Grid-based design gets the nod

Here's a fantastic piece with a ton of helpful resources about using grid design for content-intense sites. This should be a wake-up call to ALL sites that would consider themselves distributors of mainstream news. I've never been a fan of the blog-like UI for mainstream news sites...basing a site's layout on a sequential collection of reverse-ordered articles that chronologically move themselves from immediate accessibility as new items are added is a lazy, piss-poor way to present current news.

The major precept is that you've got to be working with a LOT of content, or at least be willing to fill columns and/or rows with imagery or headers. It basically promotes a use of a logical column design, akin to traditional newspapers.

More importantly, it also discusses the inevitable side effect of doing grid-based design: extended vertical pages. This is something I've battled since Day 1.

This should be required reading for those getting into the design business for high-end content sites.