Slashdot Mirror
What Website has the Cleanest Site Design?
Gabe Anast asks: "The recent article on Microsoft's market dominance referred to an article at the International Herald Tribune, which I read until I became engrossed in the natural readability and intuitive interface of that site. It's amazing! I'll have to say that site has the cleanest design of any I have ever used. So, of course, I thought 'What are the other "best designed" sites? Would Slashdot know? My personal criteria for site design is: graphic design/appeal; an intuitive interface; and content that flows naturally (eg: high content density that does not sacrifice clarity). What are your favorite sites, and by what criteria do you judge such?"
I was going to say the Doonesbury site, and even noticed that I was a bit behind reading them... Then I went there. (Microsoft's) Slate has taken it over! The site used to look like the white area without the Slate shit around it, but I guess MS felt that interface was too intuiti... err... not branded enough. First the subscription debacle of Non Sequitur and now this. Damn it!
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
funny thing that google.com is sometimes the best interface to some sites too, as some sites are really hard to manouver but it's really easy then to make up few words that will take you straight where you want on that site.
Case in point: slashdot.org. Seriously, Slashdot's search function rarely takes me to the article I'm looking for, while with Google I always get there if I just remember one or two words from the headline.
Well I would say one site that has a very clean design is Slashdot in Light mode, but I guess that doesn't really count... I haven't really run in to any really easy to use sites lately.
First, a site has to look decent, color- and font-wise. A standard font like arial or times is good, and the colors can't clash. Also, the font, color, size, et cetera has to be consistent throught the page, i.e. if there are topic headings make them all the same style. The place I have seen this most ignored is in small e-shops where they have links and pictures and huge headings everywhere.
Next: navigatino has to be easy and structured, but not overstructured--it's a balance. If you have just a pile of pages without organization, it's really hard to find stuff, but (as it sometimes happens with large directories like Yahoo and Google) grouping under too many levels gives vague top-level headings that don't really reveal what's beneath.
Another random thing that popped into my head: if the main content of a site is articles, then the navbar should have a bunch of categories for articles. It's really annoying when I see something like Home, About Us, Articles, Polls, Members, Forums, Help, Log In and I go to several places looking for stuff when all the main content is under one heading; in other words, keep the sections balanced.
Use stylesheets... it's really annoying to see crappy web pages with different fonts and colors, or mistakes in markup because the writer was typing out font tags. I saw a web site the other day that had font tags around each and every link on the page to give links a different color... um, there's an easier way to do it!
Don't add pointless features. Nobody really wants to vote on which picture of your cat is the best (sorry, a classic of vanity web pages) or sign your pointless guestbook. When you use one of those stupid web-page wizards, put a little thought into whether you really need each feature you want to add...
More about stylesheets... This is hard for already-created sites, but lay out and format the bulk of your site with CSS so it can be resized, stretched, and twisted without looking stupid. Make sure changing the font size doesn't ruin your layout, and also that you can change the font size--don't use pixel sizes!
Okay, I'm done ranting...
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That is correct. It is not a site.
;)
Mozilla 1.4b chokes on it. Opera is no better. Internet Explorer seems to me to be the only browser capable of rendering it correctly... Hmm... let's think about why... Maybe because they're using proprietary extensions? Yeah, that's it!
The design, while gimmicky (perfect word for it), is not all that useful. Clean designs can be found all over the Internet. Look at Princeton Financial's site: http://www.pfs.com/
As other posters have mentioned, the perfect site design seems to be Google's. Unfortunately, Google is a one-track thing - you search (or at least do something search related like Google Answers or Google Groups). For sites that require either a great deal more interactivity (sites for children and sites with lots of dynamic user-controllable content), that kind of design won't work. And for sites that are almost purely informational (shameless plug to our site - http://www.texasinjuryattorney.com/), menus, submenus, and in-line links seem to work good.
NOTE: I did not design that site. If I did, it would be better, because I am god-like in my abilities (or at least, that's what my ego tells me).
When they did the web site for the German edition, they carried on with the new graphic design producing one that seems better than their English language site. Even if you are a non German-language speaker, I would reccomend a visit just to look at the design. As a side note, the FT as a newspaper is never big on pictures and the web site carries on with that tradition.
Interestingly enough, the site remains free for the time being.
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There's probably lots of stuff I've forgotten or don't know about, but to me it seems clear that the PHP folks take their website seriously and have spent considerable time improving usability.
A couple of neat links:
-h3