Thoughts on the Apple.com redesign
Along with the Leopard preview at WWDC yesterday, Apple also unveiled a significant update to Apple.com. If you haven’t seen it yet, take a moment to look it over. Not unlike how they’ve reshaped the computer and music industries, it appears as if Apple is looking to redefine the rules of online design as well.
A few observations:
- The first and most obvious change is the drastically simplified navigation. It’s clean, void of clutter, and I’m sure it caused a number of internal debates, as all but core-business links have been removed (and if there was any debate before, I think it’s quite clear that Apple is indeed a hardware company).
- They have fully embraced 1024 as the de facto resolution with the width of the site now stretching to 980px.
- Products are now predominately in a horizontal-scrolling window (horizontal scrolling has typically been frowned upon).
- Extensive use of AJAX throughout, primarily as a means of eliminating clutter through hiding/sliding panels.
- Breadcrumb navigation has been moved to the footer, which I think is a first for any major corporate site (or possibly a first for any site… I haven’t seen it done before).
- Apple is also unafraid to use different background colors throughout the site (black or white), although I’m not sure if there are any rules governing which color is used when.
- There are a number of excellent (and well produced) videos throughout which all use a styled Quicktime player (checkout the Leopard Preview for a number of examples).
- I don’t believe Flash is used at all in the site. (Video is handled by Quicktime, and animation by AJAX).
- There are plenty of exceptions, but overall there appears to be a move to increase the whitespace on pages.
- Quite simply, the new site feels more like OS X than just a standard corporate website.
Overall, I’m curious to see how the industry will respond to the new site, as a number of the decisions Apple have made here contradict so-called “best practices”.
