 1995 and quickly became a huge success. Over the years, we stuck with the neon yellow legacy from the TV days as the Internet grew to encompass all forms of media.

CNET design through the ages.

We had two key goals with this CNET revamp--make the site easier to use and speed it up. Simplicity is the major theme of this design, and that includes the new "pipeless" CNET logo, a more consistent site structure and a streamlined color palette.

The back-end infrastructure has also been reengineered. We have a new API that is helping to deliver pages 40 to 50 percent faster, and makes it easier for our partners, such as Yahoo and Univision, to work with our content.

All together, the new look, as in the Reviews page below, provides a much improved framework for exposing our content, which is the ultimate purpose of the design.

The Reviews pages are more streamlined for navigating the 1,500 new product reviews produced each year. Click on the image for a full view.

It's a work in progress, so if you land on the new pages, give us some feedback (fill out the brief feedback form linked at the top of the pages).

We will be making changes and opening the revamped site up to additional users over the next several weeks as it stabilizes.

[andrew.mager]

I like the Georgia.

[andrew.mager]

Can't wait to see it live. I am glad there is no yellow :)

[redwall_hp]

Yuck. I like the current design better...

[vaxorcism]

hmmm... now it looks like all the other stuff that's done by design-houses these days... This look is sooooo very 2008, in a few years, it will look as dated as shag rugs and paneling.... I liked the yellow and the unique logo, I fear you're now more normal.....

[dfarber]

Normal and functional...let the content shine...

[sfotoord]

The new design stinks, especially for news. Today it is easy to peruse the news page and see previews of news stories. The new format just overemphasizes the other "stuff" this site pushes. The headline view that rips off the Apple coverflow is also pretty useless.

[bernie.mcginn]

sfotoord - the mockup at the top of the post is for the cnet.com home page. The CNET News homepage will have basically the same layout, but with a new coat of paint.

--
Bernie McGinn
Product Manager - CNET News.com, CNET Blogs

[amandafrench]

I like it a lot --it's cleaner than the current one, less busy. I'm curious as to whether there was / will be an information architecture overhaul as well -- I notice some tabs are gone in new design. I sometimes have trouble navigating CNET. It has never struck me as logical that Buzz Out Loud is under Reviews -- they don't do reviews! I'm always looking for and failing to find the "podcasts" section of cnet.com.

"More stories" strikes me as vague -- what's the principle behind those stories? Can't be most popular b/c there's a separate section. More of _today's_ stories?

Also I think you should consider putting a hyphen in the logo so that people know how to pronounce your name. It looks like "kuh-net" as it is. :)

[freddavis]

Cool! Hey, I recognize the screen-grab of Ryan as being the one from my blog (www.fredtime.com)... I remember taping that show... we've all come a long way since then, huh?

[dfarber]

exactly....long time and we are still doing it

[zanely]

Best of luck in your new skin to one of the most interesting and informative sites on line.

[RobinTBD]

I like it, and I know that "pipe" in the logo always confused people. But I had completely forgotten the Ryan Seacrest history, thanks for that bit of kitsch.

[LaLaFuFu]

DO NOT WANT. I used to watch C
et to C|net to cnet.com since it started. Feels like cnet died in this redesign. Feels like my old yellow wagon just died seeing this. I guess the new blood at cnet have no connection to the past so I'll just say RIP C|net. I'll miss ya.

[erik_redned]

I really liked the original logo because it used the pipe. Also, I'm not too crazy about the new font used in the logo. But the rest of the changes look great.

[ultimatebuster]

I hate the new cnet logo, the old one is way better

[jssshashi]

Please Improve search results

Unfortunate to say but I am using [ product/software + site:cnet.com] in google to find the reviews for the product i am looking for, rather thhan the CNET's inbuilt search.

"creative laptop sound card site:cnet.com or soundforge site:download.com gives the wanted product within 5 links on google.com ( ) but buried links on cnet.com / download.com

compare cnet VS google

1. creative laptop sound card site:cnet.com [link 2, not fount in first page on cnet]
looking for Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio Notebook

2. Soundforge = no results from download.com ,
google corrected and found 1st link as sound forge to get results from download.com.
[looking for sony's sound forge studio ]

All websites i visit are in white , cnet in black ... every - tab flip will hurt my eye.
Black background with white text hurts my eyes , that all i have to say. [http://I swith to white on the crave website everytime , remove the white bg option .. and crave is least interesting place|http://I swith to white on the crave website everytime , remove the white bg option .. and crave is least interesting place]

Good job with the logo though

[medavis824]

I really don't see a compelling need to make a change, unless the new owners of CNET want their own fingerprints all over the place. It's certainly not an improvement. Different but not better.

This could be the first big step towards the end of the CNET that we know and love. I hope Molly and the crew have good long term contracts with great packages.

Yahoo's last big makeover ended a nearly 10 year relationship as my home page. I hope the same doesn't happen with CNET.

[benjaminstraight]

Lookin' good!

[FakeName2]

I've never commented before, but while I appreciate all the good work you've done with the new site design, giving up all mention of your trademark yellow color seems absurd.

Time and National Geographic are just two magazines mostly remembered for their colour, as is the NBC peacock. By all means update the logo; kudos for dropping the "|". But please keep your signature color - when I think web news or reviews I think of yellow.

[cosmosjoshys]

I agree. When I think of c|net, the colors are a part of the definition. They rightly separated themselves from other media with this distinction and have thrown it away.

[redwall_hp]

I'm a web designer (and PHP coder) by profession, and I would like to say that the current design is very unique, and one of my favorite designs currently. The new look is...like 128 other websites I've seen over the past few months, and it doesn't look any better on CNET than it did on the other sites. It looks more "CBS-y," and I don't think that's a good thing.

- The logo doesn't look as good as the current one.
- Despite having the same amount of ads as the current design, it looks more ad-heavy from the positioning. This may drive more people to AdBlock...
- The navigation is less noticeable, and more cluttered looking.
- The design is heavier than the current one, which generally isn't a good thing.
- What's with the silly reflection on the word "Reviews"?

I hate to criticize other designers' work, but... Someone has to say this.

[jimabout]

TERRIBLE! Perhaps an argument could be made that this is a better organization of information, but the design elements -- white space, typography, color, even logo -- are all basically a SEVERE DOWNGRADE. Like what I'd get if I asked the local juco student who just graduated from his web design class and thought that made him a designer. I have always been a fan of CNET's designs. But I'd put money down that this was not done by any of the same people. I guess maybe you couldn't afford to pay professionals this time around? Or is it the CEO's son? There must be a good reason... Why you would throw away your trademark colors and logo instead of simply freshening it up is beyond me...

[CaptainMooseInc]

The new look is horrid. Just another site to join the masses of those sites that look JUST like it. CNET is a staple of the Internet being it's yellow and green self. No doubt we can't stop the change because some moron up top decided he wanted to drop the funds into the recreation.of a classic scheme.

Looks like I'll have to start finding my tech news elsewhere. Might as well since it'll all look the same now.