For World Emoji Day, the Unicode Consortium has redesigned its site to make it more user-friendly – TechCrunch



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On Wednesday, July 17th, World Emoji Day, Apple and Google announced their intention to bring more emoji to their respective platforms. Today, the Unicode consortium, the non-profit organization responsible for determining which emoji are getting the go-ahead, is relaunching its website with a modern, up-to-date design aimed at making its information more accessible to the general public.

Previously, the design of his website was very basic: it only included text and links to various pages about the consortium itself, the standard, various FAQs, ongoing projects and other information. It looked like a technical resource, and certainly a resource that had not been updated for years.

With an outdated layout, old social sharing buttons and boring font choices, it looked a lot more like an old government website than a resource for public consumption.

Screen Capture 2019 07 17 at 14:05

Above: the old site

This changes with the redesign. Not only is the site more user-friendly, but it also actively encourages public participation and involvement.

"Unicode is a global technology standard that is one of the basics of the Internet, "Unicode board member Greg Welch said in an announcement about changes to the site. "Unicode has facilitated the work of programmers and linguists around the world since the 1990s. But with the rise of mobile devices and the public's enthusiasm for emoji, we knew that it was time to redefine the Unicode website to make information more easily accessible and to increase community participation, "he said.

Screenshot 2019 07 17 at 02:08

Above: the Emoji section on the new site

Although the Consortium itself focuses more extensively on the development of text standards, their work with emoji now retains all the attention. Today, emoji are used by 92% of the online population worldwide, which has put the organization in the limelight.

The updated site was built with the help of a team of Adobe designers and features a home page covered in emoji. The main navigation directs visitors to information about emoji, including how to submit a proposal for a new emoji (which is still not a user-friendly process), as well as information on "adoption" of an emoji, which is a way to offer a tax-deductible donation to the Unicode Consortium while providing access to a personalized badge that you can display on your own website or social media accounts.

Currently, 136,000 emoji are available for "adoption," notes the organization, including recently announced additions, such as laziness, sea otter, waffle and Saturn.

The new site is significantly more attractive and easier to use, as a result of the redesign. But for those who miss the clbadic look, it's still available at http://unicode.org/main.html. (It often happens that you access the old site by clicking on the new links.) The redesign is only too deep, it seems.)

Although the redesign is welcome, people looking for information on their favorite emoji – like its appearance on different platforms, its official addition or what emoji means, for example – may find it better. Emojipedia website.

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