Twenty years ago this week, when the BBC News website launched, there are fewer than eight million people online in the UK - there are now about 60 million.
BBC News Online launched in November 1997, following several forays on the internet, covering:
- the Budget in 1995
- the Olympics in 1996
- the general election in May 1997
- the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, in September 1997
CNN's website was already up and running. The Guardian was also among the early internet pioneers.
The BBC News website was only 620 pixels wide at its launch - that is slightly more than half the width of the current site.
In November 1999, the site had its first revamp. The old blue banner and red star was replaced with a red header BBC News, and the search function moved to the top of the page.
The attack on the Twin Towers in New York in September 2001 shocked the world, and large numbers turned to the BBC News website.
In 2003, the old linear format was dropped in favor of a wider, horizontal layout. The aim was to make the site easier for users to find their way around and see more stories at first glance.
In 2008, the site got even wider, and for the first time video could be played from within story pages. The world map in the navigation was dropped a couple of years later.
In 2010, the website got a "fresh, updated design", which also offered "easy ways to share stories with others", according to the then editor, Steve Herrmann .
By now, increasing numbers of users were coming to the news website from Facebook and Twitter.
In 2015, the website became "responsive" - meaning its layout was designed to display well on different devices and screen sizes. By this point, about 65% of users were coming to the news website of mobiles and tablets.
The look might change,
Here's the NHS performance tracker from 1999, when the government of the day published a new set of clinical indicators giving death rates in individual hospitals in England for the first time.
We managed to squeeze in a further redesign for 2017. News editors can change the number of stories in the full-width, horizontal slices, with the option of "dialing up the volume "during major news events.
We can now offer a more visual front page. Dropping the right hand side column and going full-width means video and news stories [integrated] on the page
