New UN Web Site Launched.

• Position: Brief Article

The United Nations Web site had undergone a dramatic facelift, Mahbub Ahmad, Chief of the Information Technology Section of the Department of Public Information, told correspondents at the launching of the redesigned site at a UN Headquarters press briefing on 1 September. In the four years of its existence, the UN Web site, which received some 1 million hits per day, had seen phenomenal growth and expansion. Since 1996, it had been rendered into each of the six official languages of the United Nations. However, the Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish Web sites were still in the process of being developed and contained less material than the English and French sites. The first major change was that the user had to choose at the outset which of the official languages he or she wished to continue with, Mr. Ahmad explained. The word "welcome" appeared in each of the languages, and the user could then click on to the homepage in that language. The look and feel of the Web site had also changed, and it was gener ally more user-friendly.

The Web site was easier to navigate. One new feature was that the user could jump directly to other pages without...