Regular visitors to the homepage BBC News website were in for a surprise on Monday as they fired up their browsers. The site has had a facelift and feels rejuvenated.

Much of the navigation hasn’t changed but it is wider and uses white space so that stories have room to breathe. This is how editor Steve Herrmann described the changes:

So our designers embarked on a mission that they have called a “site refresh” – they say it’s “like gardeners doing a bit of pruning and weeding, but not digging it up and starting from scratch” ie it’s not a fundamental redesign of everything – many of the basics stay the same, because we know they work.

The refresh certainly sparked off a healthy discussion on the BBC Editors blog, with more than 500 comments in response to Steve’s post.

Overall, it is a welcomed change and work is still continuing. But there are some aspects which rankle. The content on the site is pushed down the page by a wide BBC banner, followed by a BBC News banner. This wastes valuable space on the front page.

The audio/video box is now a permanent fixture, under the top three stories. It is understandable that the BBC would want to promote its broadcast material. But visitors should be given a choice, rather than have the AV content foisted on them.

Another minor niggle is the amount of white space between the headlines on the bottom half of the page. This could be tightened up without creating too much clutter.

The most popular stories box is now more prominent. This offers an interesting insight into what people are reading. But it would good to also have a way of showing what stories are being discussed in blogosphere, recognising the the BBC is part of a network of information.