Newspapers debut redesigned sites

By Sun Advocate

After months of preparation, the Sun Advocate and Emery County Progress unveiled redesigned Web sites on June 24.
While many changes are immediately apparent, others are more subtle. Many features have been improved and a number have been added to improve the overall quality of the websites.
One of major improvements is the new archive viewer, which lets readers select the content that matches the exact type and combination they want to see.
With a few clicks of the mouse, for example, readers can view all the sports headlines and opinion articles that were published in the months of April and August.
The site search feature also received a major overhaul. The advanced search options now allow searches to be made by publication date, section, author name or keywords.
The websites offer a redesigned breaking news service. The service reports major news immediately, long before the next issue of the paper is printed.
Another new feature automatically displays headlines that may be similar or related to the article the reader is viewing.
One of the most anticipated new features is the introduction of RSS support. RSS allows readers to view the latest news headlines on computers without having to periodically check the website for updates.
RSS subscriptions are provided in the form of a data feed.
Once the RSS reader has successfully subscribed or linked to the feed, headlines are automatically downloaded periodically as they become available.
Most popular browsers have built-in RSS support.
Mozilla Firefox, for example, uses live bookmarks to display subscribed RSS feeds. Mozilla Firefox users will find that, once the live bookmark is in place, it works exactly like the latest headlines feature that comes pre-installed with the web browser.
Readers may subscribe to as many RSS feeds as they choose.
Each feed covers an individual section of the Web site like news, sports, opinion and breaking news.
Once the feed is bookmarked, the headlines will appear inside the live bookmark, which updates as new headlines are made available on the website.
In the coming months, the websites will be expanded as new features are added. Features like article comments and event calendars are already in the works, while other features are being planned.To visit either site go to www.sunad.com or www.ecprogress.com.