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Journal CmdrTaco's Journal: Redesign VIII: Abundance 21

Journal by CmdrTaco

My inbox has exploded, so I apologize to many contest entries who didn't get much of a critique. I'm being a little more conservative with my time, trying to focus more on entries that are much closer to winning than those that.. well, aren't.

The contest is supposed to close next week, so please get those entries in and wrapped up ASAP. Everyone is welcome to continue to revise and retry until the end, but starting on monday, myself and Wes Moran (OSTG's CSS/HTML/Design nut) will be going through a short list of best entries, and really shaking them for browser compatibility and implementation concerns. What this means is that if you send us your design on tuesday, it will get less time to be tested, and compatibility is a big deal.

So here is another block of designs.

Liz Hall's design is a mockup, and at this stage in the game, thats beginning to cut it close. But she does different stuff with the header that I think is fun. Navigationally this design is lacking a lot of stuff, and like a number of designs, she places the topic icons into squares, which I suspect will look strange with some of the taller or wider icons in the list.

Rob Goodlatte's design is one of the most successful designs that changes the least. He fixes problems. He cleans up some layout issues. And creates a site that looks simply like a better Slashdot. Well done.

William Swanson's entry has a number of twists that look quite nice. The problem here is that by putting the menu on the right, I'm not sure where I could put an ad there, without shoving the menu down off the right column. I like his layout of the articles, although I think his headers, using that soft green, look a little less like Slashdot than I would prefer...

Andy Peatling's design is a bit softer than I am looking for, but I still love the headers of the menu on the left. There's definitely a bit of a space problem on the right- by moving services and vendors over there AND the login box, if I put an ad over there, it's gonna be shoved way down. But that article header looks great. The curve on the left echod on the right, the gradiant, the icons for the tagging, even the indented quotes do it for me. I think I'm sold on that now- so many entries have done it and made it look good.

Ryan Ramchandar's design definitely tries mixing up the menu on the right, but I see no slashboxes, nad I'm not sure how ads would work in this layout. But his clean, minimal header and nice article layout work really well. Like a few other designs, this one feels a bit soft to me. The headlines could stand out more. But it's well done.

Derek Chin's entry is a mockup with a really nice header. The rest of this design needs some work (I'd prefer white on green headers for articles, the menus look a little dull, the boxes a little generic) but it could work.

Tom Nichols's design is VERY green. Probably a bit much for my tastes, and I'm not sure about the red as a matching color. But I give this mad props for looking really good. I'm not sure if it is what I want on Slashdot, but it's a very cool page.

Shane Churchman's design I think I have shared before, but he's continued to improve. His header is solidly layed out, his menu is efficient and useful. His layouts on articles all look great. This is a strong entry for the simply refreshing slashdot look class of entries.

The last design for today is from Chris Morrell. It's a bit louder than a lot of the others. He opts for a 2 column menu on the left. I think his searchbox and slashbox column work really well. I don't much care for his article headers. All in all this is a really good entr, and definitely looks quite different from what we have today. I think the uniqueness of this design comes down to his choice to split the header, and let the center column climb right to the top of the page. I think this is a great idea, and could totally work- getting readers to content faster is always better, and moving the center column up a hundred pixels can't hurt.

Ok, thats it for today. I'll probably do more this weekend depending on how the incoming entries look. Remember that next week monday & tuesday we're planning on judging the compatibility portion of the contest, so I suspect it might be to late to try to submit a jpg mockup at this point. But you're welcome to keep entering/revising/retrying untl the end.

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Redesign VIII: Abundance More

Redesign VIII: Abundance

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  • http://roxorweb.com/slashdot/ [roxorweb.com]

    I know Rob is looking for something similar to the current design, but I decided to try something completely different. I think Slashdot could use a complete overhaul. But, alas, he said it's not what he's looking for... oh well. :P
  • "My inbox has exploded, so I apologize to many contest entries who didn't get much of a critique. I'm being a little more conservative with my time, trying to focus more on entries that are much closer to winning than those that.. well, aren't."

    It would be nice if you bothered to look at them in teh first place. I submitted my designe 4 times since the contest began and according to my web logs they have not been viewed once.
  • Liz's I like a lot! The topic icons wouldn't matter too much imo - they'd add to Slashdots quirky charm :)

    Andys is also REALLY nice, although for some reason it reminds me of Digg.. Don't know why, maybe it's just the subtle vertical gradients??
  • You mention that the boxed icons might not work well considering that some of the icons are wider or taller than others. Might I suggest that the icons be changed to be the same physical size? It would be far better to add a little whitespace to a few of the smaller icons for the sake of uniformity, rather than pass on some nice, clever designs.

    Even though I have grown accustomed to many of the icons, this might also be a fine opportunity to update the look of a few of the icons, keeping in mind the uni

  • My Design (Score:2, Interesting)

    by benbyrd ( 972002 )
    Hi, my name is ben, I've sent my entry into Taco, but I wanted to get some user feedback. It's not totally finished, but I should be done by tomorrow. here it is - www.cloaks.com/slashdot [cloaks.com] I think these latest entries are the strongest yet - I really like some of those that use the small icons.
    • I think yours is one of the best, I especially like the logo. The only thing I don't really like is the brownish gradient behind the title of the stories... It just doesn't quite go with "slashdot green". All your other gradients are subtle and work well. :)
  • Here's mine [nicolashuon.info]. I tried to improve readability.

  • browser compatibility tests... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Janek Kozicki ( 722688 ) on Saturday May 13, 2006 @04:17PM (#15326178) Journal
    dear CmdrTaco

    Please remember to check how the design behaves when changing font sizes. Many people prefer to read with bigger fonts, like 150% or 200% of originally designed.

    yours sincerly Janek
  • Wow, what are the odds? A couple days ago my HDD as well as my Slashdot design entry seem to have been lost. I was almost finish coding up my design and bam... I'm trying to recover the data right now, so I'm crossing my fingers something is still there(particularily my entry) and that I can still submit it in time.

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