Galleries Are Dead, Long Live Galleries
When Simon Collison wrote the end of CSS showcases my initial thoughts were that they really ended a long time ago when everyone decided they would start their own showcase. It got to the point where every new site was being showcased at the same time so there was nothing really unique between the sites. Stylegala did the smart thing and decided to build a community around the site and to my knowledge it is the most popular of these CSS galleries today. However, I think the idea of a CSS gallery is dead and should remain so.
I’m not one to say whether we have won the fight for Web Standards or not, but I do know there is enough awareness about it within our community (the people who actually visit these galleries) that we can focus on design overall now, whether the site is tables, Flash, or CSS. Where’s the gallery that takes in all of these sites and focuses on quality design and not quality code? Yes code is important, but above the hood matters more to the end user than under the hood.
Where is the design gallery that focuses on not only the whole site, but just the logos and icons as well? If you are going to make a design showcase, why not make a comprehensive one? To me that’s the next evolution of design showcases. Let them die and resurrect like the Phoenix.
Related reading:
Yeah, remember these days when CSS Beauty was one of the few CSS Galleries? Remember the narrow two columns design of it? These were the days of the galleries :(
By Philipe on May 31, 2006 2:25 pm
So what are you waiting for? Why don’t you take design showcases up to the next level? It is something that would perhaps compliment your design critiques.
By Joe Lencioni on May 31, 2006 2:35 pm
I agree that good visual design should be admired and appreciated apart from the code. However, the community which has evolved from all these gallery sites (especially in the design blog neighborhood) would make it difficult to post anything that was not pure CSS without including a whole lot of noise (”but it has a table! Tables are bad and not semantic — what about all those DIVS!…blah blah blah”)
I think the smart way to develop this would be to highlight, say flash-based sites first, to develop and bring in the readers and followers of sites such as thefwa.com, ultrashock.com and the like. Then bring in the others, table-based, CSS…ala coolhomepages.com.
That way, one diversifies their audience and cuts down on the noise.
The ultimate would be to have an area where flash, table-based, CSS, java, .NET, RoR…designers could all argue their approaches. Might bring a sense of balance and sensability to the online design world.
By Mark on May 31, 2006 2:51 pm
Oh, yea… the good old CSS Vault days… *dreamin*
By Julian on May 31, 2006 3:26 pm
How many sites will be launched due to this article? One problem tho : it might/is be harder to register ‘design’ TLDs.
You should have made the showcasers’ life easier and released/authorized the XHTML showcases. Easier to find TLDs. ;)
By franky on May 31, 2006 3:26 pm
I agree with Mark’s idea of having a section based site. When it comes down to it yep the tables o’ tables evil evil chants will be there due to the movements of web standards and css showcases that seemed to be developing like a rash for a while and having the same kind of multiplying as gremlins and water. A change of the beast is definetly the only way to go if we are to see any showcase sites and not just chalk them down to history.
By karmatosed on May 31, 2006 3:35 pm
I actually have an idea for the next generation of css galleries. Though, because of the overly saturated state of the current market I don’t know if I want to implement the idea at this moment…if at all.
The problem at this point is no new galleries will get any respect from the community because its “just another gallery.” Regardless, I think galleries have some importance. Good design and code deserves attention and merit.
On a sidenote, One thing I find funny is when you see a website posted on one of the big galleries (StyeGala, CSS Beauty, CSS Vault, or any decent size gallery), it quickly filters down to the wannabe galleries. I’ve witnessed this happening to my site as I saw all these galleries show up in my stats. So basically, its a gallery of sites they grabbed from another gallery.
By Chris Griffin on May 31, 2006 4:35 pm
I run a webdesign showcase (webdesignbook.net) and it focuses mainly on the code in the first round. All submitted sites that is valid coded gets listed, and its up to users to get them voted into the next round, where 150 of the best webdesigns (where look and code matters the same) will be picked out for a book.
I have tried to move the focus away from just picking sites out that i like to look at, because what looks good in some peoples eyes, looks bad in others. This means that many of the sites listed, isn’t listed in other showcases - variaty. Look at stylegala, cssbeauty, cssvault etc, and you will find that most of the designs are listed all the same places.
By Thomas Silkjær on May 31, 2006 5:39 pm
Wow, I’m a bit ahead of you guys (http://www.cssliquid.com)
By Montoya on May 31, 2006 9:48 pm
Design showcase gallery? Dude, you do have Google right? There are plenty of website with an “artsy” view galleries out there… especially for Flash based sites. I personally see no reason for CSS galleries to die. There existence heavily influenced design trends, brought the idea of web standards to more, and ARE well designed websites.
Yes code is important, but above the hood matters more to the end user than under the hood.
At the same time I highly doubt end users go around looking at design galleries (ask your mom how many she has been to) but you know who does… other designers and developers… coders… where “under the hood” is the most important of all.
By cpawl on June 2, 2006 10:48 am
Hmmm, I still don’t think under the hood becomes that important to xhtml/css coders once they know what they are doing. Sure it might be helpful for the backend guys to get a sneak of the code running the site, but besides that…
Of course learning is a continual process so maybe that’s how you are looking at it.
By Scrivs on June 8, 2006 6:05 am
As an aside, and some blatant self-promotion, I have just launched my own project in an attempt to index and aggregate the plethora of CSS galleries out there in Webland.
http://css-galleries.com
I completely agree with the thoughts above. I’ve spent a good deal of time sifting through these showcase sites, and you can certainly tell the differences in standards between, say, CSS Mania who feature dozens of sites per week, and Screenspire who are very selective.
But you’re right, I would like to see the criteria raised above the bar of “nice design” or “uses web standards”, or incorporate the entire package. After all, that’s what makes a “good” website.
By Nick Dunn on June 25, 2006 1:54 pm
[...] There are hundreds of CSS galleries on the Web and each one claims to be unique. Although everyone has already noticed that most of these galleries repeat each other showcasing the same websites. Several articles were written about how pointless most of these galleries are, how everyone is tired of viewing the same average or similarly looking sites appearing in most of their collections. “A word to the wise, css galleries are over”, asserted Devlounge; CollyLogic wrote about “the end of CSS showcases”, and Wisdump wisely concluded that “they really ended a long time ago when everyone decided they would start their own showcase”. [...]
By CSS Galleries With a Focused Inspiration » Inspiration Bit on March 16, 2007 5:58 pm