Announcing new homepage design and features
on Jun 17, 2013 at 6:32 am
Today we are rolling out a set of new changes to the blog’s layout and design. We hope that you think it’s a lot better.
Our first priority was to make it simpler.
You see that from the very top. We have a larger banner that includes Art Lien’s sketches, which will change regularly.
Our old horizontal menu is now a cleaner vertical list of Quick Links on the right. Here you can access all of the blog’s main sections, including Merits Cases and Special Features.
Our three most significant pieces used to be listed horizontally too, under the blog banner. Now they are in a box at the top right.
Below the Sponsorship Banner from Bloomberg Law – which makes all this possible – there is a Search window. All of our search options have been consolidated here. So you can search for particular text, retrieve particular cases, retrieve content from a particular month, or go to a particular type of content, such as Book Reviews.
Below that, we have consolidated a lot of the boxes with information about the Term and added some new ones, under “Term Snapshot.” It functions as an accordion: you click on an entry to expand it. “This Week At The Court” summarizes what is going on. “Major Cases” provides links to the Term’s biggest cases. “Upcoming Petitions” shows five of the petitions that will be considered next by the Justices.
We have also added two new entries to the sidebar: Major Pending Petitions and Recent Special Features.
“Statistical Snapshot” then provides a quick look at the number of cases that have been argued, decided, summarily reversed, and set for argument in the coming Term. “Twitter Feed” displays the most recent tweets from the SCOTUSblog twitter account.
Our awards are now in an accordion as well.
Finally, we have added a new feature to the case pages. Docket entries now have colored backgrounds that correspond to the Court’s specification chart for brief covers. For example, merits briefs for the petitioner appear in light blue,while the brief of the respondent appears in red. This makes it easier to see groups of briefs, particularly amicus briefs. Colors have not yet been added to all the case pages, but we’re working on it.
We hope that these new features will give the site a cleaner feel and make it easier to navigate. As always, we welcome your feedback. You can email us at feedback@scotusblog.com.
Watch the video below to view a visual tour of the changes:
