

-= sequoia capital =- - jasonlbaptiste
http://tlrobinson.net/misc/sequoia.html

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earle
This is actually more informative than their current site!

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falsestprophet
And at least on par with their last site as I remember

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rabidsnail
It's a webpage from the future! All of the tags are lowercase and some of them
have these "style=" attributes with some weird programming language in them!

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ars
Doesn't validate, you have a </P> tag - what is that? Everyone knows you don't
close your <P> tags.

What's that extra slash after the BR and HR?

And </li>?? Since when?

Where did you learn to program HTML?

:)

~~~
tlrobinson
Sheesh, sorry. I fixed it, per your suggestions. Also, all tags and attributes
are capitalized, and there's no quotes around attribute values.

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JoelSutherland
A colleague of mine wrote about agencies moving to this odd, search-style site
a few months back:

[http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/big-ad-agency-
websites...](http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/big-ad-agency-websites-
continue-to-get-worse)

It just doesn't make any sense. It's not even trendy.

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wkdown
I can understand submitting this link to Digg / Reddit / 4Chan.

But why here? It's nonsense

~~~
ars
Yah, it does seem that way.

It's actually a list of companies that Sequoia Capitol has invested in. So
it's sort of an in joke given the startup focus this site has.

~~~
tlrobinson
It was actually inspired by this comment:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=772027>

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mrtron
Man I love that under construction animated gif.

That was a standard on all sites for so many years...

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jamesjyu
yeah, because really, when is a site _not_ under construction??

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icey
Needs more blink.

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tlrobinson
Apparently the BLINK tag doesn't actually work in some modern browsers, so I
had to reimplement it in JavaScript. If you'd like to use it on your own site,
here's the code:

    
    
        var blinkOn = 1;
        window.setInterval(function() {
            var blinks = document.getElementsByTagName("blink");
            for (var i = 0; i < blinks.length; i++)
                blinks[i].style.visibility = blinkOn ? "visible" : "hidden";
            blinkOn ^= 1;
        }, 500);

~~~
ars
Just a small note - you should not explicitly set the visibility to "visible",
set it to the empty string "" instead. This way you don't overwrite the
default property if it was something else.

And you can skip the blinkOn variable by:

    
    
      blinks[i].style.visibility = blinks[i].style.visibility == "" ? "hidden" : "";

~~~
invisible
That's actually way slower because you're doing a comparison within an
iteration. That's putting an if statement inside a loop while the result is
the same for every iteration.

~~~
ars
Computers are not that slow these days :)

It reduces complexity and a global, which is far more important.

And that blink loop is probably not that big - just how many blink tags do you
have?

I don't use it for blink loops anyway, I use it for toggle on/off, where
keeping state for each element individually is pretty important.

~~~
invisible
You're accessing the DOM every iteration, so I'd bet that it does matter
somewhat if blink is used a lot.

You can avoid polluting by make it an actual function and then setting the
function.blinkOn instead.

You're right: individually swapping them this works better, but the intent is
to have them all off or all on.

    
    
      (function() {
        var blinkIterator = function() {
            var blinks = document.getElementsByTagName("blink"),
             onOff = blinkIterator.blinkOn ? "" : "hidden";
            for (var i = 0, l = blinks.length; i < l;)
                blinks[i++].style.visibility = onOff;
            blinkIterator.blinkOn ^= 1;
        };
        blinkIterator.blinkOn = 1;
        window.setInterval(blinkIterator, 750);
      })();

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jrockway
Wow, I really miss the days of black text on a gray background. * sniff _

~~~
slyn
Expect it to make a glorious comeback because of OLEDs:
<http://static.arstechnica.com/amoled.jpg>

source: <http://arst.ch/60n>

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gizmo
No <marquee>? I'm disappointed.

~~~
Scriptor
Might not work in all browsers, but check your status bar.

~~~
davidw
It could definitely use a "this site best viewed with Mosaic 1.0" or something
to that effect.

~~~
ido
And a visitor counter.

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aresant
Fantastic. Their new site is ridiculous "look how trendy we are".

~~~
gaborcselle
I actually think their site is pretty cool / innovative.

~~~
webwright
Seriously?! If search engines had AI, I can see it being cool/innovative. With
the current state of search technology, it's a usability disaster.

Problem #1 - language. Is their portfolio page called "portfolio"? Or
"companies we've invested in?" Is their contact page called "contact"? Or "Get
in touch?" Do they have a blog? Searching for "blog" seems to indicate that
they don't-- unless it's called something other than "blog". Search is hard
and they are making their users play "guess the right search query" when a
scan/browse action would be easier and less error prone.

Problem #2 - scan-ability. So say I AM interest in learning more about their
portfolio. Roughly what types of companies do they back (what's the search
query to answer that question?)? What have they backed most recently (again,
what search query?)? Who works there (a search for partners suggests "Energy
(partners)")? Scanning is a huge part of web behavior.

Problem #3 - discoverability. What about what I'm NOT searching for? They have
some GREAT content around how to pitch VCs, what ideas are VC-worthy, etc.
With a content-free page, there is a 0% chance of me learning about stuff that
I didn't know I was looking for.

Problem #4 - SPELLING. Take a look at their partner page (if you can find it).
Are there any names there that you might have trouble spelling/searching for
if you heard it at a dinner party last night?

We don't have to guess with usability. What they SHOULD have done is write
down 5 tasks that people might do at their site and had a few friends run a
few informal tests.

I'm willing to turn in my UX designer badge if my guess is wrong and this UI
increases task performance speed and reduces errors.

Hrm, as I consider it-- I guess your comment doesn't dispute all that. It
probably can be cool, innovative, AND a usability disaster.

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thomasswift
The top text blinks.... Plus 1000 points

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zandorg
OMG so hilarious!

Budd Ugly is a classic of web design parody, except that my buddy (a hypertext
legend) thought it was a real site!

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tlrobinson
Context: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=772027>

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timdorr
Wow, trendy stuff. I'm going to have to start using that window.status trick
they're using.

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kwamenum86
Many more of those companies should have gotten the "Cool" animated gif...

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mhartl
Awesome, but is there a reason 'capital' is misspelled 'capitol'?

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whalesalad
Was spelling capital wrong part of the parody too?

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tlrobinson
Yes.

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sirech
needs a bright green background to emphasize the tree connection.

~~~
hughprime
What, and lose Netscape 1.0 support?

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antidaily
I lol'd.

