2 edits
Originally posted by Cheshire CatI think you should first define the word 'best'. Are you looking for the website that offers the best functionality? Then RHP might be in the top three of best websites in my list of favorites. Together with Yahoo! (mail) and some websites (IBM, Microsoft, Sun, Oracle) that offer online technical reference manuals.
I was just looking up web site design in order to get some inspiration and I can't seem to find anything worth looking at besides this site. 🙂 What are some of the best web site you have seen?
By 'best', do you mean: the best human interface? I that case I think, quite frankly and no offense to Russ, that RHP would score less. I'm used to it now, but I remember that as a beginning user, I had a lot of trouble finding the stuff that I needed. And I do consider myself a VERY experienced computer user. One example of a flaw in the interface: when I started writing this message, the button at the bottom of the screen read 'Post', which is what I'd expect. Then I decided to make a change to this text, and although the entire screen is similar to when I wrote the message, the button now reads 'Edit'. So when I'm done editing this text, I have to press *Edit* to *Post* this message. Weird! And how about the text that appears between the two edit boxes (labeled 'Post' and 'Previous Post'😉: 'Please edit the contents of this box to include the sections of the previous post to which you are replying...'. To what box is this text referring to? It makes sense if you think about it, but I'd like to quote a famous book on webdesign: "Don't Make Me Think!" Why does the upper edit box not simply include the message one is responding to? This is the behaviour that users are used to...
Or are you looking for great graphics design? In that case I'll just say I like RHP, and pass on passing further judgement, because given the choice between content and design, I'm the kind of person who will choose content every time. Although I can't help noticing that this website is probably designed on a computer with a 1152*864 resolution: the little corner of a chessboard that is visible to the left of the edit box used to type this message in, reappears on the far right of my screen (I'm working at a 1600*1200 resolution). However, this is a mistakte even professional webdesigners make: I once read the book Effective Webdesign by Ann Navarro; she has her own webdesign company and their website(www.webgeek.com) has the same flaw: the wavey blue navigation bar at the top of the screen repeats itself on the right. Sloppy!! However, I'm inclined to forgive Ms Navarro; the picture she uses on page 407 in her book, is made in the center of my home town, Amsterdam. 🙂
Tiling background images can only be prevented by using a huge amount of 'white space' around it. I see the tiling myself when I expand my browser.
Fortuanley, using CSS, this can now be prevented, and silly white space hacks are no longer needed.
.boxFoo
{
background-image: url(http://img/x.gif);
background-repeat: no-repeat;
}
no-repeat - would do it - but these are further options.
repeat | repeat-x | repeat-y | no-repeat
On the next update, this will be going in of course...
-Russ
