September 2004 Winners

Monc

As the Standards gospel spreads, we see more and more people pushing the boundaries of both CSS design and visual design in general. But it's still difficult to find sites that we can laud here at the Web Standards Awards. Why? Because although people are increasingly using CSS, a lot of them still ignore the spirit of Standards with poor code, poor structure and poor accessibility.

That's what makes Monc's site all the more special -- tight and clean code that is perfectly decorated in their own understated and beautiful style. An assured win for the Swedish team this September.

More...

  Reviewed by Cameron Adams :: Comments (5)

Red Labor

Red Labor is a difficult site to pin down. Part gallery, part store, part blog, and the design reflects its split personality.

When I first saw a previous version of the site a few months back I was struck by the eclectic mix of elements - each unassuming, but combined to make an edgy and slightly subversive whole. What I like is that the design appears 'unfinished'. Not because of its Wicked Worn edges, but because the designers have resisted the urge to overcook the design ingredients.

I'm not sure why they have plumped for image-maps rather than CSS Sprites for the home-page navigation, or why so many 'alt' attributes are empty, but what the hell, I love it...

  Reviewed by Andy Clarke :: Comments (4)

Noscope

Noscope is the stylish and sleek online home for Danish designer Joen Asmussen. For some reason the design makes me think of the album Born Sandy Devotional by The Triffids. They both share a spacious feel while allowing for living, organic elements.

It's worth noticing how Joen has designed the header graphic to be a bit wider than the main content. To me this creates some positive tension to the page.

Another thing that struck me was the ugly white box around the search field up in the right corner. Why on earth would a good designer put that hideous thing there? Later I found the answer in Joen's Snacksized Usability Tips. I'm not sure who has concluded that you should have a white box around the search field, but a safe bet would be to suggest another Dane.

  Reviewed by Johan Edlund :: Comments (4)

Evgord

It's good to see Web Standards penetrating areas that haven't normally been associated with web development. In this case, Evgeni Dinev's personal site is a glimpse at the Bulgarian version of CSS, and it's looking good.

Although he uses some popular design effects, the site brings them together well to create its own identity. The homepage illustration in particular is a striking contrast to the flowing lines of the interface, but the palette reinforces the imagery with a well worked fool's motley.

  Reviewed by Cameron Adams :: Comments (5)

Mozilla

Ever since WSA started back in February I've been trying to find a well designed site that uses an elastic layout, i.e. a site where the content expands or shrinks relative to the text size (think of the way the zoom tool functions in an application). I always thought the first elastic design awarded here would be some obscure design blog or experimental layout depository, so imagine my surprise when I pull up the newly redesigned mozilla site to find out that it nicely scales according to the text size. At least in Firefox and Opera. IE doesn't understand min-width and max-width and therefore turns the elastic design into a fluid one.

The two main rules:

body {
    min-width: 610px;
    margin: 20px;
}

#container {
    max-width: 70em;
    margin: 0 auto;
}

More facts:

• The markup is not xhtml for once, just good ol' html 4.
• Both the style sheets and the markup are well organised and follows one of the best coding guides I've seen.
• The navigation doesn't display correctly in Opera (6 and 7.20).

The new mozilla.org feels very professional with a clear IA, good accessibility and a stylish surface. The site has been developed by a team from silverorange.

  Reviewed by Johan Edlund :: Comments (12)