Search

Categories

Opera

Archives

Recent Entries

New A List Apart

A List Apart has completely redesigned, front and back-end they tell us. I have mixed feelings on it though…

Good things…

It doesn’t have that terrible orange/green color scheme anymore. Hooray! Seriously, Zeldman is a very smart guy, I just really don’t know what his deal is with orange…

The discussion portions of each article are nice, giving people a way to post feedback and further tips on a particular technique.

Bad things…

They use a bunch of catchy phrases to name parts of the site instead of just using clear, usable labels. Like “Up Front” instead of just saying “Home”. And “Departments” to lable the contact, credits, permissions part of the navbar. I wouldn’t call that Departments personally. Though at the moment I can’t think of anything better. I probably wouldn’t have labeled it at all actually. Another one is “Hot Topics” instead of just labeling it “Articles” or something to that effect.

The entire “about ala” page is filled with little catchy phrases that make no sense at all…

“Who made the salad?
Like Soylent Green, ALA is people. Visit the Credits page to find out about them.”

What? Soylent Green? What the fuck are you talking about?

Overall the site just looks like a blog now. Before it had more of a magazine feel to it, but now it just screams blog, while also trying to be a magazine.

And like someone on YayHooray said, the whole ISSN thing is just about the most pretentious thing I’ve seen on a web page… I mean, sure, put it on the about page or something, but plastering it all over the front page, everywhere the title of the site is mentioned, and beneath every article is way too much. To me it makes the site look less professional. Like it has to hold a big sign in your face “Look at me! Look at me! I’m a legitimate magazine! See!? I have an ISSN number just like real magazines you see in the grocery store! We are legit! Still don’t believe me? Then scroll to the bottom of the page and see that our whole site validates in XHTML, CSS and Section 508!! Aren’t we awesome????”

It’s also kind of funny how they say they spent a long time redesigning their custom CMS back-end, when it ends up looking exactly like a blog in the end. They could have just used MovableType and saved themselves a ton of time and trouble. But Zeldman still hand codes his own personal blog for some reason, so I guess it was to be expected.

I know all of this sounds pretty negative, but to be honest I was a little disappointed. I just thought it would be something new and interesting, not just another blog.

But all of those minor complaints aside, the new articles are great. Extremely well written and helpful articles about CSS navbars, random image replacement, etc. Be sure to give them a thorough read.

I to wonder what this “soylent green” is that they speak of.