Dictionary.com's New Look

It has taken them a long time, but Dictionary.com, my favorite resource for finding word definitions, has decided to upgrade the visual feel of their website. It looks pretty great considering that its previous design was circa 1993. Why do I like Dictionary.com so much? Well, to be perfectly honest it doesn't provide any additional information than any other reference website does, it was just the best site for subverting my University's policy on the use of search engines in the library.

The Library was about the most anal place to do any productive educational work (how 'bout that?) because they had the computers so locked down that you couldn't do it. Their opinion was that to do real research we should use real resources like periodicals (the rest of humanity calls them 'magazines'), journals, and other 'reputable' sources. Google wasn't good enough…except when you needed a resource that invariably was related to the 'Net and couldn't be easily found in an 'official' publication.

So, I would go to Dictionary.com and use its Google search option that wasn't scrubbed by their filters. The irony of it all, was the domain name used to do this was Dictionary.com's sister site, Reference.com. Ridiculous, eh? I think so too.

Posted on Aug 24
Written by Wayne Hartman