Designer on Slashdot Overhaul Plans

EdwardianDandy writes "Web designer Khoi Vinh, whose firm Behavior is responsible for the redesign of the Onion, argues on publish.com that an upcoming contest to overhaul Slashdot's look will yield interesting results, but the outcome will suffer because the underlying architecture is off limits." Normally I don't post stuff "About" Slashdot here since I find meta naval gazing very boring, but this article has many good points about architecture and design, even if his whole premise is based on a contest that we haven't spent more than about 5 minutes thinking about, and is mostly just meant to be a fun way for users to contribute themes to Slashdot. If Khoi wants to enter the contest, we'll consider his designs along with everyone else's. (I'm sure we can't afford him tho). And if he (or anyone) wants to make changes more substantial than cosmetic CSS, I'd consider them too. The upcoming Slashdot Redesign contest is intended to be more about design than architecture, but good ideas are good ideas.

Comments

Re:Navel-gazing

[RobotRunAmok]

D00D, leave my boy Taco alone!! He said "naval gazing." He was talking about taking the afternoon off and watching the Coast Guard maneuvers off the shore of Lake Michigan.

Guy works hard, wants to slip out early, watch some cool ships sail around, what's the problem?

Huh?

Re:Slash Light

[Blakey Rat]

One major thing that brings me back to slashdot, is how easy it is on the eyes.

Only if you're colorblind. If you think that purple color in the Games section is easy on the eyes, I'm sorry, but I think you need to see an optometrist immediately.

I wish the ads were only obtrusive...

[SethJohnson]

The new site is a disaster, and it's all about generating revenue through obtrusive ads.

So a couple years ago I was working in London and I was given a laptop to use by my employer. I decided to download the onion to read offline while riding the train home from work one day. Turns out the page wouldn't render because of a reference to a 3rd-party adserver graphic I hadn't downloaded. To fix it, I opened up my editor and was removing these ad tags from the code. Next thing I know, a man grabbed my laptop off my lab and bolted out of the train.

Apparently, the Onion REALLY wants you to see those ads and has implemented some pretty excessive means of enforcement.

Seth

Re:The onion redesign isn't very good

[starm_]

The Onion -*AD*-
\!!/
-AD-cntnt
/||\cntnt
cntnt \!!/
cntnt -AD-
cntnt /||\
\!!/ cntnt
-AD- cntnt
/||\
What? Who doesn't appreciate the artfull design and delicate balance of subtle content decorted with blindingly colorful and flashy ads?