Update (February 21, 2003):
The uploading of the finished New Look pages began today. While originally planned for last weekend, the upload was delayed when an alignment problem in some templates was noticed that affected certain older versions of Opera and Internet Explorer. Current version browsers (Internet Explorer 5.5 and 6, Netscape 6 and 7, Opera 6 and 7, Konqueror {Linux KDE 2.2} and WebTV Spring 2003) were not affected.

Archived pages will be uploaded as finished. The New Look navigation and the older navigation are 100% compatible, so any strange 404 errors produced may be reported for the editors and consultants to investigate and repair.

Original story (February 1, 2003):
Though not quite ready for the February issue's publishing date, an entire new template is being prepared for The News Letter. It's being redone in HTML 4.01 Transitional EN so that true XML browsers will be able to access the pages. HTML 4.01 Transitional is backward compatible with the X-HTML 1.0 and the XML 1.0 standards. Mass use of XML (and SGML) browsers has failed to materialize as predicted several years ago, but the newer code will exploit all the "better practices" inherit in HTML 4.01 Transitional.

Along with the new code, fresh graphics have been prepared. The basic silver and gold colors will be retained, with more extensive use of pseudometallics. Music will remain on all pages, though there will now be a floating control on all pages for those who wish to turn it off without scrolling to the bottom of the page to find the control console.

Navigation is being significantly enhanced. In addition to the current link navigation, the Archive will be fully accessible from every page via DHTML menus listing each archived article. For those who surf without JS, the text accesible Archive page will be retained. A keyword search of only The News Letter is planned. The practice of moving Column articles to their own page for several months before being archived will be discontinued. This was actually an artifact from when Column articles were not on the Headline page, but were merely referred to from the Headline page.

Text only subscribers will continue to receive The News Letter in the standard text-only format with which they are familiar. The full emplementation of the new look is scheduled to be deployed before February 15, 2003. People wanting a sneak peek of the new look may click the previous highlighted words. We think you'll like what you see.