webdesignfromscratch.com — This well known developer is taking 50 home pages and redesigning them while writing the good, the bad and the ugly about the website and what it needs. This is the first in a 50 part series so it should be a good tool and resource for aspiring web designers out there.
Jul 10, 2006 View in Crawl 4
w0rdJul 11, 2006
"Validation != accessibility." That may be true, but you can make a good argument for valid markup being more universal, therefore a screen reader (for example) will have an easier time parsing the content for its conversion to speech. If everyone uses the same underlying coding standards for web pages, all browsers, especially accessibility related ones, will have an easier time relaying the content to the user.
pngwnpwrJul 11, 2006
Does the saying "any attention is good attention" hold true within the realm of Digg? I understand people want traffic to their site and may be tempted to throw a link submission at Digg, but damn...the response from this site is not the kind of attention I would want for my site. Not saying he submitted the link, don't care either way. I don't think the site or his redesigns are that bad. He actually has some decent reading material on the site at least. I do think $1250 is a bit steep for a simple redesign. Possibly his clients will attract enough attention from the book / site to make it worthwhile though.
kodeikoJul 11, 2006
How do you navigate to-and-fro the 50 redesigns? I'm stuck at SunHome, am I missing something?
jrbrynerJul 11, 2006
He's conflicting on his point about Font Size and Contrast. The initial design has white text on a blue background and he says it's not high enough contrast. His redesign uses white text on an even lighter blue background and he calls it high contrast. Even the logo is pretty low contrast. He doesn't follow his own rules on his own site, his designs are so-so at best. Too bad he's competition.
settsuJul 11, 2006
Two-Point-Oh'd!!!Seriously though, I'm torn about how I feel about this, uh, "exercise". It does add to the pool of sites that address important usability issues. But posting it on Digg? Isn't that preaching to the choir and willingly appearing pathetically self-important while doing so?
jstohlerJul 11, 2006
The sites do look better, but guaranteed they loose search presence -- too much text has changed to images.
kickarseJul 14, 2006
I like the first two of your sites... And I have to agree with most of the guys here... While the designs are okay they aren't really _that_ great. Not for what he's charging.
theadvinciJul 3, 2008
If there only wasn't a typo...