The site is divided into three sections: the header, sidebar and main window. Buttons in the sidebar switch the content in the main window; ones in the main window affect items inside, and header buttons go elsewhere in the site: very clear. Navigating round the site, the grid stays pretty constant, since only the main window changes.
Clickability is either represented by hyperlinks (blue and underlined) or as a GUI button. The sidebar uses rollover, while the main window does not give any feedback, apart from the default cursor changing.
Adding subscriptions is shown clearly, but unsubscribing is not (it's either tucked away in a feed settings menu or placed in the settings menu. Icons are not clear by themselves but help add context to labels. In general, the site uses blue and white pretty uniformly, giving a nice uniform look.
Feed windows are nice and simple: just the title, description, date, and a star to highlight a certain feed. Unfortunately, the 'home' window is ugly: the main column is not narrow or wide enough, while the recommendations column is too prominent, and the blue boxes make it distract from the actual feed summaries.
This site looks nice, but its layout is a bit cluttered. The main story is laid out well: the bigger font draws the eye, and there are photos and supporting links to give more context. There are several smaller sub articles with pictures, and the Around the world now and More from BBC news section is summarises headlines clearly. It seems weird to have two sections named Features, views and analysis, and the Other top stories section seems too prominent for what is really a miscellaneous section.
When clicking on stories, the grid structure stays the same, with the story replacing the middle portion of the home page, and the sidebars remaining. Furthermore, now that I've selected a story, the sidebar stories are all related to the current story, rather than comprising miscellaneous stories.
Links are shown clearly on the site: they are either coloured dark red or blue, the main colours used to accent the site. The rest of site is fairly simple in general, mostly white or gray. Font size is used to mark headlines. Bold is used on subheads, and small caps are used to show headers for lists of story links. The architecture is flat: stories are divided by region/category, but there is no other hierarchy.
There are superfluous elements on the home page like the products and services bar at the bottom, and the radio and tv programmes box on the side. They could be placed more discreetly to avoid drawing the attention away.
