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New 9rules Homepage

What are your thoughts?

Published by Scrivs on June 7, 2005 in 9rules • Did you like it? Subscribe! Or Submit it to Blogosphere News!

38 people says things!

  1. Looks great. Dig the use of colors, clean structure, and beautifully organized.

    By Donny on June 7, 2005 12:01 pm

  2. Very nice job. I really like the layout and the colour scheme. Bravo! :)

    By Bruno Kerrien on June 7, 2005 12:08 pm

  3. Very nice. I think it is one of your best looking sites.

    One tiny complaint: The purpose of the button that allows you to show/hide entries isn’t immediately obvious. I would either make it something more conventional (like a “+” when it is closed, and a “-” when it is open) or put some text next to it.

    By seth on June 7, 2005 12:24 pm

  4. Agreed. It is quite appealing and very well laid out. My one concern is the blog and the difference between the two… Personally, I would love to see this style applied to the blog as well, for consistency sake at least.

    Overall, it is a beautiful re-design.

    By Joshua Brewer on June 7, 2005 12:25 pm

  5. My one concern is the blog and the difference between the two… Personally, I would love to see this style applied to the blog as well, for consistency sake at least.

    That is in the works Joshua. That is why you get the blog tab at the top since we wish to make it a smooth transition.

    By Scrivs on June 7, 2005 12:32 pm

  6. works well, i like it.

    By Alexander on June 7, 2005 1:12 pm

  7. Appears Unmatched Style already featured it a while back.

    It’s awesome.

    By Veracon on June 7, 2005 1:31 pm

  8. I agree with the above…colorful, clean and well organized. Great job.

    By Chris K on June 7, 2005 1:33 pm

  9. You did a great job…. wonderful site.

    Cheers!

    By Alex Giron on June 7, 2005 1:38 pm

  10. Scrivs,

    Looks sweet. I really like the three quick blurbs in the header (what, how, why). As a user, I would love for them to be linked to their own pages that provide more info for me. Great design though. Seems like the show/hide toggle would be great use of AJAX, if you not already using it for this.

    By Jason on June 7, 2005 1:39 pm

  11. Very nice. A good twist on the fixed site layout. Not only that, but it provides some awesome functionality, which we all know is the point of a site along with content. Right? Right?!

    By Glen C. on June 7, 2005 1:46 pm

  12. Looks excellent - only slight niggle is the black on green under the ‘featured’ bit - little difficult to make out. But, for that to be the only niggle shows it to be an excellent job :-)

    By Lee on June 7, 2005 1:49 pm

  13. As a user, I would love for them to be linked to their own pages that provide more info for me.

    It has been planned and will be coming soon.

    By Matthew Oliphant on June 7, 2005 1:49 pm

  14. The designs really nice. The colours are really effective an the subtle gradients really add some depth to the design. It’s very different from what I would have otherwise considered you’re “style” but I guess it needs to be as it’s about the network now (not just you). Great work Scrivs.

    By garrett on June 7, 2005 1:50 pm

  15. Well it isn’t my style since all the prettiness credit goes to Mike Rundle and all the coding godliness goes to Colin Devroe.

    By Scrivs on June 7, 2005 2:00 pm

  16. The design is nice, but you really need to have those what/how/why blurbs linked to informative pages.

    I had to go to three other sites to find out what 9rules might be about (still confused) and why one would want to join (kinda do) and the process involved (clueless).

    By wayan on June 7, 2005 2:11 pm

  17. It’s very nice, but it seems to be going all out to reinforce the myth that all CSS/web-standards sites look alike - drop shadows, gradient backgrounds, the greens and oranges that seem to be everywhere at the moment, and a two-column centered layout.

    Not having a dig, just an observation - as I say it’s very nicely done.

    By Matthew Pennell on June 7, 2005 2:13 pm

  18. Mmmmmm.

    By Jeff White on June 7, 2005 2:29 pm

  19. It’s totally Rundle-licious!

    By Jeff Croft on June 7, 2005 2:36 pm

  20. I really like it. Very nice.

    By Keith on June 7, 2005 2:51 pm

  21. Jeff - just the comment I love to see ;)

    Thanks guys, I designed it, and it’s great to see so many in the community give positive feedback. I think it’s fantastic, also, that all the suggestions (links on the who/what/why top section, and the blog with a similar design) are already in the works and should be done soon. The reason that there are no links on the who/what/why pages right now are because we’re still working hard on the About section of 9rules to explain it all, so when that’s done, the links will go up.

    Seth - I’m definitely still working on those show/hide buttons. The difficulty is conveying multiple metaphors at once with just one icon. We’re trying to depict:

    1. Click here, and if the box isn’t shown, show it.
    2. Click here, and if the box is already visible, hide it.
    3. Click here, and you get to see four other entries in a box underneath this button.
    4. Click here, and the four other entries you’re about to see, are actually previous entries from the same author.

    So there are multiple things we’re trying to show the user with just that little icon, and it’s difficult stuffing all that visual information in that space. That icon, in my opinion, is the most difficult part of the entire homepage in terms of the user’s experience with the behavior we’ve developed. Once we get that icon conveying the perfect message, then I think that functionality will work out great.

    Matthew - You’re 100% right, the 9rules.com website doesn’t do anything crazy or really innovative in terms of two-column layouts, and that’s cool by me. This is actually the 3rd of 4th full iteration of the homepage (with the others having layouts a little more “different” than the norm) and we just decided to do what worked best for our users and stick to layouts people have seen before so there’s no re-learning of any new web paradigms of metaphors.

    By Mike on June 7, 2005 3:10 pm

  22. I appreciate all the positive and constructive feedback. I’m working hard on the next iteration, as is Mike. Most, if not all, of your concerns have already been address (as Mike Rundle mentioned). However, I do want to warn you that our next iteration may make your heart skip a beat, so get your pace-makers charged and ready.

    Thanks again.

    By Colin D. Devroe on June 7, 2005 4:13 pm

  23. I think you get an extremely good overview really fast. Usability is better than I had imagined was possible for a site like this.

    The looks are good too - very faithful to “the theme”.

    When do you open for registrations again? :)

    By Mikkel Malmberg on June 7, 2005 5:57 pm

  24. Overall I like the design, love that list with the little icons very cool indeed. Ooh and the JavaScript very neat indeed. Gotta love your green RSS icons too, very smart.

    I get drawn towards the left hand green content, perhaps the top content should be a little bit more obvious for people who dont quite know what the site is about?

    By Tom on June 7, 2005 6:54 pm

  25. Tis beautimous.

    I like the icon for show hide… although it wasn’t immediately apparent I took a guess and had that guess validated by the title text. That functionality is pretty sweet too. The featured is article bit is a bit hard to focus on… unlike Tom, as bright as the green is my eyes still want to go back to the pretty latest network entries. I thought maybe it was because of the content but I could read it just fine once I clicked through to the blog. maybe a contrast issue? I dunno.

    Only thing I don’t care for at all is the RSS buttons in front of the links to the sites. Seems like the site should be first and the feed should be secondary. I’ve had to stop myself from clicking on the green button more than once.

    But overall goodness.

    By sunshine on June 8, 2005 10:32 am

  26. The design reminds me of cnet: http://www.cnet.com

    By William Stewart on June 8, 2005 11:22 am

  27. Only thing I don’t care for at all is the RSS buttons in front of the links to the sites. Seems like the site should be first and the feed should be secondary. I’ve had to stop myself from clicking on the green button more than once.

    To begin with, we had it where the RSS button was to the right of the site link. Visually it looked like crap, especially since that list is built randomly (for placement) on each page load.

    So in the current version, the RSS buttons serve as bullet points and “take my RSS, please” links.

    I hope that if it isn’t entirely intuitive at least it will be highly learnable.

    By Matthew Oliphant on June 8, 2005 12:59 pm

  28. Beautiful design. I check it out almost every day. Really nice. I wish I had the eye for detail that this site shows off.

    By David on June 8, 2005 1:26 pm

  29. I really like it, and I submitted it to StyleGala the day after it was published.

    The colors are wonderful, but I can’t get over the beautiful typography. Really is great!

    By Jeff Wheeler on June 8, 2005 2:02 pm

  30. Visually it looked like crap, especially since that list is built randomly (for placement) on each page load.

    I thought it might be something like that. It does look nice and I’m all about learning…

    By sunshine on June 8, 2005 10:49 pm

  31. I think that if possible, the expanding entries should be “cookie like” and should stay expanded if someone clicks that, so that each time you visit the page, you are able to see ALL the entries you want to see.

    Otherwise, very nice site and great use of color.

    By Brian on June 9, 2005 12:42 am

  32. Wow, what a looker. Love the collors.

    By Miha on June 9, 2005 5:16 am

  33. +1

    By dru on June 11, 2005 1:50 am

  34. I love to look and feel, but it’s difficult for people like me, people who’ve never been to that site, to understand what we’re supposed to do with it… how to get started. It’s a little overwhelming for people like me.

    Let me know if you would like me to elaborate.

    By Timen Swijtink on June 11, 2005 6:30 am

  35. yeah, this is a sweet re-design… even looks nice on my pc now that i’ve got cleartype going… nice and smooth on all fronts… tasty :-)

    By 3stripe on June 11, 2005 3:46 pm

  36. The design reminds me of cnet: http://www.cnet.com

    Are you joking? Cnet is a horrible cluttered mess and this is a great looking clean design.

    By Fish on June 14, 2005 11:41 am

  37. Stunning.

    By Alex King on June 14, 2005 1:49 pm

  38. I really like the color scheme and the site looks clean and refreshing and plesent to the eyes nothing personals but you did Great!

    By personals on February 4, 2006 3:40 am

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