January 13, 2005 | View Comments (18) | Category: CSS Vault
Summary: A list of all the Vault submissions that I received yesterday for you to decide what looks good and deserves admittance.
If you are a fan of the CSS Vault I am sure you are wondering why it isn't updated as much as it used to be. I can give you four reasons and maybe only one of them is really valid:
Over time I am sure I have developed a prejudice against two column, blog look alike sites, but I have tried to let every quality entry into at least the noteworthy section.
Yesterday, Bryan made a valid comment questioning why there has been a lack of updates (if you notice there has been a major lack of updates on all of my sites) and in response I told him I would post the submissions I got for that day here on Whitespace. So here is what I received:
I haven't put any of them in the Vault yet, but that doesn't mean that none of them will get in. I still have a backlog of submissions that I must go through first before I get to these. In the meantime, feel free to comment on any of the sites that you like or dislike, but please try to be polite in doing so.
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Out of that group, Steinruck Design is the only one that stands out as original and fresh. Just enough attention paid to detail and a good amount of variety.
Garrett (http://www.yourtotalsite.com)
You think Steinruck is original? I didn't get that impression -- I think it's a quality design. It definately has some print influence and a take on some old school design. I think it's worth an entry. They've taken great care in their details, and the code is professional quality.
City of Solitude has some skills with their illustration -- I think the nav and way the page lays out is a little out of whack and needs more structure, but I like the initial head graphics at first impression. I don't know if it garners great design, some tweaking probably needs to be done I would guess. Under the hood, way too much divitis, no real focus on structuring the code.
I like the Sulivan site for it's minimalist design -- very common for high end firms... it's coding habits are rough, and it has bugs in my mac browsers (divitis -- and does anyone really still use the break tag:)?). Had the code been as clean as the design, I would've thought it an honorable mention.
I don't care too much for the @ media -- I know I'M redesigning to get away from all these old trends -- but the over abundance of gradients, and the use of drop shadow on the breaking paragraphs looks like overkill. My only appeal in this is the use of orange, which is always nice to see in designers testing the waters.
I think Steinruck takes it.
Brady J. Frey (http://www.dotfive.com)
I'd have to vote for the Park Place site. I'm familiar with their Houston locations, so I'd have to say that their design does a very good job in reflecting the personality, architecture and service experience of the physical locations.
To top it off, it was built in CSS, the navigation is intuitive and the overall experience is useful and usable, and it's a beautiful design through and through.
But, what do I know. I never look at code, right Scrivs'?
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
I'm a huge fan of MegaPost Cards. It is so beautifully designed. I find it very strange that you haven't allowed it in yet.
Andrew (http://kempt.org)
Well those are yesterday's submissions so I haven't quite gotten to them yet.
And no Mark you never look at the code...tsk tsk.
Scrivs (http://9rules.com/)
Haha, damn you Andrew. I should've looked at the MegaPostCards site before I commented. Slick eh?
Scrivs (http://9rules.com/)
Scrivs, just curious if the competition of StyleGala made you do the overhaul? As I go through my feeds, seems like the CSS & Stylegala both accept the exact same sites at the exact same time. Buddy Lee Jeans for example. Anyways, love the vault, but Stylegala is quite nice ;) with the rating system and all... Oh wait, and its designed for the designer audience that has 1024 x 768 resolution... and... dammit sorry ;)
Brady White (http://www.bradywhite.net)
Personally, I think they all look pretty good except for 2 of them, I won't name sites :)
To be honest, I remember when My juicedthoughts site was included. Looking back, I really don't think it would have made it with a stricter submission policy. btw - I am referring to my old site, not the new one.
When the vault first came out, basically anyone with a decent design was included.
I can definitly tell the job is hard based on some of the designs. Some are crap (no offense to those listed above) and some are very nice. Sounds like you get more crap then nice.
However, the barometer was a good analogy.
Is the Css Vault a gallery where only the "best" designs are shown, or simply sites that not only look good, but are coded well?
I guess there is a fine line to be a good design and an "outstanding" design, especially when its one person making the decisions.
Anyways, I can see how the decisions are hard.
Bryan (http://www.juicedthoughts.com)
Brady: It has more to do with the fact that I have grown tired of the design and it needs improvement. I would never go totally against Stylegala because David has taken his site in a different direction than what the Vault is. The Vault will always just be a CSS resource, while Stylegala I think has become more of a general design issues site, ala k10k and others.
And it's odd to call it competition now (although in the past I did view it as so) since there really are no clients to compete for. I think people will visit all the galleries.
Scrivs (http://9rules.com/)
Thanks for the feedback guys. To tell you the truth, I'm a newbie at web design and really wasn't aiming on getting on CSS Vault because I didn't think I would be able to. I think most people like the top banner the most. My site is more personal, a collection of my engineering work as well as a daily blog. I had tremendous help from EHZ. I don't think I would put mine near the top, maybe at most a noteworthy. I'll keep improving. Thanks again.
Henry (http://www.cityofsolitude.com/)
Silvius.Avin
Because it's clean (front and back), very usable, subtle and effective use of Flash, and the other entries just aren't good enough. The unusual, even interesting, thing about Silvius.Avin is it's use of Dreamweaver (see its page source comments) for, I assume, content management. I think that's the first I've seen for a full XHTML/CSS site.
Jeff Werner (http://jeffwerner.ca)
Personally:
City Of Solitude, @media, Steinruck and miniwebside.
They either add something that hasn't been done too often or they pull somthing off really well.
Silvius.Avin has a rather big css bug in it....
AkaXakA (http://akaxaka.gameover.com)
Personally I found the @media design rather derivative and bland - since Jon Hicks redesigned with those sweeping rounded-corner boxes everyone seems to be using them.
The typography on City of Solitude is really nice, but the design is nothing amazing. Park Place is smooth, but looks like all those golf course sites that were in the Vault a few months back. Seriar looks about 5 years old. Jero's layout breaks in IE6.
IMO the bar was set really high by some of the fantastic work that came out in 2004 - it's very difficult to come up with anything new or innovative that is also usable and 'works'.
Matthew Pennell (http://www.thewatchmakerproject.com/)
You're right Matthew about Park Place reflecting a bit like some of the golf course sites, but I think that's what's good about it.
They are setting the bar higher for auto dealership websites - which are typically as awful as they come, even for the high-end market.
Setting the bar higher for their segment of the industry and being a corporation as opposed to a freelance individual (as the other 80% listed are)which has put some effort (by at least outsourcing to a CSS designer) into building with CSS is why they're my choice.
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
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#1
To be honest you've got a tough job.
I had a brief look at all of them and the only one I like is @media2005. the problem I had is, what criteria do you base the decision on? I guess your own, which is fine, but as you say on the site, it's subjective.
I guess half of the problem is a site such as CSSVault, with all its popularity, whether it aims to or not, becomes a barometer on successful CSS design. Therefore when it's not updated as regularly as people may want, what has happened to the barometer? Is nothing happening in the industry? Are no good sites being designed?
My point is inclusion to the Vault is subjective (actually that reiterates your point on the CCSVault site) and as you've shown here it's difficult and time consuming to go through the entries. I now understand how difficult it is to update regularly.
Mark Boulton (http://www.markboulton.co.uk)