Re: Web Competitors 2010
 

This is what we mentioned earlier. Switching up shades and adding in white. It still stays with your teams colors, but different sections are easier to distinguish and nice on the eyes. So you have what fomerlyfamous and i mentioned earlier. :)

Re: Web Competitors 2010
 

Temporary site is being published on a different server for now:

http://mort.phillipjroth.com/

Let me know what you think as it goes! Thanks.

Re: Web Competitors 2010
 

Akash your site's looking good but the bottom half either isn't loading or not there yet. I don't know which one? But the top half I see looks really good.

Re: Web Competitors 2010
 

The DiscoBots have won the Lone Star Regional Website award two years in a row.

Our team keeps the award winning site in mint condition to help other teams learn about our progress. We don't work on our 2010 website design until FIRST season starts (we like to play by the rules)!

http://2009.discobots.org
http://2008.discobots.org

Re: Web Competitors 2010
 

Team 2502 is starting to build its website (currently, just me). I'm just setting up the site structure and whatnot. "Friedman Robotics" has not been decided and will probably change. I'll holler again when it's actually done... :)

www.team2502.com

Also, we own www.teamrobot.org. That was our last year's site, but it's so lacking in design that I didn't want to really share it... :)

Keehun

Re: Web Competitors 2010
 

Im no professional designer but I don't like the sheer amount of vertical space taken up by those pictures. If they are unique to the media page that would be fine but if they are going to be on all the pages it could be a real problem for those of us who tend to use smaller windows while browsing. I do like the overall feel though.

Re: Web Competitors 2010
 

Teams in the Pacific Northwest will be delighted to hear that Billy E., the designer of www.trobotics.ca, which has won the MS Seattle Regional best website award the past two years, has graduated.

But he has left instructions on how to maintain the site...

Jason

Re: Web Competitors 2010
 

Akash, you might consider shifting those pictures to the sides of the content, or just removing them. Well...to be honest, actually, with content on that page they may distract less than they do now. So i'll hold judgement until some content is shown beneath.

So, i posted my link before, but haven't gotten anything :P

so, AGAIN!

http://team1538.com

We took everyone's problems with the left hand nav and did away with them...by centering the navigation, then playing with a sub menu. I think it's getting pretty close, just needs some more page content. Specifically photos!

Anything?

Re: Web Competitors 2010
 

Our new site is simple.
http://first.ncresa.org
:)

Re: Web Competitors 2010
 

Nice site. I like the interface and the navigation is Innovative but I'm not a fan of flash. Also when you click on on of the updates on the home page it takes a while to get back to the home. You might want to add a back to home button, so it's easier. But other than that you have good colors, and a clean site. Job well done.

Re: Web Competitors 2010
 

This site bugs me, because of the non-conventional approach to designing it. But my crazy opinion. But if you like it, then its great! plus it looks nice too.
LWakefield, i dont know if its just an unspoken rule, but never say welcome and front page. and never do it in the same sentence ;) The title should have your team number in it, because when i go to bookmark it, it will be so vague. But otherwise lookin good!

our site is www.247dabears.com. we plan to add html validation (its an asp.net app.... thats going to be amazing if we can pull it off) and a better theme later in the year.

Re: Web Competitors 2010
 

I have a rant about Flash and I beg that people NOT use it for websites. It breaks the standard method of navigating and it requires closed source, proprietary technology to edit it. Flash is great for streaming videos but for designing your main website should probably be avoided. I saw nothing there that a reasonably competent person couldn't do using Javascript and DOM Manipulation.

Jason, I apologize for appearing to pick on your team's site. It does look nice and the content is top notch. Ignoring the fact that it is in Flash I would definitely say this website is wonderful.

Re: Web Competitors 2010
 

I probably won't have anything much to do with it this year, since I'm in college this year, but I'll still throw my team's site into the mix:

http://d5robotics.org/

Still running the CMS I developed, so at least I'll leave a legacy :)

Re: Web Competitors 2010
 

Although i have graduated. I still like to see how things are going.

I'd just like to take a moment to explain my choices:
There's a wonderful backend to the site that you should see someday, which skirts past the expensive Flash editor itself. It's an entire CMS actually. Also the standard navigation methods hold up fine under most modern browsers, again due to the wonderful SWFAddress that implements custom URL and back-button support for Flash.

I do like to consider myself reasonably competent though. I have Javascript, PHP and DOM experience, enough to have done this site in another way (Dojo?) but... why? What is SO wrong about Flash?

I hear a lot about hating Flash, and I even addressed issues that people have about Flash (broken navigation, slow loading, poor layout, difficulty in editing) to the point where many visitors to the site say they had expected a Flash site to be much worse, and were pleasantly surprised. I had faith that I had resolved many of the problems, but I hear people still chanting those same issues as if I hadn't. It almost seems like blind hate. Or perhaps it is a hate for proprietary technology, an opinion I do not subscribe to.

My methodology may frustrate other developers who like standards, but I used Flash because it works, and a solution that works and meets the needs of my team (and ends up winning awards!) is a perfectly fine solution to me. If the solution had required standard HTML, I would've met that need as well.

However, with new emerging platforms like HTML 5 and integrated video, I do hope it will be replaced eventually. Who knows what my team can come up with? I have faith!

Re: Web Competitors 2010
 

First off, thank you for replying. Second, I was by no means saying you were incompetent because you used Flash, merely remarking that now, with the advent of AJAX and DOM manipulation it is possible to do nearly 100% of the things that Flash does.

You particular site did not fall prey to many of the the problems that Flash causes but those problems are still prevalent in others. I will admit I was quite surprised that not only was the site pleasant enough to use it had top notch content I'll say it again, TOP Notch Content, this is the primary failing of Flash based sites in my opinion, too often people spend a lot of time making them pretty and, for want of a better term, flashy but neglect the content.

Don't let my criticisms of your choice of a solution take away from the awards, you and your team have put a lot of work into that site, it shows. If all Flash based sites had the quality yours does perhaps my only real gripe with Flash would be that Adobe doesn't know how to write a plugin for OS X that doesn't use 50+% of my cpu.