Berlingske.dk – one of the leading Danish news-sites – redesigned this tuesday, now feauturing what you might call “frontpage-proliferation”: in the end of all pages on Berlingske.dk you’ll now find the entire frontpage pasted in. So that readers, when they’re through reading an article, gets the frontpage overview of what’s hot.
Have a look at the frontpage:
…and at the end of an article-page:
I saw this thing implemented at vg.no (extremely popular Norwegiean website) earlier this year (might have been there for a long time, though). But I haven’t seen it on other Danish sites before. And I really like the idea!
First of all, from a usability perspective, it’s a great navigation tool, informing me of whats going on on the site. And clearly prioritizing what the editors thinks the most important stories right now.
But there is something more to it: the frontpage-in-the-footer concept gives me this cool unlinear internet-feeling, that links goes everywhere, and follow their own paths. It kind of takes the chaotic link-structure of the internet right up to my face, and says: oh so you thought you could figure us out; that there is an entrance in the one end and exits in the other? (Implying: wrong you are! What you thought was the starting point – the frontpage – is the ending point at the same time. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg…)