March 5, 2001

11:30 AM

The 5k has returned!So, is this just of interest to web geeks, or will it cross over to the general masses of curious web surfers? Is it more about functionality in the tiny site, or art? What's the deal with the "Anything Goes" category, is it compromising the idea of the 5k? So many questions...
posted by anildash (22 comments total)

The only issue I have with it is the short notice this time. Last year it was open for entries for months before the judging actually happened. Just four weeks this time? Foo.
posted by endquote at 11:54 AM on March 5, 2001

I don't know, endquote -- last year, I didn't know the contest existed until after the deadline had passed. Since then, I've checked up on the page regularly and paid close attention to every announcement. Right now, I'm working on no less than three entries (I probably won't enter them all), and with spring break only a week away, I've got plenty of time to put on the finishing touches.

So maybe I'm not really contributing anything to this thread, but I'm so excited!
posted by Eamon at 12:15 PM on March 5, 2001

I'm excited too. I'm gonna shirk off my homework to finish.
posted by sonofsamiam at 12:22 PM on March 5, 2001

hey gang? In the FAQ it says Flash sites are ok. were flash sites ok last year? I think thats unfortunate.... I like Flash. its what I do, but it just seems so wrong for this contest.

Dp
posted by darkpony at 12:23 PM on March 5, 2001

There was a notice about 5k opening in December... isn't that plenty of notice?
posted by silusGROK at 12:36 PM on March 5, 2001

...is this just of interest to web geeks, or will it cross over to the general masses...?

By its nature, I think it will always be more interesting to geeks and designers than the general public. ("Hey, Marge, check out this site dedicated to enhanced creative problem-solving within the limitations of severely constrained resources!")

But last year's contest got a surprising amount of attention from the non-geek press. And among this year's judges are some folks, like Peter Seidler, whose clout extends beyond the web. This could make for even greater mainstream awareness this year, and that would be a good thing.
posted by Zeldman at 12:46 PM on March 5, 2001

This time around, the 5k is "a Metafilter network site", and shares a userbase with MeFi, which makes for easy login. Very cool, Mr. Haughey.

I hope I can come up with a good entry this year.
posted by sixfoot6 at 12:48 PM on March 5, 2001

What's the deal with the "Anything Goes" category, is it compromising the idea of the 5k?

If you can make a great Flash site under 5K, God bless ya.
posted by Zeldman at 1:01 PM on March 5, 2001

Last year, flash entries were allowed as well: one two three

This contest was only open for entries for a month last year as well, it just got lots of publicity before it opened. This does seem like short notice to me as well, but everyone who was paying attention knew (approximately) how much time they were going to have.

This year, I was really lazy and distracted: I meant to have the announcement, faq, judges' list up a month in advance. Instead, it went up after the contest was originally supposed to open. I haven't even linked to it from my site or told the judges it was open (was waiting to make sure everything was working smoothly, which it appears to be). So, I'll start spreading the word and I hope that no-one will be left out like last year.

Re: Anything goes. That was the same as last year as well: the idea is that, while it is all done under the constraint, it is still "real web": you can risk estranging your "audience" (the judges) for the benefit of something which might be more impressive, assuming they have the technology ...


Last, apologies to all re funky appearances in Netscape. As it says, we are validating to XHTML 1.0 and something had to give. Mostly worked-around now, but still some funkiness. Standards are hard.

One last thing: the contest would not have happened this year if it wasn't for all the hard work of our own ericost. His inventiveness is all over the site, from the smooth burning XSL to the cool little DHTML rating system. Thanks Eric!
posted by sylloge at 2:32 PM on March 5, 2001

my, that chicken certainly is excited.
posted by Hackworth at 3:24 PM on March 5, 2001

In a related note, the <WEB4096> announced it's winners today. Check out the 4k Asteroids clone! Done in Flash no less! Expect some similarly amazing stuff to come out of the 5k this time around.
posted by dithered at 3:31 PM on March 5, 2001

Flash was allowed. Everything was (even embedded liquid audio I assume). They just said that if the judge didn't have it you'd be marked down; if they did have it you'd be OK; you didn't know the audience of judges had so you had to choose based on that - like the web, really.

> apologies to all re funky appearances in Netscape.
> As it says, we are validating to XHTML 1.0 and
> something had to give. Mostly worked-around now,
> but still some funkiness. Standards are hard

Yeah... and I hope those standards keep you warm at night ;)
posted by holloway at 3:47 PM on March 5, 2001

It was announced in December, but the deadline wasn't announced until just now.

Shrug, I'm just whining because I haven't come up with anything yet, I guess. I got second place last year, and I'd really like to win this time. Although I imagine the competition will be much tougher.
posted by endquote at 3:57 PM on March 5, 2001

Yeah Josh, and let me tell you: from what we have seen so far (about 20 entries) the competition is indeed going to be tough. And I think we can expect a lot of Flash and Java this year if the first 20 are any indication, so all you DHTML kids better get cracking!
posted by ericost at 5:56 PM on March 5, 2001

>If you can make a great Flash site under 5K, God bless ya.

But Zeldman, don't you think it is funny that there is this perception that Flash is no good for low bandwidth designs? I mean, yes, there is some overhead in the file format, but it is a vector based format that was at one time heralded because it was expected to DECREASE file sizes on the web (remember future splash?). Anyway, I hope a ton of Flash designers spend some time seeing what they can do in 5k. Nothing could be better for the Flash design community, IMHO.
posted by ericost at 6:16 PM on March 5, 2001

But Zeldman, don't you think it is funny that there is this perception that Flash is no good for low bandwidth designs? ... it is a vector based format that was at one time heralded because it was expected to DECREASE file sizes on the web (remember future splash?). Anyway, I hope a ton of Flash designers spend some time seeing what they can do in 5k. Nothing could be better for the Flash design community, IMHO.

Yes, I agree, it would be very good for the Flash community. And yes, I remember FutureSplash, and I remember that the whole idea was low bandwidth through vectors.
posted by Zeldman at 12:57 AM on March 6, 2001

P.S. It's awesome that you used web standards to design your own publishing and rating systems. It shows your ingenuity, and it also demonstrates the power of emerging technologies like XML and XSLT. I mean, the 5K is a not-for-profit, non-commercial site. You couldn't buy a buggy, overpriced publishing system if you WANTED to. So you rolled your own. I think that's commendable.

Doesn't work totally perfectly in a 1997 browser? Hey, there's a surprise. Neither will many of the 5K entries. Unless people are expected to devote 1K to the Netscape 4 version, 1K to the IE4 version, 2K to the DOM version, and 0.75K to Lynx.

It's not realistic to expect every 5K entry to work in every browser old and new. And it's not realistic (or fair) to expect a hand-rolled, standards-based publishing system to work the same way in every browser. I think what you're doing is great. (Hey, there's another surprise.)
posted by Zeldman at 1:06 AM on March 6, 2001

Speaking of standards, here's that missing close tag. Sweet baby Jesus.
posted by Zeldman at 1:07 AM on March 6, 2001

One more close tag for good measure?
posted by youhas at 1:24 AM on March 6, 2001

I've been mulling this over considerably. Were it up to me, I'd design my entry (heavily reliant on CSS absolute positioning with javascript) HTML4.0, CSS2 and ECMA-262 compliant and be done.

But as the FAQ says, "Every single judge could be using IE5.5 on Win2k but there could be NN4 on Macs or even Opera on Linux. Love it or hate it, it's part of the web."

So do I risk only being visible in IE5+, Opera and Netscrape 6, and come in at under 3.5k, or do I swallow my getElementById, suffer the <layer>s, use inelegant detection, let the script bloat to over 4.5k and lose points for size?
Decisions decisions.
posted by normy at 1:00 PM on March 6, 2001

I've seen Flash plug-in detection scripts that are over 24K.
posted by Zeldman at 3:19 AM on March 7, 2001

Bah, I've seen font tags that are over 34K!

p.s. Normy: that pickle is my favorite pickle in the whole contest sandwich.
posted by sylloge at 7:31 PM on March 7, 2001