Comments on: Redesign Contest Results

Redesign Contest Results

mathowie — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 20:34:35 -0800

Hey everybody, it's the results of the Redesign Contest!

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 20:35:29 -0800

help me out with usernames/user page URLs if you know of the ones I've missed. I grabbed their info off their entries, and not everyone put their name on them.

By: Gyan

Gyan — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 20:38:39 -0800

Thanks. No more pestering.

By: Quartermass

Quartermass — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 20:46:16 -0800

Wow. I really, really like the pixelsmoke one.

By: abcde

abcde — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 20:52:39 -0800

The ugly one (#3) is mine.

By: Saucy Intruder

Saucy Intruder — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 20:53:52 -0800

The fandango_matt one is a well deserved winner. I especially like "metaetcetera."

By: amberglow

amberglow — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 20:54:23 -0800

lots of really good entries--i'm impressed by almost all of them.

By: carter

carter — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:04:44 -0800

Nice work all - and congrats to fandango_matt!

By: xmutex

xmutex — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:10:58 -0800

Damn. Fandango_Matt is all professional n' shit.

Very, very cool look.

When does this actually launch?

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:12:57 -0800

(rushmc)
Great solution to the lack-of-screen-real-estate problem

How gracious of you, matt.

Taz's several efforts are crisp and readable, as well as being very stylish, tho sadly, she didn't make the cut :(

Top marks to f_matt - cogent, re[v/f]erential to the Mefi I grew up with, but with the hideous concept of MyMefi...eww!

Of all that I looked at, that one I disliked the most in visual presentation. I also don't wanna see anything that looks so 'XP', as it were - like pixelsmokes [sorry dude, tho' the functionality may be excellent - who knows yet?]

/dinosaur

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:17:09 -0800

I'm working on doing the mefi projects page in a maroon version of the fandango_matt site. I'll move other sites into a new layout over the next few weeks, and hopefully I'll work elements of all three into every nook and cranny.

I'm having to redo the CSS and code from the ground up, the HTML I've produced over the past 6 years is absolute hell. I guess if folks want to help out, anyone that is a master of CSS could rework one of the fandango_matt mockup screens into a simple CSS layout. That'd save me hours of time.

BTW, I just had a crash that trashed the contest results page. If anyone has it in their cache and could repost it somewhere, I'd be eternally grateful.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:18:24 -0800

I also have to say I didn't like pixelsmoke's. I prefered the ones that took the basic motif and cleaned it up a bit. I don't like the ones with too many geegaws and whatnots. Simple clean design is where it's at. Mefi dosn't need to look professional, just readable.

Ah well.

By: FunkyHelix

FunkyHelix — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:19:34 -0800

I get a blank white page in both firefox and IE.

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:20:02 -0800

that one I disliked the most

due to poor editing, that should have more clearly referred to rushmc's entry. Oops!

By: Krrrlson

Krrrlson — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:20:03 -0800

The page comes up blank for me. Anyone else?

By: Steve_at_Linnwood

Steve_at_Linnwood — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:20:22 -0800

http://public.linnwood.org/uploads/documents/contest_results.html

By: subgenius

subgenius — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:21:09 -0800

Same with me, Krrrlson. OS X + Firefox 1.0 = blank page, no source.

By: Krrrlson

Krrrlson — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:21:20 -0800

oops, missed mathowie's note.

By: Krrrlson

Krrrlson — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:21:45 -0800

see above.

By: Steve_at_Linnwood

Steve_at_Linnwood — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:22:03 -0800

So, do we all get business cards now?

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:22:14 -0800

thanks, got it back up.

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:26:37 -0800

Er, ok - just delete the next 300 emails then matt (",)

By: amberglow

amberglow — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:27:19 -0800

i think webmutant's is my fav. (altho wendell's is closest to how i actually see the site)

By: ericost

ericost — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:27:42 -0800

But is this missing now http://junk.metafilter.com/mwd.pdf?
I get a white screen :(

I would love to do a CSS version of it BTW.

By: Jairus

Jairus — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:30:25 -0800

I would seriously probably never come back here if you used pixelsmoke's design. It's a great design from a technical point of view, but it's a terrible fit for MeFi. Much like the ArsTechnica redesign of a few months ago. I just can't read that site anymore.

To be honest, I can't think of a single thing in the pixelsmoke or eris design that I'd want to include in the fandango_matt one. It looks fantastic.

Are you not going to just use that one, or am I missing the point of the redesign contest?

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:30:27 -0800

Eric, try to right click and do a save link as... on the URL you just submitted. Works great for me.

By: Krrrlson

Krrrlson — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:31:35 -0800

yeah the pdf crashes acrobat plugin for me, but saving it to the hard disk works.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:33:53 -0800

Jairus, I liked parts of the pixelsmoke design and erisfree design, which I will work into the winning design. I pointed out the parts of the pixelsmoke design I liked, the search page and text subpages, but it doesn't mean I have to adopt an entirely white site that looks like windows xp. I like the general layout ideas in the erisfree and I'm sure I can glean ideas from it. I thought the contents of the user page was done very well and is a huge improvement over what we have now.

On the surface, I believe the fandango_matt design will largely compose what a new design looks like. Trust me and you'll see.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:34:42 -0800

It crashed my firefox as well. It's 3.4Mb, and has a nice bookmark sidebar, so maybe that's enough to crash the acrobat plugin on the PC.

By: rxreed

rxreed — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:42:11 -0800

*trusts mathowie*

By: gsteff

gsteff — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 21:49:31 -0800

Would this be a good time to say that I love MeFi's famous blue background tint? For online readability, I've always preferred light on dark to dark on light, and I've found that to be a major reason why all 3 of the current sections are aesthetically pleasant. I have a slight, probably irrational fear that the fandago_matt design's white bg will lose this.

*trusts mathowie*

By: amberglow

amberglow — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 22:06:31 -0800

abcde, yours is a totally good design (and applicable to a lot of other sites/types of sites), but not very mefi-ish. i'd definitely not call it ugly.

By: stopgap

stopgap — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 22:07:30 -0800

My only reservation with the all-white background and section color only in the links is that when you're halfway down the page looking at comments in a post, there's going to be no quick way to tell which section of the site you're in. Otherwise, I'm very impressed with how professional fandango_matt's design is.

And I'm thrilled that Matt liked my design.

By: Gyan

Gyan — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 22:12:45 -0800

stopgap: My only reservation with the all-white background and section color only in the links is that when you're halfway down the page looking at comments in a post, there's going to be no quick way to tell which section of the site you're in.

Will this really be a problem? There's a quick fix for this. Just tint the byline of a comment("posted by stopgap at...") to the section color.

By: jacquilynne

jacquilynne — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 22:14:28 -0800

Hrmm, rushmc is apparently not too happy with the other threads, the link to his page just gets a 'go away' message.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 22:20:48 -0800

any way to make it so that we get a choice in how we want to see the site, or is that too complicated to code?

and i can see rush's just fine.

By: Gyan

Gyan — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 22:22:55 -0800

amberglow, Matt has said that we can have custom stylesheets.

By: riffola

riffola — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 22:23:54 -0800

Matt, since rushmc has removed his entry, could you please put a note by his entry saying so?

Also fandango_matt's entry is the best in my opinion. Just less white please :)

Everyone who submitted did a great job, I really liked seeing the different approaches.

By: abcde

abcde — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 22:34:25 -0800

amberglow: I don't hate it either, really. I agree Mefi and blogs in general are more suited to stylized designs than to minimalist ones, but it's what came out.

By: Tarrama

Tarrama — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 22:48:52 -0800

Another vote for less white please and congratulations to all the place getters. I wish rushmc had not removed his entry, I would have liked to see it.

By: sbutler

sbutler — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 22:48:58 -0800

I really liked stopgap's idea with the small border around the page that also held some user information at the top. If matt combined that with fandango_matt's design I think MeFi would be in great shape.

By: scarabic

scarabic — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 23:13:31 -0800

The winner looks a lot like the existing design - which is a good thing. I have to say, though, that I REALLY hate the proposed "MF" logo.

MF = MotherFucker
MeFi = MetaFilter

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 23:22:27 -0800

scarabic, the logo wasn't used on any part of the site was it? I only noticed it on the business card mockup.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 23:27:28 -0800

Fandango_Matt clearly has a good grasp on the psychological aspects of getting a client to choose your product. I particularly liked the business cards; people just love to see their name on a business card.

That said, I don't think it was necessarily stronger than those who actually coded up working prototypes. Also, it would really be helpful if all the other submitters actually did their designs without anti-aliasing their fonts. I mean, of course nice smooth fonts are going to look better than mean, choppy fonts. But for the purposes of demonstrating what a design is actually going to look like, it's greatly misleading.

The "power ideas" that I liked (culled from all the submitters):

Ultra-narrow top-branding/nav
Random post
Search bar on frontpage. FRONTPAGE! Not a separate page. Frontpage! Just a tiny little form input. If you want advanced search, fine, go to another page, but dammit, the search is so friggin' useful that it's scandelous to have to dig for it.
Saved threads
Other ponies? ...

I still think webmutant's design best embodies all these ponies, and I really hope you don't put MetaFilter on a white background. Way too harsh, and your links will disappear in contrast.

By: John Kenneth Fisher

John Kenneth Fisher — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 23:28:56 -0800

fandago_matt's is excellent. My two cents: keep the 'color feel' of each section. The page can be mainly white, as long as it is still clearly "The Green" or "The Blue" or "The Burgundy" no matter where we are on the page.

Also I second Scarabic on MF v. MeFi. The 'MF" logo looks amateurish IMO, and the term "MeFi" has more personality. (on preview, Matt's point on this is well taken)

Not a fan of Pixelsmoke's overall, and eris free's would be very nice if I had never seen fandago's, but Mr Haughey: add my name to those who trust you to mix them well.

Besides, I'm looking forward to getting these fancy new MeFi business cards.....

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 23:43:42 -0800

Search bar on frontpage. FRONTPAGE! Not a separate page. Frontpage! Just a tiny little form input. If you want advanced search, fine, go to another page, but dammit, the search is so friggin' useful that it's scandelous to have to dig for it.

I added a google search box to the front page last night, did you notice? It's in the ad space, so it's probably easy to miss.

By: fandango_matt

fandango_matt — Sat, 05 Feb 2005 23:48:14 -0800

Wow! Thanks, Matt! Yours must have been a tough decision--all of the entries had excellent ideas and solutions for design, navigation, and organization. With such outstanding competition I'm honored to have won. Thank you, thanks for everyone's kind remarks, and a toast to all the contestants.

Said stopgap: My only reservation with the all-white background and section color only in the links is that when you're halfway down the page looking at comments in a post, there's going to be no quick way to tell which section of the site you're in.

Said JKF: My two cents: keep the 'color feel' of each section. The page can be mainly white, as long as it is still clearly "The Green" or "The Blue" or "The Burgundy" no matter where we are on the page.

Actually, I thought of this early in my design explorations and addressed it. Look closely at the .gif or the PDF next to mathowie's entry (GIVE ME A WEAPON...)--the links in each section match the section color so you'll always know where you are.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 00:05:01 -0800

the links in each section match the section color so you'll always know where you are.

I was thinking along the lines of JKF earlier, where a 10px or so gutter of background wouldn't look too bad around the white area.

By: Lush

Lush — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 00:13:52 -0800

I have to admit, I feel rather attached to the blueness of The Blue and it is with this bias (+ tab use) that I favored 4easypayment's entry. That said, fandango_matt's winning entry kicks ass! So simple, so clean, so functional, so powerful. I'm very impressed.

(Please ~~keep the shocking blue~~ add more color, though. Pretty please?)

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 00:41:55 -0800

I added a google search box to the front page last night, did you notice? It's in the ad space, so it's probably easy to miss.

I'm not one to double-up on my exclamation points, but in this case I am willing to make an exception.

THANK YOU!!!!!!

By: taz

taz — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 01:05:09 -0800

Very nice, fandago_matt! I really like everything about the layout. I'm not mad about the logo, but I don't hate it.

By: Dreamghost

Dreamghost — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 01:59:56 -0800

stopgap, you dun' been robbed.

Sorry to say but fandago_matt's has way too much white. The colors really make the design of this site really standout and i would hate to see that go away.

Pixel Smoke has some very intresting features and his site reminded me of a 37signals type design.

By: tinamonster

tinamonster — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 02:04:24 -0800

Is it weird that I got really freaked out by the thought of a color change in the blue, green and grey?

I have to say that besides all of the comments already made here I really dug Wendell's toggles. But maybe I just like toggles.

By: fixedgear

fixedgear — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 02:06:20 -0800

Thanks for choosing dark text on a light background. As an aging boomer, I love to read the blue but I think this redesign will improve readability. eris_free's was a little better, but I'm a minimalist, so what do I know. Good job all.

By: Orange Goblin

Orange Goblin — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 04:18:00 -0800

Another vote for less white, please. Can't stand it.

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 04:23:49 -0800

By: sciurus

sciurus — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 05:25:36 -0800

I am glad I did not enter. :) Good job everyone and congratulations to the winners!

By: pyramid termite

pyramid termite — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 06:18:53 -0800

there's some good ideas throughout here but i don't like the idea of white backgrounds

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 09:00:58 -0800

Instead of voting for "less white," since you seem keen on using CSS and flexible layouts, I'm going to vote for the flexibility to let the users choose different stylesheets to define their colors and other tidbits. Plenty of sites offer this, I see no reason why you'd not want to include such a nifty little feature if you're going to be redesigning the site anyway.

As for the entries, I thought they were all great, with the exception of rushmc's, which I cannot see because it's been removed. I do wonder why some entries were screenshots, instead of live HTML demos. This throws off my perception of how the page actually works and what the form elements will actually render like on a web browser.

For instance, the "XP-ish" one probably wouldn't look nearly so rounded and bubbly if it were live HTML, because those form elements aren't part of the page, they're how the OS/Browser renders them. I don't see how this is a very effective demonstration, besides just being easier to hack together and hit PrtScrn.

I don't mean any offense, everyone's work was top notch, but I would have loved to see actual markup.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 09:09:52 -0800

so, how about putting a 10 or 20% tint as background color on each page? or would that be too pastel?

By: scarabic

scarabic — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 10:21:53 -0800

keep the 'color feel' of each section. The page can be mainly white, as long as it is still clearly "The Green" or "The Blue"

I'd second this and take it even further. I don't want a white background. The white-text on dark background is so much easier on the eyes than a big bright glaring white page. Few colors are palatable enough to do this with, but you've managed to find 3 winners, Matt. I hope you find a way to sneak the page colors into the design.

Of course, even now we can choose a white or blue background for metafilter, although the white template wasn't nearly as meticulously designed as the blue. Some kind of choice is probably the only solution for everyone. I just hope whatever colored-background is available is on par with the rest of the site.

And no, Matt, I didn't see the MOTHERFUCKER logo anywhere in the page mockups. But we should actually do business cards, and it doesn't belong there either. People will totally pay to get a set of MetaFilter business cards (or even if they wouldn't, it would be a nice perk for the "pro" account). But if they have a big MF on them, you can count me out. "Hi! I'm scarabic! Here's my card! I'm a motherfucker, as you can see!"

;)

By: scarabic

scarabic — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 10:23:03 -0800

or would that be too pastel?

[ponders Queer Eye crack]

By: nthdegx

nthdegx — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 11:37:13 -0800

Well done, everyone.

By: stopgap

stopgap — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 11:39:25 -0800

Here's Google's cache of rushmc's design, for anyone who was curious.

By: NinjaPirate

NinjaPirate — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 12:46:18 -0800

Oooh, is this the part where we get to have "nice things"?

I'll try and brew some of the fandango_matt CSS for you, Matt, but others have probably started.
Can I get a quick hands-up of what everyone's working on so we don't tread on toes?

(sorry this is so late in the exciting thread - see what happens when I take a 'net holiday?)

By: NinjaPirate

NinjaPirate — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 12:48:56 -0800

Oh, and a corking top three from a very solid crop of inspirations.

[joins the backslapping queue]

By: erisfree

erisfree — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 13:04:49 -0800

Can I get a quick hands-up of what everyone's working on so we don't tread on toes?

I just finished the index page/css and was just about to email it to Matt.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 13:05:25 -0800

[ponders Queer Eye crack]
if you ponder that too long, people may just wonder about you, scarabic.

By: seanyboy

seanyboy — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 13:30:36 -0800

Matt. I'm very disappointed by this thread. Back when you started Ask, you said this. And now you say "Hey Everbody. It's the ...[etc]". How can you go back on what you said and all that hard work.

Actually, what I meant to say was....
Fantastic. I can't wait to see the new design in action.

By: moonbird

moonbird — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 14:00:08 -0800

Cheers to the winners! Like everyone else, I can't wait for the grand re-opening. However, I must join the chorus for not going with white, or atleast allowing a separate stylesheet for other bg color options. My eyes hurt against a pure white background, and baby blue or some light shade would help dilute the stark contrast.

Either way, I too trust Matt's judgement.

By: Tlogmer

Tlogmer — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 14:07:07 -0800

Taz's was awesome. The winning one was really good. (I wish I'd entered. Stupid lack of motivation.)

By: abcde

abcde — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 14:07:24 -0800

odinsdream: Well, many of them are mocked up rather than coded. It's easier to do a mockup than to do a mockup then make an HTML version, especially since Matt implied he was planning to recode it from scratch to his specs.

By: Jack Karaoke

Jack Karaoke — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 14:49:47 -0800

Yipe, a lot of good material to work with. The top picks all look promising. I know he emphasized the front page in the contest announcement, but I'd get a lot more out of the site if comment pages were threaded in some subtle manner. Should recoding take the opportunity to do more than manage real-estate, or are unthreaded comments a critical part of MeFi?
I know-I'm late. I wasn't aware of the redesign, I would have submitted something. My only idea that doesn't include subjects (and their pitfalls), is having a "reply", "hide replies", and maybe "show replies" next to the time stamp on each comment. If I hit a big snark, I can make the chaos go away. ?

By: dodgygeezer

dodgygeezer — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 15:22:11 -0800

I really enjoyed the designs here. I would mostly agree with Matt's choices. Since no else has mentioned them I'd like to say that i loved the big chunky fonts/logo that make up the heading on still's design. Seriously, look at this and tell me that that that logo doesn't suit mefi better than the rest. Come on, you know it makes sense.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 16:06:08 -0800

What I'd like to see, and didn't, was an interesting an useful way of surfacing the tag system now in place. This is more info architecture than design, I know, but it seems pretty bolted-on at the moment.

Perhaps Matt has Big Plans for it.

By: erisfree

erisfree — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 16:27:11 -0800

The tags were introduced after the design deadline, otherwise I'm sure everyone would have designed their take on it.

By: chundo

chundo — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 19:03:55 -0800

The visual new post / new comments cues on the donald.tetto.org one are a fantastic concept - please work that in somehow.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 19:39:57 -0800

The tags were introduced after the design deadline, otherwise I'm sure everyone would have designed their take on it.

Good point. My bad.

By: litlnemo

litlnemo — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 19:52:42 -0800

"Should recoding take the opportunity to do more than manage real-estate, or are unthreaded comments a critical part of MeFi?"

I think they are. I know many people like threaded systems, but I find them slow, irritating, and with the tendency to fracture discussions. The straight linear discussions on MeFi are one of the reasons I've enjoyed this site so much over the years. (I also run a BBS that has similar non-threaded discussion topics, so perhaps I'm biased -- but I truly find threaded discussions, especially on websites, incredibly annoying.)

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 20:24:52 -0800

look at this and tell me that that that logo doesn't suit mefi better than the rest

well, i'd have to disagree with you on that one

The color scheme is awesome, though. The open grid not-so-much. The anti-aliased fonts are a complete lie, however, as I said earlier. But I love the color choices.

By: Quartermass

Quartermass — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 20:28:28 -0800

litlnemo is right: threaded discussions suck.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 20:28:46 -0800

METAfilter: It's all about the tags, baby.

By: Gyan

Gyan — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 20:35:26 -0800

There should be a check on malicious tagging.

By: Civil_Disobedient

Civil_Disobedient — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 20:52:04 -0800

Damn, that wasn't intentional. I was trying to get a serif.

By: Quartermass

Quartermass — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 21:12:45 -0800

You BROKE it!

By: Jack Karaoke

Jack Karaoke — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 21:21:17 -0800

I realize I might be belaboring a moot point, as the redesign is underway and threading is contentious, but to clarify - this (mock up .jpg) is what I was thinking of. "reply" bounces you to the post box, and tags it in a group. "hide" hides posts associated with that group, and all child groups, for simplicity.

By: me3dia

me3dia — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 22:07:04 -0800

I like it and look forward to the debut. Congrats, fandango_matt, and great job everyone else.

By: TeamBilly

TeamBilly — Sun, 06 Feb 2005 23:12:09 -0800

I'm quite impressed by all of them, including rushmc's. I, for one, prefer white or very light gray backgrounds, but that's just me.

I'm also keeping in mind that there's going to be a large number of people who are going to bitch regardless of what finally happens. (shrug)

Good work, y'all.

By: swash

swash — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 03:10:28 -0800

Nice but many lack semantic structure. I'm not what would call a fan of Cold Fusion, but there are a number of sites out there running on cfml that I wrote (I was in college, needed the money).

So while I might advocate a rewrite in proper languages, subcomponents, I can work with the nonsense you have (if you're looking for interns, that is).

By: mdn

mdn — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 06:12:25 -0800

non-threaded discussions are one of the main reasons I ended up here. I have joined other communities but threaded discussions feel slow, fractured, and confused to me.

I'm not thrilled about the white background, either, but that's not a dealbreaker.

By: wendell

wendell — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 11:11:06 -0800

Just another sure-to-be-ignored suggestion from Wendell:

Use a CSS Swtcher to select between
(1) white background with color border and color-coded links
(2) pastel background with dark text
(3) 'classic' color background with light text

Forget PepsiBlue; this redesign could turn into a "New Coke/Coke Classic" battle and we all remember how that turned out.

And don't forget the "collapsing sub-menus" that was part of my design. If you can save your "which menu to collapse" on the cookie, it may be the easiest way to customize your page (I know, I shoulda emphasized it more in my presentation).

(wendell's is closest to how i actually see the site)
that is the strangest compliment I've ever gotten, thank you a-glow.

By: amberglow

amberglow — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 11:52:21 -0800

: >

By: sic

sic — Mon, 07 Feb 2005 13:20:06 -0800

amberglow is such a charmer.

Cheers to everybody who contributed to the contest, all of the designs were great.

By: mileena

mileena — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 11:12:03 -0800

i really love the updated blue and green in this entry. mefi colors, but a more modern feel.

and kudos to webmutant. great entry.

By: gee

gee — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 17:10:02 -0800

White background = AOK.

Ping me with a CSS assignement, if assistance is required.