Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
User Journal

Journal CmdrTaco's Journal: Redesign V: Redesign Forever 14

Journal by CmdrTaco
I'm easily in triple digits for entries at this point. Today I present to you a new block of entries that gets me totally caught up with my inbox. Some of these are dupes or revisions of earlier entries, and as always these entries are here just to share with you guys different ideas that people have had. Also to clarify the contest, my plan is to post a main page slashdot story with 3-5 leading contenders later next week. The contest doesn't officially end until May 17, and I hope to have a winner announced within a day or two of that point. Deploying the winner will depend on how good the entry is. Since I'm traveling a lot next week, my guess is that I'll fall behind on these journal entries. I think I'm going to simply start being more picky about the ones I choose to share.

lets get it started!

Wes Hunt's design is a mixed bag. I think his slashboxes are a bit weak- that carved out/sunken in effect can be used really effectively, but his doesn't work because it's on all 4 directions. I think his header is to dark to work with the body. I think the layout of the articles is quite solid. I don't care for the color choices or the /. iconography at the left. I share this design primarily because the menu is unique. I don't think it works as is, but that slide in side bar thing is almost totally unique to this entry. A few people have tried a top popout, but this is one that actually might work.

Peter Lada's design continues to be one of my favorites. I think his article header needs some work yet, that faded yellow just doesn't work for me either, but his efficient header now more strongly echos Slashdot of today. I think ultimately by changing the colors of the article headers to be white on green instead of grey on green, and perhaps avoid that lighter green and use grey instead and the color scheme works. He has some expanding/contracting mojo in the menu that goes a good distance towards saving space over there. Me like.

Matt Walker's design is a mixed bag. I think the gradiants o nthe articles doesn't really look that right, and that his article headers are a bit uninteresting. But I think his menu choices are excellent. I think a few menus could be collapsed dynamically. I think his header could be tightened up a bit- it's roomy, but the focus of Slashdot is the articles, so the faster we get there, the better. The boxes on the left and right are the same design for the most part. That might work for this design. It might work against. But since this is a static image and not a complete implementation, it's hard to predict.

I linked one of Jason's designs, but I figured I'd show you a few more of his entries. His first entry and second entry try a few different variations. The latter mor strongly echos Slashdot and I think works quite well. The 2 column menu thing is nifty. The gradiants on the articles adn comments look pretty nice.

Jens Wilk's design needs a lot of work to seriously consider, but I think his article layout is interesting, and his highly compact header is worth considering. The B&W icons up top don't really work for me. As I've said before, that space is dead in the current design... no real reason to keep it. his design includes tags, but they aren't very well integrated into the article layouts either.

Dave Snyder's Design's design is a mixed one too. The header looks choppyy- the logo sticks up on the left and the menu on the right with a whole in the middle. Just doesn't flow right to me. I don't care for the '/.' iconography there either. I feel that /. rarely works visually. I think his section menu up top is nice, but that left corner is really crowded visually. Maybe if the section menu was moved over to the right it would be cleaner. I'm not sure. I like his article headers, but dont' care much for the grey- if we're going to echo Slashdot of today this much, why not just use green titlebars again. They work now after all. I don't care for the dotted line around topic icons. I don't care for the light green background on slashboxes, or the squares around elements in the footers of articles. Note that my quibbles on this design are all relatively minor. I think that with tweaking this is a very strong contender. The only mystery to me is the footer which doesn't really seem to render at all.

John Reilly's Design continues to refine an entry that works pretty well. He fixed the problem with the ad up top so it will fit. His slashboxes look nice. His articles are almost totally unchanged from today- I think he could possibly work to improve that. I think the squares on the menu on the left are visually a bit heavy, His positioning of the quote won't work on any page with comments, although it looks nice here. The footer menu is wrapped into 2 rows for no good reason. I think his design is one of the better ones in the 'Stay very close to Current Slashdot' class of entries.

Johnathan Hok's Design is still just a PNG. I think his left hand menu is a bit busy, but the rest of the design works quite well. I wonder if it might be to white as it stands. Withought a strong secondary color it just feels soft to me. He chooses to keep the top icons as-is for better or worse. But I think overall this is an elegent design. It will be funy to see it become more than a mockup.

Ben Heise's Design's design is just like a slightly tackier version of Slashdot today. But his article layout is really good. I don't think the search box makes sense in that space, but everything else in there works really well. Outside that tho, the stipled lines, the constant use of '/.' in menu headers, the loss of the coliseo font... that stuff just won't work for me.

Khoi Le's Design is just another mockup so it's hard to comment on fully, but there are some cool ideas. I think his slashbox column could look really cool with that curve in the header. His articles are simple and very nice. The topic icon issue i've covered many times is unaddressed here, and I'm concerned that the green menu on the left might weigh down the page a bit, but I think it could all work depending on how he chooses to handle the slashboxes. Another great start that I'd love to see thought through more as it becomes CSS.

Ben Kittrell's design deserves mention for simply presenting the most action hero of any design so far submitted.

So that's it for now. I'm caught up now. Depending on how many more entries I get in the next 24 hours or so, I may do another batch of entries on saturday or so, but I'm in california for a few days after that so I doubt I'll be able to post more before next friday... and at that point I'm hoping to post something to the Slashdot mainpage. As always, feel free to update any designs you have entered, or submit fresh ideas.

At this point there are perhaps a half dozen entries that I think could win with very little additional work, but I still think the contest is wide open. It's been really fun going through everyone's entries. Keep it up.

This discussion was created by CmdrTaco (1) for no Foes and no Friends' foes, but now has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Redesign V: Redesign Forever More

Redesign V: Redesign Forever

Comments Filter:

  • nice but.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dtml-try MyNick ( 453562 )
    To be perfectly honest I'm a bit dissapointed in the entries Taco has shown us here There are a few of them that are really nicely and well done and for a starting/new website they would have worked very well with a minor bit of tweaking.

    But none of the entries I've seen came close to the readability and intuitive feel of Slashdot today. Slashdot has a lot of submenu's and various pages to wadle through and in the current design I never had any trouble finding something or understanding what a certain secti

    • Re:nice but.... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by enitime ( 964946 )
      "almost none of the shown entry's did a daring step away from Slashdot today and just "pimped up" the current feel and lay-out. I would have loved to see a totally new concept of the site, or at least something where the green isn't the dominating/distincting color."

      Because the basic guidelines were:

      1. Keep the green.
      2. Keep the logo and curve.
      3. Don't mess with the HTML.
    • I'm curious where thise sentiment comes from. I understand the comment below about having too much visual clutter on the screen, but for me the current slashdot is a visual nightmare. The line height is too small, the margins are nonexistant and there's a lack of white space in general - the readbility on slashdot IMO is passable at best. any of the designs aren't making large changes to the layout and presentation of slashdot - I agree that while not exactly the most asthetically pleasing is quite accessib
  • Peter Lada's design [proximalabs.com] continues to be one of my favorites.
    It could do without the javascript (a phrase true of so many sites), and worse, it feels full of all this 'visual noise'. It's bewildering to look at, because everything has some artsy border, a gradient, a curve, or a tiny font. I'm just not a fan of this entry at all.
  • The Peter Lada design is far and away the best one Taco's posted yet. This puts the nail in the coffin of me even trying an entry. This is exactly where I'd have gone, and looks great for the site. With some small changes (make the logo a LITTLE bigger, etc) I'd say it's launch friendly. Of course, he says it doesn't work in IE 6/7 yet, but that's why it's a WIP and not a final product, but as a design, it's fantastic. If this design or one highly similar doesn't win, I'll be surprised.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Thanks for all the comments Colin, appreciated.

      If I click an identical-looking header on the right, it brings me to the section.

      I have yet to finish the right side, and was debating on whether or not those elements should be allowed to be closed or not. Ideally I would like them to be able to be closed/opened/dragged and *remembered* (through cookies), but I am not sure what is possible at this point.

      The Search bar at the top right is a few pixels too low, compared with the rest of the things in th

  • Well, I just sent my two entries to Taco but he may not leave them here before next friday, so here they are. Here is the first one :

    Here is the other one : http://jfband.net/slash/slash2/Slashdot.html [jfband.net], I tried to remove the left menu to let more spaces to the stories without hiding any of its element.

    I wanted something readable and that's t

    • The entries that drop the green as a background are interesting. It's actually not a big change, but it makes a huge difference to the look. The preceding statement is not a value judgement of any kind, mind you, just an observation.
  • Peter Lada's design is very good (love the menus and slashboxes), but I agree that the article colors really need to be changed. Also, I feel the header is too small. The logo and slogan are such integral parts of Slashdot today (especially with the curve), it would be a shame to lose them to a tiny, easily glossed over logo. It doesn't need to be as gigantic as it is today, but it should be larger.
  • I sent my designs in on Friday, after this last post. My design is relatively basic compared to some of the other designs, but I feel that it carries the essence of the current design. My design is purely CSS and works in all browsers and scales pretty nicely to different browser/font sizes.

    Front Page: https://students.washington.edu/justinmk/slashdot/ slashdot.html [washington.edu]
    Front Page 2: https://students.washington.edu/justinmk/slashdot/ slashdot-main.html [washington.edu]
    Article: https://students.washington.edu/justinmk/sl [washington.edu]
  • Andy Peatling [cssdev.com] gets my vote so far. I've started to see a few proper designs. I like this one the best. This one [westcarolina.net] also has some nice elements.

    The blockquotes are a GOOD THING, Mr Taco! Those clumps of italics with no spacing must go! I don't think it looks messy at all, infact, I think it makes the text more visually interesting if anything. And most importantly, it's easier to read.

Slashdot Top Deals

The key elements in human thinking are not numbers but labels of fuzzy sets. -- L. Zadeh

Close