Critique No. 2 -

1) Graphic Design - Again, nothing special as far as design goes here. Everything is typically a white background with a maroonish-purple background for all things such as the navigation bar and headlines for stories. There were a lot more pictures used on this site, though, than there were for The National Review's website. Also, the automatic picture scroll at the front page added a bit more.

2) Document Production -

3) Information Design - The information was laid out pretty well I thought. There was an automated slideshow on the front page that I am assuming is automatically ran just like it is on the Routes website. There were your typical story rolls down the center of the page which seem ominous at first, but a simple drop down bar that acted as a headline separates each of the story by the day it was added. I much prefer this one date line above a handful of stories as opposed to a separate date line for each individual story.

4) Scripting Programming - HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, Javascript. My biggest question here is how the pop up bar described below is coded. It provides great interactivity and is probably a combination of a few things, I just don't know what.

5) Interface Design - Great interactivity going on for this site. A Twitter and Facebook log are available on the front page and most of the main pages as well. Furthermore, there is this REALLY cool bar that pops up on certain pages (http://www.slate.com/id/2274733/) that allows a user to instantly share the article via almost any network. There's also a built in "like" button for Facebook. Comments are allowed as well. Slate has made it extremely easy to follow their social media in some locations such as articles only as I found myself having trouble finding it on main pages.

Critique No. 1 - Nationalreview.com

1) Graphic Design - Not that the website looks all that bad all all, just some really simple stuff here. The background is the oldest HTML and CSS trick in the book - take a one pixel image from Illustrator, Photoshop, etc. and then have it repeat across the y-axis. This is a gray-to-white scale, Pandora has a blue-to-white and ESPN has a red-to-white version of the same thing. Other than that, this is your typical fixed website with a border and a simple background behind the content and basic navigation design.

2) Document Production -

3) Information Design - The site gets the job done, but it may be too much to take in. After glancing over the site several times, I still did not get a good feel for what went where other than the ads on the right side of the page. There were many different PHP commands of different story reels going on - one on the left side of the page, one down the center and then a combined programming effort of some different story display methods such as "Web Briefing", "Most Recent", etc. in the top center of the page. I thought that information was definitely presented in an effective measure, but it was just way too much.

4) Scripting Programming - HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, Javascript are all used to run this particular site.

5) Interface Design - I found, again, your typical layout of interactivity. Commenting was enabled on most, but not all, stories whether they be print or video, options to follow the National Review on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube were all available, sharing via multiple different share networks was also an option. While this may not be "interface design", I did like the text size tools they did have on some of the articles that would allow the user to change the size, font and color of the text presented. This is very accommodating to users who may struggle with seeing certain colors and those with poor vision, such as the elderly.