Microsoft's New Home Page

If you haven't notice yet or perhaps you are not one of the Microsoft products fans, they have change their corporate website design. The new navigation is aimed at helping their client to quickly find the most sought-after content on Microsoft.com. They start working on it last year and had gather a bunch of beta tester to give feedback on the new design and navigation system since early 2006.

The way I see it, the most significant changes made are on the floating navigation panel and the main content presentation display. If you click on the product menu on the right, the rest of the page will dimmed and can't be click. They must be really want you to concentrate on their products then.

Investigating inside the codes reveals no table layout exist. All layout are controlled by the CSS. Despite the prominent use of Ajax,the site adapts gracefully by replacing the Ajax panel with plain-looking menus on separate pages. However there is no sign of any RSS feeds either button nor the automated "link href=".

Now you might be wondering, does any of the above really matter? Well, the site looks and works great for the most of users. Beside, no matter how good your designs, you still can't satisfy everyone.