Katrina’s Aftermath

With Five Years Later: Hurricane Katrina, USA Today has created a documentary experience that traces the great Gulf Coast disaster from its origins to the present. The site's content is deep, comprehensive, and up-to-date. And historical material is supplemented with new research.

One of the best features is Then & Now, which is in the Effects section. It provides a uniquely interactive way to see the transformation of flooded areas. Images of the same location in 2005-2007 and in 2010 are placed alongside each other, and then you use your mouse to move the dividing line between Then (on the left) and Now (on the right). Also under Effects, Lower Ninth features 360-degree panoramas, with highlighted areas that include more information, letting you explore the neighborhood as if you were there. The Effects section also includes a fascinating Demographics map, which offers a dynamic, interactive view of changes in the population from 2000 to 2008.

One last neat feature of Five Years Later is that you can pin the site to your Windows 7 taskbar, which is a convenient way to open a customized browser window and navigate directly to any of the four main sections. This is just another great new way that Internet Explorer 9 provides fast, unobtrusive access to the content you want, when you want it.

This story, "Katrina’s Aftermath" was originally published by BrandPost.