Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot CSS Redesign Contest Update
A few weeks back I announced that Slashdot was throwing open its design to the readers. An individual will win a Laptop, and hopefully we'll all
win a Slashdot design that looks good. My Journal
Entries have chronicled dozens of entries since the contest began, commenting
on many of them. Today I share with you 3 of my favorites. These aren't
necessarily "Finalists" but I think these are some of the strongest
entries. First up is Michael Johnson's design,
second is Jason Porritt's entry, and third is a
design from Peter
Lada. The contest will end around the middle of next week. Entries can be
sent to redesign at CmdrTaco.net. Read my journal for extensive
commentary on the many entries, to see what stuff has been working and what
stuff hasn't.
They all have their strong points, but Michael Johnson's design currently has some weirdness going on in Firefox 1.5.0.3 with the page footer showing up halfway thorugh the page at the tail of the right side boxes. Little weird in IE6 as well. Other than that, they look good.
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
Slashdotted! Guess I'll wait a few hours to see em'
-- Brought to you by Carl's JR
So far, it looks like the prize for having a good design is a severe slashdotting of your server...
Of the three, I'm really partial to Jason's design. It captures all the elements of Slashdot, looks clean, has everything well separated, AND it works without error across the browsers I've tried. I'm rooting for it to win.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Great job, Slashdot manages to slashdot three slashdots in one go!
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
Since it's the only one that didn't meltdown in seconds after being posted. If you're going to make a slashdot site - might as well be slashdot proof.
They've been slashdotted already. Oh well... :(
If my design gets selected, does this mean I will get slashdotted too like these poor souls currently are? Seems like a strong deterrent to me.
-- Home is where you eat your heart out.
Who needs CSS when you have Lynx?
(Oh, and don't mention that other text-mode browser. I like my browsers coarse and ugly, thank you.)
"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - Major Mike Shearer, UK
Jason Porritt's design; cannot reach site
Peter Lada's design; feels like slashdot with collapsable menus and a more polished graphical experience. I would use this over Slashdot as it is now.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Eh, none of those three really look all that great. I expected to see better.
The Michael Johnson entry is fantastic. I really like it.
It seems that the Jason Porritt's entry is down already?
"The television is the retina of the mind's eye" - Videodrome
..to Peter Lada whose design actually survived the slashdot effect. Can't say the same for the other two.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -Hunter S. Thompson
You liked them so much, that you decided to burn them?
I don't think you liked those designs at all and this is your underhanded way of wiping them off the net!
1 (short ton / firkin) = 89.1432354 slugs / keg
This one has already won in my heart.
This is beyond just having a new stylesheet, but I think it would be pretty simple: can we get the year in the date for posts? Occasionally, I'll go through /.'s archives, or come up with something in Google, and oftentimes I have no idea how current that story is. I dunno-- maybe this is just a preference setting. Anyone know how to turn this on?
Good idea Jason Porritt: host the new slashdot CSS in your home PC with dynamic DNS. Seconds to be slashdotted!!
For those of us that don't have perfect vision. All three designs have very small fonts. When I actually make the fonts big enough to read the formatting does not hold up.
Ya bunch of f'ing TRACERS!
Seriously...I like them. A slightly cleaner interface with more sculpted graphics. It is more visually appealing and still not too busy. The menu buttons are too big on #3, though.
...All I can say is that my life is pretty strange...
that is the only server responding... so far :-)
l
http://www.proximalabs.com/slashdot/redesign3.htm
The old site works great in every browser, INCLUDING text-based browsers that handled tables (e.g.: links2).
Now, given that all positioning is done with CSS, the page just looks like one long pile of text in links. It is barely usable... I much prefer the old, compatible, non-CSS version that used tables. Other browsers that don't support CSS (e.g: Dillo) are similarly painful to use with Slashdot since the "improvement".
I really like the look of this site!
Michael Johnson's design is by far my favorite. It has a very smooth and clean design. The only other design I can view at the moment is Peter Lada's design but for me it seems like it has too much stuff crammed into a very small area. And the menus seem a little slow when expanding or retracting. Maybe I'll get to view Jason Porritt's entry and see what all top entries are looking like.
Giving slashdot free design work. You should be charging mad money for this. CmdrTaco, brilliant financial move, how else can you get dozens of designers to review at a meager cost of a laptop. !!!!!!!!!!!!
Screw realty just hook me up another monitor!
CmdrTaco , Use the Poll to get User Opinion - If you really want it,that is.
Why does yahoo do this
There are a lot of really great designs coming in that i have enjoyed looking at. However, I think one thing should be noted here. The placement of the login in the header next to the Slashdot logo I think is a wonderful idea. However, Ive noticed on some of the designs (as well as the current Slashdot design) that the login form and the Login menu section on the left are completely separate, which seems to me to be a bit awkward for new people who may be interested in signing up for a Slashdot account. I know some people will be like, they're n00bs, who cares. But it seems to me that all of this information should be together. With the login section in the footer, this might look funny having links below the form boxes, but Im sure it could be done. Whether the login information is on the left or the right, it really doesnt matter, as long as it is together. Just a polite suggestion.
Not having to hire a professional web developer/designer for a national website: ($35000).
Bitchen' Laptop for the 'Winner': $5000
Having a webserver that can withstand a good slashdotting: Priceless!
SmR
I like Peter Lada's design best because it works with the mouse gesture plugin for firefox. Since the switch to CSS the gestures on /. are so slow they can't be used. This slowness is also on Mr. Johnson's design, but strangely the Lada design works perfectly with gestures.
I'm using All-in-One Gestures 0.17.4 (and adblock and user-agent-switcher as only other extensions).
"Eh, none of those three really look all that great. I expected to see better."
As pointed out in the original story. Three weeks really isn't enough time.
Apparently, Web 2.0's distinguishing feature is Really Small Fonts. Both the 1st and 3rd designs (the 2nd one was slashdotted even before Coral Cache got it) are much less legible than the current one.
Looks like the new slashdot sites have been slashdotted. Only one loads.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
The first one looked clean, the second isn't responding, and the third looked too busy visually, with the text too small.
Nice to see they all followed taco's rules: change nothing meaningful.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
I sent a mail to CowboyNeal about this but as of yet haven't had any response, it would be good if we could select a couple of journals to track as slashboxes.
I have currently been finding out about updates to Taco's journal from digg and not from here as I would prefer.
liqbase
When I pulled up the three sites in Opera (before they were Slashdotted, gotta love that Subscription option), two out of three failed.
Michael Johnson -- footer in middle of page (also mentioned as a Firefox problem).
Jason Porritt -- critical flaw: it went into an endless loop, with the box around the story repeating itself until the story disappeared entirely.
Peter Lada -- no problems and looks good and clean to boot.
Remember, we'll all be using Opera to surf to Slashdot on the Wii, and it's gotta work there! (Oh, and something about Opera and standards compliance, etc...)
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I like Peter Lada's design. Unfortunately, it makes some of the current topic icons look like crap. I don't know if that means the design is really good and the icons suck or the design has issues. Micheal Johnson's design doesn't seem to do that. Maybe it's the size of some elements compared to Lada's. Jason Porritt's server is slashdotted so I haven't seen it.
Alright, I agree that all three designs are nice and it is obvious that the gentlemen who made them spent a decent amount of time on each. I have two complaints:
1. All three are what I would call 'linear' improvements over the existing design. That is, they all are pretty much a rehash of the current look and feel, with slightly prettier graphics. Given the readership of Slashdot I would have expected a bit more creativity in a new desgin and a willingness to take some more risks - or at least a clever new placement of some of the site's elements. I can't blame Taco for not wanting to change something that's already working though!
2. All three are a mess on IE 6.0. Please don't ask why I'm still using it.
SmR
The two I managed to see both have smaller font sizes that the current site.
I would really prefer to have something larger
Yes, yes, I know I can make it larger by scrolling the mouse wheel.....
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Respect the viewer's choice of standard font size, kids. Leave body text at 100%. The only thing that should be smaller is the fine print.
I thought Taco was claiming to look outside the box for something clean and good looking, but still retain the slashdot 'feel'.
Well, these three designs are pretty much clones of the current frontpage with just some prettiness and wizbangs added. I'm thoroughly unimpressed with these. Are these really $4,000 designs???
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Peter Lada is the only design to survive the slashdotting so he should win. The other designs must soak up too much bandwidth. I wonder how they would fair on Slashdot's own servers or if this is just a configuration thing?
;-)
Hmmm... that name is familiar. Oh yes... not to be confused with Lada.
His design looks more like Porsche to me! Good job, Peter!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I think the post should have read:
"First up is we'll take out Michael Johnson's server, second is Jason Porritt's server, and third is a design from Peter Lada, whose server will also be exploding shortly.
The Winner? Whichever one can standup to the Slashdotting.
lazy inconsiderate
I'm not sure if it's supposed to appear that way, but has anyone even *tried* viewing the first entry (Michael Johnson's) Safari? OS flame-wars aside, there *are* Slashdot readers using this browser, and some of us even subscribe...if the design ended up like that, I'd stop reading Slashdot. Again, maybe it's supposed to look like that, but at least for me, it all renders in one mile-long column, with the articles not even showing up until 6 full pages down. That makes it pretty much useless to me, since I have to scroll past all of the sidebar menus, the list of "older stuff", and even the poll before I get to any (relatively) real content.
This is not an insult to the designer, of course, but seriously, try to make it useable in alternate browsers? Something about failing gracefully...
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
It's css, if the slashdot site is made properly you could just include alternative css files for all of these themes and let the users choose.
If most of this is hardcoded(I havn't checked), then the upgrade for web standards was pointless and whoever did it missed the point.
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
1. Looks weird on FF here. 1.5.whatever version.
2. Can't get to.
3. Looks good. Best so far.
I quite like the Peter Lada's design (plus it's the only one that isn't um... Slashdotted at the moment), but there's one thing that bugs me about it. On the left side, when I click on a section header, it smoothly expands or contracts that section, which I quite like. However, on the right side, when I click a section header, it tries to open a new page. Why do the two sides act differently? It just doesn't make sense. I can understand preventing the "advertisement" section from being minimized, but why can't I shrink the Poll, or the Older Stuff?
You probably shouldn't click this.
Uh guys? The two of these I saw as live examples did NOT work with IE7 Beta. I'm pretty sure we don't want to pick a winner that will immediately need to be replaced when MS releases their new browser.
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
Looks like I can choose from previewing smoking hole in the ground #1, smoking hole in the ground #2, and smoking hole in the ground #3. These poor people and their poor servers...
"I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar."
-Hoban Washburn
I wouldn't stop reading /. if the third one won, but I agree with your comments about it. I like the current design much better.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
Either change both the CSS and the Icons or change neither. As much as people bitch about the look of Slashdot, I think it's so old that it now has a pleasing retro look. But on the new layout the old icons look like garbage. So either fix everything or fix nothing.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
I like to browse with larger fonts. So my test was simple: CRTL+
in Firefox and then CRTL+ again (bump font sizes twice). Peter Lada's
design is the only one that was OK after that. The rest were horribly
broken - the rest of the ones on Taco's page that are accessible.
The first two of the finalists are dead as of right now.
Peter Lada's design feels very heavy with big thick green bars everywhere.
Then again, I like basic html design - grey background and blue links.
Imagine Slashdot where all three columns are separate frames...
On that note, one more request: make a "clean" version of Slashdot -
no right or left columns, just the articles. Put it somewhere like
clean.slashdot.org. Keep the ad on top, I guess, but make it clean.
Is there any way we can just do that?
A tad insensitive to link to these guys sites given that the vast majority of slashdotters were gonna visit them? Yeah, OK, ad revenue might be a factor, but given the choice, I'd rather my site stayed up and I earned nothing.
How hard would it have been to Coral-cache them, Taco? Or even host them?!
The other two are slashdotted, so I'll just talk about this one.
First impression: My God, this is cutesy. (And I mean that in a bad way.) Too many rounded corners, and the light green on the dark green looks off somehow.
As others have noted, making the font big enough to read screws up the layout. Most notably the posted by name and date disappear completely.
There are little right-facing triangles next to the "from the X department" lines and the headline only stories. The collapsible menus have downward-facing triangles on them. My first expectation is that clicking on the triangles will trigger the collapse/expand function and turn the triangles so they face down when collapsed and to the right when expanded. This is not at all what they do. If you have an image to signal an action, you shouldn't reuse the same image as a static pretty thing.
Good things: The font is nice if too small on the default. I like the sensible blocks of color with lines for the menu.
eg. http://slashdot.org.nyud.net:8080/article.pl?sid=0 6/05/11/1329254
Wikileaks, no DNS
I may be in the minority, but I actually prefer the current Slashdot look to all 3. Yes, they are pretty. But part of the appeal of Slashdot is it ain't pretty. Visually or intellectually. It's raw and scrappy.
But then again, I was weened on the text based internet.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
You're running EI7... this is slashdot. You should really be using any other browser rather than IE! What kind of techie are you?
Meh.
It doesn't resize very well.
At anything less than 1024x768, you have to horizontal scroll, and at anything larger, the icons seem "detached" from the articles - there is way too much whitespace around them.
All three of these are valiant attempts at a Slashdot redesign. What hinders them is the Slashdot Coliseo wordmark and the goddamn stupid fucking green colour.
Which I gotta put on you, Taco. When clients do that to me (I am a graphic designer by trade), I know what I am getting into, which is a client who has nonsensical, nostalgic attachment to elements that simply do not work. That stuff doesn't typically end up in my portfolio.
Why don't you create a sub-category (for kicks at least) where the designers get free reign. You might be pleasantly surprised.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
I think we should go back to "Pinkdot".
OMG Ponies!!!!
That was the kewtest site evar!!!!
The first one was completely broken when I opened it with opera 9 (maybe because it is slashdotted and something loaded badly). It was better when I reloaded it, but the footer is in the middle of the page instead of being at the bottom. Of course, I can't know if #2 loads well with opera 9 because all we have is screenshots, but I like this one better.
perception is reality
I'm wondering if the topic icons would work better as SVG? And yes there's a plugin for IE.
Please pick a CSS that does not set fonts and there sizes. Yes SIZE=+3 is on for headings and the like. At least forefox lets me resize, but that more offen then not breaks CSS assumptions. IMHO thats just craze.
More offen then not a realy bad page looks so much better when I select View/Page_Style/No_Style.
Actually... Just my opinions. The fact that I'm a web developer has nothing to do with it, really. I do not like all of the whitespace in Michael Johnson's design. Its also just a little too... roundy... for me. Meh. Jason Porritt's is a bit better... Though I don't particularly think the font works well in the design. I also think the font sizing is a bit off on his.
However, I really like Peter Lada's. It's different... sexier... but still familiar. The font works well in the design... and the font sizes are spot on (though I could live with the left menu font being a pixel or two taller). Really... rather good. (Assuming you can make it work in IE. *poke* )
I also try to make a clean and readable entry, but since I've not been quoted, I haven't got any feedback yet.
http://jfband.net/slash/slash3/Slashdot.html
http://jfband.net/slash/slash3/article.short.html
I put it here, any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.
I'm not going to bash any of the designs. I think they're all very clean and clear. But I can bet that Taco picked them because they were basically Slashdot with some slight drop-shadows and some fades here and there. So, overall, they're kind of bland. Like your Grandma tells you she wants suggestions for new candy in her dried, crusty candy bowl and instead of getting something you like she gets the same thing, only wrapped so it doesn't dry as quickly.
Disclaimer: I design.
As such, I know it's not that these guys have no creativity. I am putting the blame on the client. Taco asked for little more than a fresh coat of paint on the site, and that's what he got. It would be nice if he was less constrictive and opened himself up to other ideas besides something that automatically constricted the contestants to have results almost exactly like the site you're looking at right now.
I also can't fault people for choosing the design simply because it's what a lot of other sites look like nowadays. But in a couple of years, when the whole "Web 2.0 Soft Gradients" thing loses its sheen, the site is going to look dated yet again.
I do think the finalists all have a strong, clear foundation on spacing and placement so the designs aren't bad. They're just not enough of a change.
(Take my criticism with a grain of salt as I haven't submitted anything).
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
I looks nice but it is also clear looking. The fonts are a bit bigger or something. They're easier to read anyway. Although I like the animation on no. 3s'...
be sure to keep the old one as an option for conservative users :).
Oh noes...!
There was a mirror for #2, and there is a *nasty* infinite loop going on on opera 9, in nearly crashed opera! I vote for #3!
perception is reality
Apart from the obvious, points, like some of the better designs still have browser compatibility issues (http://www.proximalabs.com/slashdot/redesign3.htm l is my fave, but renders with errors in IE), I'd like to beg and plead that accessibility issues are considered:
:)
1) check what happens when you resize fonts/zoom the page using IE FireFox and Safari's respective functions
2) Currently slashdot isn't bad for being readable through a screen reader, please check the new CSS doesn't break this. 3) although menus should ideally be top and left, to tiers of menus on the left is not good (although I do like that one - forgot whos it was now)
Cheers
Because you can - or because you should?
I really like how Peters site looks/feels. I love the plastic look and clean feel.
Kudo's to all the designers, they all look better than original.
OMG!!! That was, like, totally the best!!
I am trolling
These designs look alright, but they all use sans-serif fonts. Even though many /. users do not read the articles linked from the stories, they do read the stories and many of the comments. I think the use of serif fonts on the site has given it a certain feel that these new designs lack. Slashdot has many long and well-written comments that keep many of us coming back, and I would think that readability trumps an aesthetically slick design.
One of the things I like about Slashdot is that it respects my freedom to choose the font I prefer to read. Will Slashdot no longer do that?
What's with this desire to inflict sans-serif fonts on readers? It's popular, but terribly bland. Users get to choose the font they prefer. Why must web sites override that? Sans-serif is fine for section headings and, in fact, the sans-serif headings stand out nicely in contrast with serif paragraphs. It's also frequently useful to use sans-serif for navigation menus.
But please don't inflict these bland, less readable fonts on the discussions. If you want 'em, use your browser preferences.
I don't see why you want reduce the size of the text fonts either. If the default paragraph text size looks too small relative to your headers, then your headers are too small. Enlarge the headers. Don't shrink the paragraphs.
I thought from the original announcement that we were getting a redesign. If the "top 3" so far are the leading candidates for the final change, we get a few minor updates but overall a big yawn for a "new and improved" version with about as much change as the latest laundry soap.
I have to agreed to http://insitemotion.com/slashdot2/ having the footer displaying halfway through the page. A simple correction in CSS will fix this. As for people talking about larger fonts: Show me one site(that isn't plain text) that has any amount of design to it that doesn't blow out after zooming more than 3 or 4 times. I vote for http://slashdot.bestweddingsource.com/
perhaps he coded that as insurance
fwiw IE 6.0280 does not like that page
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Yikes. Take Taco's Birthday money and hire a real designer who can create something that looks good and gets rid of the deficiencies in the existing site.
You can slap a new coat of paint of Chevette, but it's still a Chevette.
Three Squirrels
The OMG Ponies design was a flash of pure genius.
Might I suggest that Slashdot ressurect this design on a permanent basis. Doing as such would provide a valuable opportunity to expand or market while capitalizing on the synergies associates with the pink and pony quotient.
Respectfully submitted by your MBA.
OMG Ponies!
Johnson's design is visually appealing, but has a major, and I say major flaw. Every designer knows that the eye tends to be captured by curved lines, and that is routinely exploited to draw the attention of the observer towards the product. Johnson's design has some fluid curved lines that draw the eye towards the top left corner, where there is absolutely nothing! The eye then wanders off the page, giving to the page an unpleasant "void" feeling. The attention level drops, and the viewer then instinctively moves on, looking for another, more interesting page.
I say let the top 10 designs all be used. Select the best as the default, then let the user decide which template to use in their preference settings. It's CSS afterall, isn't it?
Meh.
They do all look good and i didnt go through all of them, but no one chose different colors at all... unless i missed something, did they need to stick with the green? im not very creative, so im not saying anything, but it would have been interesting to see some different colors or something... maybe the possibility of having multiple skins that the user can set...? otherwise great stuff!
Jason's is definitly the best. It isn't even close.
Maybe it's just me (is it?), but one thing that really bugs me about slashdot currently is the serif fonts. It bugs my eyes out. I like san-serif fonts because they look crisp and clean, easy to read.
Meh.
Slashdot is all about the advertising. Wheres the spots for the OSDN ads, and 3/4 of the stories need to be advertising something.
..than pages that don't allow me to resize the text.
First thing in the morning, I might be able to pick out that 9-point stuff, but by the afternoon, I need it big to keep my eyes from watering.
Keep the original, working style until this is corrected.
I like his design best of the three. It's stylish while retaining the feel of the original.
I think his design looks the best, but I like the collapsible containers that the other two have. In fact, I like them a LOT. If Mike's had the collapsibles I'd vote for him, otherwise I like Jasons. Peter's is just too green and flat. Sorry Peter!
These are nice. Are you going to let us all vote on the winner in the end?
I have one request that is very important to me. I would like to see a more readable font on the front page. The way it is now, most posts are in italics. Anyone with a big monitor and using Firefox is going to hit Ctrl+ to enlarge the text. The italic text of the posts does get bigger, but the lines making up the letters don't get any thicker. So that's what I want to see - letters getting thicker and darker when you choose to increase the font size. Thanks.
/nitpick over
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
I'm amused at the number of people saying "I hate this one because it doesn't work in my favorite browser!"
Guys, we're concerned about picking the [i]best-looking[/i] design now, not the most compatible implementation. Once one of the designs is chosen, then we can worry about getting it to work in all browsers.
This space intentionally left blank.
BODY
{
duplicates:true;
salacious_baseless_story_padding:true;
spell_check:false;
microsoft_hate:true;
cmdr_taco:#001EEt;
}
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Maybe there's something I don't understand, but why can't they ALL be winners? Why can't /. (and other websites, for that matter) have a "skinnable" interface that lets the user choose how they want the content displayed? Drop down? Another page to set a cookie to the css file? There are many ways to do it technically. I'd even think that an "upload-your-own-CSS" feature would be nice (since you can't set cookies cross-site).
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
Peter Lada's is the only one that even works, the other two are trendy broken code trash that doesn't work in safari, opera, some versions of ff/moz, and all old browsers.
And taco, you are a retard and a douche for not hosting the entries. There's no copyright infringment excuse here, they entries have been submitted to be part of the site, you can host them on the site.
Is it possible we might put finalists up for a Slashdot Poll?
Taco would still get the final say, but he'd know if we outright hated one of the designs first.
(That being said, if this truly is just CSS changes, I'd love to see the option to choose between themes at the user level)
You're talking about evolutionary vs. revolutionary change. I used to be on a formula racing team, and each year we were accustomed to making small, evolutionary changes to our winning design to improve it. The competition often complained that we were just copying our previous designs, not introducing enough new innovation (even though we always had new innovations). It came down to the fact that revolutionary changes (broader, more fundamental) are more "dangerous", often more likely to hurt you than help you. If you're already working with a winning design, then incremental, evolutionary changes are SOP. No point in risking it all if you're winning already!
/. instead. Of course, I doubt a solution that didn't gracefully handle all common browsers would ever be accepted, but it would certainly be interesting to see.
A totally new Slashdot design would defintely be more interesting, but I would think that even if it was genius, it could hurt the site more than help it by driving away more users than it attracts. For example, a "revolutionary" design might be one that works great in Firefox, and purposely ignores obvious usability problems with IE. This could encourage lots of users to switch to Firefox, but I would expect lots of IE users would just stop visiting
I found one really big issue with Michael Johnson's design: the site requires JavaScript to be enabled for the site to display properly. This means it will not work properly with most software for the visually impaired or for paranoid geeks like me that browse the web with JavaScript turned off.
Often, if I go to a site that requires JavaScript to view it, I simply move on.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
I like the third one the best
Don't change the Slashdot design. The current design is historically classic
and instantly recognizable. Changing it to something more "flashy" or bloated is not the way to go.
"Don't change a winning team"
If there is a vote, then the existing design should also be an alternative.
Come one people, let me know what you like about the current design. I'll go first:
* The current Slahsdot design is classic in Internet and open source history, and should not be changed because people recognize the current design.
>> Disclaimer: I design.
Yes, you do. And based on your web sites portfolio I don't think you are in position to criticize anyone. At least not yet.
I vote for Jason Porritt's design. Much better than the others.
What I would like to see is someone creative design a brand-new example site for slashdot. Nevermind that you won't win, but how about stop complaining and make something that looks great (and isn't bound by taco's rules). I would make something myself if I had any design capabilities and weren't colorblind.
Meh.
I think the headlines should also be the links to the stories (same as "read more"), as they are so much bigger and easier to target for clicking.
Yesterday was the time to do it right. Are we having a REVOLUTION yet?
All three are really very good. I hope to try my hand at a design soon and post it here for all to critique and enjoy.
The first thing I look for when viewing a site's design is where my eyes go upon first glance. If it's toward the news article headlines, then the job is done, IMHO. Both Jason Porritt's and Peter Lada's designs accomplish this. Michael Johnson's took me a second to find the headline. It just wasn't THERE enough.
Overall, I'd say that Peter Lada's design is almost exactly what I'd like to see in a Slashdot redesign. It's very clean and well sectioned, with different greys breaking up the main areas of the page. The in-between shade of green used for the headline's section title is especially nice. I'm a fan of letting a user get to different parts of the site in many different locations, but ONLY if it's relevant to its location. Sticking a section link in the heading in a darker color not only draws my focus toward the headline, but it also gives me a choice: I can either go straight to a particular section when I first hit Slashdot, or I can click to the side of a headline if a particular article interests me in reading more from that section.
The only thing I'd really change are the little 16x16 pixel icons used in the "Have you meta moderated today?" alert box and the various section collapse/expand arrows. I think that those shouldn't be in the same color family as the rest of the page. They should jump out at you with reds and yellows for alerts and maybe some grey for the arrows, I dunno. They currently blend in too well with their backgrounds to be effective.
Overall, great offers from all three.
"Apparently so, but suppose you throw a coin enough times. Suppose one day, it lands on its edge."
I like it.. but it does have a bit of "lifeless" feel to it. Standing back and looking at it as a whole from a distance, somehow it seems broken, like something were missing or it has inappropriate shading. But what do I know.
Meh.
"Why don't you create a sub-category (for kicks at least) where the designers get free reign. You might be pleasantly surprised."
A completly flash-based design. Or one based on XUL.
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Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 35 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
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Taco you must think your readership are all idiots if that's the best excuse you can come up with to prevent script attacks.
for Peter Lada's design. Nice, clean, stayed up. Porrit's is a close second, however.
Don't pick up the pho*(@)$*@&@!@ NO CARRIER
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Why My Design isn't on that list? I know you Love it Rob!
You can't deny "The Great One".
There's nothing wrong with anything - Phillip J. Fry
Meh.
Y'know I've been keeping up with the entries in the Journal and I'm not terribly impressed with any of the new designs (what's with the micro-fonts and all thems fancies graphics?). I mean if I wanted a new UI and updated markup I just go to Digg ;-)
As long as after all this I can still get the existing Slashdot look I'll be happy.
crazy dynamite monkey
I looked at each site in Netscape 7.2. Of the three I would rate Jason's the highest. Michael's design included a huge sidebar advert, I am not sure if this is part of the design or a limitation of the host he uses. I also liked Peter's design. All three capture the "house" flavor, the green accents and so on. I haven't tested the sites in other browsers as yet. Looking forward to seeing who wins.
Thats the best. the last one is down completely and the first one wastes a tonne of space with stupud curves and shit. too much whitspace on that one.
jason ftw!
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
http://slashdot.org/palm
Meh.
I love the design, it will need some work to make it display the same in all browsers but that really isn't all that difficult. I found that making a good cross browser display is just a matter of testing and tweaking. Unfortunately, many developers are just lazy. My site stats for our companies web app is running each month about 60% IE, 33% Mozilla based browsers and safari, konqueror, opera etc take up the rest. Who wants to chase away 40% of your customers? Getting good customer usage stats is critical in any website, the results can be enlightening. Running your site through a validator is always a great way to start.
It should be noted that Jason Porritt's entry crashes opera.
Peter's design is the most consistent and well thought out, but it has a bit of a "corporate" feel to it. That said, I really like the reworked "vote" button (everyone else's "vote" button sticks out like the sore thumb it is) and the easy to find search box. The banner is a little drab, though.
Jason's design looks exactly how I would envision an updated "Taco" design would look. It really doesn't change things all that much, but it's a much more refined look. I like the subtle drop shadows and boxing, the improved banner and the (again) easy to find search box. It's a design that refreshes the Slashdot look.
I really don't like Michael's design at all. It just looks like Slashdot got accidentally bleached. It's not even the best of the "white" designs. That distinction goes to Lukasz Lukasiewicz, whose design is subtle and drop-dead gorgeous, but because it uses blue, Taco will never pick it. If you're going with a white design, blue is really the better contrast color - dark aqua doesn't blend as well. My big nit to pick with the design is how it hides the search box - move it up to the banner like the Jason/Peter designs and it would be a winner.
I used to enjoy reading Slashdot on the go with my Hiptop http://www.hiptop.com/ back in the day of the table-based layout. Sadly, ever since the CSS redesign, Slashdot is not unreadable on my Hiptop as the Hiptop browser renders the CSS poorly. Unfortunately, none of these three new designs improve upon the page display in the Hiptop browser. I know 'Taco specifically mentioned that designers were not to be concerned with portable devices, but still, it would be nice to be able to read Slashdot on the go again.
Peter Lada had anomolies on internet explorer for me.
God spoke to me.
I'm happy to see that /. wishes to add as many unecessary rounded corners as possible, presumably to become Web 2.0 compliant.
bring back the ponies!!!
Absolute positioning in CSS was a horrible mistake. Don't use it. If tables can do the job, use tables. Try to write your own table engine in Javascript, and you'll botch it.
Overcomplicating a plain site is just stupid. If you want to make it look better, put more effort into the artwork, not the HTML/XML.
Michael Johnson's is by far the most ambitious - the page header is too curvacious for me. Also there are several viewing issues - judging by the article dates on the other two this has likely been submitted much more recently. It could work, and most of us would get used to it - however it seems a little too flashy/flamboyant for a geek news site. A robust 7/10 in its current state.
/. . Lastly, the catagory icons are obtrusive in comparison to the writing - the icons don't need to be large for use to construe what the article is about. Heck, most of the time the title suffices. A hopeful 6.5/10.
Jason Porritt's is very sleek too - but without the flamboyancy showcased within Michael's. It is an attractive, modern design, and my own initial reaction was enthusiasm and recognition - this IS the revamped Slashdot, said the instinct. My single gripe with it however is the logo size, were the logo close to/the same size as it is now, then the theme would be practically perfect. An enthusiastic 8.5/10.
Peter Lada's design is also strong, and (lets be under no illusions), quite similar to Jason's. However unlike Jason's his design has several issues - the slogan is too phased out, it must be seen, as is it iconic of the geek's attitude. Our news is what matters, not bullshit about africanized bees or whatever. The default text size is also too small - and I bet most Slashdotter's would be pissed having to change to "larger" each time they visit
So yeah, Taco has done a fine job with this shortlist, though to conclude I'd say Jason Porritt's design is far and away the most promising, a few aesthetic modifications and preparation of catagory templates and it could be the ideal new Slashdot. It isn't hip or flamboyant - but possesses a reserved style we geeks all like beholding.
The first one doesn't work in Firefox. The second one is too tight. Third one seems reasonable.
Jason's design looks wildly psychadelic and crashed opera for me.
g
Here is a screen shot : http://www.cyberrodent.com/images/bad_slashdot.jp
maybe a missing close div in some loop... anyway, the new slashdot site better work in opera is all I'm saying.
Talk is cheap. Supply exceeds demand.
1 3 2
no i have not shot my gun in the air and gone 'Ahh!'
Is it just me, or is the current design more readable, and thus better?
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
oh man, that's soo funny
Is "breaks on IE" considered a plus point?
Use the minimum font size setting in firefox.
BTW This is not meant as a "stop whining and do this other thing" answer. This is a "thank goodness the web is readable again" sanity stop-gap measure.
each is good but i find myself liking the 2nd one ever so slightly more than the first one.
All of these designs look pretty good, and I have my preferences.
BUT, the winner should definitely be able to scale gracefully. In Firefox, use Ctrl + Scrollwheel (or Ctrl +, and Ctrl -) to see if the site has a good scaleable design.
Some of these three do better than others...
While all of these are great redesigns to the front page, what about the comments pages? This is where we as readers spend 95% of the time on Slashdot, and personally I find their current appearance - and functionality - clumsy, ugly and far from intuitive.
The conversations should appear as a tree, similarly to the way they look now, but (a) each post should be "expandable" - that is, the subject line, poster name, and moderation are shown as one line, and a click expands it to display the entire message using AJAX or any other buzzword. And, (b) when initially entering the comments page, all comments above the user's threshold should be expanded, while others are not.
This is opposed to the current system where some messages are shown fully, others are only listed (which link to a separate page! uck!), and still others are not shown at all due to low moderation; there is barely a hint that they ever existed other than some posts which appear to reply to phantom messages.
I have been a reader for years and still can't figure out how to request that no comment headers should be completely hidden, without changing the threshold level for messages I want expanded by default. Maybe it's a simple setting and I'm stupid, but I'm mentioning it here to illustrate the non-obviousness of the current method.
phozz
Heh. Heh. Your post reminds me of when Freshmeat went through it's redesign. Oh the hell he took, to the point he quit for several days.
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It's been 50 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
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You should be spending more time Taco on fixing what needs fixing than window dressing.
I really like Lada's design, I just wish that the "read more" link was more prevalent. Overall, however, it's my favorite of those three.
All three are pretty (the third gets my vote), but all three have quirks in IE 6. C'mon guys...it may not be the browser of choice for most Slashdot followers, but how can we complain about websites that are IE specific and don't render properly in Firefox if we're doing the exact same thing in reverse?!
I think it's important for each topic to have a defined border, for ease of reading. I find that my eyes tend to jump around the page when the border is just a faint shadow. For that reason, I like Jason's best, however im not a huge fan of his header...it needs to be bigger.
It worked in Opera (doesnt work in IE either)
Jason Porritt's is probably my favorite, if only the articles didn't go into an infinate loop in opera and start getting beveled over and over again.
Michael's design isnt my favorite but its pretty good, and it works in all my browsers so I guess we found a winner!
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Sorry about that last paragraph, turns out that I really am stupid. The first three are still valid though.
phozz
They designs all look nice. By no fault of their own, they were required to keep the same outdated layout, the same horrible icons, and the same confusing IA.
Such are the issues when the client won't listen to it's customers.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
EVERYTHING. Why the hell do people feel the need to force what they think their site/* should look like on the user?
I swear to god: all this shite; coloured fonts (for that matter coloured ANYTHING), widths specified by measurements and not percentages/ratios, forced font types, forced font size are all wrong to use in 99% of the cases where they are currently used.
I see sites using things where it's totally overkill; it's annoying users and pissing bandwidth down the drain. Pages that take more than 5 seconds from click to complete (on a broad band line) are broken in some way (except in cases where there is a very large amount of content). Taking more than 2 seconds to show the majority of content is also evidence of being broken in some way. Most of the time, the core issue isn't overworked servers or slow rendering clients, but actually pages that are written in a stupid way. Think massive amounts of images, using things other than ratios to align things or misuse of CSS. Funnily enough, these are the same pages that do not display correctly on certain browsers (however, excluding IE, in most cases) or are on the domain myspace.com.
Jason P's looks best to me
Is it just my browser, or are they all using sans serif fonts for the body copy? I find that much harder on the eyes.
(Ok, Windows XP)
I guess this http://rauno.com/sd_contest2.png wasn't his intention
Michael Johnson and Jason Porritt's are my favorites, but they each have their own esthetic flaws in my eyes.
At first Michael Johnson's caught my eye. I liked the flow of it the best. It's missing the menu drop downs the other ones have though. Additionally it has a minor positioning issue with the search box. The slash on the top looks nice, but seems a little over done.
Jason Porritt is a very slim lined site. His drop shadow on the posts is a little bit overwhelming though. The bottoms of his posts are a little too boxy, if that faded away more like Michaels does than his would be the best hands down.
Peter Lada's is just too boxy, but great idea for the drop down menus.
All of them are missing the icons on the top. Michaels is the only one that has room for this to be added, unless the icons are about half size they won't fit in the other two templates. Does anyone care that they're missing though?
In the end I vote Jason Porritt, but hope the drop shadow is lessened and the bottoms of the comment boxes fade away.
"To be is to do." --Socrates
"To do is to be." -- Aristotle
"Do-Be-Do-Be-Do..." --Sinatra
...the more they stay the same.
Every example I looked at contained dupe articles, damnit!
Oh wait, nevermind.
What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
Some of the fonts are too small for my eyes. Also, please check what they look like in 8bit colour, since I sometimes work through VNC with reduced colours, and it'd be nice if the site were smooth and visible then too.
Big links to get to the story and comments are preferred.
Oh You POS
I am actually quite unimpressed with the designs. It has been awhile, but none of the participants had tried anything other than green on white.
I like green, but the forest green that is used on slashdot is quite ugly and everybody knows that. Why is it that noone has the guts to try out something different.
I think Taco has threw everybody off by declaring that he expects curves, green and white.. this is why all these websites look so alike. I was really expecting something along the likes of CSS Zen Garden experience, where people really thought out-side the box.
Having visited each of the candidates, pretty much all of these make your stomach churn and are definatelly not that easy on the eyes, not to say pleasant.
Out of these three candidates, I liked #2, but I wish there would be a little less white space between left part and the story.
http://dtum.livejournal.com
They all have "boxes", but Michael's design with only the shaded upper left corner of the article block looks the cleanest, and with the curved header looks the most "designed". That said, I agree with one point, and think Michael needs to bump up the headline font size a couple of notches to improve scanability.
As to the CSS errors, perhaps we need to just pick the best looking design, and then hand it off to an expert to implement correctly.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Please try to keep posts on topic.
Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads.
Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)
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Look at the quotes on Peter's page. Very nicely done. Very badly needed.
's got the bigger text size though.
I'd like to see Peter's quoting and Jason's text size with Michael's attention to whitespace.
I can't believe no one took the bait on this!
Dark Reflection
It has some serious weirdness in the story frames when viewed in Opera.
I vote for Michael Johnson's design
WTF? redesign? it's exactly the same.
Using CSS properly means skinnable sites. CSS Redesign is a contradiction in terms. CSS is the end. punto finale. It's the HTML which needs redesigning.
What this site needs is an enema. a real honest to goodness green tea up the ass redesign to use CSS properly. Then let designers skin away. Each user logs in, chooses the design and whammo instant "redesign".
Call up a major branding firm and ask them how much to rebrand one of the larger, more popular sites on the net. Then ask them what you can get for $4k. The answer will be something like, "You're getting it now."
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Michael Johnson's design is the best.
very simple, very nice, and it keeps the pretty shade of green that site users have grown to love.
That, and it reminds me of a pill.
What better way to hit the "Submit" button on a daily basis?
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Really though, I agree that it would be nice to be able to select one of several styles. No one design works for all people. Why not give the choice of several varied (but all very good) styles that would all be properly Slashdot branded, but which work well for varied audiences, screen sizes, etc.?
Of the three, I'm really partial to Jason's design. It captures all the elements of Slashdot, looks clean, has everything well separated, AND it works without error across the browsers I've tried. I'm rooting for it to win.
Me too.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Jason Porritt's is much easier to read and use. I really like the seperation of the sections and the collapsable menue.
-Brian
The old one has got to go, so anything would be better. I like Johnson's design, but the second one has one element I really like; the dark background behind the individual story titles. Makes skimming much easier.
Karma: Neutered
It may benefical for slashdot to retain its older CSS. Although unlikely, a new CSS may appeal to and attract a younger audience which may increase the amount of tolling, flaming, and useless comments in the reply section for each posting. It may be something to consider..
This is probably the most insightful comment in the whole thread.
Jason's design exhibits some interesting behavior in Opera 9b. The roundrects that contain each article and its abstract continually, automatically, concentrically increment themselves. Check out a few screengrabs:
4 132196437/
http://flickr.com/photos/byrongibson/sets/7205759
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
The technical quirks can easily be fixed, this is slashdot.
And frankly, the other two look like bad gnome themes.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
I'd like to see what the "Lite"/"Simple" modes look like in the new scheme (any/all of them).
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I've seen this persistant horizontal scrollbar in some of my own CSS designs.
It is often caused by italics. Specifically, if the last word of a line is in italics, it will take a teensy bit more horizontal space which for some reason isn't taken into account by the browser, and thus you get the horizontal scrollbar.
However, my usual solution, which is to explicitly declare "overflow: visible" for the body tag or container element, doesn't seem to be working, so it might be something else... will have to systematically break the page down until it dissapears, which I don't have time for atm.
It r the best.
The new catch phrase should be "Now with rounded corners"
Rob's site and his decision, but how about picking something a little less bland?
Oh, I see, when they said it was a "CSS contest", they meant "not *just* CSS; in fact, we only mean 'CSS' the way tech support customers mean 'CPU'".
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
I'm confused as to whether I'm trading in my Playstation 2 for a Playstation 3, or just trading my PS2 in for a newer PS2.
When I looked at these three designs, no offence at all to the people who are doing them, but they look like what a client would be presented if they have a agreed upon a basic layout, and wouldn't a few different "looks" to choose from.
I actually think there is some pride and a lot usability in Slashdot's current look. It's not fancy, but it doesn't need to be (at all!).
I think Slashdot is wasting peoples time if we're just putting a new coat of paint on the car. We don't care how ugly you are Slashdot, we love your personality!
Hi.
How about moving the "polls" you have on the right side to the top, followed by the "older stuff" then the "YRO/INTERVIEWS kind of sections and remove the login from the right side of the page entirely.
the left side having the login (for Jason Porritt's entry) could include the actual form to put your name/password (which I see is currently not expanded by default, THANK YOU!)
these are only suggestions, but I hate having to log in to view it as I think it should (for better viewing pleasure...? it's just my opinion anyhow).
thanks for reading
I got to see 2/3 designs. Awesome work, I'm loving it. But the colors, guys, c'mon. We need a concentrated campaign to bring back OMG! PONIES!!! as the established default. Seriously. That was the best theme so far. Hell, after 10 years of reading /. I might actually even sign up an account if I could make that my default.
These are nice, even sexy, designs. My one complant is that these designs, and the current Slashdot design, try to use divs as tables, even when it doesn't fit. Tables are still part of HTML 4.01; they have not been depreceated. I don't believe it's cool to try to force divs to act as tables, when tables would fit much better. It seems they are going to have problems with the footer floating up over one of the three cols... and the cols restrict the body from filling up the whole page when you get below the cols.
If I would add any one thing to slashdot, it would be the ability for the body to expand past the cols, when the cols don't have anything in it. When you scroll down a ways, 40% of the screen is whitespace, which has to be bad design, though you might think it's cool because you only use divs. For an example of what I'm talking about, check this site. Now, it won't validate, because it's displaying the full feeds of people who don't know how to write html, but it could look the same in xhtml 1.0 strict.
Now, Slashdot is better than some sites, where they can have up to 70% whitespace if you have a larger monitor. This site is aweful. The body of the messages don't expand with the browser window, and the politics and retoric suck.
The top of this one looks great.
I like the post in the body of this one...
Anyway, that's my two cents. Take it for what it's worth.
i would like to congratulate the nominees, they all look very stunning!
Congratz
I've created two newspaper layouts from scratch and I'd like to point out that the "headlines" need to be bolder/bigger.
;)
Why you say? Because bolder text (to a certain point) is easier to spot. You should be able to see it instantly. Also, all text should be normal or above normal in size. Remember, many slashdotters are not below 30 and do not have perfect eyesight. Further, the contrast (in colors/text) need to be very big. (All three scores well on contrasts)
It is only logical that the most important text [the headline] has a size that matches it's high importance. Thus, the difference between the headline and the rest of the text should be substancial, and certainly BIGGER than all three "favorites". And the story text (second most important) should be bigger than all the other text, links, comments etc. The layout should always help, guide and prioritze for the reader. The reader should not need to waste time searching for the important information, the reader should know in 0,03 seconds what information to read first, second and last.
I also would like to ask one question: Is the time (posted) and name of poster really that important? Are they more important than the story text? If not, they should be at the end of the "story"-boxes, not at the top. Also, maybe a 50% increase in theme-picture-size be could be smart, easier to see. How about using actual pictures from the stories? (maybe a rights issue, I know, but it must be possible to get free use of a copyrighted picture in many cases). More: The text should not be in italic (ok, a few words are ok), because it is harder to read.
Also, to not alienate the readers, it may be smart to keep the original colors, so that not "everything" changes from one day to another. If wanted, change the color later.
PS: Do you see how much easier it is to spot bold text in my comment? That comfirms my first statement.
Please feel free to comment my comment!
no change is ok.
There's not enough improvement to bother switching to any of those.
I agree. Good design with a good use of negative space. Now I wonder how the other slashdot pages will be addressed?
but all I really want is a tag on every post that will skip down to the next post at that same level. The "skip all children" tag. Could those tags be generated in one pass?
Often I just want to trust the moderators--I know, I know, what am I saying--and scan all the Score:5 posts. Or skip the rest of a thread that diverged. Maybe that would kill the moderation system; no one would want to moderate anymore because the reading would be so darn good. Then Slashdot could outsource the moderating to India. Heck, outsource the "editing" and story submission duties too. Ok, so I'm a little bitter.
Infinite recursion is fun!
There's one improvement I could think of though. It would be nice if it had a little sound effect so every time another one of those borders popped into place you'd hear, "plink... plink... plink..."
<rant>
Yet another designer who learned flash and who is so taken with it that everything must be done in it.
And who is too stubborn or lazy to learn how to do things in any other way.
And who considers themselves so superior that anyone who does not like their designs must be a complete idiot.
</rant>
Ah, now I feel so much better - at least until I run into the next page that is only accessible with flash.
I've got to give my vote for Peter Lada's most recent update. So far, it seems to have the most fluid, and easily recognizable elements. It's doesn't go to the extreme with any design elements, and is generally easy to look at. I do have some issues with it, however:
-Some of the fonts need changing for the various segments along the left side; Login, Sections, Vendors, etc.. The font needs to be larger than the sub-sections, IMHO. Also, they could use a highlighting color separate from the rest of the navigation, as it's easy to get distracted by which elements you are actually selecting.
-There are some alignment issues with the Search function at the top in Safari 2.0.3
-The quote text at the very bottom of the page is far too small, making it pixelated.
-The Slashdot logo has a slight color difference with the rest of the header, either fix it, or make it slightly more dramatic.
Other than these few changes, it is by far the strongest design (though the Segal one is pretty bad ass [unfortunately, ugly]). If he keeps his work up, I'll definitely give it my top vote. Nice work Peter!
I was disappointed none of the designs required a download of some exotic plugin that is not yet released. I mean do you really what to be just run of the mill, ordinary, and boring ?
The first one sucks, the second is pretty nice, and the third has the benefit of keeping those IE idiots away.
his design is nice and suave (smooth)
"Hello 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!"
wow...the one you mentioned is easily my favorite.
Peter Lada's version is OBVIOUSLY the best! I love it.
Viewed with Firefox 1.5.0.3 under WinXP on a 1920x1200 pixel monitor. Browser windows run normally at 1024 x 1050 pixels, with 800 x 1050 optional via a favelet.
All three:
Michael Johnson's Design
Jason Porrit's Design
Peter Lada's Design
I've said the same thing I don't know how many times. I don't know if the lack of a year is some sort of throwback to Slashdot's beginnings (what, didn't they think it would last more than a year?) or what, but it's obnoxious.
I'm used to having to look in the URL bar to figure out what era an article is from. While you'd think it's obvious on a tech news site, for some of the political or misc. / cultural / current-events articles, you can't necessarily tell whether something is from 1999 or today.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I had a lot of complaints that the font size of the articles was too small, so I increased it to 12 pt font size. I also increased the line spacing to ease readability. In addition, I changed the background color of the announcement box to be grey, to help reduce the overwhelming feeling of green in the design. Let me know what you think of these changes!
I like jasons the best out of the 3...
I wouldn't--and for the same reason "100%" is not an appropriate text size. Because most browsers use a huge font size by default and the Times New Roman face, which is an abomination knockoff we owe to MS being too cheap to license the real Times. Couldn't afford it, MS??
/. was designed by idiots, and wouldn't stick around long enough to even know the real "philosophy" behind the design decision.
The significance is, sure, you and I can set a sensible default font face and size. However, it is unacceptable for any professionally-designed site to look like crap on a default-configured computer. Any casual user who stumbled upon it would think
It's just that browser defaults with respect to fonts, etc. don't mean anything anymore, and the designer should just assume that settings such as those are set to their defaults and that they are not that way because the user prefers the default, but rather because they have no idea they can change it.
When Slashdot is running properly, the best part about it is that it loads fast. While these new designs look a little nicer, all we seem to be getting for our trouble will be slower page loads.
Also, I want to second what others have said about scaling the fonts, none of these designs seem to scale the fonts gracefully. I personally design for 12pt and ensure that it can still be read up to 18pt.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
All three designs refuse to honor my default font size and instead make the text veeeery small.
That sucks big time but other than that I like the second one.
Wouldn't it be great not to use italics for the news' text? It would make the text more readable. I currently use a Greasemonkey script to change that, but having it by default would be smarter.
Taco said as much in his "expectations" but he keeps calling it a redesign. It's an update - they want the same basic thing, but they want it to look more modern (you know, like it's not 1994 anymore). And that's perfectly fine, in fact, slashdot is in desperate need of such an update, but don't call it something that it's not.
sic transit gloria mundi
However, it is unacceptable for any professionally-designed site to look like crap on a default-configured computer.
I'll have to disagree that slashdot looks like crap in its current incarnation, but that could be just because this is the site I've visted the most over the past 5 or 6 years. Also, this isn't exactly a "professionally-designed site", given that its new look will be based on this contest.
I blame Taco, with these top picks this redesign contest will make as much difference as the loathed 'upgrade' of Windows XP to Vista will be.
Abandon the rules, set the designers free!
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
I like Jason Porritt's design. clean and clear.
but I don't agree others that Slashdot should be redesigned _completely_. I am used to slashdot's style, the menu bar, the color. It is simple and easy to use. why on earth do you have to change the color and the style ?
Keep it simple, stupid!!
Pink Pony pages - still the funniest Slashdot EVER.
It's call paranoia. And in most cases it's management, not the workers, that are scared and afraid. If the IT department is still on US soil, then they are even afraid of sending it off to India.
So tell us, who do you work for? I'm sure some hacker out there could use some more zombies.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
They all look fine. Leave each of them as a selectable skin.
/. since Bill and Monica were an item. Give it a rest. Give the eyeballs something a little fresh.
But we've been looking at
1) Anything but off green.
2) Make it so we can find Search and Topics.
3) Anything but off green.
While all 3 designs look "nicer" than the current design, it seems to me that they are done by hobby-designers (i'm a visual illiterate person myself, too but learned some things from this woman).
Especially the various spaces between texts, images, etc look randomly unbalanced.
And the font sizes look randomly choosen, too. I dislike a website/printed paper where there are more than two or three font sizes. The three examples have lots of them, make it look odd to me.
-- Watch me working: www.magerquark.de
Quite frankly, I don't care who wins. Looking through all the candidates, I am just REALLY excited to see any one of those on this site instead of what we have now.
Johnson: Text too small and there's too much white space (I used to be in newspapers until I got smart, and too much white space is not a good thing). The text is kind of floating there, lost.
Lada: Slashdotted, of course.
Off-topic suggestion: Everyone who offers his opinion on this one should be modded up for "Informative" because ... well, they're offering information, aren't they?
Prevent Windows piracy. Use Linux instead.
All three proposals look like complete crap in my usual viewing environment, which is about 6 inches wide. Using the full width and small fonts, it's a comfortable measure to read; the current /. front page has a newspaper look in this view. The three proposals use way too much space for the left and right columns, leaving one word per line for the actual content, overlapping the ads and navigation, and in one case spilling down off the styled area at the bottom.
All 3 layouts have *major* glitches in IE6.
...you should probably know that the Dynamic Ribbon Device is one of the founding trademarks that the Coca-Cola company holds and they're probably not about to let you lot use it. Try to come up with your own ideas Michael Johnson.
I do like this one a lot though. It's clean, balanced and is very elegantly shaded.
I know it's a slashdot tradition, but the italics fonts are really quite difficult to read on screen, especially in big blocks. Otherwise, I quite like Jason's design.
Peter's is good, but a bit cluttered with borders and lines in my opinion.
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
Whatever the design flaws in slashdot at least I can actually read the fucking articles.
Oh wait...
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Personally, I like the center content better on Michael's design and the sidebars better on Jason's.
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
Okay, well first off I guess i didn't really take into account /.'s current status, as opposed to the proposed new designs. I still stand behind my font face statement, I oppose leaving it set to browser default because New Roman is a horrible choice in its own right, and because it makes /. look incredibly generic. And because, once again, virtually nobody "chose" TNR. They left it that way after MS chose because they don't even know there is such a thing as a choice, or that theoretically the user should be able to control the formatting of the content if they choose to. Users see the Internet as just like TV. They can't decide what actors play parts on TV shows, or whether the news anchor is a male or female, or the font used in graphics, so why would they have a choice on the computer?
/. "professionally designed" but of course with an interesting method of paying for it (free laptop). But you're right that it's not necessarily going to be that way. But I just want it to at least look like a pro designed it, regardless of the winner's credentials.
As to size, however, you're right because sizes are specified as "100%" now and it's not too bad.
As for "professionally designed," from looking at many of the submissions, many of them are from professional designers, and (assuming they are the best) I would expect one of them to win. Which would make
I really hate that "upper left corner" style of Michael's...where's the rest of the fucking box? Is there some kind of bit shortage where we need to conserve every last byte in transmission? Seriously though, the corner is little more than fluff and does little to enhance readability or make the articles "pop". 93 thumbs down.
Michael's design is the only one Ive seen that doesn't overwhelm the readers with massive chunks of dark green everwhere. There's a header, with enough identity to make it feel like Slashdot, and the articles. No massive shapes drawing your attention away from what you're trying to read. I know those side items are there thank you very much, I don't want them waved in my face.
Jason's design is like using Microsoft Office on a PC. Lots of action, lots of functionality in 150 buttons. Michael's design is like using Pages on a Mac. All the stuff you need is there, but it seems easier as it's not waving every single thing possible in your face.
Hi guys! Check this one out, I wanted some feedback.. let me know! (I have 2 versions..) http://www.umlautconception.com/slashdot/slashdot. htm
http://www.umlautconception.com/slashdotv2/slashdo t.htm
summer is coming soon. serious web designers are getting a small break and would like to try their hand at getting a $4500 worth laptop (thats what we care about most) but unfortunately it seems the contest is almost over. want to be completely satisfied? then deadline extension please...
jason kraft
osg.sys