Quote this comment

Steven Garrity Posted…

I thought about participating in this contest. When I first saw the W3C redesign, I wondered (as I presume the contest organizers did) why they didn’t chose to set an example of how standards compliance can be functional and beautiful. However, after actually using the site for a few weeks, it dawned on me that the new front page is very well organized and laid out. If anything, they could stand to improve the continuity throughout the site. I like the current front page more than any of the contest entries.

Quote this comment

Andyed Posted…

My picks:

• Encored Digital Media: with a spiffy column indicator.
• g2gk: nice header.
• Homeless Pixel: yumm, contrast.
• Shriver: one of few variants from the 3 column, well done too.
• Moronic Bajebus: another variation from 3 column.

Quote this comment

Timo Arnall Posted…

My pick would be this one. A design that has addressed the information architecture and interaction of the site, and radically overturned it. My only concern is the concealed main navigation, and the fact that I typically need to use the A-Z listings to find content that I need in the site.

Quote this comment

Liorean Posted…

My favorites were Ben Darlow's entry and the second of Seamus Leahy's entires. Their look attractive and they feature the information I want to see on the main page. Ben's entry is slightly better for a centralised navigation point than Seamus's, but they're both pretty good. Oh, and what I really think people must realise about spreading web standards, is that graphic appeal is worth more than radical and innovative use of web standards, for getting the large number of coders out there that output bad code to learn to do it right. That and the fact that the standards should be easy to find, search through, and preferably understand.

Quote this comment

Dave S. Posted…

Not meaning to slight the entrants, who all put a lot of effort into their designs, but... ‘Underwhelmed’ comes to mind. The CSS crowd is well represented, but the K10k-esque design crowd isn't. It’s obvious the latter category, the people who were supposed to enter, didn’t. That being said, there were a few good entries. My money is on Radu.

Quote this comment

huphtur Posted…

dave: the ridiculous amount of data on the W3C homepage probably scared away a lot of people. also funny to see how many designs did not set their backgroundcolor to white.

Quote this comment

Timo Posted…

I have to agree with Dave: the similarity of the majority of layouts (3 column, liquid), and the blandness of the overall design quality shows a lack of emphasis on the visual, interaction and IA. The original discussion here covered many of those areas. I don't see a significant difference between the current w3c design and many of the entries. Validation and standards aren't the issue, good, clear design is.

Quote this comment

Ben Darlow Posted…

I'm personally glad the K10K crowd didn't enter in their masses; whilst sites of that style are pretty to look at on specific platforms, they're not so great on a whole range of others which the W3C site is supposed to cater for. Of course this was the whole point of the contest; to find the happy medium, but considering the intended audience, I'd say tiny pixelfont text isn't exactly conducive to a usable design (Ian Hickson made a good point about the text on my site not being very readable, and that's a lot larger than the tiny text K10K's news posters names are written in). Ultimately though I'd be asking myself, could I see Tim Berners-Lee wanting to use this layout? If the answer is no, then it's probably not suitable for the W3C's website.