Slashdot re-design goes live - a polished CSS upgrade
Slashdot has finally undergone a re-design, thanks to the winner of its Slashdot CSS Redesign competition Alex Bendiken. Alex's efforts built on the initial CSS framework re-design earlier this year by Slashdot.
The resulting effort looks very similar to the previous design, but much more polished and with rounded curves aplenty. It also has slick collapsible menus in the left navigation bar, 21st century fonts and overall looks a lot cleaner and easier to navigate. Well done Alex! Here is what the man himself had to say on his blog:
"As a long-time Slashdot reader myself, I had a good feeling about the characteristics of the winning design. First, Slashdot’s brand and identity are closely married to its huge, loyal and long-time community. A redesign of Slashdot must be evolutionary, not revolutionary. Secondly, Slashdot presents a huge amount of information. A redesign should address the accessibility and usability of this information architecture. Finally, Slashdot operates on a budget. To allow for a fast and cost effective transition, a successful redesign should leverage its existing markup to the greatest extent possible.
With those design targets, I sat down for nearly 48 hours straight, and came up with the winning entry..."
Initial reactions, including from competing tech community sites digg and reddit, have been generally positive - but with some dissenters (a digg reader: "All it is is the same old crap with a new coat of paint on it."). Alex's blog remarks on these predictably varied reactions:
"While we have been receiving a constant stream of private congrats via e-mail, comments on all three sites cover the full spectrum from “love it” to “hate it”; the latter kind occasionally moving on to some disproportionately extreme reactions that may perhaps be a symptom of an excessive disconnect with Real Life(TM). Goes with the territory, and Alex is taking it all in stride, I hope. This much is obvious: had this been a vote, instead of CmdrTaco’s call, I doubt any single one of the proposed designs could’ve sustained a clear majority."
I like it though! My congrats to Alex and the Slashdot redesign team. It's very hard work re-designing in CSS at the best of times, but especially so when it's a huge-scale website - with a very passionate, knowlegeable and opinionated community who will jump on any perceived weakness in the CSS.