Designer on Slashdot Overhaul Plans 469
EdwardianDandy writes "Web designer Khoi Vinh, whose firm Behavior is responsible for the redesign of the Onion, argues on publish.com that an upcoming contest to overhaul Slashdot's look will yield interesting results, but the outcome will suffer because the underlying architecture is off limits." Normally I don't post stuff "About" Slashdot here since I find meta naval gazing very boring, but this article has many good points about architecture and design, even if his whole premise is based on a contest that we haven't spent more than about 5 minutes thinking about, and is mostly just meant to be a fun way for users to contribute themes to Slashdot. If Khoi wants to enter the contest, we'll consider his designs along with everyone else's. (I'm sure we can't afford him tho). And if he (or anyone) wants to make changes more substantial than cosmetic CSS, I'd consider them too. The upcoming Slashdot Redesign contest is intended to be more about design than architecture, but good ideas are good ideas.
Slash Light (Score:5, Insightful)
hands off! (Score:5, Insightful)
Me thinks the articles author thinks too much (Score:3, Insightful)
As I see it, the founders didn't decree anything: There are rules to any contest. And given how much backend work el founders probably wanted to do ( ie: none. If it ain't borked, don't fix it ), this makes perfect sense.
Aha! (Score:5, Insightful)
I realize the debate over homogeneity and efficiency of content/ad presentation is one that will never die, but there's something to be said about the sentimentality attached to site layouts. It's like that old pub you love going to getting remodeled with gear from Ikea or something. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, but it also doesn't feel right, either.
Not a nub. (Score:2, Insightful)
Why Have A Contest At All??!! (Score:1, Insightful)
So why in the world would you need readers to submit redesigns for you? At the company I work for, we wouldn't ask clients to help us with our business for free. It's not productive and is just being cheap.
If Microsoft or any-big-evil corp ran a contest with a negligible prize to help line their own pockets, they'd get ripped to shreds on slashdot. Taco, stop being a cheapass and pay for professional designers.
Re:Aha! (Score:5, Insightful)
The first time I saw the redesigned site I was really confused. Trying to sort the ads from the stories in a page that looks like it's in the middle of rush hour!
Please slashdot! Don't let that guy anywhere near your site!
Re:Why Have A Contest At All??!! (Score:5, Insightful)
It may be a business, but they're the keepers of this community. If they lose their way and get all evil and shit, Google will start their version and all us fan boys will run over there instead to bad mouth MS and warn everybody about the latest Firefox hole.
Re:The onion redesign isn't very good (Score:5, Insightful)
Ugh, microfonts (Score:5, Insightful)
They call themselves "the definitive authority on web publishing and print", and yet their own site uses teeny tiny 10px fonts? Free clue: design is about balancing form and function. When you use tiny fonts, you sacrifice function. If you forget the balance, it's not design, just art wanking. A 10px font size for the main body of text is not acceptable for something to qualify as well designed.
Meta navel gazing is exactly what's required (Score:5, Insightful)
The ASCII-goatse guys need to be IP-banned for life. The GNAA guys need to get a life. The "overrated/underrated" metamod loophole needs to be closed. Storys need to be checked for duplicates, at least a week back. Summaries should summarize. Third grade rules of grammar and spelling should be observed in summaries. Storys should be assigned to the category they belong to. Corel cache links should be supplied for sites that obviously can't take the strain - particularly if they have shown that they can't in the past. Roland Pipaquele (sp) and the Amazon recommendation link trolls should be executed. Storys should be accepted/rejected in a timely manner, and we shouldn't be seeing people posting "I submitted this 20 hours ago, and was rejected".
I could go on, but I'm sure I've said enough already to be scored a troll-for-life, so I'll quit now.
Re:Slash Light (Score:5, Insightful)
If it's not broke, don't fix it.
Re:hands off! (Score:3, Insightful)
The old layout basically had a single column of story headers, so you saw the jokes in a linear fashion. You read one, chuckle, maybe open the story in a background tab, and move on to the next one. In the new layout, I find my eyes darting all over the page as I try to skim all the headings. It's too distracting. They also only allocate a fraction of the old space for a text summary, so it's harder to get a good idea of whether the story is any good. When in doubt, I usually don't bother clicking.
Re:Slashdot software broken, bans entire subnets (Score:4, Insightful)
It's just typical hypocrisy from the editors when they bitch and scream how DRM technologies annoy and frustrate legitimate fair users, while the piracy will still go on. It's exactly what slashcode is doing now. Their filters, timers, bans, blacklists have been expanding all the time, and entrapping more legit users every day. Meanwhile, trolling, and crapflooding still exists.
Subnet bans are ridiculously amateurish with all the different proxies real trolls can use. And don't get me started with their idiotic comment filters. Talk about kiddy stuff.
Re:Navel-gazing (Score:3, Insightful)
I think most of the issues people have with Slashdot have nothing to do with the design, but rather the underlying mechanics that run it.
The CSS upgrade was a great idea, if long overdue. An upgrade to the professionalism of the site owners is also long overdue.
No this isn't a personal attack on the editors; rather it is a challenge to them to improve Slashdot by paying closer attention to the important details that the parent so thoroughly pointed out. Slashdot is good; but they can make it great with a little diligence and effort.
Re:Slashdot software broken, bans entire subnets (Score:5, Insightful)
You subscribed to a paid service but you can't get the free part of it. How lame. I'm sorry, but they don't deserve to have your money anymore. You should ask for a refund.
I'm not trying to pick on Slashdot here. I'm being fair. Even if there is a technical problem, you owe it to your customers to be direct and accommodating about it. I know this is an isolated incident, but this is no way to run a business. It's completely unacceptable and unprofessional.
The Onion is dead. Long live The Onion! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The onion redesign isn't very good (Score:4, Insightful)
It's another case of a self-proclaimed expert forcing their own perceived expertise on the end-user without bothering to take the end-user into account. I've run into a couple of these. While the good ones can be good, the bad ones lack insight and just move on making the same mistake. Unfortunately, they also have a tendency to move up the corporate ladder.
Re:Should have used XML + XSLT... (Score:3, Insightful)
No. XML is a set of syntax rules, not a document format itself. When people say "XML" when the context implies a document format, they invariably mean "an ad-hoc data format I've just made up on the spot that uses XML syntax". It's meaningless data. <myspecialheading> means nothing to anybody but you. Everybody knows what <h1> means though. Do Google apply XSLT? Do all browsers? No and no. They are left with the XML, which means nothing.
If you really want to manipulate your pages with XSLT, publish XHTML so that at least there's a decent fallback and your documents actually mean something on their own without being translated into whatever format your XSLT produces.
Re:Slashdot software broken, bans entire subnets (Score:1, Insightful)
Good work Khoi (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyway, regarding TFA, that was the biggest load of "Web Designer" horse crap ever shoveled into HTML. Slashdot has been ASS UGLY since 1997. Yet, it's been hugely successful. Why is this? Gosh, it COULDN'T be because of the CONTENT--could it? Not only has Slashdot continued to provide what it's here to provide, it's remained remarkably stable, UI-wise.
"Rethinking" the architecture is daft. Slashdot has a codebase built to encourage good comments and hide bad ones, but to accept everything that's not scripted spam. That's the architecture. "Rethinking" that is like "rethinking" the design of the nuclear reactor in a submarine while crusing at 20 knots 800 feet down.
Please keep your Web Designer hands off Slashdot, thanks.
Re:Navel-gazing (Score:1, Insightful)
You (the subscribers) knew, or should have known, what Slashdot was when you subscribed, and have no grounds for complaint. You sound like those women who marry someone despite their known flaws, then after living with said flaws for a while, it's all "boo hoo, i thought I could change him."
Slashdot is what it is - like it or don't. If it changes in a way you like, great. If it doesn't, too bad. But you don't have any reason to expect jack from it, other than unfounded reasons you invented yourself.
Re:Horrible changes so far: (Score:5, Insightful)
Rollover effects aid usability by giving instant visual feedback the moment the user can activate the link. It has the greatest effect on people who aren't that comfortable using the mouse (newbies, people with arthritis, etc), but it affects everyone to some small degree.
Not true. I can spend all day listing stupider things that people do.
Why the special attention to the underline? The user already knows it's a link, they've already navigated to it with the mouse and are geetting ready to click it. It's not the same as removing the underlines when you aren't hovering over the link.
one suggestion (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ugh, microfonts (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't use your default font size. It uses 10px font size. I already pointed that out twice, and you even quoted it.
Good design doesn't make end users fix the page. Hell, even barely average design doesn't make end users fix the page.
Re:Navel-gazing (Score:5, Insightful)
They give a valid reason for not caching all the links. Your UID is low enough that I expect you know about the FAQ [slashdot.org]. Did you know that they address this [slashdot.org]?
Lack of basic story duplication review.
There's an open invitation [slashdot.org] to solutions. As it is, though, a lot of "dupes" are really followups, or revists to old subjects from years past.
Lack of basic grammar review.
They have a copy editor [slashdot.org]. At the very least, that's "basic."
Lack of basic journalistic fact-checking.
Slashdot is a meta-news site; They don't originate much content. However, they do (usually?) follow links before posting a story, weighing it against what they know. At the very least, that's "basic."
Besides, I've seen worse out of "respectable" news media.
Troubling comments that charge karma backlash to those who defy the editors.
Obviously you don't really care, or you wouldn't have posted.
Lack of awareness that Slashdot is expected by its subscribers and would-be subscribers to behave like the professional corporate concern which it is, and not an unpaid hobby blog which it may have been in the distant past.
You're right, it's no longer an unpaid hobby blog. It's now a paid hobby blog. Slashdot was most likely bought to provide additional customers for commercial services.
Personally, I think you're taking it too seriously. Slashdot was bought because of what it was: A popular tech community with a huge potential audience for tech ads. Changing the community risks alienating the audience, regardless of whether you think the changes are for good or ill.
design vs architecture (Score:3, Insightful)
I wanted to pay a guy back by waiting till the end of the project and then saying 'I have some ideas about the fonts' but I'm too nice (lazy)
Re:Slash Light (Score:5, Insightful)
aren't we the ones who always speak of freedom of choice being such a wonderful thing? ideally, a good default look and a large degree of customisation in the preferences section would make slashdot something that can be pleasing to *every* eye. already now you can switch off just about anything except for the ads.
Re:The onion redesign isn't very good (Score:5, Insightful)
A few years ago, some cable news channel (probably CNNfn) decided to put a little stock ticker at the bottom of the screen all the time. A little distracting, but easy to ignore. Then, news channels decided to put a news ticker there. More distracting, and difficult to pay attention to the anchor while reading the ticker.
Then, some genius decided to put TWO tickers, and some other crap on the side of the screen. Headline News is the worst at this that I've seen. Now, every time you turn on Headline News, it's like a bomb went off on your screen. It's completely impossible to absorb all of the information they're trying to throw at you all at once.
This trend toward excessive busy-ness has migrated to the web. On news channels, it's primarily a way to cram in more useless information. On the web, it's primarily a way to cram in more useless advertisements. All of it sacrifices usability.
Navel gazing bad - but self-examination good (Score:5, Insightful)
Being so focused upon your navel that you DO NOTHING about it is bad. But stepping back once in a while and saying "now, how can I make things better - anybody have any good advice", then implementing that advice is the only way to improve.
For example - what if you added extra CSS classes to comments, reflecting the moderation adjectives applied and the moderation level - such as
<li class="comment, level_5, karma_bonus, insightful, interesting, overrated">
Then, without a server fetch, I could change my displayed comment threshold just by changing my CSS. Think about how much savings the
You could even add the zoo modifiers, then I could have my friends posts highlighted by changing the background, again, without a server fetch.
In short, Rob - if you put more of the information the back-end has into the generated HTML, then that would increase the amount of cool stuff WE can do at the browser end.
What's wrong with the Onion's redesign (Score:4, Insightful)
And what a horrible job you did:
1. Smearing ads all over the place. I remember seeing not one, but TWO banner ads toting NBC's "The Office" on the same page. you know, in case we didn't see the first one. It's IGN or *insert video game news site here* bad.
2. The oh-so-classic time-honored tradition of putting ALL the links humanly possible on the main page. If i have to hit Ctrl+F to find something obvious, there's something wrong.
3. Very little new content. A lot of the bottom of the main page is just links to older content, none of which is available to free users.
4. Inconsistent overall look compared to the older site.
Can websites jump the shark?
Re:Slashdot software broken, bans entire subnets (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Slash Light (Score:1, Insightful)
I never really thought "games" fit with "Stuff that matters", and maybe whoever decided on that color scheme felt the same way...
Re:Slashdot software broken, bans entire subnets (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not allow registered user accounts to post regardless of IP/Subnet bans? And if the User Account is used to spam/flood/troll ban the account. That way, the IP/Subnet ban will block AC's from posting crap, the user account bans will block spam accounts, and valid users will still have full access. It doesn't seem like rocket surgery to me.
-Rick
Re:Slashdot software broken, bans entire subnets (Score:3, Insightful)
If they have a userid and password, the logic to block a subnet to AC's but leave it unblocked to accounts older than the block, or at least paid subscribers should not be difficult.
It might even attract paid subscribers, imagine that!
Re:Slashdot's design is scandalously bad. (Score:2, Insightful)
Slashdot's interface is perfect for its intended use, which is reading and posting comments. If you still can't wrap your mind around that and feel that there needs to be more emphasis placed on graphical smileys and other garbage, well, that's your problem I guess. And Slashdot's overall layout and design may be outdated but it's still completely functional. The only thing I'd add at this point would be "quote" functionality to make it easier to quote another blob of text, similar to phpBB's [quote="someone"] tag. I've had to <blockquote><i></i></blockquote> an annoying number of times.
Re:Meta navel gazing is exactly what's required (Score:2, Insightful)
The Onion layout serves its purpose (Score:3, Insightful)
The Onion is laid out like it is because it's a news parody site. As such, it would make sense to mimic other news sites (CNN, ABCNews, CBS, etc) with a featured story on the left, shorter summaries on the right, nav bar to the far left, and so on.
Re:Navel gazing bad - but self-examination good (Score:4, Insightful)
I certainly like your suggestions, but I'm not sure how this would cut down on bandwidth. I read at a comment threshold of 3, which seems to drop 4/5 of the comments/trolls. If slashdot implemented this moderation level css classes AND sent every single comment per article, letting the user's CSS sort out the viewing threshold, I think this would actually result in a much higher bandwidth usage.
I still think the class idea is great though. You could pretty easily construct visual cues about the funniness of a post or the moderation level by using your own stylesheet. I'd probably use something like a color shade that gets progressively more saturated as the moderation level got higher, or I'd set up a sheet that just showed me +5 funny posts.
About tiny fonts (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I think it is: comparing the typical Mac fonts (Geneva and the like) with the typical Windows fonts (Arial and the like) at the same point size, they certainly look significantly different to me, with the Windows fonts rendering significantly smaller on average. I've always assumed this was something to do with Macs historically using different physical screen resolutions, though I don't have any numbers to check whether that makes sense.
This is a very good argument for what we all seem to agree on around here: the main body text of a page should be set to the default font size configured by the user's browser, not x-small, 90%, or (God forbid) an absolute pixel value like 10px. This is usability 101 stuff, and any professional web designer who's still getting it wrong doesn't deserve the title. Setting text in a small font that many users can't read isn't stylish or clever, it's thoughtless and inconsiderate.