Your favourite websites

[Spiderman]

Hey everyone

We are updating our website design and i'm trying to show the bosses why they should go for something that little bit different.

So whats your favourite websites? Idealy the more unusual the better, there have been links previously to sites that i've loved the look of and someone linked last week to a really cool looking one.

C'mon, lets see em.

Muse

[timwilky]

No No No flash is horrible. never ever use it

[Spiderman]

Originally Posted by timwilky

No No No flash is horrible. never ever use it

Ok, so put up a link to one you like that dont use flash. Please.

http://www.csszengarden.com/

http://www.oswd.org/

good places to start browsing...

Originally Posted by timwilky

No No No flash is horrible. never ever use it

Yes yes flash is fantastic use it

This site has some links to nice ones

http://www.thebestdesigns.com/index.html

and OSWD as shown above is good for ideas and getting templates.

Originally Posted by timwilky

No No No flash is horrible. never ever use it

oh puhleeze!



Flash is like any other technology... use it properly and you can yield geat results. Abuse it and you'll end up with dross.

"A good craftsman never blames his tools" (well I'll allow an exception for FrontPage)

just my 2p worth

Hi Spidey.

So, my opinion about Websites is like this: simple, and intuitive.
First off, since I am a boring bastad, flash is almost always not what you want. A flash into page is the crappest thing known the humankind.
Second, you have to insert into your head, that most people who come to your site have been on the Web for a while. They understand the way things have been done up until they hit your site. They will not want to learn how to use your site. They will want to just be able to use it, straight off.

Now, if your site is dramatically differant to the rest of the Web, this is a big deal. You have to fit yourself into the WWW, and not the other way around. You are adding something to the web, that should just slot in there.

Make it Firefox compliant. Do not use IE specific tags. Use W3C HTML validator, and CSS validator. Make everything as standard as you can. Test it on Win, OS9, OSX, Linux. Test the crap out of it.

Make it plain. For good examples of sites look at the ones that everyone uses all the time. http://news.bbc.co.uk is good. You seriously dont want to have any quirky things going on there. I would also say, only change your present site, if you are going to make it more simple, more intuitive. Get people in to test this, like your ma etc.

Good luck.

EDIT: everything about the site, ask yourself, why you are putting it in. If its for stylish reasons, lose it. Its that simple. The WWW is not there to be pretty and spinning and shiney, it is there to move info about. This can be pretty, in a clean way. But, nothing more. Being ugly is fine, as long as it gets the point across, as long as people can find what they want fast.

Originally Posted by Terence

oh puhleeze!



Flash is like any other technology... use it properly and you can yield geat results. Abuse it and you'll end up with dross.

"A good craftsman never blames his tools" (well I'll allow an exception for FrontPage)

just my 2p worth

Mate. How often have you seen a flash site, and thought, gift, this is perfect, just what the doctor ordered, I will be coming back here. How often was it really useful.
And how often was it not. How often did you go, wtf is all this, all I wanted to do was look at some bleeding dianesse jackets, and, jesus when will this load, and now my laptop fan is spinning cause the cpu is running so hot, and, and mother of christ i have to get the new flash player now. ALL I WANTED WAS TO LOOK AT A JACKET. And so on.

Flash almost always annoys. I am not saying always, but almost. How often do you return to a flash heavy site, and think, AWESOME. Theres that SAME flash ****e i saw every day for the past year.

Originally Posted by philipMac

EDIT: everything about the site, ask yourself, why you are putting it in. If its for stylish reasons, lose it. Its that simple. The WWW is not there to be pretty and spinning and shiney, it is there to move info about. This can be pretty, in a clean way. But, nothing more. Being ugly is fine, as long as it gets the point across, as long as people can find what they want fast.

Get back with ye to 1996, devil!!!!

This interweb thingy has moved on A LOT since those dark days... Usability AND design is key. Aesthetics matter now too. :P