FreddyWebDev Design Awards 2005

[Shovel]

A competition I just invented. Nominate a maximum of two sites that you rate highly for their overall design. There's no restriction on them being business sites or personal sites, just need to be something special.

There's nothing official about this, but here's the criteria I considered when making my choice:

• Unique appearance
• Web Standards compliance
• Accessibility (with regards to disabled net users and preferential keyboard navigation)
• Pushing of the envelope

And all that Malarkey
I've never, ever seen a design like it. It's a personal site, but visually inspired by print magazine design. The entire site is in valid XHTML and CSS and pretty much by implication is extremely accessible on all counts.



Better yet, it pushes the limits of CSS support in modern web browsers. To view the site in full-colour glory you need to use Firefox, Opera, Safari or any other current, standards compliant browser. If you visit using IE6 or below, however, you actually get a completely different (and technically simpler) design.
The design doesn't get altered using script or browser sniffing, it all happens using advanced CSS selectors to apply different styles to newer supporting browsers, and using some known bugs to apply different styles only to IE. It's seamless.

So, for producing two aesthetically awesome designs using web standards and experimenting with some truely bleeding edge techniques for graceful degredation, I would give an award to And all that Malarkey.

I should stress that you can learn a huge, huge, huge amount by reading around that site, too. He's a clever guy and all.

Right then, your turn.

 

[JingleBells]

UEFA.com - they recently redesigned their site, and even though its not quite XHTML compliant (the JS ads seem to mess it all up), it's still a tableless design and makes extensive use of CSS. For a site from such a large organisation, which probably receives shit-loads of visitors, it's impressive. They've even embraced RSS which is very useful indeed

 

[MYstIC G]

Horribly http://www.direct.gov.uk

 

[Maljonic]

I think this one is kind of interesting: http://www.dontclick.it

 

[TdC]

that dontclick.it is the greatest thing I've ever seen. seriously impressed. I want that in html. make it so w3c.

 

[Embattle]

Horribly http://www.direct.gov.uk

When I first saw that site I thought it was one of those register a domain jobbies.

 

[Shovel]

that dontclick.it is the greatest thing I've ever seen. seriously impressed. I want that in html. make it so w3c.

DOM Level 3 (via JavaScript) + SVG + XHTML + CSS3

The specs exist, but they're very new (or barely into Candidate Recommendation status). Thus, browser support is 'experimental' at best.

 

[SheepCow]

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/
Awwwwwwwwwwwww yeah

 

[Chilly]

I think this one is kind of interesting: http://www.dontclick.it

nice idea, but if you run it on anything but a pretty good computer it is *painfully* slow. I'm running it on my 2.2ghz laptop and its jerky and slow to transition.

 

[TdC]

strange dude. I'm running it on a 2.4GHz cellery at workies with a shared mem gfx card and all is spinky. maybe I'm just toes-over the spec then?

 

[Maljonic]

What about this one, another Flash site: http://www.klangtausch.de/

 

[Maljonic]

Has anyone seen this guy's work by the way, I think it's more art than web design though?

http://www.hoogerbrugge.com/

 

[Penguin]

I'm sure i've seen Hoogerbrugge.com before, rings a bell. It's a great website, so different, and odd. Definately more arty but i like it. It gets boring for me though even though i think it's pretty cool.

 

[~Yuckfou~]

I think this one is kind of interesting: http://www.dontclick.it

After 10 seconds I found that navigation very irritating. Nice idea but I don't think it "works" as an interface. I'm old and grumpy though.

 

[Alliandre]

I think this one is kind of interesting: http://www.dontclick.it

I like the the idea of just having a mouse over for boxes within a page, but for navigating between the pages where almost everything on the page changes I like the clicking to know that I've gone onto a new section as such.

Something quite as "free flowing" as that page makes me feel I don't know whether I've seen everything, and also I don't know where I want to go next. The non consistency with the position of the stuff in the main navigation bar at the top may have something to do with this. It might have worked better if that had stayed in the right place.

 

[MKJ]

Looked at a few mentioned.

And all that Malarkey - nicely constructed nodoubt but the choice of colours is a bit iffy I think. Black background with white text? Hard on the eyes for sure.

dontclick.it - interesting but the way things move about the screen I felt quite queazy in notime uke: .

klangtausch.de - found this one a bit scarey. Not sure I like flash sites that much to be honest.

hoogerbrugge.com - this one gets my vote. Very appealing and interesting.

MKJ
Me own poxy site

 

[tRoG]

Hoogerbrugge is my favourite, also. Interesting, and it looks pretty.

 

[Shovel]

And all that Malarkey - nicely constructed nodoubt but the choice of colours is a bit iffy I think. Black background with white text? Hard on the eyes for sure.

I've spent about 3 days wondering what of earth you're talking about, until I finally twigged that you were viewing the IE version. You may have a point about contrast, but on the other hand I do smile wryly when considering IE6 to be like a black&white television compared to full-colour alternatives. It is of course a personal site, and the majority of Andy's users had dumped IE before this redesign.

Following on from the Flash-based mouseover-fest above: Some of you may rather like Shaun Inman's personal site, particularly the Navigate/Search functionality.

 

[.Wilier.]

Thought Id post one that one of my great friends designed......some of you may know him

www.abyteapart.com

Took him a while, and Ive not put much content in, but its a cracking design imho.

 

[Penguin]

Oooh i very much like that site design.

 

[Padwah]

Love the header but the rest of the site could do with some more padding on the main content area, though seeing as that's my only complaint its safe to say that I like it

 

[Yaka]

...

 

[Maljonic]

This one's kind of different: http://www.tokyoplastic.com/

To save time > you have to click on the Japanese text (says Tokyo Plastic) at the top, then the Japanese flag then the text above the chair that says enter in Japanese katakana.