WhiteHouse.gov - before and after

Today was a historic day. The nation saw the biggest inaugural crowd ever, the peaceful transition of power (and a massive shift in politics), and — what we web designers really care about — a new WhiteHouse.gov web site.

Yes, at exactly 12:00 noon, just minutes before Chief Justice Roberts and President Obama stumbled over the exact wording of the presidential oath (really, you had just one job today, Roberts — and you screwed it up), the official White House web site switched over from the Bush version (which interestingly just got a redesign a few months ago…not sure why they bothered) to the shiny Obama edition.

All joking about “change” aside, I really do find the new site interesting. For one thing, it obviously exhibits the high level of polish and design sense that all of Obama’s sites have demonstrated over the past couple years. It now includes a blog. It has a clear statement on copyright, creative commons, and the DMCA (very significant for those battling our archaic copyright laws). The whole site is designed to be a platform to support Obama’s pledge for transparent government, and looking at it purely from a web designer’s point of view it’s a great start.

Even looking at the source, it’s clean code. Tags are organized, tend to be properly indented, and CSS classes are named well most of the time. Javascript (in the form of jQuery — my personal fav) is used efficiently and effectively to enhance the experience without weighing down the page. Graphical elements and typography are generally strong and well optimized, with only a few exceptions. It’s encouraging that his digital team takes this much care with the web site — I think it bodes well for all Internet denizens that the new president clearly has a great number of people who “get” the power of the Internet — and the power of good design.

UPDATE: CNN now has a story about the new web site.