Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot CSS Redesign Winner Announced
The winner of the contest is Alex Bendiken. He will receive a new laptop as well as bragging rights as the creator of the new look of Slashdot. You can see his winning design in a near complete form now. Feel free to comment on any compatibility issues. We plan to take this live in the next few days. There will undoubtedly be a few minor glitches, but please submit bug reports and we'll sort it out as fast as possible. Also congratulations to Peter Lada, our runner up. He gets $250 credit at ThinkGeek. Thanks to everyone who participated- it was a lot of fun.
I really like the current look of Slashdot. What was the point in changing it? Just to change it?
~S
i like it. Clean and simple.
We all want to know what sort of laptop he's getting ;-)
(looks fantastic btw, job well done)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
It looks kinda like gnome... Doesn't it? I can't say I care for it very much.
Blocky, too much wasted space and those same colors.
Mmmm.. Donuts
It looks great. Nice choice.
I like the old stuff better...
That is a very crisp look. it still feels like slashdot, just fresh.
Im a gamer, not a grammer major. This post is full of spelling and grammer mistakes.
Id just like to congratulate Mr. Alex Bendiken on a job well done and that his design was also one of my favorite designs throughout the contest. I cant wait till the design is rolled out onto the live server.
GL HF!
Welcome our new CSS overlord, Alex Bendiken.
steal it. Thanks.
They want their rectangles back!
No offense as I have always enjoyed the simplicity of the site for the last x.x number of years...but the revamp in design sure looke familiar. Looks like /. meets mac
nt = no text
Many of the entries were just too busy and distracting, or very Digg-ish (i.e. looked like a soul-less link farm). The winning design IMHO doesn't muck with things too much, but gives an aesthetically pleasing facelift to Slashdot. The only problem I could see with it is that the "Slashdot" logo (presumably should appear in the upper left) didn't show up on any browser I tried.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
It looks nice, I guess. But I really like slashdot as-is. Biggest complaint is the new location of the 'Read More...' link after stories. I'll be searching for it for a month or two before I get it down to muscle memory like the current one.
Unpleasantries.
Yuck. The main body text is in a sans-serif font. Hard to read.
While his design is very clean, it's still the same. You should allow people to submit radical themes, and then let people choose a favorite in their profile. Slashdot... news for green things by people who like green things.
It's an incremental improvement in the look. Big deal. It's nice, but for this he gets a laptop?
Perhaps the problem here is editorial: Taco and the gang couldn't stomach a more radical departure from the old standby.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
I wonder if Peter's design going to be used as-is, or if Taco will make a few tweaks to it first. For example, Alex's design incorporates quotes as separate, indented paragraphs. Slashdot not only lacks this capability today, but Taco himself pointed out that it is not feasible given how much the quotes and editor comments tend to be mixed. Perhaps he's changed his mind?
;-)
Personally, I'm a bit sad that Jason Porritt's design didn't end up in one of the top slots. (His design was the one who's mockup had the "infinite paragraphs" bug in Opera.) I personally thought his design was extremely good looking, readable, a huge step forward, and yet recognizable as "Slashdot".
Anyway, congrats to Mr. Bendiken. You're now more famous than you can possibly imagine. Don't spend it all in one place, okay?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
i like the second place entry better.
Supplies!
Compare the preview link to this PNG thumbnail from the author's website:n tent/uploads/2006/05/slashdot.png
http://summit.makalumedia.com.nyud.net:8080/wp-co
The images for all the rounded corners appear to be missing.
I just re-designed my house. It's was gray, but is now slightly darker gray. I've widened the white trim around the windows and porch railings a bit. And, I added a remote keypad for my automatic garage door opener.
Seriously, I can take the new page, put it as a 50% transparent layer under the old slashdot, and it comes close to identical. Is there something more under the covers?
Now maybe we can get on to the less important stuff like fixing the mod system. (Which will now demonstrate its fickle nature by modding me to -1.)
(I love slashdot. I think it is one of the most important forums on the internet. This re-design seems very similar to the old design... I guess it wasn't intended to be a makeover.)
... hoping the price of the new laptop doesn't get exceeded by your bandwidth costs this month ;)
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
It's OK, but on the demo page the ad is HUGE, and way too in-your-face. Takes a lot of valuable space. Please don't make the same mistake Yahoo! made with their non-flowing redesign; they say 1024x768 but that's the resolution I have and it still makes me scroll around, which is dumb because hey, I thought we'd all learned that fixed dimensions are bad!
still, good luck with the new design.
that's my first impression
This is just wrong! Are we going back in time? When the entire world is going to Web 2.0 = rounded corners?
Seriously speaking, I love the new font and the blockquote... Better than the perma italics. Only the new design looks a little too much spaced out for my taste.
Oh and could someone please tell me why we are having this redesign? I don't see a vast difference as such!
Well, I am somewhat surprised. I use Firefox 1.5.0.3, and it does not show the "Slashdot" "News for nerds" in the linked "preview".
/. is going under cover. I get a link if I over over where the /. title should be.
I guess
Go figure...
gus
.. if only.
here is a laptop you may promptly sell to pay for your bandwidth bill
the winning design is ugly, the current look is better. However, the runner up design is very smooth/nice looker. you should reconsider using that one instead.
looks, well, a hell of a lot like the "old" slashdot without the safety rounded corners.
ôó
Just my 2 cents, but I think the use of a downward-pointing triangle on the left-most section headers is a poor choice. My natural tendancy (which may differ from yours) is to click on the triangle, expecting a drop-down menu. Instead, it does nothing in Firefox 1.5.0.3.
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
1. Remove 1998-circa rounded edges and replace with squared off edges. 2. Use gradient fills that weren't available in 1998. 3. Profit! (or at least get a new laptop) Yawn.
Wow, I'm pretty impressed. I had absolutely no idea what to expect and I like the clean, polished look. It has kept the "Slashdot" while at the same time managing to bring the whole site right up to date.
Some people have already commented about wasted space... first off I don't think this is really true, it seems to be more down to the fact that everything is less "bendy" at the edges.
Well done on this, even the original icons fit in, although it would be nice to see these gradually phased out as more clean and professional designs come in.
if you aren't going to "mix it up" and go for something differnet. It looks exactly like /. in its current form. big deal.
What about the light mode?
/. stories and comments. IMHO, it is the best way to view /. with no mess and a minimum of garish color schemes. The only thing it lacks is the Poll slashbox.
/. and I'm worried that it'll be removed as an option.
I have Simple Design, Low Bandwidth, and No Icons checked in my preferences. This gives me a very streamlined, efficient way to read
The winner's entry doesn't show this view of
Please calm my fears! Tell me light mode will be part of the new look.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
SO GOOD!
Looks ok to me, I think the main thing is that Slash is moving on (FINALLY) to some new standards. I use things on Digg like the thumbs up/thumbs down buttons, and it's just one example of how things 'should' work nowadays, in regards to Web UI at least. I say "bring it on" and we can see what works, and hopefully, ways to improve it in a faster manner than in the past (Debian release comments anyone?)
fak3r.com
Yuck. Why did they go with the blocky? Lada's entry looks smooth, polished, and like the current generation of Mac/Windows!
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
We fear change
Technoli
I like the design a lot. Very clean, still readable, and the clearly-indicated quoted sections are great. Very nice to clearly see what's quoted and what's editorial at first glance. Kudos.
I do NOT tolerate change......
xao
http://TheHillforum.hopto.org
i like this design but pink was best evr ! bring bak the ponies :)
xx
bring bak the ponies!!
Slashdot'll never catch up to digg at this rate :(
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
NOOOOOOOO!
/., run for your lives!
Web 2.0 has infected
Looks to be the same to me, save a smaller harder to read font. A lot of other entries looked a lot more pleasant (no, I didn't submit, so I'm not bitter). I know Taco wanted the site to be different yet the same, but I think this is far too much on the "same" path. Not all change is bad, Taco.
today is spelling optional day.
Ok, I give up. Where's the collapsable sections??
But I do completely agree with A) it's not a democracy, although I also like the runner-up much more.
But, in reality, it's not big enough of a change that I care.
...but with Slashdot's colors. For shame.
No offense to the design winner, but too often CSS styles websites just end up a bunch of gradient filled rounded corner boxes. Its like the CSS community thinks with one brain cell. The collapsing side menu is a nice touch though. I would hope that the state of the menu will persist between sessions. Having something collapse or expand is annoying if it resets on every visit to the page (i.e. no point in offering it then). Also, I hope you bring back the running tape of the last few article icons at the top of the page. At a glance I can decide if I should bother to read slashdot or wait for an interesting icon to appear first.
Overall though, it is only a cosmetic change to Slashdot, and I don't think there is any reason why Slashdot cannot start adding theme support to their website. Why fixate on one theme? Why not take the top 5 designs and offer them in the preferences. That IS of course the beauty of designing a website with CSS. With one change of the CSS link, you can have your website easily look completely different.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I like it. Very clearly still Slashdot while making this a bit more modern. Slashdot has been living in the past for far too long.
But at least it's using CSS throughout, so it can be customized more easily. The current CSS use is quite haphazard, so while this new look isn't very impressive on the surface, it's a vast improvement underneath.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
The winner is pretty damn boring. I guess they were going for "simple" over "stylish".
As has already been said, I like the curent layout better.
Some of us have a real hard time reading sans-serif fonts. I also like the existing soft edges a lot better than the harshness of the new design. But like everything else in this world, no one seems to give a damn what I think.
This design is too busy and too dense. You need to put some more whitespace in here. It is hard to focus on just the story summaries, for example, without feeling encroached on by the other elements.
Also, News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters is too tall and thin. It is difficult to read and distracting.
I wish we had something a little more fresh. This design it a little too loyal to the legacy design.
I do appreciate the move to Sans Serif fonts, however.
What's up with the new funky non-serif fonts? And the squishy typeface?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
If you make the browser window too small it breaks.
Alos it's very, very boring.
The old or the new are about the same to me, but where is the tagging on the new look?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
While I didn't think the classic slashdot look needed changing, the first thing that struck me looking at the new slashdot 'packaging' was a karma soothing appearance.
Why the hell not make these designs available as themes and let us L^Husers make the choice?
Salut,
Jacques
His was the only design in final few that I liked. All the others were too bloated/messy and broken on my browser (Opera.. although they seemed broken on IE too, and one on Firefox also).
This was the only design that worked on all 3 major browsers, its simple enough but pretty, and if it were my choice I'd pick it so I'm glad he won.
Congrats Alex!
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I hate TNR as much as the next guy. But I really thought that /. would have gone with WingDings by now. Nothing says 'elitist' like a site written in WingDings!
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Is it too much to ask that we keep serif fonts?
I like it. It has a nice clean look. I'm glad too see that the italics and serifs are gone. They are hard to read on many displays.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
And I'll join in the chorus who despise sans serif article summaries.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Screw the haters; I love how the new redesign looks. I think the right one was picked. Just one suggestion though (and I really hope the necessary people read this): in the upper left corner, can we line up where it says "login" and where it says "sections" so the left edges are flush? I think it would be a nice aesthetic improvement. In other words, the arrow icon should have square dimensions. Again, great call. Can't wait to see the new design launch and I don't mind saying goodbye to the venerable-but-vintage look.
#roses { color: #ff0000; } #violets { color: #0000ff; }
I really like the runner up best, the current Slashdot second, and the winner is third or more. Now I'm all bummed out.
The geeks will hate it.
Insert witty sig here.
It's like transitioning from a Nintendo DS to a DS Lite. Trim the bulk, make it look a little cooler, we still get the same stories, but what about the colors? Not saying the current color scheme is horrible, but i could've done with a little bit of change. I still like it, just not overly impressed.
You constantly struggle for self improvement - and it shows.
Hooray for bad Engrish on fortune cookies
I should have entered.
How...blah.
OTOH CSS is crap.
None of that matter, the real [problem with slashdot ahs nothing to do with how it looks.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I can't see the Slashdot logo in Firefox. And it won without a logo. think reading Digg would be great, instead of /..
/. en espenol.
/..
Might as well put
No puedo ver la insignia de Slashdot en Firefox. Y ganó sin una insignia piensa que la lectura Digg sería grande, en vez de
Fonts look like total ass
Why didn't you make it look like Mr. X's Web Page?
When I click on the comments link it goes to the normal comments page.
I want to see how comments look, it's more important than to see the homepage.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
A site that is dedicated mostly towards issues concerning the open source and Linux community should at the very least support browsing via Lynx and Links.
I am sad to report, however, that neither browser renders the site in a fashion that is suitable for everyday reading. I don't blame the browsers themselves. A site like OSNews manages to render excellently with both, while offering a similar layout as here.
A few weeks ago there was that teaser taste where a few potential favorites were displayed. I liked several of them. This newly declared winning CSS does not impress me at all. Looks like a step backward. Chunky. Blocky. Wasted space. Nope, I don't like it. I don't like it at all.
All I've seen is a replacement for the front page and general stories. What about sections like Your Rights Online or Games? Please tell me they're not keeping their garish colour schemes?
There was a story about Sun here a few weeks ago titled "The comedy of Scott McNealy". The new Slashdot design should perhaps be called "The comedy of Cmdr. Taco".
I rather like it! I find it very clean and unobtrusive. I was afraid that slashdot would pick a design that was encumbered by a lot of noise or trinkets. :-)
When I first clicked on the link, I thought it looked horrible. Square corners, very plain, hardly a redesign at all. However, it's just that it's slashdotted. If you can actually get it to load, you'll see that it's quite nice looking, with rounded corners and collapsible sections. I like the second place entry too, but given the choice I think Alex's design is the best.
The new design looks like dog barf. I guess it saves on bandwidth, though, which is $$$ in the bank to the Slashdot guys.
What's with the unreadable font? And the square corners? I feel like we just lost two decades of graphic design wisdom.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Squaresville, man. Needs to be a bit more hip if ya catch my drift.
PS: 1967 did just call and asked for its lingo back.
My main concern, though, is that these "advanced" interfaces are making Slashdot harder and harder to read in browsers like Links. It used to be totally text-browser friendly, but that is no longer the case. Sad for a so-called techie site...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Hundreds of slashdotters already lead such pathetic lives that they contemplate or carry out suicide in large numbers, so why increase this possibility?
Read more... has too much padding/margin on its right side, it should be over further to help close out the section the way the x of y comments is at the left. Also way too much wasted space with the menu on the left being hover buttons instead of plain links. I know some people have some attachment to the sickly green color, but seriously, its been inducing vomiting long enough.
Check out the cave on the east side of lake Hylia. Strange and wonderful things live in it.
Wait, it's the same but somehow different.
Worst CCS makeover, ever.
I think for the first time we're actually slashdotting the slashdot server! Anyone have a coral cache link? Help!
fak3r.com
I understand the merit of competition, and the effort needed to screen nice style sheets, but it would be so much better if we, the end users of slashdot were allowed to pick it ourselves. Not with votes, but with choices! Everybody's doing it, so why not Slashdot?
"Civilization is all about beating the environment into forms that suit us better." - John Carmack
1. Spot story really late after slashdotting. 2. Make a dick of myself by talking shit about the incomplete version. 3. Profit! (or at least get modded up) Yawn.
I like the second one a bit more but they are both excellent designs. My hat off to the winner and runner up.
WTF?
No title. Less slick than Kuro5hin. Lame.
Here it is in all of its incomplete and incompatible glory. http://jiggit.com/slashdot/newSlashdot.htm Congrats to the winner.
Will there be a way of keeping the current one?
I, being that I don't like change, would just want a profile option to allow either.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
Personally, I feel the design was quite well thought-out. Here's what I noticed:
Here's what I think could be improved upon:
I understand that this is how things are on the current site, and simply persisted in the new graphical makeover.
Congratulations to Alex Bendiken. The redesign is very nice. I particularly like how easy it is to scan down the page quickly and pick out individual elements. The new design gives Slashdot a much more polished and tidy appearance.
Arial instead of Times font? This was the big change. Getting rid of the background and rounded corner images (probably not so much getting rid of, but failing to implement) being the other minor differences?
Oh well, I can't complain, I didn't try.
Windows has more viruses because linux has more virus coders.
I must have missed the poll on this.
So he did some minor changing of fonts and box colors. Really, that is about it. No major sweeping changes. No rearrangement of significant contents that I saw. And actually... ...that is the secret to winning these kinds of contests. Sure, you could go for bold and daring. Commit fashion suicide and creating something challenging. But typically, judges who area owners/users want just minor improvements on what they already have. Not any big redo.
Ultimately, I think that is why this CSS won. (Which isn't that great or bad of a thing, IMHO. That is just how these kinds of contests usually run unless there are some major flaws with the design to start with.)
Can we get rid of the all uppercase Slashdot slogan? "NEWS FOR NERDS. STUFF THAT MATTERS." I don't want to get yelled at everytime I go to Slashdot. Just make it normal "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters."
cool feature;)
/. /.-ed
Just tried to edit my preferences here http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=edituser
and guess what?
503 Service Unavailable
The service is not available. Please try again later.
Switch 1st and 2nd place...you got them backwords...
Why not have a selection of different CSS styles to choose from when you are logged in? That way people can select themselves what they like most.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I don't see why it would be difficult to have multiple versions of the site, one of which could be a text browser-friendly one (didn't there used to be a twin page like that?). While I don't know too many people that regularly use links/elinks/lynx (my wife does occasionally to look up recipes on the kitchen terminal), plenty of people use web-enabled cell phones. I've checked out Slashdot a couple of times on mine, despite it being a bit painful.
> What about the light mode?
Forget the light mode-- did they finally fix the fscked-up nested comment mode???
... Without the black background, is Slashdot less '31337' now?
absofuckinglutely stupid unless you're blind and using a screen reader
You greatly underestimate how much like Work Slashdot looks in an 80x25 terminal with amber or green on black text.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I often read slashdot without signing in, doing so only for making posts.
Partly because it's more convenient, partly because.. you know, I don't always want to be signed in.
There's been a few comments about minor preferences, such as whether the body uses serif or sans-serif. These kind of things should be easily customized without having to sign in.
So: It would be nice if there was a way of choosing a style sheet or changing minor preferences by specifying it in the URL, so I could simply bookmark it. For example: http://www.slashdot.org/?style=ponies&font=serif
I mean, would it be THAT hard to do?
I see why it's necessary to choose a good, simple default design, but it would be fantastic if it was possible to bookmark your favorite stylesheet this way, being able to choose from a large catalogue of people's designs. Imagine every user could register designs and you could choose someone's stylesheet by specifying it in the URL: http://www.slashdot.org/?style=user_radarsat1
That way people would be submitting new designs all the time, it would be a great way to generate some creativity on the site.
I dunno..
Anyways, just an idea.
I agree. What about all of us who want to use a text-based browser while reading about whether to upgrade their 6-month-old $600 video card to the latest $600 video card?
So, now Slashdot gets gradients and a new font. That's it? That's not a redesign. It's a "visual update".
I've seen the two designs that came one-two... and they're not quite space efficent.
Take the winner and compare with the origional. The origional is tight... some say too tight. There is little or no spacing around the non-story text (titles, menus, etc).
The winner is very like the origional, except that the spacing around the titles, menus, basically everything that isn't story text, is very loose. The spacing is much much larger, and wastes screen estate IMO. It's unfortunately also rather plain, plainer than the origional.
Now take the runner-up. It takes all the browser width, which is popular in most sites now. It has a better spacing around the non-story text, but still could use some tightening up. It also looks much better -- it has the shiner look.
I think being tighter (more like Google's GMail) yet stylish, will help.
--
# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
You guys have obviously never been hacked.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
I guess I din't read the rules of the contest... Was it only open to MOZILLA based browsers;)
Why the fade-in effect on the "n of m comments"-bar below the article ("article storylinks"), but not a fade-out effect on the "Posted by"-bar above the article("article details")?
Not saying it would be better with 2 gradients. I just think it feels unbalanced right now.
Oh, and I like it. Good job.
"stupid unless you're blind and using a screen reader"
...Or using a PDA or cell phone to browse.
Where are the up/down arrows on the right-side slashboxes? Will we be able to arrange them?
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
Wow, I love it. I didn't have much hope for the redesign. I assumed the design would change so much it just wouldn't "feel" like Slashdot anymore. I must say the winning design keeps that Slashdot feel, which I'm very happy about.
My only nitpick would be to make the arrows for the collapseable boxes a little smaller. They look too big and bulky compared to the rest of the items on the page (keep the hit area the same size though obviously).
Great job.
This redesign is outstanding. Much, much better than the current look. Congratulations to Mr. Bendiken.
I like the runner-up's better -- the winner looks too much like the current Slashdot. The site needs to move somewhat into the future, but then we had this problem when they insisted people move away from sending their responses in by snail mail to be typed in by a hard-working cadre of monkeys. I think they need to be swapped, but hey, not my sight, not me who has to field the angry, tempetuous emails.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Why not implement both and let the user decide? I am no web developer, but I have seen sites that allow you to choose your page style (at least when using Firefox, "View -> Page Style"). Would that be possible here, or is it too much work to maintain?
The text on the buttons looks a little cramped in Opera 9 beta 1. screenshot
How's that line go again? ..."
"Meet the new boss Same as the old boss
All that just to make Slashdot look like a generic CMS template? I was half expecting to see "Powered by PHPNuke" at the bottom.
Changes in the CSS shouldn't affect in any way what you see in Links (assuming Links doesn't do much with CSS... haven't tried it in a while. w3m 4 life!!). Of course, some html changes were made it seems, but it looks mostly the same to me. As a frequent text browser user, the main thing that bugs me about slashdot is the glut of links that precede the main body. I don't care to scroll through those links every time.
Looking at the new design (out of text browser land), I will say it's slightly prettier than the current design. However it doesn't seem any more readable and abounds with 1 + 1 = 3 noise in the same way the current design does. People have been reading newspapers for ages, yet newspapers don't make every heading a heavy contrast stripe across the entire page or sharply delimit every margin... Is it because ink is expensive or because ink is distracting? I also would have liked an off-white background and unspecified font size and style of the main text for readability's sake. In my own modest web designing (home pages and such), I've come across a good rule of thumb: if the page is more readable in lynx, links, or w3m than it is in Firefox, then it needs work. The current slashdot is pretty darn readable in a text browser once you get past the ton of links at the top. I can't say I saw any CSS redesign entrants that improved upon that for readability. (Now if I was hanging slashdot on my wall, I might prefer one of the CSS redesigns... but I'm not; I'm reading it)
Bravo! The subtle nature of the changes is very appealing. I can't wait to see this go live. It'll be almost like having a brand new Slashdot. Kinda reminds me of the last time my wife changed her hair...hmmm, better call the hair dresser...heh heh...
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
great choice!
very nice indeed.
Even if it isn't a democracy around here, why should the site not strive towards such ideals as much as is feasible?
/. population.
This is an American-based site, with many American readers. Of course, there are also numerous readers from supposedly democratic Western nations like Sweden, France, England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Italy, Spain, and so forth.
People from America should always strive towards free expression, and the application of democratic principles. That's just part of being 'American'. It's the very essence of what anybody who considers himself or herself an American should stand for.
Not surprisingly, this is even a better environment for true democracy (ie. not republicanism) than a nation. Each and every individual can actually have a say, and not just through some self-serving "representative". The question of "Which design is better?" could be put to the entire
Rob didn't want something radical, he wanted an updating of slashdot itself; similar, but better. For everyone here who thinks it sucks and how dare Rob do something this screwed up to "your" site, go make a site and for your own community there! That's what Rob did 10 years ago.
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
This redesign looks way better than the current. Can't wait for it to go live.
Also the type size is too small, seems to have lost a point. I'll have to go to "150%" (from 120%). Why is it that "designers" think that san-serif fonts in very small sizes is teh shit? It's really teh lame!
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Too be honest I'm not a fan of the newage big blocks and rounded edges, I like solid colors as well.
Will we be able to set it to the old design in our profiles?
I'm glad it works for you and glad this guy gets some bling. but without seeing how the message board is threaded under this new look, they all look the same.
I just checked the URL. It's on Slashdot itself.
Doh!
(Anyway, it did take a few seconds to load the banner.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
the LCARS version.
I'm honestly seeing no comparison to the Mac OS. Have you had any exposure to or experience with the Mac OS at any point? 'Cause I have, a few different times, and this design has precisely zero to do with anything Apple makes... Is it their Web site, which also uses a controversial white background? Or what?
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I usually scroll through all the stories, and read the texts diagonally. Fast. The small font of the winning theme is just too small for that.
/.
And no I will not increment "minimum font size" just for
Sans-Serif is good, though.
In my preferences, I have set OSTG Navbar off (Misc tab in preferences) When I set the Navbar to off, the proposed redesign doesn't look good at all. Or is that just me? Internet Explorer 6.0 on Windows XP SP2
I prefer the old/existing. I see no triangles on the "sections". I see the left menu bar now taking up more space, so that by the time you reach the articles after the left and right frames, the page is half whitespace with the articles squeezed into the middle. From what others seem to be saying, the new also doesn't gracefully degrade when javascript or colors or fonts are turned off.
http://insitemotion.com/slashdot2/
Michael Johnson's entry..
I found this in Alex Bendiken's blog... If this has already been shared, my apologies...
Kris
Remember when Windows were washed, mice were trapped and UNIX guarded the harem?
Maybe because it tested the browsers a little too hard? I just checked it out with Firefox, and although it's more attractive, important parts of it didn't render correctly.
That could be just Coral's cache of it, however. I was having trouble getting to the live copy.
wow, it looks like digg, good job...
It's like /. but CURVY!!!!11
That's a lot of penguin t-shirts.
Putting a re-design to a vote of Slashdot readers would be the ultimate example of design-by-committee, and would therefore result in the ultimate in useless, unreadable, un-navigable websites.
In my opinion, the second place entry is miles away from the first place, and quick frankly, rather poor. There is little contrast - everything just kinda blends into one... one blegh. It certainly looks as if it were designed by an engineer, not by a graphic/UI person - perhaps engineers like to look at the website equivalent of pudding all day.
If that was second place, I dread seeing those further down the line.
The redesign chosen is definitely an improvement over the current look.
RTFM; please, I beg you.
The sample page doesn't validate as HTML 4.01. Checking the code, the offending snippet appears to be in the Book Reviews section: ....org/article.pl?sid=05/11/18/1535249&tid=228&ti d=6">Joe Kauzlarich's review
Looks like the winning entry uses the literal "&" where it ought to use & (in that section anyway). Not a show-stopper, but it would be nice for Slashdot to validate properly.
No statement is true, not even this one.
I'd say the biggest change is that it's now almost actual HTML.
At a quick glance, it looks like the only error is forgetting to encode the links properly.
Even if there are a few more than that, it's still a HUGE improvement over the steaming pile of something-that-vaguely-resembles-a-web-page-but-no t-really that slashdot has traditionally served.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Please just use the user's default font and font size! pleeeeease! That's one thing I always liked about slashdot. There is really no need to screw with the fonts.
You know, you have the right to your opinion of course, but this same thing happened when Freshmeat updated their look back in the late 90s (maybe they are due for an update). A bunch of people who can't accept change and new ideas slammed the webmaster for what they did to the site, making him shut freshmeat down for a bit to teach them the lesson "Hey, its a free service that I put a lot of work into, so stop complaining assholes".
the first entry hurts my eyes with all the useless bordering. I get it! a green bar signals a new article i don't need another rounded grey thing at the bottom being a redundant reminder. The second entry takes up far less space and is less of an affront to my eyes. IF you had to pick i'd pick 2. However, i would rather stick with what we have right now.
slashdot nepotist: You're doin' a great job Alex!
Hi. I like to use my DS to browse the web while away from the computer, without the hassle of booting up a huge laptop. I like to do it maybe on the back deck sometimes, in the tropical breeze. Unfortunetly, the only solution available at this time is a text-based browser called retawq found in LinuxDS.
In short, fuck you.
...keep the old look? I thought Slashdot (the current look) was just converted into CSS a few months back; So why can't there be an option to just change the Slashdot.org to the stylesheet or our choosing like at: http://www.csszengarden.com/ ? It just take a few lines of JavaScript.
I think what would be really useful is a 'skip to content' link right at the very top of the page. This could be hidden using the css 'display: none' property but would show up for text browsers. Obviously it would just be an in-page link targeting the most recent news story.
www.markwheeler.net
Sad to see that this type of person has become so much more common on slashdot these days: People who can't look at something beyond what their tiny brain can come up with after 2 seconds of thought. Text browsing is still useful nowadays for a multitude of reasons. But having said that, I wouldn't assume that just because they are redesigning the default format for slashdot that they are removing the light UI option, which is much better when using a text browser.
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
seriously don't change it. the colour scheme is boring and the fonts suck. are you guys crazy?
Ok I'll tell you. What gives is that slashdot didn't ask you to decide. Believe it or not, the rest of the world does not necessarily agree with you.
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
I've been using a GreaseMonkey user script to apply this style to this site for the last couple weeks. I know the new design is supposed to be deployed in the next couple days, but we all know what "couple days" means :)
I'd recommend installing it so you can browse with the new look right away :)
Here is my home page.
Most informative Slashdot post ever! THANK YOU!!
Regarding the "read more" link: it is too far to the right. I have to move my mouse like 7 inches to reach it.
It is for all intents the exact same design, which of course was the biggest biatch about the constraints in the first place.
It would be useful to have three components to the new stylesheet: one each optimized for screen, print and audio.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
And something changed? Here's my entry http://slashdot.org/
you don't use the main site for that - they have a seperate mobile one
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
/. is in need of more than just CSS. I would rather an emphasis be placed on usability instead of eye candy. I personally can't stand the menuing on the left hand side. Not only does it feel positively ancient, but it gets in the way of my eye travel across the screen. The way articles are squashed they appear as though they are an afterthought to the ads. I understand ads are necessary, but there is a reason I come to the site.. To read the articles. Finally, that green is just terrible.
It really feels like the rules of this contest were "Change everything, but you aren't allowed to change anything that matters." The winning design, while I'm sure was beyond my abilities and talents, ended up looking just like the old design because of the contraints. It doesn't look new or fresh at all to me.
Using dillo (gentoos current one), i also cant see any changes (no css support in this browser), besides i think all the junk at the top and bottom has been shrunk by a few lines, maybe, other then that, i see no diffrenece. The text is still all crammed together and hard to read, but it could be worse, i could be using firefox/konqurer.
Lots of whitespace, except between the characters. I don't know what font that is, but he font metrics seem to be f*cked up, making the characters short, wide, thin strokes, and horizontally crowded. In contrast to the characters being kerned very closely, the leading is huge. The end result is very difficult for me to read.
If I bump the font size manually [CMD-+ twice], the body becomes legible, but everything else is blown up so big that only 1 or 2 story blocks fit on the page. [1024x768 resolution on 12" iBook]
One: It downloads real real slow - as if it's been slashdotted - compared to the prior version. And that's with Firefox. Heck, even the Washington Post or New York Times renders faster.
Two: It looks like someone ripped off various biochem news websites. Nothing wrong with that, but if this is a "new" creation, I'll eat my shorts.
Three: There is no three, but I hate giving two problems when I can overload my counter and give three.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I think this entry was the best -- some of the others were "prettier", or "better" from a pure design perspective. However, this design retains the familiar Slashdot feel while legitimately improving the feel and readability of the site. Not that my standards are that high ... I just wanted to make sure we didn't have headlines rendered using pixel fonts ...
(Score:-1, Wrong)
Yeah, the runner up is vastly better than the winner. Why don't you let us vote with our Prefs? Make the top ten finishers available as preferences. Chris
I totally agree but this is basically what Rob said he wanted, just a fresh coat of paint. I submitted a design that was a complete overhaul of the site, he said that even though he liked it, he was passing on it because it didnt look like slashdot. I think a bigger change would have been really nice. But the winner of the contest did do a good job, considering.
Joseph?
If you're viewing something for text then images / misc eye candy serve as nothing but distractions.
A text based browser is perfect for viewing the actual content of a page without all the unnecessary cruft.
You can't use a graphical browser on a shell account.
Slashdot loses any credibility as a true 'news for nerds' site if it won't even render properly in Links with the default (IE not the 'Simple Design') layout.
I thought about submitting, but actual work got in the way.
I'm glad I skipped it, because, having looked at some of the other designs, this is one of the more poorly crafted re-designs. I would have just been livid at being waxed by a look that, as far as I can tell, only has the gimmick of collapsable headers going for it.
The unfinished corners, blocks of grey, text floating in a sea of white, and gradient backgrounds all conspire to build a turn-of-the-century look. Slashdot will now go from a mid-90's look to an early 2000's look.
Great.
At least the runner up used borders for story postings. $250 for having a clearly better design has to sting a bit.
The designs look so similar. If I didn't know any better, I would say a good bit of code was shared....
"You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." - S. G. Colette
Serif fonts are a thing of the past. They are not attractive. There are no web sites (except slashdot) that I visit regularly that use Serif fonts.
In conclusion, all Serif fonts should consider dying.
Joseph?
I have to agree with some earlier comments. The runnerup is far superior. Less busy, more compact, streamlined and just plain easier on the eyes.
Heck, why not just skin the site? It's CSS right? Which means content is divorced from layout. So why on earth would you not just implement both and let us choose? I'm sure most of us are using browsers which support it, you wouldn't even need to implement switching on the site itself.
An inability to do this would tend to suggest that CSS is not exactly being used well here.
I'm in the minority of people who actually likes the design and looks forward to using it. Way to go!
firestream.net
For you web experts out there, how does one do those rounded corners on the article titles without using an image?
ÕÕ
I might even turn these off
[x[ Simple Design
Simplifies the design of Slashdot to strip away some of the excesses of the UI.
[x] Low Bandwidth
Reduces the size of pages for people with slower network connections
http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=edithome
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The winner doesn't scale properly when the window is shrunk. I know this may not seem important to a lot of people, but having to use a horizontal scrollbar when the window isn't really that small horizontally is awful. At least the old design scaled.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
No fuck you because you're too lazy to use the fucking mobile version of /. instead of the main page you fucking retard
The purpose of CSS is not to make pages pretty. It's to make pages portable.
Really nice!
No, you just leapt straight back onto offense with shouts of "asshat" and "nerd-penis", once again dismissing text browsers out of hand, which is ironic given the way you attempted to turn his point back around on him.
It's also smaler. (Haven't checked whether it's because it overrode my overrides or what.)
It's literally painful to try to read it. Eyestrain in seconds. Have to switch to my reading glasses when my distant galsses worked fine with the old one.
If slashdot is serious about the mildly visually handicapped (which includes pretty much everybody over 30) they should avoid that like the plague.
If they're only interested in serving the young and healthy they might as well clone Wired.
Can't even comment on the rest of the new look (which might be OK or might have other problems) since the ache is too distracting.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
i knew someone was going to come up with this
ssh -L port:host:hostport
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Love the winner. Love the runner up. Slashdot looks shit as it is.
Goodnight London.
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
Slashdot will still be a useless POS no matter what CSS it uses.
... it's like the same.
I repeat: I totally agree.
Sit, Ubuntu, sit. Good dog.
What do you think this is, 1999 or something ?
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
I don't see why it would be difficult to have multiple versions of the site, one of which could be a text browser-friendly one (didn't there used to be a twin page like that?).
Having multiple versions of the site starts to become a administator's nightmare because of the overhead of keeping all the various versions working. Less of a problem when the content is all pulled from a DB like Slashdot is.
But this is what XSLT is for - serve up the content in XML and have the browser apply the XSLT stylesheet client-side. This has the added side effect of reducing bandwidth usage since you're not shifting the styling and layout data over the network every time the page is loaded.
The icky problem with XSLT at the moment, is that whilest all the mainstream browsers (even IE) support it, there's no way for the server to tell whether the browser is capable since there is no header the browser is required to set if it is.
In any case, if your web site doesn't work in both modern browsers and text browsers then you must be truely clueless when it comes to web design.
Use elements that are applicable to the *type* of content (i.e. tables are used to output tabular data, not to position random stuff on the screen. Menus can be presented as unordered lists, etc.). Then style those elements to give you the visual effect you need. Text-only browsers can discard the styling data and they still get to see the content - the correct use of elements gives the browser good hints as to how to display the data. Small-screen devices such as PDAs can select a different stylesheet.
And if you're expecting everyone to have Javascript then your site is very badly broken - Javascript-only features cause serious usability problems (for example, they may force someone to open something in a pop-up window when they don't want to). Javascript is an *enhancement* - build your site without it and then if you want to add *optional* enhancements then write some Javascript that modifies the DOM tree to add hooks to the right elements.
Interestingly, if your corporate website doesn't meet the W3 accessibility guidelines then (depending on your location) you may be breaking the law - many parts of the world have laws that prevent businesses from discriminating against the disabled. These often extend to corporate websites and large organisations have been sued for sizable chunks of cash for ignoring these laws.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
yikes. what a mess. a little browser testing before this is released please!
It's interesting to look at how many people complained about the new design, without complimenting anything on it.
Is it normal for people to be so negitive, or is this more specific to the slashdot / geek crowd?
Looks great - to me, with good vision. But can't Slashdot seize the opportunity to improve the accessibility of the site for blind fellow geeks?
Looking at the HTML, here's two really simple things that would really help:
I develop a free web browser for blind people called WebbIE) but I think these suggestions would help JAWS and WindowEyes screenreader users, IBM Homepage Reader users and everyone with non-visual browsers. How about it? Show everyone how it should be done!
Having said that, I hate three column designs. You heard me: they suck. Particularly when the main column is much longer than the sidebars, resulting in a narrow column of text bordered by wide, empty white expanses. Well, I suppose it's too late to get that changed now.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
You're downplaying the original CSS redesign. Before the redesign, Slashdot was not anywhere near CSS/HTML spec compliant. The redesign accomplished 2 things:
- pages load faster due to smaller pages
- seperated most of the styling from the content (CSS)
- easier to maintain/modify
Don't downplay the original CSS redesign. While the front look may have not been altered much, a lot of changes went on behind the scenes.
Meh. It's ok.
I thought this was supposed to be a new design. Not a "tweak" of the existing one.
At least it's familiar.
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
oh FFS - text based browsers in 2006?
absofuckinglutely stupid
Why is it stupid? I frequently use eLinks because it's a whole lot faster than firing up a graphical browser (why exactly do I need graphics in order to read text news stories?).
I've also found myself using Elinks in an 80x25 console on a machine while waiting for it to install a Linux distro - it certainly helps pass the time. Not to mention those times when I've had to go searching for drivers/configuration/whatever which I needed in order to actually get a GUI (how many people do you think use eLinks to hit nVidia's website and download the drivers?).
Next you'll be telling me that reading mailing lists in PINE instead of using web forums is "absofuckinglutely stupid" because clearly the fact that it lets me read the interesting posts 100x faster than a forum is pointless, right?
http://blog.nexusuk.org
The old look may have been ugly, but at least it was clean and obeyed my font preferences. Soon we'll all be swimming in a sea of gradients and badly chosen fonts. This new design has too many horizontal lines to be easily read too.
"oh FFS - text based browsers in 2006? absofuckinglutely stupid unless you're blind and using a screen reader"
Which implied that you failed to see how there could be a use for them aside from being blind.
Clearly, there are many uses for text based browsers even in 2006; others responding to you have pointed out some of these uses. The real problem is not only were you quick to display your ignorance, but you did so in an obnoxious and insulting manner. Your subsequent comments have only reinforced the impression that you are someone with anger problems, poor impulse control and a surprising humourous lack of ability to reason. Next time you decide to share your thoughts, calm yourself down, take a few deep breathes, repeat to yourself "Everybody does not hate me" and post without using unnecessary profanities. You will make yourself look like a big boy then!
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
I notice in my little FireFox toolbar, under 'view', there is an option for 'Page Style'. Can we keep the old design as an option for those who don't want to switch, and just make the new style the default? Heck, can we even have the runner up as another style choice?
I applaud Rob for a) implementing CSS months ago; b) deciding it was time for a design freshening; and c) picking an attractive winner.
I do have a couple of thoughts.
The green gradient backgrounds seem to make those areas darker than the corresponding areas of the classic design. I was struck by a very slight feeling of disparagement by this (the darker color, not the design). While the color may be mathematically correct, it doesn't seem correct visually.
The gray gradient backgrounds (story footer) seem a little flatter than I think they were intended to be.
The gray slashbox headers could stand to be a little darker. The contrast here with the white slashbox title is a bit weak.
In the left side menu, inverting the colors on mouse over is too drastic and heavy, and conflicts with the feel of the rest of the design with regard to this kind of UI feedback. It also makes my first thought about the green gradients more apparent. A much lighter color is called for IMO, perhaps a midtone gray to light green gradient?
i do really like the redesign, but as others have said, the runner up is better.
"Times have not become more violent, they have just become more televised." - Marilyn Manson
The choice of type hurts my aging eyes.
It's been fun.
--
A "soon to be ex-/. reader" C
I also would have liked an off-white background and unspecified font size and style of the main text for readability's sake.
...". Maybe I'll turn this off and look at the new /.'s colors and fonts.
/. folks aren't any more interested in such topics than most of the other awful web sites out there.
I found that it honors my chosen colors and font size. It has no choice, really, because when faced with a new browser, one of my first acts is usually to hunt down the config thingies for them, and check the little boxes next to "Ignore page's
Also, I've frequently run across the observation that you can quickly judge the "user friendliness" of a web site's designers. You just tell your browser not to override such things, set your default colors and fonts to something other than what the browser came with, and see what shows up on your screen.
The main symptom of user hostility is forcing a white background. The best comment I've seen on this practice is: Would you ask your users to stare at a lit fluorescent light? Many computer screens are fluorescent lights, actually, so if you specify background=white, that's exactly what you're doing. You're assaulting your viewers' eyes with a fully-lit fluorescent rectangle, and forcing them to take steps to mitigate your assault by spending time overriding your settings. Or just suffer from your assault, because they don't know how to mitigate it.
The print-book industry discovered this sort of thing ages ago. That why, for example, paperback books are mostly made with off-white paper. This is done intentionally, so that the books can be comfortably read in sunlight. The web publishing "industry" hasn't yet learned lessons like this though. And it seems that the
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
if you want to use a text based only browser (stupid) use the farking version of /. meant for cellphones
I'm sorry, but:
1. There are genuine reasons for using text-only browsers, so it's not "stupid"
2. If your web pages don't (by default) look good in both graphical browsers and in text browsers then you shouldn't be designing web pages since that means your code is broken to begin with. This stuff isn't rocket science.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
And I don't know if you're already aware of it, but this
still counts as dismissing text browsers out of hand.I just hate it. It looks like a simple book exercise in how to use CSS, not a real design. Boring, not as easy to read as the current Slashdot. The runner up is so much better in so many ways.
The reactions here remind me of the reactions to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiPr oject_Usability/Main_Page/Final_archive/MainPagere design at wikipedia not to long ago (except I'm for the changes here). It seems that whenever you do something like this, you'll get positive and negative responces
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
Both of the designs draw too much attention to the styling elements. This is to be expected for a design contest, I suppose.
However, the site elements should blend into the background. The focus should be on the articles, not the curved-and-gradiated superheaders.
Be nice to see a comment display page as a lot happens there. I don't mind it at all, which is less than ringing endorsement but still a positive ;).
... Standards and Practices !
I would add a:
text-indent: 4px;
to the Paragraph section as that little indent does tidy things up visually.
My 1 cent worth.
PenGun
Do What Now ???
Well, I tried clicking on the arrows the first time and nothing happened. After all your wonderful suggestions, I went back in Firefox and IE and clicked on the arrows.
It works fairly well in Firefox, but under IE (6.0.x), I had to click the arrows 4-5 times before the side menus collapsed. I've reloaded it several times and there's always that delay. At least the arrow or section should CHANGE colors or fonts to indicate you've selected it and it's actionable.
I also tried the runner up's site with no problems.
Mass moderation would work if moderations you saw were applied a weight relative to the similarity of their past moderations to yours. http://www.reciprodate.com/ uses such a feature.
I don't let the browser window (or other applications, if I can help it) occupy the entire screen. It is more difficult to read lines of type that long.
Here is the problem:
body {
min-width: 760px;
Does anyone have any concept of design at all? The winning entry looks like a three year old made it. The second place entry is a thousand times better.
However, the worst attrocity of this site remains: the horrendous color. Why don't you take a page from google or apple. Simpleness can look good... it doesn't have to make you throw up everywhere upon sight.
At least the content is interesting. Let the RSS feed continue.
So, this guy's the winner because his design most closely resembles the current Slashdot design?
What part of RE-Design am I missing here?
I thought a competition for a RE-design actually meant making a new design, that may or may not be based on the old one.
The winning design is basically the same old design, with slightly spiffier graphics and collapsable blocks. That's it... hardly a re-design. More like putting shoe-shine on your worn-out sandals and calling them new shoes.
I for one am very disappointed in this choice, given the quality of the other finalists.
Personally I would have wanted Michael Johnson's design.
-- This sig for rent.
...the one that looks most like the existing design! Only with more rounded edges, because rounded edges are the true definition of Web 2.0.
(I'm only kidding, BTW. Congrats!)
Why on God's green earth would you tunnel X over SSH to use a text-based browser?
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
The winner looks almost like the existing site but with little more than a gradient applied to the tabs. The runner up was a superior design and a more fitting evolution of the site.
try in THIS thread
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
Well I guess it is too late, and really I don't care what the site looks like, AS LONG IT IS READABLE.
I thought it is worth mentioning the 3 Rules of the Internet:
1. Content.
2. Content.
3. Content.
Sigh....
When I look at the winning design by Alex Bendiken, I can't find any portion of it that has been done better than Peter's. The nesting menus on the left aren't nearly as smooth, and the text size is the same as the article text, so everything seems to blend together. I commend Alex for attempting to make teal look trendy again, but he has failed. Peter's color choice, although only slightly lighter, makes all the difference. Differentiating between separate sections of the site is extremely easy as well. It is obvious that Peter put a lot of thought into simulating real-world readership when he designed his layout. As far as content delivery goes, Alex's design floats boxes and dumps content in. Peter's is much more polished, with slight accents between copy shifts. This makes the right things stand out where they should. He even included a lovely box for the new tagging system, which is completely absent from Alex's design. The Slashdot people need to create functionality for users to pick their primary content layout from a list. After all, one of the main advantages of CSS is the ability to completely change the design of a site with just one click from the end user. I guess we can't expect much from a judge who's homepage looks like it's frozen in 1993.
P.S. This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated.
Collapsing the left sidebar's sections doesn't work with Konqueror 3.5.3 ( to be released soon ).
Never learn by your mistakes, if you do you may never dare to try again
Why are the contents of the right side advertisement bar left-aligned? It looks awkward to me... More often than not the box that contains the ads is much larger than the ads themselves, and left aligning them within that box just looks sloppy... as a web designer myself I'd say you should try centering them within the box or something.
Now that the HTML and CSS are all pretty how hard would it be to create a Greasemonkey script to use the runner-up's style sheet?
Turn the contrast and brightness on your display down from "tan".
I know it's late for an Anonymous Coward to post, and that this is a big nit... but
not everyone has the same pixel order on their screens. Rasterizing "News for nerds..." with ClearText leads to pukey discoloration for a fair number of viewers.
otherwise, quite clean and readable.
Thanks
Hmmm....
No sir, I don't like it!
crazy dynamite monkey
Well I think it looks great! About as good as Slashdot could possibly be without radical departure. Nice one, Alex.
Anybody else see a striking similarity between the winner, and the Mozilla "Modern" theme?
Both are neat. I personally like the runner up better. But both are modern and in a style that I would've used. I'm looking forward to seeing it in action. Linkstyles are broken in Camino, btw.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
one phrase: That looks clean. Good job, and kudos to you ;).
j^2
Your too stupid to read slashdot
Mod parent insanely hilarious. What a maroon!
That idea was good when I had it too, but apparently all we get is applause, and some references to using a Firefox extension.
And I still think it's a great idea.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
I doubt they care; you can't see their ads in lynx.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
It's true. I also use a text command-line in 2006 to do both development and administrative functions, and I write these funky things called "shell scripts" on occasion. I even use a vanilla (non-VIM) version of vi on occasion.
Not everyone is interested in loading up multi-MB flashy megabrowsers all the time. If I'm already doing something in a fullscreen console and want to quickly check things out on the web, I can do it with VERY little difficulty on sites such as Google or Yahoo News, OSNews, Groklaw, the various newspaper sites that I read, etc.
Only Slashdot has become unwieldy in such a browser over the past couple of years, and that was mainly due to its switch to the first CSS-based UI (sometime I saw as a complete waste of time which resulted in more browser incompatibilities and usage barriers than it gained).
Slashdot is a text site. TEXT. The main content here is textual news items and a series of forums with a very simple tree structure. It doesn't need all this fancy crap to work, and yet it foists that type of thing upon its users without giving us the option to use a much simpler UI. And yes, I know about the "light" interface. Try using it to bounce between stories and you'll know how worthless it is!
A technie site that doesn't cater to techie users. That's what slashdot has become. It used to be that webnmasters and site designers took pride in creating sites that were usable by even non-mainstream users, but no longer...
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
If that will be the new CSS I prefer the actual one, really.
I'll take a snapshot before it's too late.
(sorry if I'm a little late in the game)
1. having "So-And-So writes" and then a line break (or more specifically, forcing a normally inline <i> tag to display:block) looks weird and breaks the readability of the article intro, it makes the layout look more choppy, in places it wastes a whole line, AND it ruins the semantic value of the <i> tag (instead of say using <blockquote>). article intros are much easier to read as they are currently - this is a major step backwards.
2. secondary articles look too close to the footers of the main articles. the way it looks on the existing site (smaller, with the darker mid-value background) is much more effective at differentiating between the two types of articles, and makes it easier for the user to alternately disregard or focus on either.
3. article intro line-height is 1-2px too much.
But this new look is so cool- now they will leave us alone!
I suggest you read Slashdot
That's not stealing! It's copyright infringement! :-)
Much more easy on the psyche than the current look. Kudos.
// This is not a sig.
what are you doing in a full screen console?
it's called xterm - just put firefox on a seperate virtual desktop
it should be noted that i'm running a three headed setup one 17" CRT, a 19" CRT and a 19" DFP here at work though - i never have to take my konsoles, quanta or firefox off my screen
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
I like Peter Lada's better.
Both designs pwn in my opinion. I'm working on design myself... I'm struggling, it's not looking terribly good.
Since they're using CSS to position everything on the page, they can easily put the sections, help, stories, etc links BELOW the main content. The CSS can just put it back on the left for browsers that can handle it, and lynx users will be that much happier. Simple solution.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Right, because living life in text only is the only way to live! Freak...
Why oh why has slashdot forsaking the BSD section?
Nope. I dropped lynx years ago. Links is a completely different text-based browser that shows things like tables and frames in a proper way, which makes some attempt to match text colors, and which (in some variants) also has a GUI display so images and other things are present just like they are in the Big Boys.
Here's an example of www.osnews.com being viewed by Links via PuTTY on a SunOS server:
http://www.visi.com/~rsteiner/links.gif
and the main project site is here:
http://links.sourceforge.net/
I've personally used Links under OS/2, Linux, and Solaris with some regularity, and also on BeOS from time to time. It's a really nice browser for what it does. Except on Slashdot.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I understand the use of the simple design of Slashdot, for readability and saving bandwidth but as a web designer it just looks too... old? Out of date? The new winning design looks beautiful and pretty much stays true to the same look and feel of the current design. I am very fond of it. Props to the creator.
Kamran A
The new look is better in an evolutionary sort of way. Nothing radical and everyone will be use to it inside a week. For one reason or another they'll occasionally see the old version and marvel at how archaic it looks, like seeing Yahoo! from 8 years ago in the wayback machine.
Question: the winner does not appear to expose tagging, whereas the runner-up does. What is that about?
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
but why does anyone need this - other than to attract new readers. For that - and for that alone it is useful. Want to eliminate ads? Want to read slashdot in a really streamlined manner? The functionality has existed for years. Just go to your preferences, and check the "simple design", "low bandwidth", and "no topic" icons. do you want topic icons? then turn them on. do you not want stories about kde? turn those off. You can drastically reduce the amount of crap you had to put up with just to read the stories. Now, if someone could find a way to get CSS to eliminate dupes...
Thanks for the cool graphics slashdot - but no thanks, I'll stick with my low bandwidth text and +4 filter.
On some of the boxes that I admin at home, running X takes up more resources than it's worth.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
B) you have collapsable sections with the winner
C) read before you write
D) ????
E) PROFIT!!!!
I have just one serious complaint with the winner... The center column, which is the IMPORTANT part of the site, gets very, very badly smashed if your browser window isn't full screen-width, while the other 2 columns are full-width. Big mistake!
f r.png
/. and much better than the runner-up, IMHO.
eg.: http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/7969/slashdot0
Fix that one issue, and I won't complain much. It will be a big improvement over traditional
Two minor things though, if anyone is interested:
Many others have already said it, and I agree... There's just too much whitespace around everything. The nav-bar and slashboxes at the sides are twice as tall now, for no good reason. Having 50% whitespace doesn't look good... Not at all.
Please make it a somewhat different color. The "dark-green into black" gradient is very hard on the eyes, and doesn't fit in with the white page anyhow. Either start from a much lighter green, or make it a gradient to white (or grey, or yellow, or anything else that is NOT BLACK!).
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Keep the existing design but display every story twice in a random manner - Autodupe Technology (TM)
Although I may be the nth poster to say so...
The new design is absolutely spectacular, easy and the eyes and invites reading. Wonderful! Congrats on a job well done and a prize more than well-deserved.
Z.
I have to say that both are equally bad. The writing is too small and thin, the contrast is gone to shit, the rounded corners are harder on the eyes than quare ones, the articles have been squashed into the middle by all the cruft, it stinks.
These css sheet were obviously designed by people who think that running at 1600x1200 resolution "makes everythiing look better", and for whom javascript is considered as integral to the browser as html. My eyesight is bad bub, I run at 1024x768 like the majority of regular people.
Do you know what's going to happen if they apply this to the comments? I'll tell you. Everytime you load a new page, you're going to have to press Ctrl + to increase the font size because whoever approved this font sits way too close to their screen.
You know what I expected from the new css redesign? The exact same look, tweaked slightly for better( more professional) presentation, and possibly, just possibly, some features like collapsable comments. What did we get instead? An unprofessional harder on the eyes look, and collapsable "menus"!? What the hell would I want to collapse those for?!
Anyone could have done better than this. Anyone. There should be another contest, so this time real people can try, not wannabe arts students jumped up on coffee and "1337ness". It wouldn't take much. Just some effort and a small degree of professionalism in not trying to make the site read better, not look "cooler". Yeah it's cool alright. Cool like a handcoded Myspace site. Kill me now, or buy me a bigger monitor.
Thanks Taco. Thanks a lot.
May the Maths Be with you!
A simple solution. I've suggested it, as I'm sure many other have, and the suggestion seems to have been ignored. So far. :-(
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
This is what I call a successful redesign. You can still clearly see that it's Slashdot even though the changes are quite extensive.
Cool, clean, familiar. Kudos!
And remember kids: Never trust a computer you can actually lift.
I tried the chosen design in both links and lynx, worked fine for me, and was readable.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
The winner did a great job but I like the runner up so much better. All the underscored links look ugly.
Can't be arsed to read 6 full pages of babbling... this is not a re-design; this is general laundry. Good stuff your theme is refaced accordingly to the "seculum". Now get rid of the chaotic content and the million menues/submenues and/or "great" feed/channel/utilities that bloat the page and you will certanly re-design something. ermmm, I think I've just burned my positive karma out in one round.
***Game Over***Insert Coin***
And what about these whatever dept. strings? They are:
1. uninteresting
2. unfunny
3. time wasting
4. space wasting
5. and often stupid
Why are they there? Someone get rid of them!
I'm not so sure what problems you are having with text based browsers. Links works fine for both the current design and the new design.
Time makes more converts than reason
I actually like both of the redesigns, but it seems that, from a graphic design perspective at least, the winner is a little cleaner. Perhaps the rounded corners in the top left and bottom right of the article outlines separate the space better to my eye. Anyhow...both pages took a fair amount of time to load, and while this might be a simple question, is this because CSS has to load all the sheets before loading the page, or will my (XP) computer store the sheets offline and the sheets will load more quickly in the future?
And, not related to what the contestants really had control over (but hopefully not entirely off-topic), but is there a reason that you can't click on the article title to go to its page? Clicking the title seems more intuitive than looking for a 'Readmore' link at the bottom of the summary. I do also appreciate that the winner at least place this in the bottom right, which is the second place I would look.
URL? I wasn't aware such a thing existed, to be honest. There are no links to it from either the FAQ or the front page.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
No, the point was to change it just enough to annoy people, but not enough to allow any changes that might fix the basic design issues. Because, you know, it has to look like Slashdot. So the contest was to come up with new lipstick for the pig. When I read the list of restrictions and found out the judges were looking for something pretty much like what they already had, I lost all interest.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
The main Slashdot page certainly works with text browsers, but it isn't convenient.
You have to compare the current version to the pre-CSS version (which looked and felt almost exactly the same on text-mode as it did on GUI-mode) in order to understand the main thrust of my disappointment in Slashdot's direction.
The current (and apparently future) versions of the site are a huge downgrade by comparison, and for very little relevant functional gain that I can see. YMMV, etc.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I got the following unexpected response when trying to retrieve :
403 Forbidden
... foremost. The runner-up is definitely an improvement over the traditional /. look, as well, but my tired allergy eyes (I need relief ... FAST FAST FAST FAST!) make their way easily through the more generous font sizes and white space of the winning design.
Funny thing is, I probably get 95 percent of my /. usage from reading the RSS of top-level items in Bloglines, without visiting the site itself. I'm a scanner, sosumi.
Now there's a UI (Bloglines) that needs a redesign, too!
-- Jay Small | Small Initiatives | Sensible Internet Design | smallinitiatives.com
People have been reading newspapers for ages, yet newspapers don't make every heading a heavy contrast stripe across the entire page or sharply delimit every margin... Is it because ink is expensive or because ink is distracting?
Very true. The winner actually looks pretty ugly with all those dark blocks floating around in a bright page. I favor the runner-up for being more sane regarding the contrast.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Doesn't matter what you do to the CSS, there's still no replacement for the JenniCam slashbox option.
*sigh*
Karma only matters to me now and zen.
I find the CSS version far more readable in text browsers. Sure, the sections could be moved below the stories, but overall it seems less clutered in links (text mode table layout in links seems to confuse me).
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Why change it tho? (I might get a -1, Redundant for that sole line, I know)
You just got troll'd!
I would like to agree that the font is too small.
I have 14' monitor with 1400x1050 resolution and it's not readable.
It seems the clearest way out of the dilemma (change for the better, but not too much) would be to make ./ skinnable by allowing users to select one of several stylesheets. This is old technology, and now that ./ is effectively stylable, I don't know why they haven't pursued this option. Instead of picking the best in a contest, they could make available the best from each category (e.g., most radical departure, cleanest, most conservative).
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
So the article says " but please submit bug reports "and I troll around the slashcode site for a while, but I can't see a place to file bugs about the Slashdot CSS.
Am I blind?
Meanwhile, I am not handicapped in the slightest nor do I have less than the top-of-the-line equipment, yet still resort to text-based readers to scrape the buggy, crashing Java, the flashing banner ads, the running and jumping and popping up hover ads, the crammed in links to everything but Dear Abby, and the useless 50 graphics and frames and buttons and gizmos and widgets out of the way in order to read the three sentences worth of content taking up half-a-postage-stamp's worth of space in the middle of a 4000x3000 page whose type is sized down to 4pt and written in dark colors on a loud textured background sharing table column 8 row 13 with a 130MB gif of a burping Jesus.
And a comment like yours leaves no doubt in my mind that you're the one designing pages that way.
the one i know of us http://slashdot.org/palm/
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
I have to say, the fonts, the shading... looks VERY professional overall and I cannot wait for it to go live! Wheeee!
-pete
You know what I did about it? I cut my /.ing by 9/10ths, get all my news now from feed agregators which include Slashdot and scrape it for the stories it links to so I can jump there directly, and when I do feel motivated to post in a clued discussion, I ensure that I post annonymously. So that I can just dump a word to those who will appreciate hearing it and not have to worry over the 10,000 kindergardeners who will flame at it and mod it random.
Meanwhile, Slashdot frets about redesigning the CSS.
there is also a wml interface i didn't know about
http://slashdot.org/slashdot.wml
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
I don't care about the overall design of the site as much as the font - you gotta be able to READ the site in the first place. The default fonts I'm seeing on this so-called "winning design" are just too damn hard for me to read. Sorry Slashdot, I always loved this site, but I'm not going to bust my eyeballs trying to do it.
Just my two cents.
-Rick
...I'm guessing a third of people didn't actually get the images the first time they looked at it, resulting in a very bare and ugly page.
Is it because ink is expensive or because ink is distracting?
I'd imagine that it's a little of both. Don't forget that major newspapers will be printing hundreds of thousands or millions of papers every day; all that ink is going to add up over the course of a year.
There are also other issues, of course - newsprint tends to come off on your fingers, so if there was a lot of extra cosmetic ink on the page, the readers' fingers would get that much dirtier (I know I hate how dirty my fingers get after reading a paper now).
Finally, PCs are not newspapers. They have different design considerations, and so naturally lend themselves to different types of design.
've come across a good rule of thumb: if the page is more readable in lynx, links, or w3m than it is in Firefox, then it needs work. The current slashdot is pretty darn readable in a text browser once you get past the ton of links at the top
I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say there - do you mean that the current page *does* need to be redesigned?
Now if I was hanging slashdot on my wall, I might prefer one of the CSS redesigns... but I'm not; I'm reading it
I know where you're coming from, but for me (and I suspect a lot of people), I tend to spend a very large proportion of my day staring at my monitor. What's on it had better be pleasing to my eye, and while plain text in a terminal window is definitely *usable*, it's not very aesthetically pleasing. That's a very subjective thing, of course, but my opinion would be the exact opposite of yours.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
That really is truly amazing.
...to steal it.
That is so amazingly amazing, I think... I'd like...
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
absofuckinglutely stupid unless you're blind and using a screen reader
And how exactly do you know that he isn't?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
New CSS/Old CSS who the fucks cares so long as I can:
I agree completely! Please use my default font family for the article summary text and discussion.
/. is it didn't presume to choose my font face and font size for me, they way most other inferior websites do. Now /. wants to join the ranks of the inferior??
Even more important, please use my default font size for the article summary text and discussion!!
One of the main things I've always liked about
Why would this new designer think I want to read body text that is 85% of the size I've already chosen for my system!?
Does your web app choke on + characters in e-mail addresses? (RFC2822 s.3.2.4)
Lycos webmail does - you can't send to any address with a + in (either thorugh the web interface or the WebDAV-based one...
I'll give it to the designer of the winning submission: it looks nice enough. Granted, I couldn't pull off something that nice myself so I wont go too negative. However, i'm going to agree with many others that say you're just, "polishing a turd" with this redesign. Nothing great or radical has come from this design in my opinion -- It's just more of the same with all this web 2.0 type look and crap. What about changing to a color scheme thats easier to read? geez... /. frontpage in sometime to come so it kind of feels like this oppurtunity has been wasted to experiment with a different way of thinking for _at least awhile_.
As for the second design... it takes more chances than the winning one does, and looks better.
Chances are there isn't going to be another "major" cosmetic change to the
If I had my way, I would have made the website themeable so that you could do you own fance little css design, and upload it to some centeral server. To go even farther, you could maybe browse all the designs that have been uploaded based on previous votes or something like that. The design for the front page would then be the overall winner for past month or something similar. Oh well...
1) Name one that I haven't already rejected the validity of (like needing ot use links because your firewall when you already have SSH - use the damn -L option)
Ok, how about:
1. A text browser is vastly faster and more lightweight than a graphical browser.
2. Why would I require a graphical browser to read text news stories? The graphics just detract from the content
3. I have frequently used eLinks in a console while stuck without a GUI for whatever reason (there are numberous reasons why this may be the case - I'm not going to list them all, use your imagination).
4. Using the -L option to forward ports through SSH would involve having an HTTP proxy to forward to (you can't forward directly to an HTTP 1.1 server without playing DNS tricks). There may not be a proxy available.
5. What possible reason is there to *exclude* text browsers?
2) Bullshit
Ah yes, the art of pretending you've won an arguement you've already lost. Would you care to qualify that comment?
http://blog.nexusuk.org
What, what is this? Where are the 5? 5 what u ask? The 5 main reasons to get out of bed ladies, yes thats right the 5 highly descriptive icons that tell you at a glance what u are getting for breakfast???? Woe the fate of the 5.
/. a better place :p
Otherwise a top site redesign who'd have thought you could make
Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign ! But I don't fully agree, I think the slashdot design is flawed from the start -- I would of preferred a redesign
I think the new design brings slashdot forward into at least the 90's, maybe even 2000's. Good work to the designer! It looks great! A welcome update.
Will life ever go on without serifs?
The new winning design does not work for me for a number of serious reasons.
1. The font is illegibly small in comparison with my preferred browser settings - why ignore user preferences?
2. The upper-left title graphic does not show up - what web site am I browsing again?
3. The collapsible sections are jerky and annoyingly slow - this is not slick.
4. Too cramped and not enough hierarchy in font sizes.
The second place design suffers from none of these flaws.
You should try reading your journal entries yourself:
Generally I hold slashdot users as a group more intelligent than the average person, so seeing bigotry - which is the direct manifestation of ignorance and immaturity - running around slashdot like wildfire was disturbing so say the least
I think you've just made a prime example of yourself.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
How about you cheapskates just fork out the money to get a redesign done by a professional instead of asking a million designers to put tons of work into something they won't get a return on. All of you designers that submitted a design are a disgrace to the industry and all you are doing is hurting yourselves. From now on I'll just ask my clients to compensate me in iPod Nanos.
Is this a common phenomenon? The font size is smaller and harder to read than in the current version on my setup, but maybe not everyone's.
It looks pretty terrible actually. Increasing the size (in Firefox) makes it look pretty good.
Can we keep the size as it was in the old version please?
OK, since I don't have the Lucida fonts specifically used, I end up falling back to Helvetica. And that's a butt-ugly bitmapped font with no anti-aliasing. As a result, the new design looks like ass warmed over. Where can I get a decent Helvetica TrueType font?
Looks great! It will make Slashdot even more enjoyable!!!
it no longer renders on the Clie browser Netfront. that really sucks. maybe a little more testing should go into a web site created by, read by, and loved by those who's flag often flies for cross platform independence.
nature loves variety::society hates it get your variety at http://www.monkeypantz.net
Nice. But don't make the new IT section that putrid brown.
They say the mind is the first thing to
i hope this new redesign provides at least a print layout of a story with comments. the current site doesnt offer print-formatted functionality, and i have to print the browser page with all the crap...sometimes you just need a nicely formatted page to take with you to the office shitter to enjoy the discussion in its entirety - or wipe your ass with if you'd rather mark it -1 redundant.
You can only read the top 5 comments for each story with the mobile version. What if I want to read them all?
(Valid XHTML + CSS would let my browser do that -- but unfortunately slashdot is neither.)
My other car is first.
4. Using the -L option to forward ports through SSH would involve having an HTTP proxy to forward to (you can't forward directly to an HTTP 1.1 server without playing DNS tricks). There may not be a proxy available. ;)
thats why you use -D rather than -L
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I disagree. If done right modernizing a web site can make it look better in text based browsers.
Throwing out all the crap HTML3 legacy tags and table layouts etc and making sure the structure of your document is intact can make a page look more readable in a plain text browser then ever.
Have you compared how Slashdot looks in Lynx before and after their HTML/CSS redesign?
Why lose the sereph font in the body? looks good and sets you guys apart pleaes keep it.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
No, you fool! didnt you hear, K5 is for lamerz! everyone reads Digg now.
-- listen to interesting music, support independent radio... WPRB
Why do we still have to keep the ugly GREEN? Eeergh.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Anyway, I think that he was referring to your comments about holding slashdot users as more intelligent than the rest of the population and that you were shocked to see immaturity and ignorance displayed here. The vehicle that was used to display the ignorance and immaturity is immaterial here. I think that he was just thinking on a deeper level than you....and if are shocked to see bigotry on display on slashdot, then you simply havent been here long enough.
Congrats LordKazan, you have obviously made some fine friends today with your witty, erudite and insightful commentary on the subject of text browsers. I am sure that the slashdot community is now painfully aware of your knowledge of the subject. Now go away and post somewhere more appropiate, say perhaps myspace?
"I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you really have to sit in a dark room, then you should know how to turn the brightness down accordingly, also a recommended thing to do. The assault happens because of difference in brightness compared to your surroundings, not because of some arbitrary color on the screen.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
... just mosey on over to www.ghostzilla.com, install it, and then put the browsing window in a contextually appropriate app window on your screen. My bosses totally don't care what I do on company time as long as I meet my deadlines, but if they did and I were feeling sneaky I might, say, integrate the window into an Eclipse panel...
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
I have a black page-background, with the text having a white or blue-green background. I would like it better if the navigation sections would be at the bottom of the html file (like wikipedia) so I don't have to scroll through several screenfulls of it.
Also, I can never post with a text mode web browser due to the anti-spam image verification.
THe runner up is better in my opinion. Better use of space, but understandably the winner is better for the aged eyes. And we all know Slashdot is aged and full of old eyes.
Fine! I'll get my own website! With blackjack and hookers! On second thought forget the blackjack. And the website.
"Sad for a so-called techie site..."
Actually, aren't "techies" the sort who, you know, actually stay up to date with modern technology?
Wake up grandpa, it's 2006. Technology has advanced an inch or two since the 60s.
It's ugly, looks very un-efficient and un-techie, and looks like it has been shat out of a Barbie using an iMac. Slashdot had better allow us to choose our versions, or else the vast majority of Slashdotters will be very, very pissed, I think. I don't like change for the sake of change, especially if the old version works better than the "new and improved" version.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
The first element in each subsection does not pad the arrow image from the right side as all other instances. This only occurs in IE so its not that big of a deal but please you web developers really need to think of how these things will look in other browsers. Add some CSS comment hacks and fix it you lazy bum
;)
Good look BTW
I am a regular slashdot reader but apparently missed any announcement of this contest. If I had submitted something, it would have been at the bottom anyhow. BTY I know its /. but like to spell some things out.
Then will anyone ever read this comment? Other comments I have made seem to immediately fade into oblivion. Oops there I go.
J
My objection to the new look is simple.
I get to see less news on my screen.
(Actually it annoys me - each time we get a new version of - anything, it seems - there's more pretty borders and less actual content)
Can we make the empty borders go away please? (Yes, otherwise it's great)
"Cats like plain crisps"
Renders poorly in Firefox 1.5 and needs an alternate Style Sheet to get rid of the black background. Accessibility standards!
Oh, ouch, I'm not much liking the guy either, but I wouldn't wish myspace on my worst enemy.
I strongly prefer your design.
However, I must join others in calling for user customization on the styling - the best of all worlds, for everyone!
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
One of the primary reasons why Slashdot would NOT want to do something like offering skins is that you lose the strength of your brand by doing so. Slashdot is not a product per se, but it is a community, it has an established image, and they want to maintain that. If you offer ten or fifteen different looks for your brand then you lose position in the marketplace. Consider companies like Apple, Microsoft, even properties such as Star Trek, and the like. Now I realize that these are different types of businesses but each of them has a style and everything that is produced is consistent in that style, even if there are subtle variations here and there, you never feel like you have gone to a totally different website. Someone referenced CSS Zen Garden and that is not a great comparison to make. CSS Zen Garden is an experiment in what can be done using CSS for your design layouts, so providing a wide range of looks is a compelling way of demonstrating the point that they are making. Slashdot however is essentially a news service. They do not need to provide a dozen different ways to look at the news, they simply need an organized and efficient way of delivering it. In terms of product strength/identity, letting the user pick their own unique look for the product is borderline suicidal. I think the new design looks great. It is a bit more sleek and sexy but it still looks and functions like Slashdot.
tags. You can't develop CSS with invalid HTML; it's like trying to play darts in a tornado. How does anyone know this CSS works if it's never been tested?
I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I have to point and laugh at you now...
Changes to the CSS, now and in the future, can't possibly make it easier or harder for links to render the page, because even the newest versions of Links (GUI or text) have ZERO CSS support, which is my single biggest complaint with Links. The writers of Links2 are asking for donations to continue development, so I don't expect to see any improvements comming from them. And links-1 hasn't seen any improvements for a LONG time.
So, I'm afraid Links appears to be EOL, which is a real terrible shame, since no other browser, GUI or otherwise, can be navigated so easily without a mouse... Opera has a bit of similar nav functions in place, but it's still a cheap, uncomfortable, limited imitation at best.
It's frustrating when technology marches on, and otherwise great programs don't keep-up, but that's the sad fact of life. Nobody is willing to add basic CSS support to Links, so Links is getting more and more limited by the day, and, effectively dying.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I like the new design over the old one, but I will take the black letters over a white background with blue links any day. Slashdot Light is really pretty.
It's barely a change at all. Some of the entrants were really innovative, cleaning up a lot of junk and providing a very immediate interface. When you compare to entries like these, you wonder why they bothered.
http://skazani.pl/lukasz/projekty/slashdot/
http://insitemotion.com/slashdot2/
(no, I didn't enter either)
Xenu loves you!
May be Rob wanted just a facelift/upgrade from the old design - but I was dissapointed to the see the new one being ALMOST the same as the old one,only a little slickier .
I expected it to bring a lot more 'NEW' feel.
P.S: No "Go make your own site" replies pls !
Why does yahoo do this
at freshmeat you can set your own default font and size (without the need of overriding all fonts by default). that's an interesting option, because at the current state, the main text font of the winner, is not antialiased on my screen, while the current slashdot font is fine. i think on freshmeat you can even set your own css to display the pages. that would be really nice (and probably even more geeky). i'm also sick (even though pretty used to) that slashdot green. it's old, it's stall, it's boring.
i still like the design of the winner better, because it's more stylish round, even though i'm not entirely sure, if that doesn't take up too much space and distracts from the text. beatuy is in the eye of the beholder, while readabilty is pretty much something you can control (O_o).
Trying out Safari 1.2.4 here (Mac OS X 10.3.8).
When I first opened the page the menues on the left appeared to be all empty. Only after moving my mouse over the entries did they appear - but only in the "Sections" part.
Then I read the comments here and noticed one can click the triangle to collapse menu sections. I did that and voila! section entries appeared all. Untill I reloaded, now they sometimes are there, sometimes not.
Might be a bug in an older version of Safari, might just be someone overdid it with the CSS games. Not every clever hack deserves to be done IMHO.
oh yes i'm a "bigot" because i think using text browsers in this day and age are stupid
No. I was talking about your general attitude
perhaps you should go look up the definition of that word
Bigot, n: A person who regards his own faith and views as unquestionably right, and any belief or opinion opposed to or differing from them as unreasonable or wicked. In an extended sense, a person who is intolerant of opinions which conflict with his own
Sound familiar?
you fucking moron
Case in point - intolerance of other people's views.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
It's really cool.
Spam: Any activity on internet to gain popularity without paying to advertising companies like Google.
I really like the new theme, and I think it's great that so many people put a lot of hard work and effort into improving this community. Slashdot was in need of an updated appearance, and the thing that I like most about the new design is that it doesn't try to reinvent Slasdhot, it just tries to improve on what we are already enjoying.
I've already decided what size I want my paragraph font to display. Why do you think you are clever making it smaller?
Will you people learn to use RELATIVE CHANGES to font size?!
As a general rule, sans serif fonts are a triumph of style over substance. In a discussion oriented web site, the font should be chosen for readability over appearance. The great thing about Helvetica is that it makes your spelling mistakes 15% less perceptible. Huge appeal to the slashdot editors there. Not long ago the NYTimes adopted a misguided makeover incorporating bamboo-slat column widths crowding their primary asset--their journalism--into a claustrophobic prison window. I've cut my page views from daily to weekly as a direct result.
Slashdot is slashdot because of the admins, the stories and the community.
I think therefore I am... a Linux geek.
...is just me snoring...
Congradulations to the winner. I saw the preview, and I'm looking forward to the new Slashdot design!
jagossel
Slashdot still has a "light" mode. I've used it for years and am using it right now. It's a user preference setting.
The main limiter right now is that web designers are forced to use bitmap images which are inherently sized in pixels. Therefore in order to make the design sensible the font sizes need to be displayed in pixels too. If we ever manage to get generally-available vector graphics by some means designers will then be able to start specifying everything -- including graphics -- in relative sizes so that the absolute size of something can go back to being a user preference. Only then will this ideal of designers leaving the body text at 100% be feasible.
Of course, there will still be the need for bitmaps for things like photos, but ideally we'd be sending high-quality photographs to clients and having the browsers scale them to suit some relative unit. The limiters here are that data transfer speeds are still abysmal for lots of users (mobile device users especially) and that most browsers are terrible at scaling bitmaps. The former could be fixed by some mechanism which allows browsers to only retrieve the resolution they need, much like browsers are currently able to retrieve a stylesheet that's appropriate for their form factor.
Alternative stylesheets were a nice idea on the part of the CSS people at W3C, but in practice browsers seem to be pretty poor at remembering your choice of stylesheet between pages or between visits to the same page, meaning that you either need to switch it every time you click a link or install some crazy browser extension that tricks the browser into using the right one.
I think the point of this contest was to see who could develop the best CSS code, not so much the overall look and feel which has been vastly improved over yesterday's example.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Tahoma as primary body font is a disastrous choice, particularly on CRT screens. The letters are generally spaced so narrowly that words are hard to read, particularly between letters like i and l ("million"). And there is no italic, so the normal weight gets forcibly slanted. Tahoma is intended for use in dialog boxes and menus, not body text and headlines.
I have to say I really like the runner up's design!
The parent post gives the most important reason that Slashdot isn't offering user-selected themes.
The other reason is that ensuring that all themes work creates maintenance overhead, which might seem insignificant until you're actually the one responsible for doing it. It doesn't make sense to have five different looks for the same product unless you're going to somehow sell more of it as a result. The calculation is that people won't read Slashdot significantly more just because they can also get it in Pastel OMG Ponies! Pink.
For some reason, I think of The Onion with this new look...
With even halfway decent antialiasing, serif fonts are perfectly readable even on my 100DPI monitor. Personally, I just don't like Arial. Gives me too many flashbacks to IE.
Program Intellivision!
"Maintenance headache."
Program Intellivision!
yeah ! ...
Gradient, round corners, littles arrows, more gradient
welcome to july 2001 !! yay !!
[chinese democracy starts now
why? switch off css and huh? miles of navigation entries on the top of the page followed by images and forms. content comes after a decade of scrolling - this is bad for disabled persons with e.g. braille-terminals. shame.
* a merry live and a short one
Go to your preferences page and check the boxes for simple design, low bandwith, and no icons. Then turn off all the other extraneous sections and features you don't like.
What you will get is the equivalent of the old "light mode". Works fine in text browsers.
Thanks, Crow!
Won't some browsers let you use a user-specified stylesheet (e.g. Opera)? If so, couldn't you download and use whatever stylesheet you like for /.? These could then be offered by any 3rd party. I've never done this myself, but I thought it was possible.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
I dunno, let's have a look...
Hmm, looks fine to me. In actual fact, it looks damn good. Much better than
Tables suck!
Part Time Philosopher, Oft Times Romantic, Full Time Unix Geek
Unfortunately, there was some problem with the template for the first half an hour or so after the announcement. All the images were returning a "Service Unavailable" error, which is why there were so many people complaining about the lack of rounded corners and gradients. In fact, the design has plenty of those elements, as several people graciously pointed out later on ;-)
A small tidbit regarding the collapsible menus: I don't think many people have noticed the fact they also remember the state you leave them in, so if you collapse a menu, it'll stay collapsed. This is the case for all menus except the Services and Vendors, which, as Rob indicated in his comments, need to always be expanded by default.
-Alex BendikenCollapsability can be added without changing css.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I have to say that the runner-up is so much better it hurts. The problem with slashdot is all the noise. The collapseable sections would be a much welcome improvement. Don't see why they didn't go with the runner up. Just my 2cents
When they previously announced candidates under consideration I preferred the runner up immediately and still do.
There are a small number of things I'd change, but largely it's by far the better design IMHO. I wonder what the selection process was like...
Excellent work by all three web designers, but in my eyes, the clear winner is Michael Johnson. How the heck did he not win?
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Thanks. That looks like it might be useful.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Hooray
My comments were really about the pre-CSS site versus the newer incarnations, and also about the fact that these newer CSS variants to little or nothing to improve the situation for non-CSS browsers. Thus, while your comments about CSS changes are correct, they have little to do with the main thrust of my complaint.
Sadly, however, I have to agree with almost everything else that you say. Links is effectively dying even though it's effectively a best-of-breed browser.
The sad part of it, though, is the fact that web site designers *could* choose to continue to support it while also using things like CSS. All it takes is a little focus while testing to see how a page looks in a non-CSS browser. And a site like Slashdot could easily be a shining example of how to do that. It's a technology-conscious site.
Unfortunately, like the KDE developers, the folks at Slashdot seem more interested in flash than functionality.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Tables suck in most Lynx variants, but they rock in Links (really), as do frames.
:-)
The presence of proper support for those two items in Links is the biggest reason I abandoned Lynx in the first place. It's a very different browsing experience, and since you can also use a mouse with it in fullscreen Linux or OS/2 consoles it's even point-and-clicky if you want it to be.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I'm not blind, but that's not the point.
The main point it that I'm using a standards-compliant browser which is a bit non-mainstream but which is also still viable with almost all of the modern news-related web sites I've seen.
Unfortunately, Slashdot has been leading the way in moving away from usability with such browsers, and their newest direction doesn't do anything to improve that standing.
I use Links "because I can", and that should be enough reason. With a well-designed web site, even one that uses CSS, it would be a nonissue. With Slashdot, it's becoming a problem.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Taste, colours, politics, religion... Very ugly, but also very consistent, clear and very very /.
So I have to admit it's a good design, given the parameters set by the jury...
Congrats to winner and runner up! Big challenge.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
I ran my own contest concurrently. I had no winners (or entrants).
The creator claims that he spent "nearly 48 hours straight." The contest announcement placed the laptop value at $4500. It works out to $93.75 per hour. Considering the high profile of the site, it is cheap. Maybe it will work as advertising for Alex Bendiken.
I hope Peter Lada gets more than a $250 gift certificate and this thorough hosing of his webserver. The numbers look worse for him. Advertising?
They look even worse for all the losers.
A greasemonkey script for those of you who liked my design (runner up) more. I'll keep everyone posted on when this is released. Thanks!
ARGH! Why in the hell did I not participate in this contest?! Dumb Geek! Dumb, dumb, dumb! No offense to the winner or anything, but I'm not really impressed. Given the criterion of the contest, I'm not surprised, but all in all, I'm a bit disappointed. Oh well, hind site is 20/20.
Resources for Webmasters
The new just looks CLEAN and CORPORATE. Friggin hohum! Nothing cool. Nothing geeky. Just Clean & Corporate-looking. :(
maybe we will get a log out button in lite mode. I hate using /. on semi-public machines since I have to manually delete my cookies to log out.
I frequently use eLinks because it's a whole lot faster than firing up a graphical browser
What kind of ancient technology are you using? If Opera runs noticeably slower than eLinks, you need to get a new computer.
It has been quite a while, but I vaugely remember the "torn page" look of the original Slashdot, or at least the first few months that I was visiting it anyway (fall 1997 give-or-take).
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
Seems like you haven't been around long enough to have an opinion anyway.
I hate it i hate it i hate it i hate it, I want my old slashdot back you :-////
bastards!!!
I subscribe, please put the read more on the left ! It's way easier to click...
I love, love, love the new design. I can actually bear to visit this site now. I have always valued the content... always hated the design. Not only do you know news, now you know what margins are! And you know what legible typefaces are! Yay! Kudos for making the change! Great work!
That was my biggest beef with the old design. Italicized text is very difficult to read, especially big blocks of it. So hooray for regular Verdana!
Just install your own CSS. Forefox I did just that in Firefox. Read my journal for the details.
Am I the only one who gets a huge gap between the slashblurb and the comments whenever there's an ad in the upper right corner? (Not always one there). It seems the comment portion of the page is tabled below the right-side boxes (ad, username info, and "Related Links", which makes it go Waaaaaaaaaaaaaayyy down the page whenever a tall advert is thrown in there. Seems like the comments aren't thrown in the middle of three columns, but in the right column in a 2-col setup, where the top of the right column is split into two columns (blurb sub-column and 'right-side-boxes' sub-column). Clunky. Me no like. didn't it say 'report bugs' somewhere? where?
fuck yer dualboot Macbook, Mactard