News Design bit-tech's new site skin competition

Typo? "Submissions need to be made in this forum thread in a single post - before midnight on July 17th" in The key info.
Unless someone has invented time travel already and not told me about it?

 

Any chance of changing to a non fixed-width layout? updated the layout image with 3440x1440 (green) and UHD (yellow) to illustrate the problem.

 

Letting the community decide is a cool idea. Is there any prize or reward for winning this competition, or is it purely for the privilege of having your design on this wonderful website? (don't mean to come across as cynical here)

Is there a reason why each person can only submit one (pair of) skin(s)? I mean, isn't the more the better in this case?

 

I like it as it is.....

 

Can you please enlarge the main content are of the site? 1920 wide at the very least (1080p is the most popular resolution by far), or even do a mildly dynamic site that scales for 2560 wide screens?

Right now it looks like this on my 2560x1600 screen, which is frankly, comically tiny.

Also, can we have a dark theme too (for both the main site and the forums)? Too much crap is bright white, despite having no reason to be (since there isn't a huge amount to be spent on ink).

EDIT: also, please, PLEASE, whatever you do, don't build a massive javascript webapp. Simple, plain HTML loads quick (faster than I can switch tabs on my miserly 20/1 ADSL connections) and renders well.. meanwhile something like The Verge's website is a bloated, slow piece of crap that takes a full 20seconds to load on a gigabit connection at Uni on a quad-core laptop with dedicated graphics and 16GiB of RAM, and that's just not acceptable. If I wanted the 56k experience, I'd use a 56k connection.

 

That's just a setting in the User Control Panel, at the bottom of the "Edit Options" page (change Forum Width from "Fixed" to "Variable"). Sadly the front page does not appear to have a similar setting.

 

AFAIK, there was a setting in the forum CP to switch between fixed width and variable (full) width. This was back when Jamie redesigned the site last, which was a good few years ago (I'm thinking maybe it was 2012?)

 

Yeah, that.

I often, (usually) have my web browser open on one half of my screen while having something else open in the other half. I just assumed most people did that...

 

This too. It'd be nice if the new site worked well on tablets and mobile phones. Yes you can double tap to zoom into content on the current site, but a responsive design is just that bit nicer.

 

Can breaking news items be announced by Miley Cyrus swinging across the screen on a wrecking ball? That would be cool.

 

Incidentally, this what the site is like if you view it in one full size window at 3840 wide. I've scaled it down to not destroy people's internet connections, as the file size is slightly ridiculous


convenient if you dislike scrolling though...

 

When I'm not working, I'll have my browser opened maximized on my 2560x1600 screen for some very immersive browsing, since I have my IM windows on my left 1920x1200 screen and IRC on my right 1920x1200 screen.

When I'm working, I'll have many more windows tiles, but when I'm working I'm not really browsing the internet and reading bit-tech, am I?

Yes, I have a triple-screen setup, and for those wondering, yes, I will upgrade the side screen to 2560x1600, eventually...

 

This sort of contest really worries me. As a design and long time Bit-Tech visitor, I had hoped not to see something like this. I'm a designer and developer, and have seen lots of design contest like this crop up over the years. They are what is referred to as speculative work. What this means is work is done with only the hope of reward for the individual.

This is bad for the business and the individuals doing the design work. For the individual, they are putting their time and effort into something they are unlikely to get rewarded for. For the company, they are getting something for free, but without the process designers normally go through: getting to know the business, understand the aims of the company, understand the limitations of the project. The whole point of this is a collaborative effort.

For more information, take a look here: http://www.nospec.com/design-contests

Obviously, some people would love to do this, and I don't want to spoil it for people, but given what I have seen with these kinds of contests going south quickly, I feel I have to speak out.

 

Exactamundo! Full screen browsing seems a waste of space.

 

It's just a background for the website. What's the worst that can happen?