I kinda like the new look of the Bloomberg.com site — it stands out from the rest of the web clutter. Either that, or I am just not used to it, and it "pops."
I assume its a visual branding cue — Bloomberg terminals are white/orange text on black background, and this very much picks up that look:
what’s with the black background? too effin’ gloomy, it’s a financial site not a funeral parlour!!
Speaking of Bloomberg… a little birdie tells me that they got banned from the Dept. of Commerce press room following multiple press release embargo violations.
This is actually retro–in the early days black was a popular background for websites…I even remember chiding an associate for using black on a company website as it had “gone out of fashion” at the time…
I like it !
Many years ago I had set up my PC to have a black background and yellow text. I also keep my room dark. I’ve found this just about eliminates eyestrain. I can be on the computer for 16 hrs. a day and my eyes feel great. A white background just allows a lot of light to hit the eyes…not good. Try it for a while, you’ll be impressed!
What I want to know is:
When the hell are they going to update the interface on the Bloomberg terminals themselves!! I mean, its command line based, 1980’s graphics, and tons of arcane tickers and codes and whatnot. I understand that older folks in the buisness are used to it that way, but thats not an excuse to not modernize your service. I’m very computer literate, and i’ve never encountered a modern software product that is more difficult to use than Bloomberg…it seriously feels like i’m working on an old DOS box…