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What Website has the Cleanest Site Design?
Posted by
Cliff
on Mon May 19, 2003 04:38 PM
from the suitable-examples-for-others dept.
from the suitable-examples-for-others dept.
Gabe Anast asks: "The recent article on Microsoft's market dominance referred to an article at the International Herald Tribune, which I read until I became engrossed in the natural readability and intuitive interface of that site. It's amazing! I'll have to say that site has the cleanest design of any I have ever used. So, of course, I thought 'What are the other "best designed" sites? Would Slashdot know? My personal criteria for site design is: graphic design/appeal; an intuitive interface; and content that flows naturally (eg: high content density that does not sacrifice clarity). What are your favorite sites, and by what criteria do you judge such?"
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Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy interface, easy results.
Re:Easy (Score:5, Insightful)
the less there is the better usually. ads should not be getting too much space and useless bloating by providing links to other pages of the same provider(that have nothing to do with the content) are usually useless on every page.
in fact these 'navigational' bars sometimes make the navigating much more difficult, since they tend to make it so that you get everywhere from one point. now this might seem smart and useful, but would you rather have easier time finding where you are going with a room that had 300 doors, or finding where you want to be in structure where there was like 4 doors from every room with signs saying what are you going towards..
Parent
Re:Easy (Score:4, Interesting)
Case in point: slashdot.org. Seriously, Slashdot's search function rarely takes me to the article I'm looking for, while with Google I always get there if I just remember one or two words from the headline.
Parent
Re:Easy (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.google.com/
search terms here site:slashdot.org
Obvious to you or I, but I'm hoping this post is useful to someone.
Parent
Re:Easy (Score:3, Insightful)
Or how about the ability to force the search on stories to only match ALL keywor
Easy for basic functionality (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, google is my favorite search engine. I just don't think they deserve any awards for Web page design.
The basic features of google are easy to access, but there are a whole bunch of google features that are not available from their main page. Google has their own features page [google.com] (try getting to that from the front page), but there are all sorts of third party Web pages explaining some of the "hidden" features of google. Their "Advanced search" really does not offer many of their fea
Without a doubt (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Without a doubt (Score:2)
"Google - even their ads are clean and not obtrusive."
I guess so! My first reaction when I read this was, "Google has ads?!"
Not obtrusive indeed! =)
I nominated the OLD BBC news site (Score:2)
7 Letters (Score:2)
well, only four distinct letters...
Why, my own of course (Score:2)
-Vic
Re:Why, my own of course (Score:2, Insightful)
Makes it difficult for readers who can't read small fonts, I would say.
Gripe (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we can set the bar a little higher than that don't you?
Re:Gripe (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Gripe (Score:2, Interesting)
Mozilla 1.4b chokes on it. Opera is no better. Internet Explorer seems to me to be the only browser capable of rendering it correctly... Hmm... let's think about why... Maybe because they're using proprietary extensions? Yeah, that's it!
The design, while gimmicky (perfect word for it), is not all that useful. Clean designs can be found all over the Internet. Look at Princeton Financial's site: http://www.pfs.com/
As other posters have mentioned, the perfect site design se
Re:Gripe (Score:2)
What's up with this "not a website" attitude? As much as the W3C would like to think it dictates web standards, there is a significant "de facto" standard of what works and what doesn't on web pages. It's perfectly possible to make a web site that essentially everyone can use without passing the W3C validator. That page might not be proper XHTML 4.0/CSS2/XML/RSS/WSDL compliant, but that doesn't make it not a web site! At the same time, you can easily make a proper s
Re:Gripe (Score:2)
but the biggest indicator would be that navigator bar, it gets fumbled when you scroll down.
could you say a car that didn't meet the requirements for a legal car is perfectly ok for a car?
or would you say a cripled 'enchanced cd' is a real compact disc?
Re:Gripe (Score:2)
The site dynamically re-allocates the content across multiple pages based on window height window and font size. (Small window = 'page 1 of 7', large window = page '1 of 2'). So, though it may not use your entire big monitor left-to-right, it does expand top-to-bottom, and redistribute the content across the appropriate number of pages. One great thing about the site is that all content is loaded in the first request, and if you click to the 'ne
Clean Design? (Score:4, Insightful)
I am very displeased with the website's designer. This is all before I have even had a chance to explore the rest of the site. Sorry, your 10 seconds is up. Next Link.....
Re:Clean Design? (Score:2)
Nope, its a firebird bug (Score:2)
Re:Clean Design? (Score:2)
While we're calling the kettle black, your own site only 'tentatively' validates as html 4.01.
Shocked at Doonesbury (Score:2, Interesting)
ok, it's not really part of the internet... (Score:5, Funny)
It's right here! (Score:5, Funny)
Transmeta's site was nice (Score:2, Funny)
This web page is not here yet
Cleanest site design... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cleanest site design... (Score:2, Informative)
It's actually ultra-clean and very light. it's faster to download and render - it's still very usuable under lynx and i have for a while too. And it's pretty color agnostic. as in, just black on white. So give slashdot light a try.
Basically the table is not a monsterosity and the sidebars are missing. And you don't get the pretty topic icons.
Wall Street Journal (Score:2)
Here's an amazing site... (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's one that has some of the cleanest design and interface concepts, as well as low bandwidth support that I've seen: ccosas beanbagcentral site [beanbagcentral.com]
The whole beanbagcentral.com [beanbagcentral.com] website is really impressive.
Either way, I vote for well managed color coordination, easy display of commonly used information, not a bandwidth hog, and relative content.
Keep in mind though - how good a site depends on the purpose of a site. It's all a matter of the design, intent, target audience, etc. What may seem like a bad
My Opinion (Score:3, Interesting)
Well I would say one site that has a very clean design is Slashdot in Light mode, but I guess that doesn't really count... I haven't really run in to any really easy to use sites lately.
First, a site has to look decent, color- and font-wise. A standard font like arial or times is good, and the colors can't clash. Also, the font, color, size, et cetera has to be consistent throught the page, i.e. if there are topic headings make them all the same style. The place I have seen this most ignored is in small e-shops where they have links and pictures and huge headings everywhere.
Next: navigatino has to be easy and structured, but not overstructured--it's a balance. If you have just a pile of pages without organization, it's really hard to find stuff, but (as it sometimes happens with large directories like Yahoo and Google) grouping under too many levels gives vague top-level headings that don't really reveal what's beneath.
Another random thing that popped into my head: if the main content of a site is articles, then the navbar should have a bunch of categories for articles. It's really annoying when I see something like Home, About Us, Articles, Polls, Members, Forums, Help, Log In and I go to several places looking for stuff when all the main content is under one heading; in other words, keep the sections balanced.
Use stylesheets... it's really annoying to see crappy web pages with different fonts and colors, or mistakes in markup because the writer was typing out font tags. I saw a web site the other day that had font tags around each and every link on the page to give links a different color... um, there's an easier way to do it!
Don't add pointless features. Nobody really wants to vote on which picture of your cat is the best (sorry, a classic of vanity web pages) or sign your pointless guestbook. When you use one of those stupid web-page wizards, put a little thought into whether you really need each feature you want to add...
More about stylesheets... This is hard for already-created sites, but lay out and format the bulk of your site with CSS so it can be resized, stretched, and twisted without looking stupid. Make sure changing the font size doesn't ruin your layout, and also that you can change the font size--don't use pixel sizes!
Okay, I'm done ranting...
Right points, wrong order (Score:2)
The same damned thing's true of most web designers.
Apple? (Score:2)
Ha'ayal and Fisheye (Score:3, Informative)
Zombo.com (Score:2)
Animeigo (Score:2)
Jodi (Score:2)
The man knows his html... (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously though, here are some sites whose design I like:
Sweetcode [sweetcode.org]
Mathworld [wolfram.com]
openrbl.org [openrbl.org]
perldoc [perldoc.com]
Paul Borke's website [swin.edu.au]
the Joel On Software forums [fogcreek.com]
the Tech Report [tech-report.com] (a debatable choice, but the best of its type)
Dmitry's Design Lab [webreference.com]
Everyone knows that Jeff. K's Web site (Score:3, Funny)
how about some judging criteria: (Score:5, Funny)
And secondly, it's got to look good running at 64 x 48 pixels. Some people need to look at their monitors from the next room using an inverted pair of binoculars.
Finally, under no circumstances shall you take into consideration the content being displayed. My blog (dedicated to the daily minutiae of my plants and their arcing patterns toward sunlight) easily satisfies all of these requirements, so why shouldn't a consumer-oriented, dynamic, international news site be able to do it too?
Off the top of my head: (Score:3, Informative)
Clean news sites (Score:3, Informative)
Drilling down to an area of interest on either site is very clean, quick and easy too.
My vote goes to... (Score:3, Insightful)
At first glance many will disagree, and likely every one of them will have no experience with McMaster-Carr. The thing you have to realize is that their printed catalog is about 3500 pages, and they stock over 400,000 items, and this site incorporates all that and more. I have to say this is hands down the most usable e-commerce site I've ever had to deal with, putting many sites with far fewer items to shame.
webpagesthatsuck.com (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com
Financial Times (German Edition) (Score:5, Interesting)
When they did the web site for the German edition, they carried on with the new graphic design producing one that seems better than their English language site [ft.com]. Even if you are a non German-language speaker, I would reccomend a visit just to look at the design. As a side note, the FT as a newspaper is never big on pictures and the web site carries on with that tradition.
Interestingly enough, the site remains free for the time being.
Standards compliance, damn it! (Score:5, Insightful)
Geez, forget clean "design"!
I'd settle for standards compliant sites. If you start there, it's harder to screw up your precious "design", unless tempted by using flash and javascript, and the like.
People, your next stop is the W3C [w3.org].
zApple.com (Score:3, Funny)
Text-based design (Score:3, Informative)
Re:That's easy. (Score:2)
Let's see: they list the page numbers in a big long list of numbers, with no next or previous button anywhere. Worse, they've decided that links shouldn't be underlined (even though that's a usability no-no), and to add insult to injury the link color is dark blue and the text color is black. In other words, to flip pages, you first have to determine which p
NOOOOOOO! (Score:3, Insightful)
But the thing is, web users don't read web sites like books.
Look at the usability research, and a few things are clear. Most web sites are scanned, not read. (The exceptions are things like lengthy articles, but even then, many of these are printed and read from paper anyway.) Hence writing in the same style, and offering the same "mass of text" presentation, as would be appropriate for a book is bad practice for the web.
Most users do not scroll much, if at all. Two o