Great Examples Of Web Design

prospect

Hi All,
Not sure if this is the right place, blah blah, mods move if required, etc, etc...

What are your favourite examples of websites, in terms of good design.

I would think it should look:
Professional Looking (not like www.365online.com)
Simple (not like www.elara.ie)
Neat (not like www.linux.ie)
Easy to use / Navigate (cant think of an example, but I know there are ones out there)
Interesting / Attractive (not like all of the above)

An example would be: www.carzone.ie

What ones stick out in your mind as great designed sites?

rsynnott

That's not exactly very well designed. (Though it's not as bad as the designer's nightmare of a site)

mewso

Yes indeed that designer needs to fix his own site before doing anything else.
I'm probably similar to alot of others here in that I look to good XHTML sites for my inspiration:-

http://www.alistapart.com/ - (newly redesigned)
http://www.zeldman.com/
http://www.clagnut.com/
http://www.stopdesign.com/
http://veerle.duoh.com/

Clean, simple and effective.

DonkeyStyle \o/

musician wrote:

http://www.alistapart.com/ - (newly redesigned)

I opened this site in Mozilla and thought "Eeh, ok?"
Then I opened it in IE6 and thought "Ahaaa!"
The site looks utterly borked in Mozilla.
He's not making a very good case for web standards, at least not for Mozilla users

RobertFoster

I find A List Apart to be totally messed up in IE6, but fine in Firefox...

rsynnott

It's just a bit broken, I think...

DonkeyStyle \o/

This never would have happened if he'd used tables

deevey

well one of the sites that made me get interested in webdesign in the first place was 01 LA's site which was done by 2 advanced .. i dont like their newest site though th old one was better I think its somewhere on the new site? ..

virtually all their sites I feel are worthy of praise for good navigation and useability .. I'v never had a problem accessing them via any browser on Mac or PC.

Only thing is that most of their sites are very bandwidth heavy they are complex.

I like flashing images

Goodshape

deevey wrote:

well one of the sites that made me get interested in webdesign in the first place was 01 LA's site

I see a big box telling me to download a plugin which doesn't work for my oporating system. Boo-urns

The first sites linked to where all pretty meh in my opinion. musician offered some good looking sites though. Best one - http://www.zeldman.com/ -- nice, simple, easy on the eyes and the colours work great.

rsynnott

DonkeyStyle \o/ wrote:

This never would have happened if he'd used tables

Heresy! Burn him!

miju

I'm going to be a bit cocky here and I say www.jaded-sun.com

For a professional looking, simple, neat and easy to use website (me waits for backlash :-)

rsynnott

_raptor_ wrote:

I'm going to be a bit cocky here and I say www.jaded-sun.com

For a professional looking, simple, neat and easy to use website (me waits for backlash :-)

No, no, IFRAMEs are generally the work of Satan. And the forum is completely unreadable; try a more sensible colour scheme.

Webmonkey

deevey wrote:

well one of the sites that made me get interested in webdesign in the first place was 01 LA's site which was done by 2 advanced .. i dont like their newest site though th old one was better I think its somewhere on the new site? ..

Yeah i agree, don't like the new one and i think its the colourscheme.
This was their old one: http://www.2advanced.com/archive/v3/

a lot nicer imo

rsynnott

Eh, no! Flash! Flash should never, ever be used to design web-pages. It's horrible.

Webmonkey

well i agree as well flash shouldn't be used.
But there is something about the design that attracts me. Just a personal thing i suppose

miju

rsynnott wrote:

No, no, IFRAMEs are generally the work of Satan. And the forum is completely unreadable; try a more sensible colour scheme.

first off I'm aware of i-frames and why they shouldnt be used but in the case of design and neatness (which was what i was posting about) it works, as regards the forum what way do you mean its unreadble ive never had any trouble reading it and nor as anyone else ive asked about it

just curious like

heggie

ugh flash bashers are getting so old now

rsynnott

_raptor_ wrote:

first off I'm aware of i-frames and why they shouldnt be used but in the case of design and neatness (which was what i was posting about) it works, as regards the forum what way do you mean its unreadble ive never had any trouble reading it and nor as anyone else ive asked about it

just curious like

Black is generally not a good background colour.

Rollo Tamasi

black is a bit of a no-no alright however give me yellow text on blue backgrounds all day long!

miju

i know black is a bit of a no-no as well but the client wanted the pictures ephasises to put across the image of a live band

now im not being smart here, but what colors would anyone else suggest another color that would emphasise the pictures?

Rollo Tamasi

use the same colour palatte as the Loop da loop ice creams !

rsynnott

My priority would always be to make text readable. That said, since it's a brochure site, I suppose the pictures have to take some priority...

smeggle

I'd have to put forward for mention http://www.peoplesrepublicofcork.com/

only slight complaint is it can take a little while to load but overall it's a well thought out site, with an easy to understand/navigate layout and a well balanced color scheme.

carzone.ie is a simple functional site. hosting365 is a design I've liked since I first saw it though navigation can be awkward. I like them both though carzone especially for it's simplicity which makes it very easy to use.

Ph3n0m

smeggle wrote:

I'd have to put forward for mention http://www.peoplesrepublicofcork.com/

only slight complaint is it can take a little while to load but overall it's a well thought out site, with an easy to understand/navigate layout and a well balanced color scheme. .

A little while????? On broadband here it took over 20 seconds before I saw anything - that is not good design, and its still a basic post nuke site

miju

mmmuuuussssssttt resist the urge to resurect locked thread onnnn thisss forummmm :-)

sorry couldnt help it

rsynnott

Ssh!

And that's the slowest site I've seen in the last few years that wasn't actually coming from China or somewhere. (It actually seems to be in or around Boston)

Webmonkey

smeggle wrote:

I'd have to put forward for mention http://www.peoplesrepublicofcork.com/

only slight complaint is it can take a little while to load but overall it's a well thought out site, with an easy to understand/navigate layout and a well balanced color scheme.

carzone.ie is a simple functional site. hosting365 is a design I've liked since I first saw it though navigation can be awkward. I like them both though carzone especially for it's simplicity which makes it very easy to use.

Can you tell me where the design in this page is. As mentioned its only a basic nuke site.
It looks way too basic.

smeggle

jayz ye guy's are hard to please
ok then what about this place - Alexluu One of the sites I host as a sub domain. I have a few of these sites as I offer young trainee web designers/coders web space to be able to practice there stuff on. Most are College students and I do it just to help them out at no cost to myself.

Theres also www.firemonger.org (About to be redesigned with a cms) again a charity hosting project for a project put together by a group of students. The project is the only private one officially reconised by Mozilla and is doing very well. They are about to re-lease Firemonger v 2.0 shortly.

I have other student projects that are donated free hosting to help them out. I've been doing that for a couple of years now. It gives them the start they need without ending up on one of those horrible free servers. Some even have there own data bases that they can learn on during there studies.

Sidane

smeggle wrote:

I'd have to put forward for mention http://www.peoplesrepublicofcork.com/

only slight complaint is it can take a little while to load but overall it's a well thought out site, with an easy to understand/navigate layout and a well balanced color scheme.

Yeah not sure wtf is going on with that site but the page was blank for 15-20 seconds and that's on a 2mbit connection. Not good! Plus the design is a bit dull, effective enough but uninspiring.

Browse http://www.cssvault.com for lots of nifty designs.

Webmonkey

smeggle wrote:

jayz ye guy's are hard to please
ok then what about this place - Alexluu One of the sites I host as a sub domain. I have a few of these sites as I offer young trainee web designers/coders web space to be able to practice there stuff on. Most are College students and I do it just to help them out at no cost to myself.

Theres also www.firemonger.org (About to be redesigned with a cms) again a charity hosting project for a project put together by a group of students. The project is the only private one officially reconised by Mozilla and is doing very well. They are about to re-lease Firemonger v 2.0 shortly.

I have other student projects that are donated free hosting to help them out. I've been doing that for a couple of years now. It gives them the start they need without ending up on one of those horrible free servers. Some even have there own data bases that they can learn on during there studies.

None of them sites seem to load for me. I think your host is a bit dodgy.

Figment

I keep my favourites Irish list here: http://www.spoiltchild.com/spoilt/

rsynnott

smeggle wrote:

jayz ye guy's are hard to please
ok then what about this place - Alexluu One of the sites I host as a sub domain. I have a few of these sites as I offer young trainee web designers/coders web space to be able to practice there stuff on. Most are College students and I do it just to help them out at no cost to myself.

Not bad.

smeggle wrote:

Theres also www.firemonger.org (About to be redesigned with a cms) again a charity hosting project for a project put together by a group of students. The project is the only private one officially reconised by Mozilla and is doing very well. They are about to re-lease Firemonger v 2.0 shortly.

Erm, no. Yuk.

smeggle wrote:

I have other student projects that are donated free hosting to help them out. I've been doing that for a couple of years now. It gives them the start they need without ending up on one of those horrible free servers. Some even have there own data bases that they can learn on during there studies.

That's nice; completely off topic tho.

Webmonkey wrote:

None of them sites seem to load for me. I think your host is a bit dodgy.

Considering he's a known advocate of the cheap-n-dodgy webhost, that's unsurprising...

Rather bizarrely, one of them (the non-US one) seems to be IIS running PHP.

smeggle

Rather bizarrely, one of them (the non-US one) seems to be IIS running PHP.

Is it? em there both non US btw

rsynnott

Hmm. Ah, yes, they are; wrong name for one of them.

Yes, it is running PHP on IIS. You didn't know this?

smeggle

Smeegle - banned for being a complete tool.

DonkeyStyle \o/

smeggle wrote:

The only reason anyone would be wanting to go to that depth is if they intend to be malicious in some way like running sql injection for instance?

Jesus Christ man, 'that depth'?
It's easily possible to see that a server is running IIS if you were to try'n open a page that doesn't exist... for example www.yoururl.com/roflwtf.html would turn up a server generated 'not found' page with IIS written on it in black and white.
And the .php file extensions on the urls aren't exactly secret hax0r information either.
Both observations can be made during normal use of a site.

Also why is it worth mentioing that an IIS server is running PHP?
I've got a hosting account that runs IIS and allows me to enable PHP... granted it would be cheaper to get linux hosting if I was using PHP instead of ASP, but still... what's the big issue?

dahamsta

rofl