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.

Comments

I have to say

[Soporific]

I really like the current look of Slashdot. What was the point in changing it? Just to change it?

~S

Re:I have to say

[tha_mink]

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

Re:I have to say

[4im]

Having a look at both the winner and the second using Firefox on Linux, the winner is definitely better looking than the second - the winner respects my font settings, while with the second many parts of the page are simply unreadably small. For that reason alone, there is simply no contest between the two.

Re:I have to say

[digitalgiblet]

Here's a crazy thought. How about allowing each user to choose which way they want to see it. Slashdot could jump to the forefront of web-technology and market this ability as something totally new and original and come up with a new name for it like "skins" or "themes". They already have a "preferences" page.

I'm not sure the world is ready for such customizability, but slashdot should boldly step into the late '90s world of customization!

Phew

[Alioth]

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.

Light mode?

[foo fighter]

What about the light mode?

I have Simple Design, Low Bandwidth, and No Icons checked in my preferences. This gives me a very streamlined, efficient way to read /. 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.

The winner's entry doesn't show this view of /. and I'm worried that it'll be removed as an option.

Please calm my fears! Tell me light mode will be part of the new look.

Hoping for something new

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

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.

Too Busy

[corby]

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.

Thumbs Up

[Detritus]

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.

I agree. The runner-up seems FAR better.

[Richard Steiner]

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...

Let people choose

[houghi]

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.

Judging by the comments...he got it right

[gevmage]

Reading through the comments on this forum so far, looks like Rob got it right. About 1/3 like it a lot, about 1/3 think it's good but they're reflexively resistant, and about 1/3 sounding like country music singers and how they "long for the old one". :-)

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.

That's the whole point

[fm6]

If the new CSS support is any good, Slashdot should work better in text-based browsers. The whole point of using CSS is to separate content from presentation. That makes it possible to take the same page and display it sanely on a GUI browser, a text browser, a PDA...

The purpose of CSS is not to make pages pretty. It's to make pages portable.

Re:the ultimate design-by-committee

[Bloke down the pub]

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.

No it wouldn't.

Putting each individual feature of possible designs to an individual vote might.

Downplaying the original CSS redesign

[Laebshade]

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.