What is Digg?104 Comments
- Dested, on 10/12/2007, -4/+55Holy crap! The entire article is on one page! I didnt know that you could still do that.
- david76, on 10/12/2007, -6/+44How to...
Design a site that blends in with every other "Web 2.0" site. Brilliant. - phjr, on 10/12/2007, -6/+31One of the best Web-2.0 articles I've seen. Good pick!
- abstractia, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19These "how-to" design guides are rubbish. Especially ones dealing with such nebulous concepts as "Web 2.0". It's a designer's responsibility to choose appropriate visual and functional elements that meet the goals of the project, not just slap together some gradient-laden, giant-text-sized monstrosity that's fully buzzword compliant.
Web 2.0 is a useless buzzword created by a marketeer - Tim O'Reilly to sell tickets to an overpriced conference. It isn't some great gospel of good design, or some great leap in web technology. You should always use appropriate design and tech for your project, not just adopt the latest fad.
Use this guide if you want your work to be cliche, unoriginal, and completely insignificant. Proper designers think for themselves - they don't just check off "Web 2.0" style-guide points. - soogy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+16I'm getting tired of people overusing the term "Web 2.0".
First of all, clean URLs have been around far longer than O'Reilly started talking about "Web 2.0".
Second, clean URLs have nothing to do with security. Why on EARTH would a generated GET var link be less secure? They both contain the same information, just styled differently.
Third, you shouldn't be using ColdFusion in the first place. If you do switch, then it's not that difficult to redirect. Besides, when did this become an argument about why to use clean URLs? I merely said it has nothing to do with Web 2.0.
Again, go look at O'Reilly's definition of Web 2.0. It seems people are misusing the term and applying to everything nowadays. - m3mn0n, on 10/12/2007, -4/+13@soogy
I know what SEO is and I'm not talking about SEO. Clean URLs is a web 2.0 site navigation convention that organizes your URLs is logical structure with the most important stuff going on the left and the lesser ones or the subcategories or parameters on the right.
It's just as much a help to people and your site security as it is to crawlers because they can navigate your site by easily guessing URLs. And it's not just about SEO because with clean URLs you're separating your web application technology from your URLs and you're separating your file system structure from URLs, which both are good. Why? Things like "page.cfm?blabla&id=329739252&foo=sfWEWETdasGS" is flat out ugly and you can't remember it easy, where as "/page/idnumber/foovalue/" is easy. You can't easily hack the URL to navigate the site. And if your site ever switched from ColdFusion to say PHP, you lose all PageRank and you break all links to your site.
So without writing and entire article here I'll end this with saying there is MORE emphasis on other aspects/benefits of using Clean URLs than just being good for search engines, so it's not just SEO. SEO is a result of Clean URLs, as is a cleaner look, hackable URLs, keeping your pages technology independent, and etc. - soogy, on 10/12/2007, -8/+15Why are people digging david76 down? All this article is trying to do is get people to lose creativity. Yes, we should all make websites with the same styles! Oh, boy. Wouldn't this series of tubes be great if we could do that?
- armbar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7soogy, url rewriting can be theoretically safer by not allowing url stuffing, and by not showing which language the site is written in. It's not great, since it's security by obscurity, but it keeps out a lot of script kiddies.
- fritzon, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10I'm tired of people that are tired of and complaining about the term Web 2.0.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6it's all about the web 3.0
what the hell age are you people living in??? - Mikekuul, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6The standard of comments on this is appalling.
This article is good, and a few of you should take a second to consider the fact that articles like this could be used to educate not only current web users, but future users.
Furthermore:
"Clearly, a site doesn't need to exhibit all these features to work well, and displaying these features doesn't make a design "2.0" - or good!"
While this article is analysing "Web 2.0", it is more an overview of design elements that work and why they work. While they may be trends followed in many "Web 2.0" sites, they are still stand alone elements that designers (amateur or professional) should recognize and consider when producing a site design. As the quote says, you don't need to use them all, and they won't necessarily make your design "Web 2.0" or good.
To all those saying "designing for web 2.0 is bad", tell me why other than "cus they're all doing it". - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+10Great article. I love anything that can help people understand good web development :) Cheers!
- alexvalentine, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Nice article, but people on digg need to get their heads around the idea that web 2.0 has nothing to do with photoshop or web site layout.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html - judgeFire, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@soogy re:"That's called search-engine optimization, which has nothing to do with design"
SEO is interaction design at its finest. Don't dilute the word to stand for graphic design only. - quux, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I'm a programmer. I build web sites. I don't do design. If I'm lucky, the shops I contract in hire will hire a designer. Sometimes they don't, and I'm forced to do it myself. And what I do to a web site design is just wrong.
This web-two-pointy-oh site is chock full of help for people like me.
If you're already a shmancy designer with mad-uber photoshop skills who can make a user weep at the beauty of your fung shoo-ee inspired home page, this site is not for you. So go away and leave this article to guys like me; a guy who thinks the 216 web safe colors are about 212 too many.
And trust me, you may think you know how to code, but you don't. I'm currently working with one of you. :-P - Dolomite, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3anything with Web 2.0 in the title gets my digg.
- armbar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"So if a client came to you and said I want my site to look "Web 2.0ish" you'd tell them it was ***** and to go away?"
No, I'd recommend that they expand on what they mean by web 2.0. I would recommend that they size down the fonts so they're not elephant-sized, and use a decent color scheme. If they still wanted it to be web 2.0 with big nasty pink fonts, I would tell them no.
Accepting every client who asks you to do their website is the surest way to have a really crappy portfolio. - gauthierm, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4This should be added to the style guide:
Use the Joint Photographic Experts Group image format for photographs and the Portable Network Graphics image format for graphics. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3What happened to Web 1.0 ?
- xeno439, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3amen, paid for sure. conspiracy theory no. But once it gets on the front page, group think kicks in. That's all it takes. This story had 30 diggs when it hit the front.
- m3mn0n, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5@soogy
Since you seem not to know what the hell you're talking about, maybe you should read that article yourself and look at where it says "An attitude, not a technology"..."hackability"... & "granular addressability of content". Those three things are right inside the meme map of web 2.0 from the article you're talking about and those three things are entirely what clean URLs are about, aside from SEO.
Maybe it does have more to do with application development than web design, but that doesn't take away the fact that I think it's wrong it's not even mentioned on the site we're this page is linking to. - rjoseph, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Some interesting information in the article for sure, but the irony of how badly it renders in Safari makes me think the author simply culled information from many other sites while having no idea how to actually design for "Web 2.0." Isn't one of the central tenets of "Web 2.0" to ensure that the site look stunning in every browser?
Oh Digg, the crap you'll digg up. - anteyekon4myst, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4 Sort of agree with what alexvalentine is trying to say. I think its just a coincedence that CSS' functionality and design emerged at the same time the social web did. Note sites that had the same design styles before hand such ass csszengarden.
Secondly, A lot of the design observations categorized under web 2.0 style are just simple design principles. The only reason why we see more of it now is because 1, programmers with a lack of understanding in design are less and less apart of the process and 2 people are getting better educated in design generally. Reducing visual form so that it corresponds to functionality, thus reducing elements on a page, is not a new idea.
@ soogy
My first instinct was the same as yours. There is a lot of conformity, but I dont think that's what the author is trying to get at. I think the similarity in styles emerges from people imitating a "new style", then people talking about it (viral marketing) and then companies requesting what everyone is talking about. However, I think there is enough variance in the elements the author points out to afford a multitdue of designs.
Good article. My only real criticism is that you used the term Web 2.0 to define the design style, thus limiting the design principles to a time period. Although I realise most people will only pay attention to posts that have a buzz word, so good job on exploiting that.
Cheers! - imyayo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"2.0 design means focused, clean and simple."
If you're a web designer, you should be designing websites like that from the start. Not just now, so you can throw on a "web 2.0" label. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I
- ulyssesyt, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3every designer i know is revolted by the "Web 2.0" *****. why in the world would you want EVERY WEBSITE TO FOLLOW THE SAME DESIGN GUIDELINES?
but "eb 2.0" is for the amateurs and people who don't want to design--the people who Google for "web templates." - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3maybe learn how to set type...jeez. everyone of those designs shown in the article has type that is set "good enough" or looks like "ass."
- popstalin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2So if a client came to you and said I want my site to look "Web 2.0ish" you'd tell them it was ***** and to go away?
Got news for you, I'm a designer and I'm not revolted by designing what people want (including Web 2.0)—I'm revolted by being poor, homeless and starving. - digguerre, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2muntz is completely correct. it's not that this kind of design "bad" - its that content should drive your design, not web trends. It's good to be relative to the times, but not at the expense of creativity and creating something that's appropriate to the content.
- Saiing, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Abstractia: to be honest, I think you're missing the point. This isn't a guide for "proper" designers - professional designers wouldn't go to a site like this for advice. But it is an interesting read, and there are a few nice tips that joe-public can take away and use. If it slightly improves the layout of one or two people's personal sites, or inspires people to think about the subject of interface design then it's mostly harmless and at worst a bit of fun.
I think it's also fair to say that the author isn't stating "this is how you MUST do it". He's just identified many of the well known common features found in a lot of "web 2.0" sites and put them all together in a nicely written guide. Whether individuals want to borrow any of these ideas is up to them. Personally speaking, I actually quite like some of the fresh bright designs that have cropped up in the last year or two. The fact that there are 'trends' in web sites shows that as an industry, web design is maturing and is no longer the poor relation of print design (where purists have often claimed the "real" designers work!)
I would never claim to be an expert, but I say this as someone with nearly 20 years experience in the design industry for both print and screen. - 5la5hd0tter, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5it's sad that was all you were able to pick up from that article.
- sephiroth965, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I thought this was a very good tutorial. The writer knows what they're talking about.(i.e. they understand visual heirarchy in design and concepts of positive/negative space, as well as the best ways to use these concepts.)
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I really like Edward Tufte, I attended one of his courses a year ago. I am making my way through his books, he's got a lot of great concepts... :) Data ink ratio is one of my faves.
- hadimirza, on 03/26/2008, -0/+1Very Nice article!! It helped me make some good looking web pages of my own. Thanks, dugg and bookmarked.
- theadvinci, on 07/01/2008, -0/+1Interesting.
- WikiEasy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm glad the article dissed Yaxay. I've always hated that interface the few times I've stumbled across it. And to think many worshipped it as being good design???!?
- mike503, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1should we trust a site for web 2.0 advice that still uses coldfusion?
:) - abstractia, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I turn down clients on a daily basis who ask for a "Web 2.0" site. I'd rather a client approach me with the specifics of his or her needs - business, aesthetics, or otherwise, and leave the designing to the designer. A client asking for a "Web 2.0" site is likely just cool-chasing - looking for another cookie-cutter pile of junk. I don't even reply.
- skelta63, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2haha. very true. can't wait to ride the 2.1 wave when the gradients are duo-tone
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0http://www.design-sites.net/
- byo2000, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2First of all, the designer of that web site should learn how to make his/her content render correctly for a range of browsers. It doesn't even render correctly for mine !!! (Firefox 2.0) Get that down first before trying to preach about Web 2.0
- ChefGroovy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I would say Amazon is the granddaddy of next-gen web philosophy for commerce. Things like "people who bought this item, also bought...", allowing customers to write their own reviews, dynamic listings and all that. They were way ahead of their time and have made a science out of it. Kind of bloated now.
IMDB would be somewhere on the top of the list too. - eddiexplorer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Get Opera then.
- liberum, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Yeah, really great pick! Good thoughts about design... I don't like centered websites with static width though. This is not about web 2.0 (stupid idea anyway), this is about readability and design.
- amikael9999, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0A collection of Web Design Books:
http://freecomputerbooks.com/webDesignBooksIndex.html - fatcitysocial, on 10/10/2008, -0/+0Yeah the web 2.0 design its cool maybe you will like our web2.0 site that we just launched
Fat City Social
http://fatcitysocial.com/ - demopoly, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Okay, for the record:
- Repeats of stories from last year, or up to five years ago.
- Anything even mentioning Something 2.0 that isn't a release upgrade from Something 1.9.
- Any article promoting Ubuntu. This is not the hottest thing in the world. It's just another distro. Get over yourselves. I've got XGL on Core 6, but you don't see me filling digg with fluff about it.
- Anything that says "this is incredible!" or other such bullsheep preconditioning in the topic. Grow up.
+ Posting something I haven't seen fifty times on six different blogs. - freewebhowto, on 02/13/2009, -0/+0http://freewebhowto.com
- tweaked7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0so would this be considered web 2.0:
http://www.imxstudio.com
? - tomlaw, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Wow, this article touches on the "gimmicks" of Web 2.0 and not the real essence behind the movement. The essence is what dictates the style. It's meant to be friendly because these sites are user driven or offerring services that propagate a community-style interaction with the service. That style can be whatever it needs to be but for what it is now, you have a handful of sites that set the trend and then a ***** load of sites that have leeched. You're describing the leecher style of design. How very M$ of you. Show a little more understanding of the process and tell people how to achieve better usability, not style-stealing.
Sagmeister says: "Style=Fart". Words to live by. If you don't know who he is, Google him then go get a design degree.
Peace. -
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