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
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.
How about something that blocks all Dvorak articles?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Quick! Some Anonomous Coward send Taco a link to Digg.com just to fuck with him.
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!
10. Creative treatment of grammatical errors Some sort of highlighting for its/it's errors would be nice.
"Honestly, I don't mean to be rude or anything, but you are the worst designer who's design I've had to look at. A chimp with a paint brush could have done better than you. You need to find something else to do with your life. Your design makes blind people scream 'Oh, mi eyes!'" - Simon Cowell
Live forever, or die trying.
That is probably because you are spending your entire day surfing Slashdot instead of doing REAL WORK!!!
Oh wait....sorry, I just had a flashback to my last manager.
Third prize is "You're fired".
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!
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...
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!!
..and mebbe add in a little A.J.A.X. to asynchronously slashdot all the stories ?
[all generalizations are untrue except this one]
You underestimate the patience of a thousand bored programmers given the option to achieve instant geek celebrity status. Beware, for you have unleashed a storm the likes of which this world has never seen before.
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.
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)
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.
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!
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
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.
I like purple just fine- the games section is a purplish thing. Stop talking bad about the purple man!
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
Heck, I don't think any of the 3-digit id's are still being used.
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.
I heard UID (1) was available. I think it's owned by CptnBurrito or something like that.
I'm going to go create my own technology news site, with blackjack and hookers. You know what? Forget the news site.
Don't you mean Simon CowboyNeal?
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
I stopped using mine years ago.
What's a three-digit id anyway?
Have you read my journal today?