The good, the bad and the rebooted

With the dust settled on CSS reboot, I have decided to do the usual round up post of what I thought of the entries. I have now gotten through all the sites, no mean feat that was with a lot of entries this time. I did notice a large percentage of no reboots again, which sort of was a shame but there we go. It was less of a mixed bag than November in my opinion. There seemed to be several strong themes running through out most of the entries. On a personal note, I am happy with how things have gone since reboot, although I am still in that pre-reboot brain dribble phase. I would like to thank anyone that had a word to say about any of my reboot designs, as usual both good and bad feedback is appreciated. I am already looking forward to the next one, I may have just got well and truly hooked on rebooting now. Firstly, I am going to round up the ones that I really liked be they for design, navigation or just general content. As with any reboot, there were so many I feel deserve a mention, but I have narrowed it down to the ones that had the most impact and interest to me.

• LISTD
• Obuweb Technologies
• Design Snack
• iBaguio
• Fresh Branding
• Pixel Eden
• Critical Web Design
• Zeb Online
• Chris Wiliams Design
• Ian Tearle
• Frexy Studios
• OC Food Review

There were a number of trends that I noted during this reboot. I feel that they are fairly distinctive so thought I would go through them one by one as I saw them. This is more of a summary list of trends noted than anything.

• Flock is back This is not just about flock wallpaper backgrounds, it is also about a lot of the general trend to backgrounds being used in sites and similar styled elements. This trend made me happy as I have been looking myself for interesting ways to use backgrounds in designing sites.
• Naturally web It may not be “easy being green” if you are Kermit, but it sure is if you are a website this year. Anyone would think it was Spring or something. Not that I can talk too much as I had a hint of green about the gills this reboot too. I am really happy about this trend as it was such a badly done colour on the web for a while.
• A leaning to the dark side Instantly from looking at the thumbnail previews on css reboot, one thing strikes you bar the green gill affect is that the great number of websites from the dark side. There are a lot of examples where this is done really well and in rather inventive bright accent combinations.
• Classical bookcase There seemed a harking back to traditional design through backgrounds and use of curls, swirls and patterns in the designing. Reminds me of some of the classical folio books you can get.
• Retro ice-cream Put the TV on it’s time for I Love Lucy! Both in illustrations and colour combinations, there seemed a fair few with the touch of the bewitched poodle skirt going on. This also links in with another pattern to that of vector people being used where before you couldn’t move for pixelation.
• Earth Child Along with the green there seems to be a trend to browns and natural colours. This is also coupled with a lot of plant imagery and style elements. Personally, I like this and always think natural elements compliment the web as a medium if done well.
• Reflected branding I am not sure if this is a good thing or a plague. There is a lot of it going around sort of like some Spring flu carried on from the winter flu. I also have to admit on one project recently to have been infected with the reflected logoitis. Done well it is good, but seems somewhat less high on the impact scale with all the hip kids doing it and a lot of the not hip kids jumping on the band wagon.
• You’ve been tangoed If you don’t know there is a fizzy orange drink called Tango. It looked like a whole lot of it got spilt on the web during reboot. Again the combination with green and blue or both was often the basis. It sure makes for a cheerier web. There was a definite trend to more colour this time which was not a bad thing.
• Footer weight problems It is official, the most overweight part of most reboots is not the web designers, it is the footers. Big is back and this time it’s got notes and everything. Be it fades, transparencies, gradients or just block colour, the footers have grown up and got a beer belly.

A lot of these trends I think were a reaction to the constant techie trend that had been inundating the web. As with any trend though, it is good to notice but bad to copy exactly. Way I see CSS reboot is a good way to see what is going on and notice what direction a snapshot of designers are going in. If you take it as that then you are taking it for what it is, a good showcase of CSS talent and trends.

The bad
One main thing I had problems with was the width and accessible avoidance of a lot of sites. I do not admit to being right all the time with standards and as most people learn as I am going through the accessible forest. It just smacks a little Darth Vadar’ish using CSS for a force of inaccessible. Believe it or not there are still people out there using a non Apple Cinema display. I have one client that only uses a 800×600 maximum and it was a bit hard to prove to him this was the a great showcase event. I am not going to get into the battle of how big should sites be, the arguments on both sides are so well known most can spew them out without thinking. For me, it seemed a shame to have so many at over the standard (debatable point) size. I admit this might be a personal choice, although I do have a widescreen so it is not out of only having a small screen resolution. I forget though when was the last time I had a browser window fully open on my desktop, you are always doing more than one thing and I don’t like people assuming my viewing habits.

A further trend did worry me a little more and was tied into this time warp web design which seems to be in a time that accessibility forgot. It is the use of elements and images that take so long to download on a 1mb connection I have been putting the kettle on regularly. Now, I am hardly in the dark ages here with my bandwidth. Yes, I do not have uber speed but this should be more than enough for me to view a web page. I am finding on too many for my liking that this is not the case. It just seems to be a sign of a finger upness to what so many have fought and scraped towards regarding accessibility. Great your site looks lovely with a giant fish background, but really do you care about anyone that isn’t you or using your same set up?

Summing up the boot
As usual I am happy that I took part and also take all reboots as they are meant to be; a snapshot not gospel on good web design. I feel there are a few warning signals with some of the things raised such as the using of CSS in ways that take away the accessible goal. There will always be people that have to lick the plug socket cos nobody else is, I salute those that wear a red hat when everyone else wears a blue one; sometimes though people are doing things on mass for a good reason and not just because they go baa.