June 01, 2004 | View Comments (30) | Category: Version 2
Summary: The April/May entries and the site for June.
This month the site up for grabs is MacEdition. Hasn't been updated in a looooong time, but I am good friends with the guy who runs the site and they are looking to make a comeback soon. What better way to do that then with a redesign? If you have ever heard of CodeBitch, this is where she got her start.
Prizes (so far):
If you have any prizes that you would like to donate just let me know.
There they are (hey Robert I emailed you about yours, let me know). Voting starts tomorrow. I was really impressed with some of the entries and how they tackled the IA of the site. Once the winner has been selected I will show how I envisioned the IA of the site. Best of luck to everyone.
Trackback URL: http://9rules.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/252
I impressed, to say the least. There's some real quality stuff amongst the redesigns. Seems like every month the standard is raising!
Congrats to all the participants!
Geert DD (http://www.fietsenkris.be/)
I don't mean to be critical, but I can't help but mention this because I think it's a fundamental problem between designers and "the bottom line"-ers. If you go to IMDB you'll notice banner ads (though, not during the beginning of the week on the frontpage) - that's how they make money. However, if you look at these submissions, none of them (with maybe the exception of Zelnox) have mocked-up any way to include ads. Yes, I know they're ugly and evil, but that's how this site makes most of its money. People aren't going to listen to all of these wonderful things we have to say about the web if we can't show ROI.
B. Adam (http://www.weeklystandards.com)
I've sent you the new link Scrivs, let me know if you get it.
As for my design, call me an uber minimalist who doesn't like graphics destracting from the info on info-based sites lol.
Nice site btw Minz Meyer.
Robert Lofthouse
B.Adam: I think we all assume that we're rich. Either way, i'm sure if any design was chosen for the official site - it could easily be changed to include a section for ads.
There are a lot of nice entries.
Robert Lofthouse
Whew, good work everyone! I've made my decision, but I assure you, it wasn't easy.
Good luck to all the entrants on tomorrow's vote! :)
Chris Vincent (http://dris.dyndns.org:8080/)
Yeah, I think I have 3-4 favs, so picking one is definitely going to be a challenge. Have to go beyond aesthetics definitely to pick the winner which is good since that is what everyone should be doing anyways :)
Scrivs (http://businesslogs.com)
It's funny taking a first look at all the entries. I mean I designed mine after concluding that certain things need to be there or not be there, it should look this way, there should be these graphics, the content should read like this etc. So on looking at the others, my first impressions are that they've not quite got it right. On second impressions I think, uh oh, it's me who hasn't quite got it right. On third impressions, my view will change again. Eventually I hope I will be able to see which is really the best!
They are all certainly better than the original, some great layouts, graphics, ideas etc. This is going to be even tougher to judge than before, even if there are less entries. Well done everybody. Isn't the version 2 contest a great learning experience? Many thanks to Scrivs who makes all this possible. Where would we be without him?
01 (http://www.01010.org/)
I think it's just nice to see so many designers views of one site. How everyone has a different interpratation of how it should look.
I don't feel there is a corect way to design any site. After all, different people need different things - while 50% of people may love graphic intensive sites, the other 50% might prefer minimalism.
Robert Lofthouse
Interesting batch, given that two months went by between this offering and the last... Like most everyone else I've got a few faves... I think Chugs III is the top contender, just cause it was the only design that actually made me _want_ to go look around the site... Though the very top, the area with just text and the brown background seems weird... Overall, you guys continue to amaze... keep it up...
Alex
I know I'll probably get flamed for saying this but I wasn't overly impressed with the redesigns - there are a few good ones in there (and Minz Meyers one is lovely)
Alex, Chug III is good (layout wise and use of real estate) but lacks decent branding and the font choice doesn't quite fit in with the site.
As robert says "I don't feel there is a corect way to design any site. After all, different people need different things - while 50% of people may love graphic intensive sites, the other 50% might prefer minimalism." - it'll be interesting to see what way they voting goes.
Anyway well done to those who entered, its always interesting to see what different people would do with the same site...
Chris (http://chris.lineages.co.uk)
I think a lot of people expect us to spent the entire month/2 months just redesigning the web site lol. While that may be true for some, the rest of us have jobs to do and money to earn. e.g. I did my design in the first month, I spent a few hours on it and that was mostly just ensuring the code validated, accesibility was catered for, and that the code was logical. Other than that I spent a small amount of time on little graphic details. I didn't work on it at all in the second month because I didn't have time.
So I think we can all say, that it wasn't technically our best - but what we could put together in the time we had.
Robert Lofthouse
I have posted some feedback on all the entries on my website. Alex, why didn't you enter? I usually like your entries.
01 (http://www.01010.org/)
After reading the feedback I thought - "Why is my graphic taking so long to load?". I checked the CSS positioning file, and found I have accidently linked to the psd and not the gif. I'll try and change it when I have time. Sorry to all those on dial-ups.
Thanks for the comments 01.
Robert Lofthouse
The psd file has been changed to the gif version.
Again, sorry to those on dial-ups.
Robert Lofthouse
Hey Scrivs, sorry to post in this thread, but I figured is close enough:
The link on the IMDB V2 voting page for IMDB points to http://imbd.com/...they must be glad with the traffic :)
AkaXakA (http://www.AkaXakA.tk/)
It's a shame that only about 3 of the designs work in older browsers, I would have thought that that would have been a top priority, especially for an information based web site accessed by all.
I will leave you to do your own testing, and vote based on your own methods of judging how good a site is.
It was nice to check my logs and see that quite a few people were checking the css out, and validating my design. Rather than basing their opinion solely on the design.
I love this redesign contest for the pure fact that it gives me another "testing ground". I can try out new ideas, and improve my skills.
Well.. it's 4:05am here.. and i've been working since 8am the previous day - i'm shattered. Starting up your own business is exhausting.
Robert Lofthouse
Robert - What do you mean by making designs work in old browsers? For me it means making the page readable with just text and graphics but no layout except that it flows in a logical sequence.
If people don't want to upgrade, for free, to modern browsers, which can be small, then they also choose to lose the benefits of up-to-date web design, imho. So why cater too much for them?
01 (http://www.01010.org/)
01: If you're selling something on a website, at least, you don't want to alienate those people with old browsers who might be buying your product. A lot of corporate people still use Netscape 4.x because their IT department standardized on it 3 or 4 years ago and hasn't upgraded yet... and they spend money online.
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
JC: How many people use Netscape 4? Any idea? If the website is readable with Netscape 4 but lacks modern features, then those corporate people are going to press their IT dept to upgrade. My god, it's long overdue isn't it? What alternative to IMDb is there for them that they will go and spend their money elsewhere?
Part of CSS and XHTML standards is trying to bring luddites into the 21st century. It is such a lot of time wasted imo jumping through all kinds of hoops just to satisfy a minority. But I don't suppose IMDB will listen to that. They will stick with tables for a long time yet.
01 (http://www.01010.org/)
I was mainly referring to how most people didn't even cater for Internet Explorer 5, which is still used quite a lot on the web - let alone netscape 4 or anything like that.
Robert Lofthouse
Just checked them all with Netscape 4 and all are fine except for a couple. I haven't checked anything with IE 5 cos I haven't got it. I'd appreciate any feedback on my site wrt IE5, so I know what to do in future.
01 (http://www.01010.org/)
Well, over half the people in my company, for one. We're finally moving to IE6 & Netscape 7, but that takes alot of time and effort.
IMDB of course isn't quite so applicable, because it's a resource, not an ecommerce site, but as a general rule, if you're selling stuff, it'd better work in old browsers, and not just dump a bunch of crap to the page with nice HRs between the sections. That's fine for news sites, but if you're trying to make money, it'd better be backwards compatible.
As for the luddites... ideals are fine, but money is better. Have to be practical here. Remember that even though the browsers are free, it's going to cost money and time for a corporate IT staff to go from location to location, update every employee's computer to a new browser, deal with any conflicts that arise with existing software, train them to use the new browser (though firefox or netscape or whatever in 'classic' mode would help with that alot), deal with the thousands of follow-up calls because obviously because an IT person touched their computer, every dumb thing they do from that point forward *has* to be because of that browser install.... And what's the benefit to the corporation? Extra hassle patching the hole of the day in IE... keeping up with mozilla's constant updating... oh, and the users, who mostly shouldn't be surfing the net at work anyway but do, can view those sites with CSS designs more efficiently. Not alot of reason to upgrade unless they need it for internal use, which is how we're pushing ours through, bit by painful bit, setting our web-based apps to either require or at least look much better in up-to-date browsers. But it's a slow process... we've been at it for a couple of years and just hit the 50% mark a few months ago.
You can talk about jumping through hoops to satisfy a minority, but that only applies to sites whose sole purpose is to be viewed. If they're trying to make money, you have to cater to everyone, especially those people with money... mac users, for example, are a minority... but they spend more per user than windows users do. (no data to back that up, just remember reading that somewhere) And I can definitely vouch for our NN4 users spending money online... especially golf sites, travel sites, those sorts of things.
Basically comes down to... don't cut off the income source. It's better to have a basic table based site running in tandem with your CSS site and maintain both (which isn't that big of a deal when you're dealing with includes and templates and stuff anyway) than it is to lose money.
Oh, and to keep this somewhat on topic -- Zelnox, I really like your design. The random image in the header is a very nice touch. :-)
JC (http://thelionsweb.com/weblog)
Thanks for explaining all that JC. I don't work in the corporate world, and after reading that perhaps I am lucky! I thought it would be fairly simple to upgrade but apparently not.
As you're in there doing it, can everyone be catered for with tables along with CSS, or what other fixes need to be made?
And Zelnox, yours is one of the sites that doesn't work in NN4!
01 (http://www.01010.org/)
No need to name names really, everyone will find out who's web site doesn't work in certain browsers.
It's quite easy to run IE 5.0, IE 5.5 and IE 6.0 on the same machine, without partitioning your hard drive or using virtual pc software. So people have no excuse not to test on them all :P
Robert Lofthouse
"No need to name names really"
I think this contest is about web design and it may make a difference if some designs break in lots of browsers, but imho it isn't the main concern. I think it helps someone telling them if things break. It doesn't affect the voting. I doubt if "everyone will find out who's web site doesn't work in certain browsers" because they may not be too concerned with that, but more concerned with the overall design. I think it does more good telling people direct than passing insinuations and sticking your tongue out.
As you are obviously very clever and find it easy installing 3 versions of IE, perhaps you could let me know how it is done without screwing my whole system up. If you want to help, of course.
01 (http://www.01010.org/)
I assume that you're on a pc running windows. I'll get you a link to some detailed instructions as soon as I can, so check back here for a link.
As for web sites breaking in browsers, pretty much all of them do, except for a small few. A lot of people seemed to have spent so much time getting the graphics right, that they forgot their audience.
Robert Lofthouse
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#1
Hey Scrivs,
Would it be possible if I could switch it onto my new server and send you the new link?
I've only just got the new server up and running, so that link you have won't work, and you probably sent the email to my old address.
Anyways, let me know through here.
Alternatively, I submitted my new email along with this.
Robert Lofthouse