Frommer's 2009

Over the past couple of months, Frommers.com underwent a full redesign. The main goal of it was to give it an up-to-date look. Many infosites have made the jump to an XVGA resolution, so it was about time to do so with Frommer's. The new space would also provide opportunities for all of the feature that needed promotion and more standard ad units. One major change that users won't notice and actually, non-technical staff as well was the coding standard used. The code under the hood is now XHTML 1.0 Transitional instead of HTML 4.0 Loose. It's cleaner as it follows XML formatting and is much easier to use with CSS.

The color palette is roughly the same as before, so users will still feel that level of comfort. Some non-daily users may not even notice the difference. The improvements to the interface include...

1) a personalized CSS dropdown navigation with Pluck SiteLife login & Omniture Search.

2) JQuery slideshow to promote new features.

3) extremely prominent search boxes, since that's the primary means of navigation these days.

4) better integration of our world events, that were previously buried because of a bandaid approach applied to an acquired entity.

5) direct access API widgets everywhere that plugin to SiteLife blogs, forums and photo galleries.