Web 2.0 Design

Ok, it has finally driven me to write this rant. The whole "Web 2.0" design style. It's like every designer in the web community has suddenly lost all independent creative thought and started cloning the site next to him/her. It's driving me nuts! First off, the colour palette. Apparently it must all be lime green, orange and teal blue - preferably all together. Second you must have gradients especially on dark grey backgrounds. Third you must use HUGE fonts, all the same font faces, oh and italics. Other rules to follow are using rounded corners, making your site stretchy and making use of a reflective drop shadow somewhere. God help us all, even Slashdot has fallen victim with its redesign:
Mint - lime green, dark grey gradients = 2 Web 2.0 points
Slashdot - dark grey gradients, stretchy, rounded corners, italics = 4 Web 2.0 points
Ning - lime green, teal blue, huge fonts, rounded corners = 4 Web 2.0 points
Clear Left - lime green, stretchy, huge fonts, italics, reflective drop shadow = 5 Web 2.0 points
@Media - lime green, orange, teal blue, stretchy, huge fonts, italics, reflective drop shadow = 7 Web 2.0 points THE WINNER!! 31 May 2006 | 2 comments

Content Management Systems

My latest project is looking at various open source php based CMS and seeing how easy it would be to build websites off them. As mentioned in a previous post I've downloaded and installed CMS Made Simple. The best place I've found to start, however, is OpenSourceCMS. This site has demos of many php/mysql based free and open source software systems which they supply the admin password for so you can try them all out. Not just standard CMS but blogs, wikis, forums and e-learning sites as well. Invaluable! 22 May 2006

Webpages that suck

I've been working on some designs for a Health and Safety at work site and I must say my designs don't have a lot to live up to. Have you seen the state of most HSW sites? I'm thinking of starting my own business just to help the poor people who run these sites out. Check out these beauties:

• Health and Safety Homepages
• Safety and Health Program Manuals

03 May 2006