with Imagination: by Dustin Diaz

./with Imagination

A JavaScript, CSS, XHTML web log focusing on usability and accessibility by Dustin Diaz

You become what you practice

Friday, December 16th, 2005

It’s easy to get caught prototyping with inline styles, a few extra presentational tags, and inklings of onclick on every couple of elements to get your behavior just right.

You become what you practice

It’s even easier to just get the job done and rush things together. Slap on that high pass filter, drop the ’star’ html, and throw in a few <br /> tags while you’re at it (just enough where it’s not too noticeable).

You become what you practice

You’ve justified that it’s only one table to hold together those three columns. It’s much better than the old layout afterall, right? Nobody is going to notice anyway.

You become what you practice

There’s a release date afterall. We gotta drop this project off to QA. We don’t have time. Just release it because it’s good enough.

We’ve done this before…and we’ll do it again…you become what you practice

Todays contest and book information

Web Redesign

Whomever answers todays question the best will win a copy of Web ReDesign: Workflow that works by Kelly Goto and Emily Cotler.

What is the worst re-design a major website has undertaken, and why was it the worst?

Please remember to put your answers encapsulated within a <blockquote> element, and the regular discussion as normal.

8 Responses to “You become what you practice”

  1. Charlie

    December 16th, 2005 at 4:33 am

    It has to be http://www.disneystore.co.uk and here’s why http://www.molly.com/2005/11/03/an-open-letter-to-disney-store-uk/

  2. Wench

    December 16th, 2005 at 8:53 am

    Don’t take this personally (besides, I don’t think it’s your fault)…

    I actually like the old My Yahoo! design better.

    1) I preferred the tabs across the top for personalized “pages”.
    2) I don’t like the dropdown
    3) The old design fit in my 800×600 browser window and didn’t force me to maximize my window (1280×1024) in order to see all the content.
    4) When it was first launched, it was borked in firefox - the select a page and the search box ran into eachother (glad that was fixed, btw).
    5) Also, my photos and my briefcase got “revamped” around the same time, and I lost every single one of my photos. :(

    I quit using My Yahoo! since not long after this change took place. :(

    Yahoo mail is still my favorite webmail app; real mail goes to yahoo, online signups goes to gmail (although, I haven’t tried the Yahoo! beta mail yet…and, to be honest, from screenshots, I’m not overly anxious to give it a go, either).

  3. Jon

    December 16th, 2005 at 9:46 am

    without a doubt ebay. just look at it.

  4. Elliot Swan

    December 16th, 2005 at 10:36 am

    I hear disney.co.uk did a pretty rotten job for a redesign.

  5. Joe Grossberg

    December 16th, 2005 at 11:24 am

    Charlie and Elliot:

    “a travesty, a tragedy, and an embarrassment” seems a bit melodramatic.

    Jon:

    I believe eBay looks bad on purpose, because many of their customers wouldn’t want the slick-looking equivalent of a fancy boutique; they want an online flea market: chaotic and quirky.

  6. Elliot Swan

    December 16th, 2005 at 2:59 pm

    Oh…I see somebody posted that before me. I didn’t see that before..

  7. Answer Clever: Win a book. 12days is still on

    December 21st, 2005 at 12:17 am

    [...] Unobtrusive Degradable Ajax Style Sheet Switcher Easier DOM walking with cleanWhiteSpace You become what you pract [...]

  8. Derek

    December 21st, 2005 at 2:27 am

    I was trying to come up with something clever, but whoever said Disney should get this one. That was hideous.

    -Derek

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