Comments on: Let Me Decide How Your Website Looks

By: Bookmarks about Pageflakes

Bookmarks about Pageflakes — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 03:00:11 +0000

[...] – bookmarked by 4 members originally found by IrkenTrad on 2008-09-27 Let Me Decide How Your Website Looks http://www.1goodreason.com/blog/2008/07/09/let-me-decide-how-your-website-looks/ – bookmarked by 1 [...]

By: Chris Kieff

Chris Kieff — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:17:45 +0000

Hmmm, Rob interesting point. But look to iGoogle and myYahoo for inspiration.

This is the age of “Have it your way!” which is any way that you want it.

I’d refloat that idea, because if you can pull it off, you’ll be leading edge and you will build a stronger community.

Chris

By: Rob Blatt

Rob Blatt — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:53:08 +0000

I’ll admit that the site that I work on has the ability to change all block locations from the admin side of things, and I have floated this EXACT idea to the powers that be in the past. It went past a design issue for them and it became an editorial issue believe it or not.

By: Chris Kieff

Chris Kieff — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:38:22 +0000

Shawn,

Of course designers will need to work with the idea that users can move things around and change colors. It will limit the designers but create new design challenges and opportunities as well.

Each site will have to decide what flexibility they will offer to users. Those that are more dependent upon the design of the site for presenting important information will need to limit user creativity. Over time the users/ marketplace will decide what is best.

Thanks for your thoughts.
Chris

By: Shawn K

Shawn K — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 15:24:13 +0000

I like the idea of being able to rearrange aspects of a site, but their should also be limits to it. I’m not quite sure what those limits should be, but people don’t always know what’s best for them. And rather than be able to just pick colors, there should be themes. Sometimes a web designer will draw your attention to certain areas by use of color coordination, and that will be lost if one can just pick colors willy-nilly.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 18:08:48 +0000

Janeth,

That will be up to each site. I’m promoting the idea that eBay and Amazon allow their sites to be reorganized by each user. Similar to iGoogle or myYahoo.
Chris

By: Janeth

Janeth — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:23:28 +0000

I like the idea.

But would others be able to see the way that I like your site to look?

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:21:42 +0000

Rob,

Yes, GreaseMonkey is getting close but true simple drag and drop functionality is the goal here.

I don’t think that the time and money spent on the design will be wasted. Currently we are dealing with the capricious browsers and CSS, and which font will be displayed. I believe this will simply be a new set of design constraints in website design.

Thanks,
Chris

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:18:50 +0000

Dave,
I agree it is expensive but I think it will be the way of the future. And the stickiness factor is huge.
Thanks,
Chris

By: Rob Blatt

Rob Blatt — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 16:12:18 +0000

To some degree the Greasemonkey extension in Firefox is allowing this to happen using CSS magic. However, being someone that works on websites, it’s extremely frustrating that all of the time, energy and money that was spent on the design will just get tossed out the window by some user that wants to change it up for the sake of making my site look more like amazon.com or whatever.

I see it both ways, and I don’t think that anyone is right.