January 09, 2004 | View Comments (24) | Category: CSS Vault
Summary: It's time for the CSS Vault redesign to begin, but I need your input as to what should be improved.
No worries, its not for whitespace, but for the CSS Vault, which is badly in need of a tuneup. The original design served its purpose when there were not that many sites or resources, but as you can see things have gotten a little crazy and now I think the current design just doesn't do this resource justice. I already have some sketches of how the new stuff is probably going to look, but that is only based on how I wish things to be. Since it has become a community resource I figured it only fair that I ask the audience what would you like to see from the Vault? What improvements would you make?
One particular feature I have been thinking about is opening comments for the gallery section so that designers may critique the sites. These would be only open for a couple of days to try and control the discussion and of course would be heavily moderated so that no useless statements are made. I think we could all benefit from a good quality discussion on the value of a site's design and it is always good to see other's opinions.
The gallery section is also screaming for a better hierarchy system. As of now every entry simply gets put into the "gallery" section. The only possibilities I have thought of right now are "company" and "personal" so any other suggestions here would help greatly. Since MT allows the use of multiple categories, I think this will help in sorting the mess.
Finally the last thing I could think of putting which should have been there from the beginning is a "search" function. This goes in no matter what, since the only thing keeping it out was pure laziness.
So just speak up and let me know what you want. Thanks. Oh and I have a backlog of entries to put in so if you submitted me something and have not seen it, either it's not going or I just haven't gotten to it.
Trackback URL: http://9rules.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/100
being a new visitor to the site as well as new to css web design, i would like to see the resources section better developed. if we could rate the resources quality, that would be awesome so we could more easily find what we're looking for instead of wading through sites that potentially don't give the answer we're looking for.
great site... keep up the good work.
joe (http://www.makejoefamous.com)
A thumbnailed grid would be appreciated. It would be easier to find a webdesign at a glance when you don't know the name of the website.
mauriz (http://www.svay.com)
I think the structure of the resources section is good. Maybe rather than an "All Resources" listing, maybe they could be listed under each category heading with some kind of show/hide toggle feature.
As I'm sure you don't have time to review each resource, some kind of user rating might be the way to go if people really want that (is this hard to do?). Maybe that could be done for the gallery too and you could have a top ten section or something like that.
Finally, on the Gallery you could attempt to to categorise them along some kind of taxonomy of design styles as Curt Cloninger did in "Fresh Styles for Web Designers" (New Riders).
dez (http://dezwozhere.com/blog/)
Maybe organizing the vault similar to how you have the white_space homepage done. showing the most recent entries, but then also giving the category listings. I really like that organization method.
Jeremy Flint (http://www.jeremyflint.com)
Well maybe I could open up comments for resources also to allow people to voice their opinions about it. Just as good as a rating system, but with better feedback.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
I'll second the thumbnail approach. Maybe a thumbnail with a brief description of why the site is there.
JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
I'm with Mauriz and JC. Thumbnails would be great for quick scanning.
And, would it be possible to have an alphabetical sort of the site list in the Gallery? It looks like they're in chronological order, but alphabetical would be helpful for quickly finding a particular site.
I'd also love to see direct links to the featured sites from the xml feeds. When I click the link now, I briefly lose my bearings as I jump to the archived page. (Especially in the Resources section, where it always takes me a second to remember that the header is also the link to the site.)
Sharif (http://www.blueplaidshirt.com)
Could you also read each of the sites and give us a short, brief, 10,000 word summary of the purpose of each site.
:-)
Jeremy Flint (http://www.jeremyflint.com)
Trust me if I had more time I would love to give better critiques of each site. That is what the comments will be for I guess.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
Jeremy Flint's suggestion to organize the Vault in the same way you organised White_Space sounds really good.
Percept (http://percept.be)
I agree with Keith...comments in The Vault would be great.
Todd (http://www.monkeyhouselounge.com/tcoleman2/)
I think it would be great if you add (1) a set of criteria, based on which you accept or deny entries, and (2) a voting system (perhaps 1-5 stars) so we can see the most popular entries.
Jeroen Coumans (http://www.jeroencoumans.nl)
I'd be cautious about ratings. How do we tell the difference between "it's very good" and "OMG this is the best thing I have seen in my life". There should some metrics in addition to only comments. Rating a website should be partly objective and partly subjective.
I would like to see the sites in the gallery placed in more categories (according to type). Perhaps not as detailed as www.linkdup.com, but I feel that only two categories barely offer any additional benefits than the current offering. Maybe also categorize according to style and not type.
Perhaps more screenshots?
Also, why not list the sites that did not get added. Maybe they can receive arguments and eventually get a second chance. By having the opportunity to compare the chosen ones versus the rejected ones allows us to understand better what is good.
Zelnox
Alright, some great ideas going on here. However, let me add a restraint. The site is powered in MT so I only going as far as the limits of MT will take me. I don't feel like adding any custom programming in or anything like that. You guys are already making this more elaborate than than my tiny brain could think of :)
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
When I come back to look for a site, I generally haven't a clue what its name is, I just remember what it looked like. I also don't have a clue when I saw it.
To help me find things quickly I'd like:
[1] Keyword search.
[2] Thumbnail gallery - option to display all, by month, by category.
I think it's important to display the thumbnail image whenever you display the name - so on the search results a list of names woudn't be enough, I need the visuals as well.
As for categories, personally I wouldn't want anything beyond Corporate and Personal. If I can remember more detail than that I probably wouldn't be coming back to find something, I'd be Googling it.
Maybe for casual browsing more defined categories would be helpful to filter things out, but I can't think of any section names off the top off my head.
HTH.
Dunstan (http://www.1976design.com/blog/)
A bunch of good ideas so far but I'd like to be able to see none of them. Personaly the one thing I have found the most useful with the vault is the previous and next links with the very short description. It's the closest thing yet to leafing through a design book or magazine and I hope you keep it.
If you want to add categories, longer descriptions, comments, ratings, whatever, fine. But I think they should be hidden behind a "more" link or at least less prominent in the layout so when starting a design it's still possible to simply go from the most recent and page through the sites for inspiration.
Patrick (http://i.never.nu)
Well, since you asked =)
Something that's always bugged me about sites like Coolhomepages is that the sites they link to will often change design and the thumbnail doesn't correspond to the design. While it's practically impossible to keep on top of this, it would be great if the CSSVault provided not only a thumbnail but also a bigger, higher quality screenshot of the site as it was when it was added.
You're already taking a screenshot to generate the thumbnail. If you could make that available in case the site goes down for good or alters its design, that would be great.
sergio (http://overcaffeinated.net)
I can't think of anything more depressing that a bunch of wannabe web designers deigning to comment on the work of other web designers.
Unless the web designer who is the subject of discussion comes back to comment on how crappy the websites of those commenting are.
Brawls are okay.
Joel Biroco (http://biroco.com/)
I personally have to agree with Patrick about leafing through the entries with a Show / Hide function to show and hide all of the comments and everything. At the same time having a grid with thumbnails is also an attractive idea for when I want to grab a site real quick.
Perhaps a rating system would be nice with a few categories beyond just stars, for instance "Usability", "Color Choice", "Markup", etc. And then, this may be a stretch, a way to pull up websites accordingly to the strongest in whatever category. I often come to the CSSVault to get an idea of how people do things specifically, whether it be color or markup or CSS.
just some thoughts.
Mike (http://dayofthe.com)
Hmmm, I never thought of the Vault as a scrapbook. Interesting analogy there. This is starting to get tougher than I though. Long weekend ahead...
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
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#1
Logically speaking, corporate and personal are probably the only two categories you would need. You could always alphabetize them, or categorize them by weeks rather than months.
The comments section would be a good addition as well, as long as it is well moderated and, like you said, closed after a certain time limit. The one thing that annoys me is being on a message board and some newbie comes in and replys to a post that is a year old, pushing it to the top.
Anyway, good job. Love the vault. Maybe I will get there someday.
Jeremy Flint (http://www.jeremyflint.com)