cssvault - inspiring creativity

How many of you nay-sayers saw the old woot site? It was white, with black text, and a big purple gif button in the middle that said "I want one". It was fugly. No style at all. I'm not saying that it is going to blow anyone away (especially not the CSS elite) but it is worthy of mention. Using CSS, they have just recently simplified, clarified and beautified the site. I'm a complete novice at CSS, but I can read, and almost make sense of their woot.css. It's simple, straight forward, and a good example of how to build a site using CSS. Also, I see many of you complaining about the color choices, or the font in the woot logo... or even the "I want one" button... They have loyal visitors who have come to expect that button. They can't get rid of it. It's part of their presence. And it's a stylistic choice. Should a CSS site be picking of the font, or a color? Anyone can do that. Maybe you should you be looking at how they used CSS to successfully improve the site. I'm a site user, and I appreciate the upgrade to Woot 2.0!

Ryan

This is not a good site...

Jorge (http://thetaoofwebdesign.tk/)

Sorry to point out yet another negative here, but is it just me or are the sub-pages of Woot majorly broken in Safari 1.2.3 ? ... The sidebar background image is covering the main content. On a positive note, glad to see we've all managed to have a constructive conversation about this site :-)

Terry (http://www.vibe9design.com)

This really is crap! Is this a joke?

anonymous

" make it more trendy which is an important thing for a new business on the web" I do not feel that the trendy design of a site or if it uses the "coolest" graphics makes a large difference to any web business. Sure, us CSS nerds would apreciate a beautiful, trendy site with super clean css but for the average Joe these things are a much smaller part of the equation. I believe they care far more about ease of use, a design that they are comfortable with (see amazon.com), and good products/prices. I do realize this is the place to critique websites and this design is rightfully criticized but saying that a trendier visual design is important to any online business may be a bit short sighted. Lets not forget that content is king. If this site had a trendier visual design it would sell more widgets?

Dave (http://davidroyer.com)

No, but it might garner more attention with the potential to sell more widgets. Style is important. If it weren't people wouldn't spend so much time worrying about it. Something the Japanese and Europeans are painfully aware of but that America is still often a little behind (with there being exceptions of course in both directions) I use a Blaupunkt CD Radio in my car. I specifically bought it because I like how it looked and yes, functions. However, there were plenty of other brands I could have gone with that have CD Radios with exactly the same functionality or maybe even better. But I bought the Blaupunkt because it had style as well. The iPod is functionally inferior to basically every mp3 player Creative has released (If you don't count immediate ease of use). But the iPod has style (Creative has stickers). And actually in my opinion Amazon has steadily improved their design to fit with the style of the times while still keeping things familiar. Note they now use gradients on their navigation. I didn't say it was the end all to everything. But I do think it is important to every business to look attractive and professional. They may still succeed without it (style). But I think they can do better with it. :) But we can agree to disagree I think.

Jamie Poitra (http://www.methnen.com)

I shit out better designs.

Johnny

Compositionally, this site is suffocating. That needs sorting before anything else in my view. Extra content has been just 'crammed' in spaces, especially on the header area. The style is inconsistent also - it looks like the entire site is a 'make it up as we go along' affair. Sorry to be negative. On a plus point - just a few layout changes would go a long way to sorting the site out.

kevadamson (http://www.kevadamson.com)

I think every one here is so hung up on greatness that you are not seeing the brilliance of the site, ant that is it's USABILITY! The content is great, and very well layed out on the page. The signup page is for instance split into 2 columns, required fields and optional fields. Great solution. It is also very whitty and fun to read. OK ... I agree, the look does not blow my mind, but must every site do that? Remember, the web is about content, not XHTML/CSS validation. To conclude: Good website, fully deserving of a CSS Vault mention. Very usable and clean. Well structured content.

Árni Gunnar (http://www.arnigunnar.net)

Not really it sucks.... there should be a usabilityvault for these kind of sites. No idea hown it got here... maybe a word from the owner? what was he thinking?

Steve

If you thought this is bad, you should have seen the first version. :-)

Darkside

You gotto be kidding me... Nothing impresive... tsk tsk tsk. Why is this site here?

Slikea

No, it doesn't look very professional; Definetly not worth the CSS Vault. Take a look at the "I Want One!" button on the home page, it just doesn't have the detail of the other sites listed here.

Thame (http://www.tom.frihost.net/)

I agree this isn't CSS Vault worthy.

Jeff Adams (http://www.tinyfly.com)

woot - what?! total crap :)

hafe

The only thing I find remotely interesting about that site is how it uses plaintext and CSS for the big price ad, on the right. Such things are still, even with CSS sites, often just done with an image. Which doesn't make sense as that doesn't allow for easy changing, but hey, whatever suits them. But beyond that nice little thing (this isn't the first site to do that either, anyway) I don't really see what's so special about this. For a moment, I'd hoped that it might have been an elastic site, adding at least that much of special interest to it, but alas, no such luck there, either. Is my site really so rare in being an elastic layout? Vivabit.co.uk has one, too, but beyond that, it's like people are afraid to use Elastic... a shame.

Faruk Ateş (http://www.kurafire.net/)

It's not that it's bad, it's just not Vault-worthy.

Brad

I'm stunned! This site is not the worst site out there, obviously. In fact it's a solid CSS layout; but in today's standards-crazed web community, there's soooooo many more site that are waaaaay better. Furthermore, for Woot's industry, I would expect much more in terms of graphics design, especially if this site is to be Vault worthy. I really just can't seem to find anything special, unique, ground-breaking or uber-professional at all. I'm NOT jealous, just confused!

Terry E. (http://www.vibe9design.com)

That "i want one" button is so 1999. o_o

Bryan Veloso (http://www.avalonstar.com)

I don't think it's so bad. It's just as good as any other site. I think the generic-looking color scheme may be what turns a lot of people off. And I agree with Bryan, the button and font for "woot" does look kind of 90s, heh.

Grahf (http://www.tabpole.com/forums)

One of the ugliest css sites I've ever seen.

David

I dont think it's -that- bad, it's just that good either. the colorscheme isn't very strong, and indeed details such as that 'I want one' button give it a 90s kinda feel. also, the way the text is presented on that first page does not invite to read all (or any, for that matter) of it.

bart-jan (http://www.subdued.net)

just NOT that good either, I meant....

bart-jan (http://www.subdued.net)

Coupla things... stay up til midnight a couple of nights in a row, waiting for a new woot, and then you won't care how the page looks, you'll just know you need your fix before you can sleep. OTHER thing... woot handles the display/don't display statistics section very well, and it works on every browser I've tried... something not terribly easy in CSS to accomplish. Said my peace.

Sam (http://www.mishunery.com)

What a bunch of elitist BS. A clean, easy to navigate, low key site and people goes on and on about how crappy it is. It irritates me to no end to visit a site that is more about form than function. I also find it interesting that the people who were most critical of the site don't list a url for their own site(Johnny, Steve, David). Heaven forbid anyone have anything bad to say about their site, and before I get comments about how I don't list a URL either...I am new to web design and am trying to teach myself CSS.

Ax

very good layout

PrograMming (http://www.bokrin.com)

Great layout and colours

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