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Some very interesting, replies here.

Ok i'll make my point clearer, first i admit that i misunderstood the parent post, he was talking about presentation and presentation only so yes, i confused content and logic with presentation, my mistake.

I didn't mean to say that good presentation is not important, however i am convinced that function should never be sacrificed for presentation when developing websites, and most graphic designers believe the opposite, why?.. because most of them don't perceive websites as systems, and of course they also have little or no experience designing systems.

It was a nice experiment to see your reactions to surfstation, about ten years ago when most of the "cool" stuff on the web was made by graphic designers this site together with k10k and others were considered the panacea, things have changed a lot since those days indeed.

every single day

But the Litte Ninjai is nice, as is Broken Saints and even Homestar Runner (which you probably already know).

If you are more into design oriented websites (like me), check out the news section on Kaliber 10000, Linkdup and many more.

Regarding that All-your-base comment: Once you Linux people get proper video playback, I will show you a video of Steve Ballmer dancing like crazy. You won't believe it! :-))
(Yes, this is meant as a joke.)

"... I guess the tech economy is improving. We are getting more cool stuff stories and less lawsuit stories (except for SCO)...."

i certainly hope this is the case and not that there are just sooo many crap-lawsuit stories that people are just sick and tired of them. Not that it takes much to get tired of them though ;-p

i'm with you on being happy to see more of this type of story. The site design is top notch, if you like design, check Kaliber 10k for daily goodness (and some fucking mad backend coding for some of these things).

<a href="http://www.k10k.net/">Lame site #1</a>, with subframes and a scrollbox.
<a href="http://www.designiskinky.com/index_main.html ">Lame site #2</a>, with a scrollbox with a <i>horizontal</i> scrollbar, so you have to scroll back and forth to read <i>each line</i>.
<a href="http://www.adobe.com/">Lame site #3</a>, with a really bland front page.

Lame site #1, with subframes and a scrollbox.
Lame site #2, with a scrollbox with a horizontal scrollbar, so you have to scroll back and forth to read each line.
Lame site #3, with a really bland front page.

My goal, which may not be what the standards set as a goal, is to do the best that a given browser can do with a common set of code. What I end up seeing is stuff like no background color at all in some of these sites in Netscape 4. That's because the background color was put in the stylesheet and NOT put in the HTML. But if it were put in the HTML, then it would still work on both old and new browsers, and work better in the older ones compared to leaving it out.

CSS is the way of the future ...

I'll agree with you on this. Now we need to debate whether CSS is the way of the present.

The reviewer cited a goal that was to make the web site work in as many browsers as possible. The goal statement isn't entirely clear. He needs to define what "work" means. If he's willing to give up looking as good as a given browser can look, in order to achieve standards compliance, and has a goal of merely making sure the text can be see, then his goal is not the same as mine. But I've seen people who do things with this total standards compliance goal and come up with totally a totally crappy site.

As for K10k, I do see a lot of layout on this page, but I can't tell if you've completed it or not. It looks like a nice design, but it lacks content. Here (and scrolled) is what it looks like to me in Netscape 4 (with CSS off, because it is unsafe to browser in NS4 with CSS on due to bugs). I certainly wouldn't call that usable (but like I say, I don't know if this is "under construction" or not ... it looks like a half way done site). I included the scrolled down image of it so that I could also point out the fact that the form elements are out of bounds of what appears to be areas where maybe it isn't intended. I see many sites where the designer tries to fix things to a specific number of pixels, and this simply does not work on the web unless you can make those be images and control them exactly (which can be done for the submit button, but only in a limited way by changing font for the input fields and drop down menus).

What this K10k page does in NS 4 is certainly not what I want to let happen on any web page I design. This page does a lot better in NS 3 and 4, as well as IE 4, 5, and 6, and even Gecko, Konq, and Opera. I'm happy with it because I got what I wanted. Of course it is table driven, so NS 1 is out of luck and will have to use the Lynx version. But at least there is a link to that.

The point of web standards is not--I repeat not--to make your site look the same in all browsers, but that it should be readable or usable in all browsers. A fancy-schmancy table-based layout may look good in most modern browsers, but just try viewing your wonderful page in lynx, or using a screen reader like JAWS and you'll find your fancy table-based layout has been reduced to ashes.

Using web standards, we can design sites that look good and are still usable, all the way back to the first text-based browsers. Did you know that Netscape 1.0 did not even support tables? So, if there's some schlub out there using it (and if he is, please upgrade... this is 2003, for goodness' sake), your wonderful table-based design is worth squat to him. My site, on the other hand, designed with web standards, will look fine in his copy of Netscape 1.0, so if two similar sites were designed--one with web standards and the other without--who is more likely to keep those readers who are disabled or using old or out-of-date browsers?

One final note before I get off my soapbox. If you need proof that you can do more with standards than without, look at K10k. While it does still use tables, the site uses style sheets to do most of the work and as a result, the site looks great. CSS is the way of the future, whether you're designing with or without tables. You'd better get used to it.

haha get a grip man, SVG has had as much impact on the developer community as VRML or MTS

oh and SWF is an Open format, sure it isnt W3C but then neither is this site, or CNN or Google or CNET or ZDnet or BBC.....

standards hahah

MT is all you will ever need.

Media Temple.

k10k uses MT, by the way.

I've always been a fan of the 404 error page that K10k.net throws up.

Good to see it's still there even in the latest incarnation of the site!

Just type in a url like: http://k10k.net/damnation

404's are a great way to include simple eeggs - there should be more of 'em!

< An evil smile spreads across Pike65's monitor tanned face >

DHTML, eh? Ah! The ultimate challenge! k10k!

. . . . Goddammit!

OK if it can take k10k it can take anything. Guess it's just my DHTML that sucks. Maybe I should get a book and learn how to do it properly. This reverse engineering shit doesn't work as well for the Net as it does for C. That's what happens when you try to make a fault tolerant mark-up language, I suppose . . .

There are so many backend hotshots and content delivery gurus on Slashdot. Clean, streamlined design and multimedia are not mutually exclusive, regardless of what the current crop of webmasters push on people.

Part of the dip in web popularity and content, content, content push right now has something to do with how BORING most sites are visually. Information and communication can be highly visual, multimedia experiences without the techno soundtrack and popup windows. "Content-freaks" tend to forget that photos, infographics, video, audio (used sparingly), even motion graphics are often ESSENTIAL components of successful communication.

I think good web design goes beyond presenting viewers with long articles and extensive commenting/forum features.

It's the attention to detail.

Sites like k10k, pixelsurgeon, presstube, and others, succeed in providing visual stimulation, while google, slash-anything, etc. succeed in providing content. There are very few sites that succeed at both. None that I've ever done. Probably because the number one feature people ask for is SPEED.

Well used flash, with a nice php/sql powered backend, can really deliver speedy content to slow modems and fast modems alike.

That said, I'm still leery of using flash on front doors and on high traffic / wide user-base sites.

Oh and one other thing that drives me crazy. Forms that don't allow auto-fill for states b/c of pull down menus, and forms with excessive validation or required fill boxes...

Been thinking about this a lot myself.

Really? I see it every day, just the other way around:

Generally in the format of something like:

"Netscape 6/mozilla is not supported. Please go [here] to download the latest version of IE"

Or from shockwave (if you go to their site on a non-windows, non-ie browser... the only way to view anything on it is to fake the user agent string to a windows/ie code in konq).

"It appears that your operating system is not supported by shockwave.com. We support the following operating systems: Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0 (or later), and Mac OS 8.1 (or later)."

I have to give kudoes to http://k10k.net/ because they had a "we don't support netscape 6 DCOM just yet, sucks to be you" type message up a while back, but they have apparently re-designed their site.

The person who designed that site deserves to be shot...

After you get by the frame code, find the right frame to view, and scroll past the JavaShit, you find this:

Real good design there.

Yes, I am a Raxis.

Maybe /. should interview some more.. progressive.. designers like toke and mschmidt for k10k.

If you know of any online artist groups, inform them about the eToy vs eToys issue. The artist community does not suffer this crap very easily.

I can tell you, the backing behind online artist groups is very large. We may not have a site like /. but there are a lot of sites involved, and just about everyone has subscriptions lists that spread news quite quickly. I would say the online art movement against eToys is almost as large as the Slashdot movement, even if it isn't "in your face". Here's some online art sites w/ relevent info for those in that community:

praystation.com
kaliber1000.net
kiiroi.nu
vitaflo.com

Web designers are not the problem--W3BD3Z1NR3Z, our version of script kiddies, are the problem. Good Web designers don't alienate large portions of their audience--20% of all users is a HUGE share of the user base.