Get to Know the New Features of All About Birds

By Hugh Powell

Baltimore Oriole by Brian Hix July 13, 2015

On August 13, 2015, we launched a new version of our All About Birds website. It’s our first redesign since 2009, and the changes we’ve made are designed to take advantage of new web standards that organize information and communicate stories.

home screen all about birds — The new All About Birds home page features a fresh look, easy access to search, and a curated stream of articles. See the new home page here.

What’s new in All About Birds?

a clean look with an emphasis on helpful, timely content
a much better search experience
access to most Cornell Lab projects with a single search. Did you know the Cornell Lab runs eBird, Project FeederWatch, NestWatch, BirdSleuth, and many other projects? Now when you search All About Birds, you’ll search them all
new article pages tell stories with an artful mix of photos, video, and sounds
fully responsive design—load quickly, resize on the fly, and the text is readable whether you’re on a computer or a smartphone

new features added to All About Birds search page — The search page has been completely redesigned. These are some of the new features. Click to see a larger version.

What hasn’t changed?

The All About Birds species guide will have minor changes to its appearance and search bar, but it’ll remain fundamentally unchanged. This is a very popular section of our website, and it’s next on our team’s redesign list.

Dive Into the New Features

Better search. We’ve cleaned up search results and organized them into categories. Are you looking for a particular bird species? They’re organized in one section of the search results page. Looking for an answer to a question? Go straight to the FAQ results. How about an article about bird biology, or about what to feed birds or how to get them into your yard? The results are organized logically. Try it here with a search query like, say, Downy Woodpecker.

Access to all Cornell Lab projects. When you search All About Birds, we’ll give you results from all our projects—eBird, FeederWatch, BirdSleuth, and many more. (No more trying to remember which project had the page or article you were looking for.) A little green “popout” icon in the article title lets you know if you’re headed away from All About Birds. Click your browser’s back button to get back to All About Birds again.

Search suggestions. Start typing your search query and we’ll suggest both bird species and article titles right there in the search box. It’s a quick way to see what’s available, even before you start your search.

Looking for a bird but don’t know its name? Our search results show you pictures of bird species that match your search terms. You can compare photos and listen to songs right on the search results page. A button click expands the list downward so you can keep exploring species as long as you want.

Want to browse instead of search? We put a lot of effort into better search, but what if you prefer to browse? Look for the green “Topics” button at the top left of any screen to reveal links to the site’s main sections. You can explore these topic pages even further with the list of subtopics. Try it out with our News & Features section.

Quicker answers to your FAQs. When you enter a question into our search box, matching FAQs show up in a special section of search results. To drill into our FAQs even more deeply, visit the FAQ topic page.

Check out a recent conservation story to see how text, images, sound, and video play off one another to create a rich experience. Try Moneyball for Shorebirds, Facing Into the Wind, or North of the Treeline.

Tell us what you think. We built this site for you. We’d love to hear your comments, reactions, and suggestions. Leave a comment here.