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Nate Posted…

A while back, Dave Shae shared his thoughts about the WThRemix contest. At least to some degree, his point was quite valid - namely, that quite a number of folks who would label themselves as designers opted to not participate. The WThRemix contest had 25 entries, but if a larger core designer group had entered, perhaps anywhere from 2-10 times as many entries might have been competing. I have high hopes that Dave's Zen Garden will inspire more designers to give tableless XHTML/CSS a try. Here are some things that I believe will work in favor of success for Zen Garden:

• On-going, without time limit
• No perception of prize loss
• Clearly states "designers only please"
• Entries will be screened by Dave, non-accepted ones will not be posted
• Most important: Great examples to get folks inspired

Congratulations goes to Dave for putting this significant project together, here's to the inspiration I'm sure it will create.

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Dave Shea Posted…

Thanks Nate! You've touched on my thinking exactly. I don't think I could have verbalized it better. I learned a lot from the WThRemix and Hack Hotbot contests. I participated in the latter, and found the limitations to be too great. The temporal nature of the contest meant a rush to get a not-so-well tested final product out. My hope is that the driving factor in participation will be that it doesn't actually take a lot of work to put a design together. Most of the thinking happens in Photoshop, the coding itself doesn't take days. One page to modify, where you can modify as much or as little as necessary. I hope to not reject any submissions people have spent time building. However, I'm definitely looking for quality over quantity. I'm reasonably satisfied with my initial examples, but my secret hope is that eventually the bar will be raised so high that they're the black sheep of the lot.