Design the site

[+webscouter.]

With so many people disliking the visual changes on Geocaching.com I thought it would be fun to have a design contest for the site.

 

Design a cache page that you think would be the most effective way to display the required information. It needs to have a freeform description for the cache owner but you can design the navigation and the "fixed" elements of the page.

 

Post a graphic of the page in the thread with a width of 800 pixels so that all pages will be the same for comparison purposes. If you want you can link that graphic to a larger graphic for closer examination.

 

Have fun, if we get enough response I will then hold a cointest for a GWVII coin for the favorite re-design.

 

Edited to change the pixel width to a larger but still non-scrolling width.

Edited January 18, 2010 by webscouter.

[+obsidianspider]

Just for clarification, you're not suggesting that we design for a browser window of 800 pixels wide, just that the screen shot be resized to 800 pixels wide when posted to the forum, right?

Edited January 18, 2010 by obsidianspider

[+Lil Devil]

The existing cache pages can only be narrowed down to approx. 1024 pixels wide so I think that's what you should base your contest on.

[+patned]

Just to remind everyone that you need to make sure you are offering a good design, I have a laptop running Internet Explorer 5 on the Windows ME OS, so make sure your new design works in that configuration.

 

Good luck.

[+dbox]

But don't forget PDAs, mobiles, netbooks, running with IE 5to8, FF, Opera, Safari and so on.

 

So let's just use the old design.

I have never heard of any problems with that.

[+obsidianspider]

Just to remind everyone that you need to make sure you are offering a good design, I have a laptop running Internet Explorer 5 on the Windows ME OS, so make sure your new design works in that configuration.

 

Good luck.

That said, not every design needs to look identical in every browser. Designing to the lowest common denominator cripples innovation. A reduced level of functionality for those who choose to use an older browser is completely reasonable.

 

Beyond ensuring basic functionality, there is no reason to design for such arcane configurations. Suggesting that a site needs to work exactly the same in IE5 as a modern browser is not a reasonable request. Next someone is going to chime in complaining that geocaching.com doesn't work properly on Mosaic.

 

A lot of consideration needs to be taken when designing for the web, but since browsers can't agree on how to interpret code, it's not fair to expect a site to behave identically on all browsers.

Edited January 18, 2010 by obsidianspider

[+AZ Cache Family]

With the talk of making sure that GC.com works on Mobile applications, how about designing a more functional WAP interface? Trust me if I knew how, I would... The recent update to the site hosed my favorite mobile app (A thread was created and closed within 24 hours regarding it). So I am now back to using the WAP Site for posting logs on the go and would like to see a more updated version. I'm not trying to hijack the thread, just expanding on the idea a bit.

[+niraD]

Suggesting that a site needs to work exactly the same in IE5 as a modern browser is not a reasonable request.

If someone is going to cater to MSIE 5.x, then they should also cater to all the other browsers that have more than its 0.03% of the market.

[+patned]

Suggesting that a site needs to work exactly the same in IE5 as a modern browser is not a reasonable request.

If someone is going to cater to MSIE 5.x, then they should also cater to all the other browsers that have more than its 0.03% of the market.

 

I was being a little sarcastic in my post, in reference to all the people complaining that IE6 or whatever now looks bad. Unless you are going to support ALL browsers and ALL operating systems, then something somewhere is going to fail. If it is user code that fails, or someone does not use the latest tool, that is their choice, not GC's error. I have some very simple cache pages and don't see a problem with them. That doesn't mean some people don't now have bad looking ones, it just means that everyone is different. Should GC have really checked all of the nearly 1 million pages out there to make sure nothing went wrong?

[+webscouter.]

I only wanted the screen shot to be 800 pixels wide, that way it doesn't scroll to horizontally on the forums.

 

Design for a 1024 width.

 

I just thought this would be a fun way to show off your mad skills.