Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot CSS Redesign Contest
I will pick the winner based on a series of arbitrary and random criteria, many of which I will list below. The list is by no means comprehensive, but it should give you a good starting point.
I'm sure there are ultimately things that I'm forgetting. But the key goal here is to create the new look & feel for Slashdot. The winner is the one who creates what gets us the closest to a new site design.
This contest will be highly subjective. Ultimately tho, it falls upon me to select the winner based on arbitrary and subjective factors like aesthetics, as well as more tangible ones like implementability and compatibility.
CRITERIAWhat follows is a brief list of criteria I will use to judge, as well as how to submit your entries. Remember that anything artistic I suggest is just that- a suggestion. If you hate green, go ahead and make a blue design. I'm just telling you what I'm looking for in a winning design... and while I am the judge, nothing is set in stone... like any good art student knows- you can do almost anything you want as long as you can rationalize it in your critique.
- Uses our existing CSS framework - We are willing to make minor changes to our underlying HTML if need be, but the ideal winner is implemented entirely by using custom images and CSS. Almost every element on Slashdot is appropriately classed or ID'd now, so you should be able to do it.
- Works compatibly on most browsers - IE, Firefox, Mozilla, and Safari represent the bulk of our traffic. Ideally a winning candidate works on these platforms, but also degrades nicely to the less popular browsers. We'll test winners against whatever we have access to. We're not expecting everyone's entry to work perfectly and identically on every platform that exists, but if your whole design hangs on CSS trickery that only works under 1 browser, you will lose!
- Retains all major bits of information - unless you can make a case for dropping something! Articles need bylines. You still need space for our ads. We still need a submenu to list out all the sections. If you want to trim down menus or something, we'll consider that, but most items on our pages need to be there for some reason. You'll need to rationalize dropping items from menus or removing parts of the UI that we need.
- Doesn't require us to add major new bits of data - There are a million great ideas for functions and features that could be added to Slashdot. This is not the place to propose them. This is about Look & Feel. This is not about telling us that we need voting on articles or tagging on polls. Those are valid feature suggestions that we would love to do one day. But this contest is about look & feel. Save feature requests for another time (and remember, patches are always welcome!)
- Topic Icons - So we have 150+ topic icons. Your design needs to incorporate our existing icons, and not require that we rebuild all of them. That means most likely that the icons sit on a white background. The icons themselves vary from around 50x100 to 100x50 but most float around 64x64. I'd strongly suggest that a winning entry is submitted using our existing topic icons as examples. let me say that again we have 150+ icons, and we can't rebuild them all. Your design should use our icons. Not new ones. That means sizes, and white backgrounds. This is the one rule that is pretty hard and fast. And no we're not switching to anti-aliased PNGs yet. Sorry.
- Entries ought not be bandwidth gluts. No hard/fast size limits here, but if your page requires 2 megs of jpegs to render, I'd suggest moving on.
- Retains some sense of visual continuity with Today's Slashdot - This one is the real challenge I think. From the Slashdot 'Shade of Green' (#006666) to the curve on the upper left hand corner of the page & article headers, to the use of the Coliseo font, I really think that many of these design elements need to persist. You are welcome to ignore me of course. But I'm being totally up front about this point: the winning entry ought to echo the current design. How loud of an echo is up to you.
- Entries should show as at least the index, but ideally a few other pages to see how their design might look showing other data formats. I really think Slashdot has 4 "major" pages: The Index, The Article, The Comments, and The User. I'm not saying you need to do all four, but the winning design needs to translate well to every data type on the site. The more guidance you give us, the more likely you are to win.
- I have to like it. Design something pretty. Design something high-tech. Design something minimal. Design something elaborate. I don't know what the winner will look like. I'm excited to see what you guys come up with.
I fully intend to critique good entries. The goal here is of course to get the best looking, bandwidth efficient, compatible, attractive Slashdot. If I think your design is ugly, I'll tell you. If I think it's close, I'll give you specific ideas. I'm the judge here, so this is totally unfair. But again, my goal here is not to be fair, it's to make Slashdot look awesome.
I'm going to give this 2 weeks, and then I'm going to share with you some of my favorites at that point in a story. I'll try to tell you all what I like about these designs. I'll ask at that time for your feedback. Then I'll give everyone one more week. The contest will continue to be open to anyone who wants. Everyone is welcome to refine their designs, or submit new ones right until the end.
Between now and then, I will try to post a few journal entries as I see good designs float through. I want this whole process to be as participative as possible.
At the end of this time, I will pick a winner. I will be biased. I will be unfair. I will pick the design that I think is the best for Slashdot based on the criteria I mention above as well as my own personal sense of aesthetics.
The winner will get a fancy laptop. We haven't picked the exact one yet, but it's going to be a good one- we're not cutting corners. You'll be able to choose from a MacBook Pro or else a bleeding edge Alienware laptop. We'll pick the specs when we pick a winner so you get whatever is supremely awesome, but valued up to US $4500. We'll also be offering a $250 runner up prize.
Lastly, our corporate lawyer tells us that you are required to read the official rules before you enter.
Good luck to everyone. Happy designing. Have fun... I can't wait to see what people come up with!
SWEET!
A few months back we went and redesigned Slashdot with fancy new CSS templates. If u mean that April 1 pink theme... oh no...not again...
hilarious
The CSS for "OMG!!! Ponies!!!"? I'd like to use that as my starting point. TIA!
The truth about Scientology, Xenu, and you: Operation Clambake
Wait - this ISN'T an april fools joke?
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Just reuse this one.
You can send the laptop to:
Troll, inc
Under your bridge
Mid-town, USA 00192
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
If multiple entries prove to be good, especially for different targets (e.g., Light HTML, Mobile Presentation, etc) then it should be trivial to implement having multiple stylesheets the user can select, either via the browser's stylesheet selector, or in the user preferences.
However I quite liked the OMG Ponies design...
Linus Torvalds likes this one.
He said so.
I don't think that you find people complaining about how /. looks, you find them complaining about:
/. effect (Option of nyud.net:8080 in the original links).
1) Slashvertisements
2) Duplicate, triplicates et cetera
3) Spelling errors.
4) No mechanisms to protect the
and so on...
v4sw6PU$hw6ln6pr4F$ck 4/6$ma3+6u7LNS$w2m4l7U$i2e4+7en6a2X h
If Slashdot is ugly (and it is), why are so many of its "characteristic" elements supposed to be retained? One of the first things I'd do in a redesign is drop the #006666. And why not let users submit new icon packs? Once again, the icons currently in use are pretty horrendous, and yet the criterion is "Make it look pretty while still using our shitty gifs. So let's see: The redesign has to keep the same title font, the same top-left curve, and the same green; it must have white content areas, because it must incorporate the lovely set of circa 1999 icons. What exactly are you expecting?
I think it should be mentioned that Slashcode doesn't work on Windows or at least no one has been able to do it yet.
So it seems that if you want to start out developing this on your box, you really need to have some of the more freindly versions of Linux running (read above post for suggestions).
Just a forewarning if you're only a Windows user and you are thinking about this.
I believe the standard setup is:
* Debian or Red Hat Linux
* Perl
* Apache
* mod_perl
* MySQL
My work here is dung.
Three things.
I'm assuming this is for the entire interface. e.g. registered users versus non-registered.
Would you reconsider if we redid all 150 topic icons?
Bonus points if we can target PDA's and cellphones?
Remeber this story?
How about something that blocks all Dvorak articles?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
something that looks fresh, something that is not cluttered with tons of boxes/links, something that has a great moderation system with readable threads, something that will degrade perfectly on all browsers (including links/lynx)...Let's see...what can I call as an example...Oh, I know:
/. is, and it would be easy to change the colors, add those BIG icons like CmdTaco wants. I don't create themes/designs myself, but I know when I find a good one.
http://digg.com/
Seriously, that site is so much easier to read, navigate, use; it's just years ahead of where
fak3r.com
The winner will get a fancy laptop. We haven't picked the exact one yet, but it's going to be a good one- we're not cutting corners. You'll be able to choose from a MacBook Pro or else a bleeding edge Alienware laptop.
If I win, will it be pre-configured to tri-boot XP-OSX-LINUX?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Heh... you mean back to a site where submitters and users spell like the 12-year olds they are and where the readers actually *do* all the work without credit ? Well, hey - who cares about content as long as the design is all about ponies ?
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
But I really liked the "OMG!! Ponies!!1" style. Can't you make that permanent? It would be approriate for a site like this where the founder's called "CowboyNeal."
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
They have a ton of nice looking XHTML-Strict complaint website templates there, all free for use!
Meh.
Thank the guy some posts below for the original link.
o l.css
http://slashdot.cuteness.org/slashdot/slashdot_fo
... because it's the only decent browser I have at work, and it at least looks consistent, albeit very bland. I have no worries viewing anything in the "IT" section with Communicator, since the colors actually have contrast in this browser! :)
I'm actually looking forward to this "American Idol" evaluation of the CSS submissions. Goot luck to the entrants.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
And I thought I'd never get a chance to tag a story with "ponies" again.
What, you want it to be powerful AND pretty? What do you think this is, OSX?
Oh, and did I mention that the top prize is a new laptop?
:P Ok, just kidding, and go Flying Dutchmen, Taco.
:) mentioned, the redesign isn't the thing you should be working on. He laid out the other things that keep Slashdot from being a growing (and thus more profitable) web property, and instead have lead to it declining in quality and popularity.
No, you hadn't and if you actually read your story summaries you would have seen that in the first few sentences before that, it hadn't been mentioned.
More importantly what another poster (Un1xlOsr or something like that
Quick! Some Anonomous Coward send Taco a link to Digg.com just to fuck with him.
Yay! You don't have to be in the US! That sucks about most online contests...
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
... for Geek holidays, not just the April 1st "Ponies!" version.
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
site that requires active X. I think that would be extremely popular. >:)
We demand a signed photograph of CmdrTaco as a runner up prize. Mod this up if you agree!
Is pulling from www.oswd.org ruled out? :-)
10. Creative treatment of grammatical errors Some sort of highlighting for its/it's errors would be nice.
The 'top selected URLs' you plan on using in two weeks... will you provide the webspace to host them. Because most of us have bandwidth expenses and fear the slashdot effect from the story...
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I find it hard to reply to a specific comment in digg. Some of the comments have a reply but not all.
I think digg has managed to create what I thought was impossible. A more bad mannered community than slashdot! Heck Slashdot is a happy friendly place compared to digg.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
...don't just redecorate it.
Your confines are really tight, and don't really provide any room for the identity to grow. Considering your competition (digg) has a much stronger, cleaner design because they haven't had to be tied to a decade of old design rules, I would almost say that you'd be better off throwing some of the rules out.
I think if you really want to redesign the site, you need to be willing to try new approaches with the architecture -- redoing many of the icons, cleaning up what can be a glut of information, and giving the site a more modern style that suits 2006. Tebrand the site and get rid of the font; create a new logo.
I hate to put it this way, because it's so cliche, but think outside the box. Your parameters make the box really hard to move around in.
I'm betting the best designs you get are the ones that ignore your rules and regulations the most.
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
This one made me forget about entering. You listed the main things I hate the most about the current design. And while you say 'you can ignore me of course', it is strongly implied that this would be an exercise in futility.
I'm not sure I know how to please someone who's aesthetic discretion module is so blinkered as to actually cause an affection for Coliseo. :)
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Can I request a case of Jim Beam instead if I win top prize?
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
First they ignore you.
Then they fight you. === You are here
Then they lose.
Slashdot, Karma is a bitch.
Instead of requiring someone to set something up elsewhere, it'd be nice if you could post your CSS to your user account and have it applied (much like on wikipedia). Slap in an option on the URL to viewing the page with someone else's style sheet. Bam. All your entries are in one place; no one has to worry about setting up hosting elsewhere; anyone can view anyone's entry (or throw a admin-only thing on it or something if you care); etc.
Only problem I see is that you can't do anything outside of what you can do with a style sheet. If someone's that serious then they shouldn't have a problem/lack-of-motivation of setting up hosting elsewhere.
Better still: make this permanent. If I don't like X or Y then I can tweak my own style sheet the way I want. But I suppose that'd lead to user's finding a way to display: none the adverts.
Oh well, one can dream I guess...
:wq
For an instant I thought it was "redesign cascading style sheets" themselves. That would be nice.
But yeah, it could use some freshening up. Make it more web-2.0-ish, and put some more javascript on there while you're at it.
I have a few real questions:
1. By redesign, do you mean graphic design or both graphic and functional design (functional != moving links)?
2. Where are your templates, provide a kit please (including logos and the topic icons you talk about). Pro-bono workers won't really like to waste their time fishing for files. Don't talk to me about firefox webdev extension.
3. What is trademarked, or has any legal aspects?
4. Is it open to residents of the Province of Québec (Canada)?
Right. Not because we have to. But because we're l33t!.
Slashdot would work just great in HTML 3.2, after all.
Taco's getting a great deal here.
And more power to him, but let me suggest he sweeten the deal a bit.
(I'm not suggesting this put of self-interest: I'm a programmer, not a graphics designer. And besides, I prefer the minimalist non-graphic Slashdot interface anyway.)
In addition to the laptop, give the winner a tiny link to his (or her) site on any Slashdot page using his design. On the bottom of each page, in a small font size, something like "Page design by Winner's Name/a>.
This costs Slashdot nothing, and gives the winner free advertising that lets him participate in his own success. He can link to a site that offers redesigns for as fee, or a blog that explains his design principles and gets him some ad revenue, or whatever.
For the non-winning submissions that become Slashdot's "work for hire" property, at least put up a gallery of those designs, hosted by Slashdot and linking to the submitters' sites, so that Slashdot's readers can check them out and give the non-winners some business or at least page views.
And Slashdot should relax the work for hire provisions of the legal contest rules; I understand that Slashdot wants to be unhindered in its use of submitted designs and careful not to open itself to any law suits, but maybe Slashdot could provide an more Open Source example than requiring that all submissions, even the non winning ones, "transfer and convey, to Sponsor any and all your intellectual property rights in the Design".
Again, more power to Taco and Slashdot. Taco's leveraged Slashdot's visibility to get some serious work done for free. Just use that leverage to reward the contest submitters too.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
I'm not a designer, but my suggestion would be to somehow incorporate the improvements found in the Slashdotter Firefox extension (formerly, greasemonkey script).
The ability to load comments without refreshing the page (and losing my place in the overall thread) is wonderful, as is the ability to seamlessly Hide replies to an off-topic discussion that has gotten highly Modded.
That added flexibility does more for the design than anything else I can think of adding.
This statement is solely an opinion. Kindly take it as such in all cases.
Disregard everything he said and submit a Windows XP themed /.
The irony if it got selected!!!
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
me: Basically, I just copied your existing design, then I compressed the images to cut down on bandwidth. And this racing stripe I feel is pretty sharp.
Woohoo! PILE-ON!
:)
Sorry, eldavojohn. When I started writing my reply there were no others
Otherwise my T-shirt will be obsolete!
Perhaps consider a change to Slashdot that will allow the end-user to select a different design, based on their preferences. If you want to be strict about it, provide a list of "pre-approved" designs (from minimalist to spectacular), where your selection is saved in your profile.
Something like that.
I'm wondering just how much we could push this redesign using tools like greasemonkey?
Also good to hear a complete redesigned icon set would be allowed -- I think this is a positive move; even if you don't pick the skin that uses them as the winner, another set or three of icons to use/choose from would be a "good thing" -- Especially if it standardizes on icon dimensions, an obvious problem with the current set.
Slashdot is what it is and doesn't need to be a Digg clone, but instead a site with its own character and a new outfit.
firestream.net
Looking through my fonts folder I don't see it. More specifically, where is the source? How many people have it on their systems as opposed to those who don't?
Oh, wait, Coiseo is the font used in bitmaps, but is it used anywhere else?
zappa pwns!
I'm confused, are you talking about Slashdot or Digg? :-)
That's a real problem, because as far as the design goes, I think the #1 problem by far is that you just seem to have dumped every link you can think of wherever it will fit. For example, look at the left-hand sidebar links, and look at the footer links. Is there any organisation there at all? Are half those links even necessary?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
As long as they stop the browser from jumping to the end of the bloody page every other time when I try to highlight text.
---- Take the Space Quiz!
Third prize is "You're fired".
And the fact that this flamebait got modded up is another reason I like Digg's system better. Moderation is in the hands of all users there, not the select few. Diggers dont' have to put up with seeing flamebait and trolls get modded up while they helplessly watch and just hope some meta-mod will take care of it.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
I've read many times on Slashdot how the website design profession is the IT equivalent to working at McDonalds. How many times have we read the post "Would you like fries with that?" when we discuss the skill level of said profession (and see the comment get modded up as "funny")?
I just can't see alot of Slashdotters jumping at the opportunity to work their ass off just to have their submissions declined and mocked.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Forgive me for possibly being tasteless here.
But I like the Slashdot interface as it is. It's ridiculously simple, eminently readable, and relatively uncluttered. Moreover, it loads incredibly fast.
I can understand wanting a new "look". With enough time you get tired of ANYTHING. However, I, as a reader, feel that the current format already works pretty effin' well.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You sound like one of the Knights who say "Ni!"
"something that looks fresh, something that is not cluttered...but not too expensive. Oh, and a second one over here for a kind of split level effect. Then you must create all of your CSS pages with.....(wait for it)
A HERRING!"
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
* {
font-family: comics-sans;
text-transform: uppercase;
color: pink;
font-weigth: bold;
}
-Woof woof woof!
Sorry, I always wanted to find a good excuse to say that on /. ;-)
We can expect a Matrix or a Lord of the Rings design?
Is javascript using some of the more well known frameworks/scripts (ie: dojo or prototype) allowed?
Coliseo Font (direct download)... from here in case they don't link the hotlinking to the zip file.
Good luck everyone!
Are you local? There's nothing for you here!
News for nerds. Comments don't matter.
It might be useful, since we could stick to whatever layout you are used to now anyway.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Over at the Museum of Modern Art's website, they're asking their members to recommend a new back-end database architecture and help them do the math to optimize the content streaming on their edge servers. They're even giving a prize of six passes to the upcoming Edward Munch exhibition to whomever proposes the most creative Disaster Recovery plan for their server room. Some synchronicity, huh?
Wait... they're NOT?
sorry... never mind...
Instead you get to see oppression by the masses instead of oppression by the select few! Yay! Digg is soooo much better!
Anecdotally, I've heard the Slashdot effect isn't nearly what it used to be. And the statistics are there to support this claim. The rate of commenting sitewide (including journals, polls, and user-created sids) is down over 25% from its peak in 2004-2005. This is publicly verifiable knowledge; just dig around in old stories and note the comment IDs.
Posting anonymously, with no cookies, from a foreign proxy, with an alternate browser, so as not to get "bitchslapped" down by the editors.
check out my brand new design:
http://s87360432.onlinehome.us/slashdot.html
After reading the rules, like the one that says 'echo the current layout' and 'use the same font' and 'dont change the graphics' - I REALLY think taco will pick my new layout. New laptop, here I come!!
Perhaps someone will ahve time to redo all 150+ icons with their theme. That'd be fair. I'd have time to do it but I have to go read slashdot.
Cheers, Ed
"We don't have the source material and time to rebuild 153 icons."
But you have the source material and time to rebuild the site's CSS several hundred times.
All you have to do is ask.
Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions
I am surprised at how many people are complaining about the guidelines. I am really excited about the contest! I have used slashdot for years to talk to people about website design ("Notice how they do this, this, and this really well... Notice how they do this and this really poorly...") and to have a crack at redesigning it is a wonderful opportunity for me. If my design gets in I will feel like I have done my part for geekdom, forever.
I wouldn't choose the green if it was my website, but you know what? It's not my website. I have tons of user-interface and web-design ideas that could help change slashdot's look (getting rid of hard-coded pixel-values and that nasty black background being the first two on the list). Why complain about the guidelines given, spend that energy thinking of the things you can do within them. Once you have a concept, as it develops it will lead you to think about how far you need to go outside of those initial guidelines to make it happen.
(Uh oh, this is making web-design sound like an art)
Whatever you do, I still feel that if I want to actually *read* some of the replies here, it's the lynx mode that is the most easy on my eyes. So please don't put up some fancy gfx ... you'll only force me to really use lynx to browse slashdot ;)
So how long until someone makes /. look like Digg?
/. looks now
I kid, I kid! I personally love the way
And the fact that this flamebait got modded up is another reason I like Digg's system better. Moderation is in the hands of all users there, not the select few. Diggers dont' have to put up with seeing flamebait and trolls get modded up while they helplessly watch and just hope some meta-mod will take care of it.
I don't see how you can honestly look at Digg and feel that you get better comments. If you browse comments here at +4 or +5 you might get a few clever trolls here and there, but you get a lot of meat. Meanwhile Digg which has lower comment volume has very few lengthy comments at all. Then when you respond the author never knows, and there are no threads to continue the conversation. The result is a million short posts repeating the same ideas over and over. I know slashdot has similar problems, but I don't see how anyone could rationally see Digg as an improvement.
The idea that you want to change the look and feel of the site but refuse to change the god awful icons is laughable. Try to consider some of these questions:
1) Why are there 150 icons? Methinks overkill. I'd propose you could get away far less granular categorization and no one would even notice. There are 101 creative ways to deal with this issue.
2) Why are transparent PNG's not acceptable given your target browser market? Without some conditional logic trickery IE6 can show the transparency. And even if it couldn't, it would still show a white background. Are you concerned about file size?
3) Why so opposed to changing the icons? They're ugly. You clearly get a lot of feedback about this or you wouldn't be so defensive about it. How about considering what your clients are telling you? Even in places where the kitch factor is appropriate, the drop shadow just isn't. *sigh* This isn't your fault, but you can fix it. You're not a designer. I wouldn't expect my dentist to be a great painter and I won't try to do a root canal.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
Everyone knows 12 year olds are about look and style! Why not just scrape their work and call it our own? That's what any good grown-up does at work... http://www.digg.com/css/digg2.css It would be "kool" and we could just say "sorry, my bad" when they catch us...
Three replies thus far, all of them basically pouncing on a very minor part of my post.
95% of my post wasn't about Digg. It was about Slashdot. Digg and Slashdot are two different sites that mine a similar market.
I wasn't basing my point around Digg. I was merely exemplifying it. I know a lot of people around here don't like Digg, just as a lot of people here don't like Slashdot. But really, I think both sites could learn something from the other.
The truth is, though, Slashdot has ten layers of old structure that it should peel away and clean up, and that'd be true whether or not Digg existed.
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
Unless you enjoy looking at sites like goatse and gay pr0n, I don't think that I would look at open submissions.
I'm sorry, but I can't throw any support behind this endeavour at all. After all, I think it's time to go back and look at what was just said:
Hey guys! I'm more than willing to let you redesign this place. Oh, keep that shitty logotype, and that "Slashdot Green", and the crappily-compressed icons of yesteryear. Actually, what we want is you to just change things minimally, and we want to do as little work on the Slashcode backend (and information architecture) as possible.
The point you guys are missing here is twofold: first, a redesign is more than just skin-deep; second, it's hard to even get to the skin-deep side of things when you're stifling creativity to the point of where the only thing you want to see is exactly what you've got now. Just go do a find/replace and change section heads to Helvetica and body copy to Georgia, space out your line-height a bit more, and voila! instant Slashdot "redesign". I wouldn't even call it much of a facelift.
You guys are trying to compete with places that are obviously out of your league from a UI perspective at that. As my friend Stick_Fig said above, Digg works because it's drastically cleaner on the frontend, and the only way to get that cleanliness on Slashdot in a CSS change would be to add a ton of display: none; to the code. This offers no benefit in decreasing load time to the user and just makes the site that more frivolous.
You've already lost some part of your readerbase to sites like Digg (which is a forbidden term around these parts) and quick-access links lists like del.icio.us popular. Asking for a facelift isn't helping your cause.
Anyway, let's get to that point: Changing a CSS file is not a "redesign". Saying so is just fooling yourself. A true redesign would take into account plenty of information architecture, markup optimisation, and a total re-thinking of Slashcode's interface. It's not enough to simply change green to blue and underline your links with dotted borders. A redesign requires changes to the markup both for semantics/accessibility as well as to maintain a coherent architecture across the redesign. A redesign requires thinking outside of the box on comment layout, administrative interface, and site structure.
You should be allowing designers and developers to tweak Slashcode itself as well as the template's markup. This readerbase is more than talented enough to do so. Once the aging Slashcode dinosaur is brought into check and architecture has been optimised, things can move along smoothly on the CSS end of things. And no, that HTML/CSS thing that you guys did a few months back (that CmdrTaco is saying was so snazzy) really doesn't change much of anything. Changing markup and not changing any internal IA structure is useless, and this contest is exactly what designer Khoi Vinh complained about in October.
Slashdot, you're pretty much keeping yourself right on the same track. This is just as short-sighted as the original concept was, and I don't see anything changing drastically here in the near future. From the article on Publish.com:
I can't be the only one that remembers the Slashdot PT Cruiser.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Minors can't enter into a contract without their parents being in on it, and any contract they did enter for said contest would be null and void leaving CT screwed. So basically the answer is "yes."
Pete/Petri "damn, my chainsaw is clogged with 1's and 0's again." --clyde
/. is a friendly home. Its where I come for news and there aren't ads all over the place, and everything is two colors. Makes it pretty easy to read and not be distracted by BS. But, i'm hoping the powers that be feel the same way about this and will pick a bland boring style that will make me happy.... or i'll blow their houses up. With blackcat fireworks.
I'm Dvorak, you insensitive clod!
[wakes up ... {shudders}]
I hereby petition you not to accept any design based chiefly around the color purple. Any other color (OMG PONIES included ... that's a valid HTML color name, right?) is acceptable, but not purple.
Does this mean that /. will finally render properly on IE? It's only the most popular browser on the planet, and many of us browsing from work are stuck with it anyway...
I won't be submitting an entry for two reasons - first, I actually like the layout of Slashdot. It's one of the most readable layouts out there, conforms nicely to all of the "best practices" of typesetting, and is far more elegant than 99.9% of all other blogs out there. That's one major reason I've stayed with Slashdot. The other reason is that I regard CSS as satanic hellspawn, the consequence of major corporations molesting the W3C. It would be better for LaTeX to add hypertext links and for browsers to move to a real presentation system. That's not going to happen. Hell, efforts by people to support TCL as a replacement for Java haven't got anywhere, and far more people use TCL than use LaTeX. Internet Explorer doesn't even have proper PNG support yet!
What's needed isn't a new look & feel, what's needed is a scoreboard. Each company's website totally smashed by a Slashdotting scores 5 points, 4 points for a SQL error, 1 point for merely being slowed and -2 if there's no noticeable impact. A bonus of 10 points should be awarded if it's a major corporation.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
that the Slashdot redesign goes better than the Gentoo redesign project. It's been 2 years.
You want change that keeps everything the same? Why can't you just redo the CSS to match a nice design rather than making us work around your CSS? wtf do you want from us?!
This is one of the more important comments in this thread right now...
Yeah, I'd love to see that too. I'm in the middle of trying to figure out how to convert some of my ancient (1990s) web GIFs into PNGs with proper alpha-based anti-aliasing. Any tips on automating this would be great.
Constitutionally Correct
I don't know about Digg, but Slashdot's comment volume is dropping like a rock.
I second that! I experimented with #f8f8f8 (and variations around it like #f8eeff, etc) and while you'd think it would be too subtle, in fact it cut eye strain quite a bit. That's just one subjective anecdote, but hey.
Constitutionally Correct
This was posted on digg 3 days ago!
If you haven't seen how the comments work at www.dailykos.com, you should check it out. You can hide and unhide without changing the page, presumably cutting down on net traffic. Posting is done on the same page and previewing is mandatory. It's pretty nice.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
I liked the Ponies one!!! Just go back with that... Pink is in.
Topic Icons - So we have 150+ topic icons. Your design needs to incorporate our existing icons, and not require that we rebuild all of them. That means most likely that the icons sit on a white background.
At first I read this and thought - Icons? What Icons? I don't see any icons on slashdot. Reaching back in my memory I recalled that I disabled them the very second I was given the ability to disable the icons in my slashdot profile. Haven't seen them for years - and don't miss them.
Let users make the icons to replace your old icons!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Where should I send my three ring binder to? It's already got the keys on it!
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
...the corporate identies of those companies are strong and well-thought-out. Slashdot doesn't have consistent branding and would be more difficult to work with. And in most rebranding projects, they throw at least some stuff out.
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
Minors in the USA can sign contracts.
The problem is that the minor can choose to disaffirm the contract any time before he/she turns 18, leaving not much of a recourse to the other party. This would be a problem in a credit agreement.
But this isn't generally a problem as long as the minor is providing a service to someone else -- if the service is provided, you pay; if not, you don't.
(I got my own business license at 14 -- many years ago.)
References:
Contracting as a minor
California Bar
Where do I submit?
We can finnally get rid of that ugly puke green. Let the blood bath begin. Let's see who can make
FYI; IE7 complys with W3C standards much more then IE6.
FYI that the Official Rules reference a URL (http://www.slashdot.org/redesign) that doesn't seem to load anything but the front page. (If it does indeed go somewhere useful now, honest, it didn't when I posted this!)
I, for one, welcome our new CSS overlords. (Ok, ok... That was the only one left to say... All the others were taken :)
Grammar Zealots: please spare a non-english writer (lastknight dot com)
You'll probably get plenty of takers, but as for myself, I find the following terms and conditions an Extreme turn-off:
... you hereby assign, transfer and convey, and agree to further assign, transfer and convey, to Sponsor any and all your intellectual property rights in the Design." ... ..."
" (c)
" (g) Entries become the property of the Sponsor and will not be returned.
Isn't slashdot a big supporter of Creative Commons? Non-exclusive copyright arrangements anyone?
maybe there wouldn't be much cause to reuse code that would be developed for this contest, but that would make it less valuable and interesting to write, in my opinion.
-- The above may have once been believed by me, but any truth or application you find is your own problem.
That way, I could go to my prefs, set my CSS to be http://www.example.com/my.css, and then slash would send meas the last stylesheet of any page served to me.
www.eFax.com are spammers
Taco, please find my design at http://www.digg.com./
As a professional designer, I feel the need to share, from a certain perspective, that "spec" design work hurts both the designer and the client.
See what the folks at No-Spec.com have to say about specs, and design contests in particular: http://www.no-spec.com/?page_id=38
I would advocate that, instead, Taco hire an agency or designer that he likes to do the work.
People like me, the lay-webmasters who can handle CSS okay, can forget about it. The future winner has already produced the winning files.
Please try the winning design in konqueror. I would imagine there are quite a few slashdot readers who use it.
Offer $3500 for a redesigned site to somebody else... submit all the good designs you get. Then take the $1000 difference and stuff it in your pocket. Well.. it might be hard with a laptop but you can do it. :)
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
DIV.maincontent {
background-image: url('http://goatse.cx/hello.jpg')
}
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
Am I the only one who likes the current look? I'd like to make the left-nav column wider, and get rig of that right column, but other than that - I love the look.
Whoo, signature!
DesireCampbell.com
Don't worry about that...
:(
Thats the challange I guess...
With great spelling like this straight from the Taco himself, it will always have taht "Old Slashdot Feel"!
Oh, the answer is "Lonely, so very lonely." The question? How I will feel after I am no longer allowed on Slashdot.?
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
The legal page says: "6. Odds of Winning. The odds of winning the Contest will be determined solely by the number of Entries submitted and deemed eligible for the Contest."
But this implies that anyone entering anything eligible has an equal chance of winning! Then section 8 (judging) goes on to say, effectively, that the odds of winning are dependent on CmdrTaco's opinion.
Sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen!
It's trivial to do a fairly decent looking removal of the white background. (in GIMP) Image->Mode->RGB; Select all shadows and edges etc.; Filters->Colors->Color to alpha (remove white); save as PNG (or convert back to indexed mode first).
This takes less than 5 minutes depending on the complexity of the icon. Doing 150 would be a chore. Is anyone interested in collaborating on creating a PNG icon set for use by all contest entrants? Seems like that is one easy thing that would open desings up a bit more. I will gladly de-GIF a handful, but I probably couldn't set up a website for the collaboration.
I'm WRONG. Ad divs are actually called things like class="ad1" and id="advertisement-content". The point about using perl to stop it still stands.
OMG CmdrTaco is post whoring!!!
I have a great idea for a redesign, and it retains the same color of green, but we'd have to rename the site to "Hulk Smashdot!"
Is that acceptable?
Comment of the year
Netscape 3.0.4 (gold)
The reason it'd be hard to view each other's work is that it's unlikely that someone's going to open up any kind of file upload.
I'm tempted to offer a phpbb forum or some such, but the same effect can be achieved with multiple journal entries.
Jesus, getting rid of the green isnt the REASON for a redesign?!
Sometimes I end up on the linux or politics area of the site and think "Oh my god, slashdot isnt absolutely fucking hideous anymore!" sadly its short lived as I realize.. nope, thats just the not as hideous part of the site, the mainpage hasnt changed one bit This "style" is NOT something you want to hold on to. Dont fool yourself, Ugly is not a design element.
Web Developers: Celebrate to our roots! Animated Gifs and Tiled Backgrounds, dont let our history die!
There, at least now people can have something nice to look at while they fantasise about being motivated enough to do anything about them!
For those of you that don't want to delve into the slashcode stylesheets, but are curious as to how they're done:
Details about SlashCSS layout
There's also quite of slashcode related information at http://slash.lottadot.com/.
http://slashdot.org/~tf23/journal
*Please* don't select a winner that breaks the slashdotter extension.
I haven't had a look at the code for the slashdotter, but I hope it's robust enough to deal with CSS changes like this contest suggests without breaking.
Unfortunately, robustness doesn't seem to be the general rule with Mozilla extensions, which seem to break with every upgrade or site change. Sometimes it seems as if half of the Greasemonkey scripts don't work any more because the pages they were designed to work with have changed.
The one the surprizes me the most is the Venkman JavaScript debugger. Usually developer tools are the first things that get ported to a new version of any platform because the developers are using it themselves, but for some reason, the Venkman debugger is frequently non functional on the latest version of Firefox.
Oh well. I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope this contest doesn't break slashdotter or that the extension gets updated quickly afterwards.
P.S. I hope you can't tell that SpellBound is broken on my installation of FireFox.
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
hi, to system administrators. is there any chance to get a high-bandwith layout for the competition, flash and nice animated stuff welcome? gretz - XunliNG
I have an even better contest. I call it "Do My Job 2006."
1. I send you a list of my job duties.
2. You do my job.
3. You give your results to me.
4. Of all applications, I choose the best to reward with a paltry fraction of my income in the form of a prize.
you know you could just turn your styles off right?
Am I the only one (er... besides Taco) that thinks this would be a dumb move? I know whenever I see a similar shade of green and white together, Slashdot is the first thing I think of. I'm guessing this is why web developer and brand manager are two different titles. How can you see this color scheme as many times a day as some of us do and not think of it as an essential part of the site's identity? If it was so damn ugly from a usability standpoint, none of us would be here. #006666 should remain sacrosanct!!
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
I think I read this on digg yesterday...
LMAO
Since the rdesign a few months back, the slashdot sight renders slowly, usually requiring multiple refreshes. This happens to me on XP, Mac, but not on Linux. Camino on OSX also doesn't show this. Anyone else notice this?
Way to start the contest during my FINALS WEEK
I had all year of doing nothing to work on a layout but now I'm busy damn it!
Can I have a "good faith effort" MacBook Pro?
The most depressing section though, is ePlus. Last real article posted there was in 1998 (and all 3 articles posted there in total had zero comments?!), although in 2005 there's an empty article that I think is the remains of an April Fool's joke that's since been deleted.
That said, even if a section has only one story, I'm not sure that they can really be deleted. After all, those stories (and their associated comments) are sort of part of Slashdot's (and the Internet's in general) history; I think it's better that they remain accessible by category somehow. Although maybe they could be buried down on a "Defunct Sections" page and removed from the list of open categories that can be submitted to.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I read /. with images turned off, my colors/text overriding the page's, and my own CSS file, you insensitive clod!
;-)
(And I don't even subscribe. Guess I'm totally out of the running.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Collaborate to de-GIF the Slashdot icons for the benefit of all.
All that Slashdot would have to do to force you to see ads is provide a second style sheet below the user-defined one that forces the ads to be displayed. However, just forcing display:block for that div isn't enough since you can do things like absolute positioning the div outside of the viewport of the browser window. In reality, Slashdot would probably have to completely disallow you from messing with display elements related to adverts, which would most easily be accomplished by removing the ids and classes from the advertisement display elements. Unless, of course, they don't care if you remove them from view, which I assume they do.
If you can automatically convert the edges and the drop-shadows to have partial transparency as well, let me know how you do it.
Constitutionally Correct
Taco: Could you explain your model, young man?
Anonymous Coward: What's to explain? He's an idiot!
Mods: Pipe down!
Eddeye: Well basically, I just copied the plant we have now.
Taco: Mm-hmm.
Eddeye: Then, I added some fins to lower wind resistance. And this racing stripe here I feel is pretty sharp.
Taco: Agreed. First prize!
Anonymous Coward: But it, it was a contest for children!
Mods: Yeah. And Eddeye beat their brains out!
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
Some of the topical areas are pretty well redundant or deprecated, if you ask me. For example, the "books" topic appears to be a superset of "book reviews," and the "NES" and "Nintendo" topics share a similar relationship. And when was the last time you really saw anything newsworthy about Be, Comdex, Democrats, Digital, ePlus, the 2000 Beanies, or TurboLinux?
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
I've followed the criteria and following the recommendations I came up with this: http://www.slashdot.org/ - I think it is exactly what CmdrTaco is looking for.
But nah, really, the arbitrary restrictions make it more challenging, I think I'm in.
Punish those of us who's positive karma was blown away forever by pricks like Michael Sims just because we voiced an opposing viewpoint. Cheers!
Think I'm exaggerating? I went from +2 to 'Terrible' karma after posting a message critical of Michael Sims' "Editing" (and no, it wasn't a troll).
I've had to abandon the login I've had for many years because every message I post from it is automagically modded -1.
Does anyone know what the tax repercussions of winning this are? If the work done is work-for-hire, that means I need to report the $4500 laptop as income? That means I'd actually have to pay money on taxes?
Or am I off base here?
I'm baffled by this "contest". Is the goal to come up with a new design, or is the goal to streamline the HTML? Because their two different skills.
If you're looking for a new design - have folks submit mocks in JPG or PSD or whatever of their proposed design.
If you're looking for updated HTML code - then it's a dev issue.
Asking a designer to redesign the site AND update the HTML will result in pretty crap designs. They're two different skills - use them to their best ability.
As nerds, shouldn't we all be using Lynx to read /.?
Or hitting 66.35.250.150 port 80 with telnet?
Maybe this place is for wannabe nerds...
Back to my assembler coding!
White text, white background solves all problems.
Letting the users judge, and have a poll to let us select what we think are the the better entries ?
In any case, as others have suggested, it would be nice to be able to select from say the top 20 entries from our profile, or just to let us specify an alternate url for the css file. But in this case some poor designer would have to pay for the bandwith, which is uncool...
I do web design as a hobby and to promote my ebook, so I personally take insult to comments that demean the profession.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Dear CmdrTaco,
I want to state up front I think that you're making a big mistake by making this a contest instead of a collaboration, and I think it's an even bigger mistake to offer a prize to the winner. Slashdot is a large, active web community, and we work together pretty well. So why make the CSS redesign into something that actually discourages collaboration?
Offering a prize for first place tells everybody "don't let anyone else see what you're doing, because they might copy it and edge you out for the prize by adding some minor feature." Also, as others have pointed out already: there's no reward for submitting a great idea that comes in 3nd place, so the 'glass is half empty' folks with great ideas won't even bother submitting.
There's still time to change your mind and turn this into a two-week collaborative exercize instead of a competition. Step 1: Just make a new story about the collaboration and keep it at the top of the front page for an entire week. People will post their ideas and moderators will do their thing. People who don't have mod points can express opinions (pro or con) about the proposed CSS in each sub-thread. Step 2: After the first week, take the top-rated entries and put them in a poll. We'll collectively vote for our favorite and refine the other entries for another week.
At the end of the two weeks, you'll have several *really good* ideas to choose from, and you'll have the added benefit of knowing how the community will respond to the design you select. If you really want to give away a laptop, just have a raffle from amongst the +5 modded comments that contribute to the effort.
Sincerely,
Anonymous Coward
Not to sounds like a know it all SOB, but 3 weeks for pro bono design and development is somewhat rushed. At the very least, this time table is going to alienate the best professional designers that frequent this site. In my experience, the really good designers are busy, and if you want to get free work from them, you need to give them some time. On the other hand, there are tons of mediocre "designers" that have all the time in the world.
Slashdot is a large site and could be a great portfolio piece. I will probably forward this info to my colleagues. Yet I don't think this contest properly geared toward the design process. That could result in a final site that isn't as successful as it could be.
For a high traffic site you really want something more then a shinny skin. You want someone to consider more then development and contemporary graphics. You want someone to who understands branding, interaction, typography, psychology, and other aspects of visual communication. Realistically, a small site for a paying client might need two weeks for sketches and or photoshop / illustrator comps, and an additional week for an interactive comp. For a non-paying client, I'd doubt that time frame.
Once again, I don't intend to sounds like a whiny SOB, and I'm sure someone will flame the hell out of this post, nevertheless there things the boys behind Slashdot could do to assure a better end result. At the very least, give the contest a 2 month deadline, and pass this information to organizations like the AIGA. You'll get a better selection of successful solutions.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
I disabled Adblock and Greasemonkey so I could save a 'clean' version of the page, and HOLY SHIT does this site ever need a redesign. I mean it's almost usable with the sidebars and ads gone, but in native mode it's terrifying.
If by "meat" you mean: a lot of people repeating the popular opinion while those who may be arguing the counterpoint are modded down to -1.
If people form a cogent argument that goes against popular opinion, they will often get modded up. On Digg that is almost impossible.
Taco also needs to ditch the present moderation system and go with the Advogato trust metric.
/. design is in fact very good design. /. qualities, the color doesn't really matter, this design has worked for a decade... and it will be as good after 25 more years.
/. look like... I only got a VT220 om my uVAX so I use Lynx :-)
Colors do not improve anything and they cause problems to every 10th male. Look at
We are not here because of the design... or the naked girls (or guys)...
We are here because we got our information from here, the "News for Nerds, Stuff that matters." part, and we discuss interesting things with other interesting peope (nerds).
--
btw. how does
In Soviet Russia, a Beowulf cluster of Linux-running laptops imagine YOU!
1) Considering the simplicity of the redesign, and the fact that involves no reworking of underlying Perl, this is a pretty easy job even for an amateur with some CSS experience to do. Compare to csszengarden.com - this is ESSENTIALLY WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING.
2) $4500 is pretty damned phat loots for such a simple job. You're getting four and a half grand for doing a purely topical and aesthetic design job that doesn't even requre you debug a single line of HTML.
3) Being able to say that you redesigned Slashdot is probably a prize enough considering what it adds to the resumé of an aspiring web designer. I'm not talking about the "honor" of being Slashdot's designer, but for the credibility it gives to you.
However, the fact that there's not an option to get paid in cash is really stupid, it almost sounds like one of the slashdot mods is too lazy to put up an ebay listing for his überlap 2000 and is getting rid of it this way. I'd rather be paid in cash instead of getting a laptop whose value is no doubt overassessed.
YOu know, if anyone were going to try to change all 153 graphics, it sure would be nice if the fucking directory they are stored in was browseable.
You want a new look but we gotta use the same icons, and the same color and look. Yeah.
Do you really need any other prize besides having frickin' /. in your design portfolio?
A lot of people seem to be criticizing CmdrTaco ethically for holding this competition. I personally don't see it as an issue, but its always interesting what other people's opinions are. BBC is holding a very similar competition (http://open.bbc.co.uk/reboot/). They received a lot of the same negative comments from people that this is like getting a $10,000 job done for half the price with twice the creative control. However these people did not realize the winner would only be showcased for one day and retained complete intellectual property of the design. BBC had this to say about it: "I would completely agree with jay that we would be ripping people off if we were going to turn entries submitted into the final homepage design. But that's not the objective of this competition." Interesting read at any rate, and very relevant to peoples criticisms.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
A few months ago this site was working like a beauty on my Treo 600. Suddently one day it got all freaky. I haven't heard from anybody else, but I'm assuming its the website that changed, not my Treo that got corrupted.
The designers should make a version for these popular mobile devices, or at least make sure the website works on their browsers.
Now, where's that eBay password..
Yeah and that contest ended in crap. Quite often a page renders mostly blank for me - the sections to the left might be there, but there is no content. It isn't always, so perhaps it is related to the adds, but it came about at the change - and nobody cares. Hurrah!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
PLEASE please stop using italics for quotations. it's ugly on the screen and a pain to read. and most of what appears seems to be in the form of quotations. that's a lot of ugliness, a lot of pain. ta.
I hate that color. Im guessing the person who picked that color got it from Windows 95/98, since that green-aqua color is the default background color.
and its notoriously difficult to "undo". Scripting doesn't even get close.
And people wonder why compositing software like Shake costs thousands of dollars.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
If you go to yours or another users's page, you can see how they tagged articles (and whether they replied). Presumably this is a quick way to get a feel for what a user thinks about articles.
I understand the ability to search for articles tagged a certain way is also forthcoming.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Perhaps the winner might have a better chance at winning if the entire iconpack was all rebuilt nice and shiny along with the deaign.
Anyone remember the crack team that redesigned Craigslist ?
http://craigslist.thebignoob.com/
But you'll bitch and moan about broken PNG support in IE?
Also, have you unblocked the W3C validator yet?
Free Hans!
As Louis Armstrong said in the early days of TV before he was banned for awhile, "We're going to play the next song not too slow, not too fast, just half fast..."
Slashdot entertains. Windows pays the mortgage.
If someone were to remake all 153 icons, as pretty anti-aliased PNGs and they used AlphaImageLoader to make them work with IE 5.5, IE 6 as well as the other browsers you mentioned, then would PNGs be allowed?
Or are PNGs not allowed whatever?
Tom Anthony
Might I suggest something like this?
http://www.vu.union.edu/~shoemakc/new/dos/Y1984K.
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
P.S. I hope you can't tell that SpellBound is broken on my installation of FireFox.
If it stopped working when you upgraded FF a few versions back, check out the dev version. Works nicer now, has new features, an all-around good deal.
If it's broken for some other reason... whoops, ignore this post.
http://csszengarden.com/
When I was young, I had to rub sticks together to compute.
I don't see why you are doing this if you could probably just bum a webdeveloper from say, getacoder.com or something and have him/her do it for you. It would definitely be easier that way to have someone custom do it for you for at most 200 bucks.
What's the reasoning?
The definition of slashdot and craigslist. A legacy of perl.
I didn't know they had a 'fortune' box!
Hint#1: Make it work. Test it. Ensure someone else agrees with you. ... unterminated strings etc.
The current (2006-04-27) Slashdot AdSolution include (http://a.as-us.falkag.net/dat/dlv/aslmain.js) has errors in it.
If you are a Developer with 'Debugging' turned on (like me), then Runtime Error popups appear if there are say,
Naughty programmer,
sit,
stay,
re-test.
Good point about all these arbitrary complaints too, I think you should replace all this ugly geek news with pictures of otters.
bah
After hearing about the contest, I spent several hours with Inkscape trying out some desings. I'm somewhat comfortable with my concept art at this point, and am just starting to convert it to CSS. The concept JPEG can be seen here: http://www.deviantart.com/view/32444534/.
Clearly, Slashdotters have strong opinions about the site's appearance. Odds are, you probably think my design is shit. That's fine. Go ahead and tell my exactly what you hate about it, and I'll make the improvements. :)
I think you will find the information in the link below pretty valuable. The fact that you are offering this contest is disgusting, and in the long-run contests like this do harm to the design industry as a whole. Congratulations, news about this contest is going to spread like wildfire, and many designers will look at Slashdot with negative implications:
http://www.no-spec.com/
Gee, next time I can't afford to get something done, I'll just label it a contest and have designers do it for free in hopes that they'll get a prize.
If the slashdotting is intense enough maybe we can also burn down the lucky winner's house or apartment.
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
http://www.andyrutledge.com/slashdot-hates-designe rs.php
I agree, 110%. I'm a programmer, not a designer, but I see how this hurts everyone who makes a living in software - design or programming. I always thought a "work for hire" meant you were hired and payed for the job, not entereing a contest. I expect this from most companies, but I would have thought this one among all others would understand designers are not cheap whores on a street corner who turn tricks just to eat.
If you're so cheap, just go to http://www.oswd.org/ - or is the catch of "give credit to the designer" too much strain on the company?
Although not of "general" interest, there are some extended capabilities needed for historic documents and some foreign languages:
None of these would be hard to implement, but would expand the potential avenues that you could explore with a DTP package by many orders of magnitude.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Yes, I know that the connection between site design arteest and content editor is pretty limited, but given that the winner will be wholly responsible for the redesign of a site seen by bajillions of people every day, why not give them some level of status indicative of the kind of effort they've made, and given some appropriate statement of commitment, bring them on board?
___ In the words of Gen. Douglas McArthur: "I'll be right back."
This user style I wrote removes the italics, and changes the font to Georgia, justifies it, and does some other stuff to make articles look better.
Slashdot Classic
I have always thought that geek is sexy and I also think this site really needs to be redesigned. the question is: ...are you gonna let me play? ...or this is a tough-macho-nerdy-thing?
kisses!
wetat artg
I am seriously considering re-designing this for you (my laptop is getting old) When i redesign I ideally have a few things to redesign from. The most important is: STATS on the links that are most clicked when a user enters the site.
Yay for putting most of it in CSS and using id's, makes the designer's job lots easier. I already have quite a bit of feedback from some regulars to your site.
On another note, and icon re-design is a HUGE task. Quite frankly i wouldn't go near it without some cold hard cash to tempt me!
i agree with the parent post. it doesn't seem appropriate to make claims of ownership to ALL the submitted designs since only the top two designs are being compensated ("work for hire"). please correct me if i'm wrong, but it seems that the only way slashdot legally owns your submission is if you sign their hard copy.
"(f) You agree that if you are chosen as a Prize winner you shall promptly sign any documents reasonably requested by Sponsor to evidence or perfect its rights in the Design, such as a hard copy of these Official Rules, before you are eligible to collect the Prize."
clearly, signing away your rights would not be a hard decision if you won, and i would definitely have no problem giving up my rights in exchange for a macbook - pretty fair situation, there. but otherwise, why would someone want to give up their complete rights to a design that they may have spent hours/days working on? i doubt all these well-informed slashdot readers will meekly give up complete intellectual property rights to their designs unless they won the contest.
That's the exact opposite of what I have observed.
/. since the beginning of time. Fine, I won't argue with you. That's a fundamental facet of humanity.
Look, everyone has complained about groupthink on
The point is that it's ten times worse on Digg because:
* There's no limit on moderation
* There's meta moderation
and
* There's no real threading
If you think Digg comments is better please explain why instead of the same old "Slashdot sucks!" which we already all know and accept.
Please note that I was perfectly happy to have an agreeable discussion on the subject of game theory, good points of the Slashdot moderation system, and ways in which it could be improved but you took a rude tone in reply - not a good idea for winning over supporters.
LOL
/. has much better comments and conversation. So far you haven't really addressed that, you just don't seem to like what I have to say. Fine, but I don't care enough to submit a paper to a journal with graphs and bibliography so that you'll respect my opinion. If you have an opinion on the matter I'd be interested to hear it; hence my original post.
I don't need 'supporters'. I don't need to conduct a scientific experiment. There was nothing particularly rude about what I said, brusque maybe. Yes it was anecdotal, but your reply isn't even that; it's just a refutation of a supporting argument without evidence, anecdotal or otherwise.
My thesis is that
You had 3 bullet points in the post I replied to. I destroyed each and every one of them. Yet all you can muster is a sad "lol"? Spend a little more time on your rebuttal next time and I might think you have a mind of your own.
I remain unimpressed with you.
You had 3 bullet points in the post I replied to. I destroyed each and every one of them. Yet all you can muster is a sad "lol"? Spend a little more time on your rebuttal next time and I might think you have a mind of your own.
/. comment system is better than the Digg system. Instead you rebutted the imaginary thesis that /. is perfect.
Where do you come up with this stuff? You never rebutted my thesis which is that the
Spend a little time addressing my actual point and I might think that you have some actual insight in addition to reflexive nitpicking pedantry.