What is Digg?67 Comments
- korteenea, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Did anyone actually think to give some thought to the typography on these sites? Half of the sites had me closing the window before I was even enticed to click a link. Typography, unfortunately, is usually the first thing tossed out the window.
Personally I'm not a fan of Flash, but as Bengalbandwagon mentions above, it's the fastest way to create interactive elements. However, I'd have to say it was rather stupid to choose interactivity as the primary judging criteria for these sites. You can have tons of interactivity and still look like crap... and interactivity is not going to save a site that makes you want to hit the X in the corner. Interactivity alone does not make for a good design. - Mooseknuckle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I'm with cockbadger ... this was not a web-design competetion, but rather a "crappy flash" competetion...
Even the sitening site is pretty weak imo... Dont need to have overdone Draggable divs, and ajax just for the sole purpose of using the technology.
It's like taking a nice ribeye, and slathering it with Pepper and A1-steak sauce... Too much of a good thing just ruins it.
If anyone wants to see real web-design in action, check out the site someone mentioned above: CSS Zen Garden.
As far as web "programming" goes, type in AJAX on wikipedia, and scroll down to some working examples. Netflix pops to mind as a nice implementaion of AJAX (not to mention the known ones like Gmail and Google maps).
Again, hate to break it to you guys, but Flash is not web-development. I think it's an ephemeral technology that will soon be phased out when browsers start conforming better to the W3C specs for DHTML and CSS. - kyelewis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I came to the comments page thinking that I just had to comment on the overuse of flash on these pages. I'm currently running 64-bit firefox and can't be bothered closing it all down to open a 32-bit version to watch the flash content right now). But it seems you've all beaten me to the punch. Good job Sitening, at least someone actually gets it.
- alevel27mage, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Yeah please post some video of sites you did when you were 15 that were better and took less than 24 hours. I'm interested in seeing them."
A) It depends on what you count as a website. If you are counting these artistic flash things, then I dunno, but
B) There is an organization called SkillsUSA, maybe you know it as VICA, and there is a national Web Design contest at the High School and College levels. I'd say that the winners' site was much better, as it was completely compliant, fast-loading, etc. etc. Every competitor (in teams of 2) had to have a site done in 8 hours, with the theme/non-profit the site was being designed for announced at the very beginning of that 8 hours, and no outside materials (images, books, code libraries, etc.) accepted.
Don't underestimate young people, I guess. And as I said before, these 'sites' would be great in a pollution awareness kiosk or something, just not on the web. - kerbechard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I had a blast at the competition. The sites that came out to this gig were amazing. All of the teams did cool work, and I especially liked the pro site Sitening did. Great layout and solid code. I was on team Lorem Ipsum, and we were floored that we did so well against such great sites. After they gave us the award, we stood back stage trying to figure out what had happened.
I'm really proud of our team. We've never worked collaboratively on a project before, and we came together pretty well.
Shout outs to David, Josh and Kirby! ten weeks 'til the next one!
-Kevin - JosiahQ, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2There is a problem with coherently defining the term "web design", and I believe that was manifest at the cre824 festival this weekend. Is it programming? is it purely graphic design? We certainly know its a fusion of the two.
My problem with the competition is that there were no standards really whatsoever on how to judge the sites. The only flash my team's sites used was SIFR on one small title. I don't have a problem with flash at all, as long as the flash is used to provide a coherent and useful user exeperience, not just to ani-flashturbate all over the page.
And yes, we cared about type, very much in our project. To whomever asked that. It was one of my biggest frustrations with the professional winners site in that they didn't take advantage of Flash's ability to exert more control over the type. - taiso, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Take this angle - I just went out and bought a $3000 monster machine with a huge monitor and great quality speakers. Why on earth do I want to be limited to viewing a static site with nothing but square, flat graphics and the odd "click" noise (coutesy of IE!). It's like saying that all computer games should still run in CGA and 64K of memory just so a tiny minority can still play them.
It's all OK saying that people with low-end browsers/macines or geeks running Lynx want to be able to view websites, but technology's pushing forwards and web designers shouldn't have to hold back. I think the real solution in the majority of cases is to provide both - ie a snazzy, funky Flash site for those with decent setups and a standards compliant site for accessibility and those stuck in the dark ages. In 24 hours though this just isn't possible - as much as I'd like to have provided an accessible site along with the Flash site in our entry, the time limits don't make this feasible.
All the teams worked really hard on the competition and no one has the right to slag them off unless they've been there and tried it themselves. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thanks Kevin! I was shocked when I found out you were in the amateur section, and not pro. Very nice design work.
-Jon @ Sitening - gooru, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Gah! Why is there so much Flash?
- scottholdren, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Try lynx'ing the Sitening site.
http://team15.cre824.net/ - jimwarden, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I had to work (wildlife officer) as it was the opening day of deer season, but got to go by late for Kevin Rose's talk about digg.com and later to the award's dinner. I was really impressed with what they created in 24 hours, got to speak with several of the contestants as I am always looking for graphic and web design help as a eBay power seller.
Kevin was really cool, and sorry I missed the podcast of Friday.
Jim - dusingaz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Lots of trees have been hugged.
- bhsx, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Congrats to all the winners. Those were some truly inspiring sites. I agree that the Sitening entry was overall my favorite.
But the MFT team certainly was purty. Very crafty. - JAWS, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I have to laugh. I'm running firefox with adblock and no page came up for the winner, or 1/2 the other competitors for that matter. I'm using adblock "out of the box" (e.g., no changes to it's filterset)
- Blackthorne, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1So, it's not actually a web design competition. It's a flash design competition masquerading as a web design competition.
Any good web designer will tell you that if a big percentage of people can't view your site, that's not good design. The real goal in web design is to get your content across. Flash thwarts that goal. - okaysamurai, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Home movies from this weekend:
http://okaysamurai.com/cre824/ - mailman-zero, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1When I think website, I think HTML, XML, CSS. Tech demos of Flash's capabilities are not ever remotely what I want to see in a competition for "Web Design."
- dcskate101, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I agree with you 'bengalbandwagon'!! I'll just let all the 'diggs' speak for themselves =)
- tylerhall, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I was a member of the Tricycle team at cre824. We created one of the "horrible confusing and annoying flash animations" :) I agree with everyone that Flash is used too often. This competition was a clear example of that. I want to say thanks to the Sitening team for getting the word out that there are other ways to design a great looking website *without* using Flash.
As for why my team used Flash...1) It's what our bosses told us to use. 2) It was obvious coming into the competition that there would be bias against non-Flash sites. Hopefully next year that will change.
In the end everyone (win or lose) had a great time. Lots of excellent speakers, free food, and tons of interesting people to meet. - joshteague, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Here, here! Amazing weekend. Incredible, and inspiring work. Let's do it again next year. Cheers, Kevin.
- schrags, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1From a web design aspect, IMO most of the sites are crap. They are all just stupid flash sites, with a lack of navigation, etc. I HATE flash.... Now from an art design aspect, the sites are fantatsic.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1My company, Sitening, was one of the 8 pro teams that competed. We had a blast, and it was fun being the ONLY pro team that didn't use any Flash. We went crazy with AJAX-like drag and drops, fades, and sliders. Overall, most of the teams created some amazing sites in 24 hours.
- davke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yeah please post some video of sites you did when you were 15 that were better and took less than 24 hours. I'm interested in seeing them.
- dcskate101, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yeah, I tried to put the theme in my posting, but it was too many characters. The theme was 'To Act Or Not To Act, Our Planet In 50 Years.'
- joeyjojo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"and it was fun being the ONLY pro team that didn't use any Flash."
So, you were really the only firm that actually made a web site.
Why is this called a web design competition? Looks more like a flash decoration competition. - capajc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Hmm, the Mighty Fighting Tigers one is just a dumb graphic saying "Please download Flash 8". I could've come up with something better than that for a competition.
Oh wait... - panique, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Joeyjojo, you said it brothaman. I don't even have Flash 8 installed on my puter, it went over with a silent fizz over here.
I have a question though for all these marketing/designbots gone mad in flash...how do you work some SEO into your clients' sites so they can pull some traffic? - spin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1The only site out of the whole lot that was worth damn was SITENING | http://team15.cre824.net/. And I thought that it was damn good.
I am extremely discouraged by the complete over/mis-use of flash! Based on all of the demo sites i looked at, this even should have been named Flash24. - jimwarden, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Kevin (Lorem Ipsum)
Shoot me an e-mail (jimwarden@juno.com). I was sitting right next to you when you won and then you took off. To get some sleep no doubt. I want to talk with you guys since you are so close. I loved your work. Congrats to your team.
Jim - davke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Sounds interesting I'll check that out. Oh and I wasn't underestimating; I actually did want to see some of the sites out of curiosity.
And I definitely agree about this being much less of a web design competition than it should have been, but it does seem to have been a nice design competition and did yield some very interesting results in my opinion. - freakystyley, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Seriously, there should be three categories for this type of competition: web application (or task-oriented site), brochureware, and complete waste of time.
- jimwarden, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Hey Josh, enjoyed talking with you and your team. Jim
- Greg-J, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Am I the only one that found all of those sites uninspired and bland?
- kungfustickman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Wow those are really nice websites. I really like the creativity. The theme seems to be on awareness and pollution. I found these websites to be very thought provoking.
Good Job Guys. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Is this 2001 all over again? ...please can somebody assure me these last few years of web design not been in vain.
To quote Otto in A Fish called Wanda... "DISSAPOINTED"
To be fair, they do call the competition Design, and not Development.
Oh what the hell, cre824 just sucked... blaahhhhhhh - Blackthorne, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The only sites I know of that use flash are from major corporations or personal vanity sites. None of the major tech sites use flash. There are reasons for this. I can understand being defensive because you're very proud of what you've made (and rightly so). But in the real world, these sites would be very hard to get popular, and any content that did become popular would just be converted to text and placed on a non-flash site, which would then get linked.
- jimwarden, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0okaysamuri:
Thanks for the home movie link. I am going to view it after my bitTorrent download finishes.
I enjoyed talking with you guys out in the lobby. I was the guy in the green uniform. I really liked what you came up with, and your presentation was really good. "Our team has girls!" was my favorite. Being able to speak so well in front of a big audience will serve you well in the future. Send me some contact info. jimwarden@juno.com
Jim - kerbechard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"I was shocked when I found out you were in the amateur section, and not pro" -johnenshaw
Yeah, we were kind of surprised we were put into that category too. None of us are web designers/developers/flash experts. I do freelance print and video stuff. One of our guys does interface design for software apps and consumer electronics, and the other two do business application development and data base something or other. But according to the guys at the thing, since we aren't employed as web designers, we're in the amateur category.
Most of the stuff we did was learned over weekends and late nights; all for the simple pleasure of knowing how to do some cool stuff.
After watching Josh Davis speak, however, I REALLY want to get into flash. Our flash guy was pretty good, but DAMN, Davis was amazing.
In case people were there and don't know who Lorem Ipsum is/was, this is us:
David Kirby
Josh Teague
Davi Campano
and the geek with glasses Kevin Welch(that's me BTW).
I've seen some cool shots from the gathering, and I'm sure more people are going to post them on personal sites and flickr and such. So, thanks in advance. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0You can view all the photos here: http://flickr.com/photos/tags/cre824/
- jay314, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm going to come off sounding like a troll here, but I'm seriously disappointed with the sites here. Of the sites I could actually see (3 of the pro sites, all of the amateur), only one (sitening)made any sense. With the others, I turned off my speakers, spent 30 seconds clicking on things, and the left thinking "wtf?".
These sites completely fail to convey any message, let alone any information. Was there some kind of theme here? Pollution is bad?
I would have figured a team of designers -- even amateurs -- given 24 hours could come up with a nice-looking, well-presented, usable site of 4 or 5 pages. Instead, I am presented with either a notice to upgrade to Flash 8 or some abstract pictures.
And what's the deal with "SVAD"? A picture of buildings and a windows xp wallpaper? Is that the whole site? - kerbechard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Sorry about the links in the last one, I guess I should have read the how-to-post-a-link-on-digg FAQ.
In order of the above listing, here they are:
kirby - http://www.flickr.com/photos/hrtwrk/64791693/
teague - http://www.flickr.com/photos/79662364@N00/65354711/
campano - http://www.flickr.com/photos/hrtwrk/64791629/
welch - http://www.flickr.com/photos/79662364@N00/65352845/ - jaredly, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The designs are nice but the development sucks.
- kerbechard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Thanks to who ever took these, BTW
- kerbechard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0RatsAss,
I have to say, I'm glad somebody got the joke about the text on site. It was meant to be silly/simplistic so as to imitate the 40's/50's propaganda film for children (EX this one on table manners: http://www.archive.org/details/DiningTo1951 ). I think some of the people at the conference didn't fully understand the humor behind lines like "Using too much pesticides can make the drinking water sludgy" (for best comedic results, read this out loud in an patronizingly authoritative baritone voice similar to the one in the previously mentioned film style).
As for the shadow, yeah we found out about that too late to fix it. The browsers we tested it in (IE, FireFox, Safari) drew the pull chain correctly, but we found out later that there were some issues depending on plug-in/browser combos.
-kw - taiso, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I hope this doesn't turn into another Flash vs standards thread... this was a web DESIGN competition - not a web development competition and not an accessibility competition. Each has its place. Kudos to Sitening for being brave and standing out and well done to everyone else for the hard work. The brief specifically stated the work would be assessed on animation, video and sound design (among other things) - all of which are very easy in flash but not so straightforward in HTML/CSS.
Stop being so geeky and chill out ;) - kerbechard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I second that Teague.
- joshteague, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Thanks Mike. We had a great time . . . some really impressive work from everyone. We were surprised to say the least.
- irieemon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm a member of "The Mighty Fighting Tigers" and I'm pretty surprised at the backlash against the use of Flash for the competition. Flash is an amazing technology, that has advanced the usability of the Internet and has created cross platform/browser capability that never existed.
Done correctly you can have an SEO friendly, full accessibility for screen readers, and the ability to create dynamic applications faster, and with more flexibility than with many other technologies. 98% of the browsing public has Flash 6 or higher, so it's not really an "out there" plug in anymore.
There is plenty of code in proper flash design, in our project we used XML to deliver the text content and global site variables to change the language on the fly based on the language selection. The .jpg images were all loaded externally, and our base site size was 260K for all the vector animation. We used progress bars to inform the audience of external loading, as well as tested in a dial-up simulator. Our site was not size heavy, and really the only thing we pushed the envelope on was a Flash 8 requirement.
None of these sites have to live on in "the real world" after the competition. They are exercises in talent, creativity, and technical saavy. People prefer their technology and I prefer flash, and done right it's just as fast, and just as effective as any other scripting/HTML/XML combination out there. - wild, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Don't let the Star Wars watch fool you ladies.
- mkelley, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Congrats to the Lorem Ipsum guys. I sat next to you during Kevin Rose's talk on saturday (mike).
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