

W3 gets new Look - taranfx
http://www.w3.org/standards/

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tripngroove
The absolute worst web design trend of 2009 is this header background that
extends beyond the container and makes it look like the header is on a piece
of paper that has been folded around the background. Let me show you what I'm
talking about: <http://i.imgur.com/yP7CH.png>

It's a silly and needless ornamentation that wasn't cool or interesting when
the first person did it, and became even more worthless and boring with each
successive use. Bahhumbug!

I'll hug it and kiss it and apologize if I see it used in a way even remotely
relevant to the context of the content, or integrated into the visual language
of the design (e.g. on a blog about origami), but until then, I'm a hater. I'd
rather see drop shadows under blinking text; at least that would be quasi-
original.

Also, the blue logo area pops so ridiculously hard it makes it impossible to
keep my attention focused on the rest of the page. I'd tone it down to a
smooth #80a7d3, like you see in the image I linked above.

EDIT: Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled w3 finally redesigned the site; on
first impression it appears to be a marked improvement.

~~~
daleharvey
I dont really understand how you could dislike it so much, its a tiny flourish
that gives a little visual hierarchy

~~~
tptacek
What's the hierarchy that it establishes that the large type, all-caps, and
oddly-spaced embossed icon didn't already establish?

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aw3c2
It looks a bit like a generic domain squatters landing page. No soul. Before
it showed clearly that passionate programmers where at work. Now it looks like
a "design job". A bit too much for my taste.

~~~
robotron
Not sure if I would go so far as to say it looks like a domain squatter page.

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markbnine
Of course the first thing I did was validate it. Couldn't help myself... It
passed.

~~~
compumike
The HTML did, but not the CSS :-P

[http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-
validator/validator?uri=http%3A%2F%...](http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-
validator/validator?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2Fstandards%2F&profile=css21&usermedium=all&warning=1&lang=en)

~~~
cloudkj
From the looks of the star html and _border declarations, validation is
failing due to the IE-specific hacks :-P

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tptacek
The uppermost nav menu is a blob of text, the nav item "standards" is repeated
(Standards, STANDARDS, standards, _S_ T _A_ N _D_ A _R_ D _S_ ) like the date
of a monster truck rally, and there's no obvious difference between left-nav
and top-nav. It looks like a blog from 2005 viewed in a browser with the wrong
fonts. Who designed it?

~~~
dasil003
It looks like a cheap bastardization of Drupal's default template that I think
they launched with Drupal 5 several years ago.

Quite simply I think they tried too hard. The gradients and whitespace are
extremely clumsy. It would look 10 times better with flat colors and
standardized on some kind of grid and font size scheme.

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maqr
And still a wrong doctype or mime type, depending on how you look at it.

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seldo
Not really a fan. The W3C does so much that their past homepages have suffered
from a mass of undifferentiated links. This design attempts to solve the
problem by taking down the number of links, but the dearth of contrast and
colour means it's still very hard to tell what's important, what's time-
sensitive, and what's always there.

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eam
I don't get the point of the drop shadow under the blue square where the w3c
logo appears. It breaks the harmony. It bugs me.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Look at the bottom of the page. The footer has the same effect. IMO it's not a
drop shadow but is supposed to suggest that the section below is curving
smoothly away and back under as if that element was made of a piece of paper
that was rolled over the top.

On the whole it looks like they were close to having something great.

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amrj700
I'm tempted to say that index.html should be an index. You know 1994-style
blue links in <li>'s in a nice hierarchy and nothing else. The old site used
to be like that, deep linking from the front page to the specs etc. and a
newsfeed in the middle. For some reason, I hate this new design. Maybe it's
just "We fear change!"

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andrewcooke
why are the left and top menus (standards, participate, ...) the same? that
seems very odd for an otherwise fairly professional-looking page.

edit: and why have the "pointer" point to yet another instance of the word
"standards" rather than the one in the top menu? i know it's way better than
it was, but it seems odd to be so much better and yet still have odd things
like that...

~~~
pyre
> _why are the left and top menus (standards, participate, ...) the same?_

Looks like the top menu is static, but the left menu changes as you navigate.
Compare the two on this page: <http://www.w3.org/Consortium/membership-
benefits>

Kinda falls apart on pages like this: <http://www.w3.org/Consortium/fee-
history>

There's a lot of needless elements though. Go here:
<http://www.w3.org/Consortium/membership.html>, then click on the drop-down
under 'Fees'. The 'current fees' link takes you to the same page that the
'Fees' link goes to. And the 'fee history' link goes to a page that is also
linked to from the page the 'Fees'/'current fees' links go to.

Same with the drop-down under "Join W3C" The "Join W3C" link and the "how to
join" link both point to the same URL: "<http://www.w3.org/Consortium/join>

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compay
They're using PHP and Smarty, from looking at comments in the source code.

I find it highly ironic that the people in charge of web standards and
consistency use the programming language with least consistent syntax.

~~~
pyre
Does consistency in programming language somehow automatically translate to
consistency in output?

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compay
No. What I find ironic is the cultural mismatch. PHP seems an unlikely
language for technological idealists.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I don't think they are really idealists - more pragmatic than idealism
implies.

