CmdrTaco's Journal: Redesign X: 3(?) Horse Race

The contest is not over. The rules say that we will take entries through tonight. But at this moment, there are really only 3 entries in serious consideration. You are all welcome to continue to submit until the contest ends, but understand that I am really flooded with entries, so you are likely to get little more than confirmation of receipt at this point, unless your entry is in serious competion.

I share now for you 3 "finalists". One of these is a definite favorite (I won't say which one) but with tweaking, I think any of these could be the next Slashdot. That is, unless someone rolls in with something perfect. I believe you have seen all of these before, but I include them now just for discussion purposes. Wes has been poking and prodding at the HTML/CSS under the hood so we can judge on that as well. None of these substantially alter the HTML under the hood, so implementation is relatively simple. We'd have to make variants for the sections, and resolve some layout issues in some of the parts of the site, but thats not to tough. It's possible that we could deploy the winning design next week.

Alex's entry has gone through many variations, and here is one of his latest. His new article footer looks great, although I might re-order things a bit. He added a space for messaging, but I don't think I like it in the slashbox column- I would probably move it back to where it is now, but I might use the same design. He uses the a light grey background in the menu, the slashboxes, the article footer, and the section menu intgrated into the header: but he chooses to delineate elements 3 different ways: a grey line, a white line, and nothing at all. I'm not sure which way works best, but I'd probably noodle around with that somewhat. The titles of slashboxes & the left hand menu don't need to be capsed: It's a little loud. We want the eye in the middle, not the navigational elements. I'm not sure about the green line between multiple abbreviated articles. I'd also like to see the horizontal line on the indented block quoted text line up on the left with the titlebar & footer. He also has mocked up a few other pages so you can see how he would translate this design to other parts of the site. I feel that this design is quite clearly Slashdot. It's a cleaner version of what we have today. It solves some problems with the current layout, we could still incorporate some javascript to expand/contract the menus. We'd need to think a bit about the upper right hand corner yet: is all we want is search, or do we want some user preference type stuff up there? But the vast majority of questions are answered.

Michael's entry continues to just feel unfinished to me. The curve and shadow effect that he's scooped out of the menu and title looks simply fantastic. I'm not precisely sure what a horizontal ad would look like, and I feel that the titlebars of the articles would look better if they were green. The slashboxes are a little simple for my tastes. In my browser at least, some of the fonts are unreadably small. I think that as it stands, this design simply feels incomplete to me, which is a bummer since it starts out so strongly. It has possibly the most attractive header/menu bar, but the article/slashboxes need work. In fact, of the 3 finalists I post today, I think this one is the least complete. It lacks a number of elements that are critical- login boxes, the message space etc. The abbreviated articles have no punch, and the slashboxes need delineation. This design gets strong response from almost everyone I show it to... but it lacks a number of puzzle pieces. But damn if it doesn't look good.

Peter Lada's design definitely doesn't suffer from that problem. He has covered every detail that i would need. This last revision has new abbreviated articles that look great. I honestly don't think I'd use his fancy little javascript in the upper right that toggles the search/login space. I don't really think it's necessary. I'd probably make the logo bigger: he's trying to keep it sized above the menu column, but I wish it would have a bit more punch size. I don't know if that size is worth breaking the 'barrier' between his 3 clearly defined left column. But his menu is functional and an elegant solution to the clutter we have over there. His slashboxes look clean and obvious. The ad positions will all work here. His poll button even has a nice sense of 'pop' to it. One issue raised here is that his articles might be a bit generic. Do they look to much like everything else on the internet? Thats hard to say... I mean, maybe the whole internet just looks like Slashdot in 1997 ;)

So there they are, my 3 favorites at 11am. The contest officially closes at the end of the day today. Everyone is welcome to revise their entries, or submit something new, but please understand that my repsonses will be minimal unless your design is something I like as much as the three above. For you folks in the comments, I'd love to see your comments on the actual HTML/CSS above. They each require slightly different amounts of effort for us to actually implement (and as Wes noted, some of them improve upon our HTML anyway, so it would be worth it). Remember this is not a democracy- I'm making the decision here. But I really am reading all the comments and taking everyone's feedback into consideration.

Good luck to everyone who is entering.