Slashdot CSS Redesign Contest Update

A few weeks back I announced that Slashdot was throwing open its design to the readers. An individual will win a Laptop, and hopefully we'll all win a Slashdot design that looks good. My Journal Entries have chronicled dozens of entries since the contest began, commenting on many of them. Today I share with you 3 of my favorites. These aren't necessarily "Finalists" but I think these are some of the strongest entries. First up is Michael Johnson's design, second is Jason Porritt's entry, and third is a design from Peter Lada. The contest will end around the middle of next week. Entries can be sent to redesign at CmdrTaco.net. Read my journal for extensive commentary on the many entries, to see what stuff has been working and what stuff hasn't.

There is a winner

[Anonymous Coward]

This one [westcarolina.net] has already won in my heart.

Re:Slashdot slashdots Slashdot!

[consonant]

That's just wrong, man. Take your pick from these:

1. How many dots would a slashdot slash, if a slashdot could slash dots?

2. How many slashes would a slashdot dot, if a slashdot could dot slashes?

Re:Great attempts, but hamstrung by client

[engwar]

I totally agree.

I'm not a graphic designer but am one of two developers at an Ad agency. I'll bet people would be AMAZED if real designers felt they could do something totally different with the Slashdot design.

Most of the redesign attempts I've seen look better than what we've got now, but none of them look like a great designer created it. And a lot of that is due to the fact that the redesign is being micro-managed by a developer.

Set the design free!

I'd mod you up if I could.

One major visual design flaw

[AmicoToni]

Johnson's design is visually appealing, but has a major, and I say major flaw. Every designer knows that the eye tends to be captured by curved lines, and that is routinely exploited to draw the attention of the observer towards the product. Johnson's design has some fluid curved lines that draw the eye towards the top left corner, where there is absolutely nothing! The eye then wanders off the page, giving to the page an unpleasant "void" feeling. The attention level drops, and the viewer then instinctively moves on, looking for another, more interesting page.

Big issue: Requires JavaScript

[TheReaperD]

I found one really big issue with Michael Johnson's design [insitemotion.com]: the site requires JavaScript to be enabled for the site to display properly. This means it will not work properly with most software for the visually impaired or for paranoid geeks like me that browse the web with JavaScript turned off.

Often, if I go to a site that requires JavaScript to view it, I simply move on.

Re:Could we please make the headlines the links?

[peterlada]

Mine encorporates this idea. (#3)

Re:Evolutionary vs. Revolutionary

[Cynshard]

I have to agree with you. And apparently so does this Cameron Moll Article [alistapart.com] at A List Apart.

Hiptop/Sidekick

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to enjoy reading Slashdot on the go with my Hiptop http://www.hiptop.com/ [hiptop.com] back in the day of the table-based layout. Sadly, ever since the CSS redesign, Slashdot is not unreadable on my Hiptop as the Hiptop browser renders the CSS poorly. Unfortunately, none of these three new designs improve upon the page display in the Hiptop browser. I know 'Taco specifically mentioned that designers were not to be concerned with portable devices, but still, it would be nice to be able to read Slashdot on the go again.

Re:Parent poster is right

[Kjella]

Disclaimer: I design.

So you said, and I saw two AC at 0 flaming your own designs [fantasticdamage.com]. I thought they were trolling, but well... if you would design something similar if you got "free reigns", then I'm sorry to say I agree with them. I don't like them at least, YMMV. However, I do agree that this contest is almost like Tom Sawyer making people paint the fence, because it's basicly the same fence afterwards.

Re:Why do we need a 'winner'?

[Dis*abstraction]

CSS Zen Garden has to include a metric shit-ton of redundant div and span wrappers in its HTML to allow for flexibility in design, since CSS by itself isn't descriptive enough to allow, for example, rearranging elements to flow visually depending on context. All this extraneous code bloats the filesize and significantly increases the complexity of the document structure to the point where the underlying HTML is even worse than a table-based layout. I'd say it was the designers of the CSS standard who missed the point.

Not impressed

[DigitalDragon]

I am actually quite unimpressed with the designs. It has been awhile, but none of the participants had tried anything other than green on white.

I like green, but the forest green that is used on slashdot is quite ugly and everybody knows that. Why is it that noone has the guts to try out something different.

I think Taco has threw everybody off by declaring that he expects curves, green and white.. this is why all these websites look so alike. I was really expecting something along the likes of CSS Zen Garden experience, where people really thought out-side the box.

Having visited each of the candidates, pretty much all of these make your stomach churn and are definatelly not that easy on the eyes, not to say pleasant.

Out of these three candidates, I liked #2, but I wish there would be a little less white space between left part and the story.

Re:Why do we need a 'winner'?

[fan777]

The parent poster makes a good point. Actually, I kinda prefer the current design other than a few CSS glitches and maybe the location of certain elements. The problem with the newer interfaces are that they are too slick. With Redesign Competitions, I've noticed that the "slicker" the new interface is, the less emphasis there is on content later. The fact that /. has a somewhat shitty design right now actually helps me get into the articles and comments better without being distracted by whiz-bang-golly-gee-moe freshness of Web 2.0.

Re:Great attempts, but hamstrung by client

[Coryoth]

Taco is accepting designs that use other colours. I quite like this design in blue [viknet.pl] by Lukasz Lukasiewicz. Taco just favour thins that have more links with the original design, and thus better continuity for Slashdot in general.

Jedidiah.

Re:Not too bad.....

[Azar]

If you can unzip a file you can install firefox... and what IT department would complain about a user using firefox?

I envy you. While yes, I can "unzip a file", I cannot download it in the first place. "Freeware and software downloads" are caught by our web filter. Firefox, Opera, even some useful development tools are forbidden (out of general policy, not on the software's individual merits). It's all rather draconian, especially since most of the time the software I'm attempting to download is something to help me with my job (a visual diff program, CVS client, etc).

Anything that the IT department doesn't control is "off limits". Call it idiocy, call it a Microsoft-centric world, but there are many large corporation IT departments that scowl at anything open source / free / non-Microsoft. It's out of their realm of expertise and therefore "scary and unknown".