

The Anatomy of a Perfect Web Site - johanbrook
http://johanbrook.com/minimalism/anatomy-perfect-web-site/

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diego_moita
The author is a Swedish designer. He sees the world with the Northern
European, Braun and IKEA mindset: minimalist and functional.

I respect and like it. But only for things and spaces that you need to use so
often that you almost forget they exist. And only works for people that are
open to this approach.

In some cultures (e.g: India and South America) you'd need to put a lot of
gold and bling to catch people's attention. We like it baroque/art-noveau
style: flamboyant, shiny and extravagant like a Carnaval parade or a Bollywood
movie.

~~~
rufibarbatus
There was a point, a while ago, where drawing the line between Design and Art
Direction was all the rage amongst design bloggers. If you read that link
considering this particular distinction (that is, Design _as opposed to Art
Direction_ ), the impression it gives is that the author is considering
function, yes, but not preaching anything about style.

To be sure: he _chose_ a minimalist ("under-designed") webpage _on purpose_ to
make a point. To wit: well-crafted Design (as opposed to Art Direction) can
produce a User Experience orders of magnitude better than beautiful Art
Direction that's not functionally tied to the content it surrounds.

EDITed to add: In fact, at no point does the author say that minimum is
preferrable to flamboyant. What he says in his conclusion section, rather, is:
"Design without context is not design. It’s noise." That is: form without
function is not design, and in fact it adds noise to the overall message.

Another EDIT: I stand corrected about the definition of Art Direction. It is
so much more than just the bling, _and_ it's also supposed to be functional.
But "pointless bling is noise" is still how I read the original article.
Here's a nice link on Art Direction vs Design:
<http://www.alistapart.com/articles/art-direction-and-design/>

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kghose
The best design for a site depends heavily on who it is targeted at.

It is simply not true that a bare minimum is best for all sites.

The example site is an academic and very functional site, and will appeal to a
person who goes to it looking for specific and easily accessible information.

As a site for drawing the interest of children, or teenagers it will probably
fail.

As a site for getting people to buy a product it will probably fail.

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arocks
I agree that the website is quite functional and presents great content but I
don't believe it conveys great design aesthetics. Some of the problems that I
instinctively felt were:

\- Intuitively I do not expect the clickable diagrams to be 'clickable'. It is
sort of hidden in a plain looking site. If you don't look carefully, you might
miss it.

\- The choice of colors are inconsistent across the site.

\- Unlike what the closing note suggests, it would be a little challenging to
adopt the table-based 2-column layout for a more 'responsive design' suiting
smaller screens.

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jimsteinhart
"Design without context is not design. It’s noise."

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StuffMaster
I can't possibly upvote this enough. 99% of websites I visit have too much
style, and I think it's better to go under than over.

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franze
<http://chortle.ccsu.edu/CS151/cs151java.html>

    
    
      * no doctype
      * first line HTML comment -> quirks mode (or whatever we call it nowadays)

~~~
andos
If the content is great and accessible, and the visitor leaves the website
satisfied, who cares?

~~~
rimantas
Those who will maintain the site. In any case, table layout is not that
accessible.

~~~
mjschultz
In what way is this table layout not that accessible? I just fired up Voice
Over and it read the page in the expected order. (Heading, left text, right
text, chapter list.) The only complaint I would have is the bad alt text on
images in the chapters (but every site has that problem it seems).

The font size can be increased without much issue (again, no more than most
sites).

* I'm not blind or hard of sight, so I'm not an authority on these things. Just curious.

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talmand
I don't understand the point, even a minimalist design is a design.

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rajpaul
This is Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway corporate website:
<http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/>

It's very simple and clean.

~~~
mrpollo
Interestingly enough, the site hasn't changed much since the 90's here is a
link from the Way Back Machine

May 30, 1997

[http://web.archive.org/web/19970530212007/http://www.berkshi...](http://web.archive.org/web/19970530212007/http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/)

The latest version has this interesting bit on the head

<meta name="GENERATOR" content="MSHTML 8.00.6001.18828">

It's only interesting to me because in my short life as a developer its the
first time i see this MSHTML reference, if you are like me here is a good
read:

Trident (also known as MSHTML) -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_(layout_engine)#cite_no...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_\(layout_engine\)#cite_note-8)

According to this version 8 was the first to pass the ACID 2.1 test, the
article links for reference this blog post from Microsoft that is dated 2009 -
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2009/01/09/the-
internet-e...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2009/01/09/the-internet-
explorer-8-user-agent-string-updated-edition.aspx)

I'm guessing the latest update to that site wasn't long ago, makes me think
about the process they have to change a site like this, for such a clean site,
i think it has passed the test of time, and it reminds me how much Microsoft
rules on the Corporate world.

