Found a really interesting WP site

[Yikes]

Hi Guys,

I saw this site:

http://startupgiraffe.com/

And thought it was a quite interesting use of WP. As I can't attend the month, thought I'd post it here!

What does everyone else think?

B

[Mike Little]

I'm afraid I absolutely hate sites designed this way. They are a nightmare for users with accessibility issues. 

 

Mike

-- 

Mike Little
http://zed1.com/

[John Logsdon]

I tend to agree with Mike - you need to scroll down and that is not good for
accessibility.

My main comment though is, if you switch off .css completely, it is all one
page so everything is loaded in one go...

But it does show how enormously flexible a twentyeleven theme can be if you
really want to go that way!

--
Best wishes

John Logsdon

[Philip Valentino]

summary opinion - design has been sacrificed to quality / performance. how many js files ? jquery twice ? cufon ? 177 requests (its the map in the footer) ? for 190kb page ?
call the page on your mobile - theres piles of it hidden away - fluff that only works on desktop.

for a "design" house they should have started with a blank responsive framework in my opinion, and built from the bottom up. "mobile first"
eg http://foundation.zurb.com & http://themefortress.com/reverie/ (or Bootstrap, Bones, ....)

theres the 'web of ye olde' concept of "mystery meat" a bit like their landing page.
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/mysterymeatnavigation.html

I do not consider this as exemplary at all - thats not down to Wordpress - its down to the Giraffes.

phil

[Perry]

It would probably look nice screen-capped on the pages of .Net magazine :) Also I guess it might play well with with the right sort of clients (graphic heavy presentation and so on).

As an aside, does anyone have any thoughts about the jQuery concertina effect used on the FAQ section on the site? I first looked at it on my phone and it struck me that if laid out nicely with thumb sized clickable links that style of presentation might work well on mobile.

I have a project in mind and was thinking about ways to present text heavy lists.

Perry

[Yikes]

Sorry if I offended anyone with this site, I'd just hadn't seen a wordpress site that looked like this before, so thought I'd post it! I didn't look too closely at the source code!

I am seeing a lot of sites that look like this recently (one very long page), mostly internet startup companies based in the USA. I wonder if it's just fashion (like splash screens were) or whether there's a perceived advantage with Google having all your content on your index page? (not that there will be an advantage with Google of course!) Just wondering!

I didn't think about the accessibility issue about the scrolling, although they do have "Sticky" navigation which clings to the top on the desktop version. Would this be an advantage from a usability point of view if you did have a page that was quite long? It seems to disappear on the mobile and iPad versions though.

It probably isn't a good idea to make the user load your entire site at once and they should display the navigation straight away too!

Thanks for the interesting links about responsive design Phil, am learning more about this at the moment!

:-)

regards
Phil
07768 920977
www.redlobsterdesign.co.uk
@philipvalentino

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[Mike Little]

On 20 November 2012 13:19, Yikes <belinda...@gmail.com> wrote:

Sorry if I offended anyone with this site, I'd just hadn't seen a wordpress site that looked like this before, so thought I'd post it! I didn't look too closely at the source code!

I am seeing a lot of sites that look like this recently (one very long page), mostly internet startup companies based in the USA. I wonder if it's just fashion (like splash screens were) or whether there's a perceived advantage with Google having all your content on your index page? (not that there will be an advantage with Google of course!) Just wondering!

It's absolutely only about a recent design trend. Not just US based, I've seen a good number of UK and other sites too. Hopefully it will die soon.

 

I didn't think about the accessibility issue about the scrolling, although they do have "Sticky" navigation which clings to the top on the desktop version. Would this be an advantage from a usability point of view if you did have a page that was quite long? It seems to disappear on the mobile and iPad versions though.

I would mostly regard it as a disadvantage even to sighted and able viewers.

When you first hit the site, the animated scroll 'button' looks like it should be clicked on, the mouse cursor even changes to tell you you can click on it. But clicking doesn't do anything.

The persistant navigation is not yet visible at the top of the page. 

If you do figure out to scroll down (and many would use the scroll bar at the side of the window), the first click doesn't change the content other than to bring the giraffe into view. 

I managed to get it so that clicking in the scroll bar a second time puts the first section of content underneath the navigation so you don't get to read it!

The services section items animate when you mouse over them, hinting that maybe you can click on them, but once again nothing happens.

If you click to have the screen scroll to a specific section and the content scrolled to doesn't fit the page,  then you need to scroll normally to see through to the end of that section, and if you scroll too far you get to see the next section and maybe you start reading that, but it's not a continuation of what you were just reading... 

If you then click on the next menu item, it scrolls to a part you've already seen?

If you manage to make your way back to the top of the page, the scroll hint has now gone and you are left looking at just two words and no clue what to do. 

It can be very confusing for people who are not familiar with the web, it is so very different from most of what they have previously encountered. 

For people with cognitive difficulties, I should imagine it could be impossible to understand.

Mike