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Looking to unveil its new design early next week, the new BBC News website will include wider pages, bigger images and a pan-BBC masthead according to editor Steve Herrmann. This is an exciting relaunch that I’ve been awaiting since the beta release of the new BBC homepage was announced which was certainly more than simply a lick of paint.

The most exciting change for this fanatical LINUX user is the use of of Flash embedded video rather than the Real or Windows Media format pop-up windows. This has already been rolled out with success (example). As the industry shifts its metric’s standard from pageview to time-on-site, changes like this will yield tremendous dividends.

Early signs suggest that on those stories where we’ve embedded the video in a story, as opposed to providing the link to a pop-up player as we’ve done up to now, the video gets about ten times more usage than before. So it looks like it’s working well so far. (Steve Herrmann)

To move away from the five-year-old, oppressively blue design is an absolute no-brainer. This move to a cleaner, more open layout from the beta release has proven to be more easily readable, and it appears that the BBC truly is looking and listening to its readers to lead the way to its new iteration.

Gone is the overbearing field of red, replaced with smart, high-contrast colors at the recently redesigned New York Sun Web site. The site further tightens up their design with a larger font size, no summary or teaser paragraphs, bolder photo inclusion, and minimal advertisements. Another pleasing design choice is actually featured on inside pages where their blogs and podcasts teases are slightly offset from the container.

Delving past the homepage, the less-is-more approach is carried throughout the site. The sports section features a lead story for each category followed by seven bullets, while the category page itself devolves to the simplest of indexed lists.

Although this lends itself to an easier experience for scanning, they could stand to place some additional effort in differentiating sections from each other. The arts page features three distinct graphical teases atop the page allowing it to visually stand on its own. Moving between politics, news and editorials visually lacks punch or a decisive cue the reader may easily use as a landmark.

The calendar page features a fluid slider for day-of-the-week selection, however the listings feel heavy and clumsy. Each listing expands to offer additional information for the event, and may benefit from hiding more initially to minimize clutter. Also, opting to display a single days listings rather than two may also curb the crowding.

All-in-all, the redesign is a welcomed one, but not without additional work necessary.

Close to 33,000 web professionals answered the 37 question survey on A List Apart, providing the first data collected on the business of web design and development as practiced in the U.S. and worldwide.  Here’s what they found.