CBC Unveils a New iPhone Site
The digital programming department unveiled a new iPhone site yesterday.
The site improves the navigation, includes more visuals, and has the ability to share stories via Facebook, Twitter and email.
If you’re having trouble with CBC content on your iPhone, the CBC also redesigned the support page.
Both the iPhone and the iPod has become extremely popular platforms for the CBC. Richard Stursberg said a few weeks ago that the CBC served 787,000 podcasts in May, and the iPhone site clocked 920,000 page views.
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It looks really nice, but it does the same thing that drove me bonkers about the last one, which is that you drill down into the “More Stories,” but when you back out once you’ve finished reading the story you’ve selected, you’re not brought back to where you were, but the main stories page and have to drill down again through the More Stories links if you want to continue to read the articles there.
Marc, are you saying that when you finish reading the story and hit the back button you return to the top of the page and have to scroll down to where you left from?
What I mean is that say I click on the More Stories link, it adds some more stories to my screen, and then say I click it again and see two stories on the next screen that I want to read.
So, I read one story, and then I back up to the previous page to read the other one, but IRS gone to the original default page I entered at, two pages back from where I wanted to be. If I want to actually read the other story that I planned to, I have to click More Stories twice again.
This also prevents me from drilling down too much as I know that once I read a story deep down, I’m liable to not bother going back to read more if it takes a bunch of steps to get back where I was.
Listening to CBC Radio 3.
Richard “Strusberg”? Who’s that?
[...] = ‘hermida’; CBC has launched a new new iPhone site, offering a clean and intuitive way to browse CBC content on Apple’s popular [...]
Really nice. They need to allow copy-pasting, though! Now that it’s actually possible to do it on the iPod Touch or the iPhone, CBC’s website needs to actually let us select a part of the text and copy it…
Otherwise, everything looks great.
Did anyone else notice the moveable ad banner that ran across the bottom of the screen?
It doesn’t seem to be there any longer—thank god!—but a few days ago, there was a 10mm high banner that moved into place at the bottom of the screen every time you scrolled a news story.
I figured it took up about 15% of the vertical real estate (advertising iPhone ringtones), and limited readability of the news story as it occasionally got stuck over some text and scrolled WITH the story (as opposed to “floating” in front of it).
I used to use the old iPhone site all the time…even gave it an icon on the first page of my iPod Touch. However, the new site is completely unusable for me due to the small font sizes used.
I have less-than-perfect vision, as do many people. The old site would make the text larger when you switched from portrait to landscape. No more, now the site just reflows more (tiny) text into the screen. This would be desirable for some people, but is a complete deal-breaker for me. Even the basic text size in portrait was bigger with the old site. What’s worse, the styling of the site also prevents the usual “zoom” gestures in Safari from working.
Please, CBC Online….give those of us without 20/20 a way to read the site again!
@CS: there’s a link at the bottom of the homepage that *should* switch you back to the regular site, but now that I check it it doesn’t appear to be working. We’ll get right on it.
CBC, you need to make an option for iPhone users to access your regular site as well. I like seeing the regular page without having to click on every sub-category to see the top headlines. Add a link to the regular site on the bottom of the page (tsn.ca & espn.com do this).
I don’t see this link anywhere.
As an aside: why is there a Radio Canada app for the iPhone but not one for CBC?
Because the CBC one is grinding through the app approval process.
@CS: temporarily taken off while it’s fixed.
Good point John.
CBC should look at eh New York Times iPhone App. NYT App allows you to save content to read later when not connected to the internet. Plane, subway, train, etc.
As for SRC having an App and the CBC not. Les deux solitudes.
Instead of having one web service we have 2, double the mangers etc.
Re: John Egan says:
As an aside: why is there a Radio Canada app for the iPhone but not one for CBC?
Stay tuned
@CS (and others): link to regular site now in place and working, and cut’n'paste is enabled.
@Kev OK, the link to the full site works, but it’s a stretch to say the full site is iPhone friendly. Back to my original question, how about an iPhone site with the old styling, or at least some options stored in cookies that control font size and what happens scaling-wise when you go to landscape mode?
I still don’t have a practical solution for CBC news on the iPhone.