As Slate's design director--yes, I'm wearing black--I could essay at length about the redesign that debuts in today's issue. I could speak volumes about our ambition to balance white space with type, and art with copy. About our quest to create more readable Web pages. About new navigation that makes dancing through Slate to find interesting articles all but effortless.

But instead of boring you with self-serving "designspeak," I've prepared a concise roll call of what's new and different in the new and different Slate--our first complete redesign since we launched in 1996.

What's New?

New Content Views

We've created three new ways to view Slate contents.

•  "New Today" lists everything posted since 7 p.m. ET the previous day.
• "Complete" lists the entire current content of Slate.
• The "Navigation Banner," that maroon stripe that says "Slate" at the top and bottom of every Slate page, uses color coding and drop-down menus to give you access to any page in Slate from any other page in Slate. The only catch is you have to have a modern browser such as Internet Explorer 4.0 or 5.0 or the forthcoming Netscape 5.0 browser.

I'll tell you more about how to use the Navigation Banner in just a minute.

New Today is the default home page of Slate, which means it's what you'll see when you go to www.slate.com. If you want to see a list of the entire current content, just click the Complete button on the Navigation Banner. If you really prefer this one, we encourage you to bookmark it (in Netscape Navigator) or put it in your browser's Favorites folder (in Internet Explorer).

New Sections

We've sorted our content into four sections: "Briefing," "Features," "24/Seven," and "Utilities."