April 25, 2000

4:19 PM

Please help me out.Only a few days left till the 5k has to be finished. I just went through three marathon days in a row getting entries into the database, but it is hard to select ones to send to the judges. Have a look and send your recommendations in (instructions on that page).
posted by sylloge (4 comments total)

Why is half the page BLINKing? Anyone else getting this?

I don't really like most of those entries. Just fancy little DHTML or JavaScript tricks...not really nicely designed websites.
posted by Succa at 6:21 PM on April 25, 2000

Ah, someone had a <BLINK> in their description. It's fixed now.On the more interesting side, you're not the only one to make that complaint, and I have to say I don't get it. What were you expecting?As the one who had to wade through 1,200 or so of these, I'm pretty glad there were as few C|Net-links-on-the-left and Amazon-tabs-across-the-top content-less "designs" as there were.ECMA & the DOM are part of the medium; using them doesn't prevent something from being "nicely designed." Some were art, some were entertainment, some were silly and that's cool. Sober and straightforward information, even important information, isn't inherently more valuable than humour, aestheics or diversion.In any case, it wasn't a writing competion and those entrants who chose to fit approximately 850 words into an amount of space which typically accomodates about 850 words weren't really doing anything interesting w.r.t. this competition.
posted by sylloge at 8:07 PM on April 25, 2000

Point taken, but to me, the bottom line is that I can download a Space Invaders game for my computer without having to play a web-enabled version. And when I go to someone's site, I'm not expecting the entire site to be a popup window with a maze exploring game. These were both very remarkable submissions, no doubt about it. But does their toy value necessarily make them well-designed sites? Call me a wet blanket, but I think a "design" contest is different than a "cram cool tricks into 5k" contest. How will the judges give marks for useability, communication, etc? They can't!
posted by Succa at 8:20 AM on April 26, 2000

I can see that point. I suppose it is somewhat closer to the left on the |art - - - - - design| continuum (if it is a continuum). It was an award for production as well though (where technique is 90% of the game). 5k isn't really a realistic size for a whole site though (since in everyday life I believe in DOCTYPES, good META tags, link titles, alt tags and lots of other multibyte conceits to universality) and "neat" creative things are worthy of some attention.Off the top of my head, I can't think of any awards for usability, communication -- good interaction design -- and maybe there should be. Next year?
posted by sylloge at 1:43 PM on April 26, 2000