I know that Bill mentioned the upcoming redesign on the Blog, but it’s now live at http://www.usfirst.org. Haven’t looked enough at it to know what I think yet…
I also have not explored much, but the opening page is a LOT more exciting for first-time visitors.
I love the layout and as Don said, much more exciting of an intro. Great job to the FIRST Webmasters!
While I welcome the update (long time coming!)…
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BEWARE - the site looks horrible on Firefox! :mad: Everything is out of place and it’s all pushed over to the left. You would think that any modern-day web designer worth his/her salt would be over their IE-centric vision by now.
Come on FIRST - we know you can do better!
It turns out that the common Firefox Add-on “Adblock Plus” does really bad things to the site. So, please ignore my comments above, but be forewarned if you use Firefox and that Add-on.
BTW - First time I’ve ever seen Adblock Plus do that to a page. The new FIRST site is built with something called Ektron. Google gives lots of hits concerning incompatibilities between their tools and Firefox 3.x.
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OK - I was too quick to criticize, and I apologize. It seems I had Firefox running with the old site still loaded in the browser. Instead of restarting, I just did a page reload, and got garbage! (I just wish I’d taken a screenshot!). When I turned off Adblock Plus and reloaded, it must have done a “real” refresh, and I got the site as it should look. So I falsely assumed that Ablock Plus was the culprit.
Since then, I went to another computer and www.usfirst.org loaded just fine with Adblock Plus running. So… “never mind”:o
Works fine on Safari, Chrome, and Firefox for me… (Firefox 3.0 btw, since 3.5 was giving me issues…)
It gets a thumb up from me.
Overall, I don’t like it. There’s too much going on all over the page. It works fine in Firefox 3.5.
Works fine on Chrome, IE and FF 3.5 for me…
First impression is a bit confusing. First I felt that it was simple and rather plain, but then I felt overwhelmed as I saw everything I would needed to be link to on the home page. It’s exciting, although my total feeling on the website will only come after I have explored. (which will probably be tomorrow at roughly 7:30 during first period) hahaha.
Hrm… I’m having no problems with FF 3.5 & Adblock Plus…
I like the home page navigation–everything seems to be a pageload or two closer, which is a Good Thing. I notice they’ve started adding trademark symbols around mentions of Gracious Professionalism. This makes me twitch a little bit, but I also understand the rationale (legal protection, etc., etc.) and will leave it alone.
Descriptive URLs (such as those TBA and CD-Media use) would’ve been a nice addition, though FIRST has in the past shortened URLs that will be accessed often. Combined with the possibility of technical barriers, they get a pass.
The one thing that really irks me is the version of the FIRST logo on the non-competition-specific pages, which bears a passing resemblance to the third example I excerpt from the FIRST logo standards (PDF link):
If the logo standards have changed, then it’s time to update the document. (My hard drive has what appears to be an identical copy of the current version with a date stamp of January 2007.) Otherwise, standards are standards.
Overall, I give it a B+. The home page is a lot more eye-catching, the navigation is improved, and the color coding helps divide the sections up a bit. The logo question is holding me back from completely loving it (though if there’s some method to the madness there, I’ll gladly eat my words). Nice work, FIRST!
This page (http://usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/default.aspx) seems to be rendering a bit oddly for me on many browsers. Is it just me?
Same problem here.
-RC
It seems that I’m using IE8 at school, and when I initialy opened it up, it was really quirky, but after a quick refresh, it’s all good.
I noticed that the Junior Lego League doesn’t have a video/link on the main page. I think it’d nice for them to get their own little thing.
I see that the FRC documents have been organized onto the page. The organization is great too. It’s easy to understand and not too complex.
The FTC Challenge History is a little wierd. The heading acts like a link, meaning that it performs an action when one hovers over, but it’s not an link. 
Plus, there are no documents from the pervious years.
Overall it’s an improvement. I cannot say how much better the navigation is. Like Billfred said, everything is literally roughly 1-2 clicks away from any other part on the website.
I went in search of the logos that were up on the last website, and I couldn’t find any…I searched for quite some time…was anyone else able to find the logos page?
The FRC Logos page is here http://usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/resourcecenter.aspx?id=650
And there appears to be links to the other pages from there. FIRST refers to this page as the “Communications Resource Center” for each program.
Without an official word from HQ, my first thought on this is that since FIRST is the actual trademark holder, they would have more flexibility as to use of the trademark. My understanding of the Logo Standards document(which I haven’t looked at since the new version of the logo was first released) is that its purpose is to let us know how we can use the logo, and not necessarily the rules that FIRST themselves are required to follow.
http://billfred.googlepages.com/frc_logo_donts.png
If the logo standards have changed, then it’s time to update the document. (My hard drive has what appears to be an identical copy of the current version with a date stamp of January 2007.) Otherwise, standards are standards.
Overall, I give it a B+. The home page is a lot more eye-catching, the navigation is improved, and the color coding helps divide the sections up a bit. The logo question is holding me back from completely loving it (though if there’s some method to the madness there, I’ll gladly eat my words). Nice work, FIRST!
It appears they changed the logo to a standard FIRST logo. Web designers must have not read the fine print(or a fairly prominent FIRST document).
Wierd for me too, IE8
As for the logo, it looks right to me - the symbols in color and the FIRST logotype (text) below in black. This ‘2009’ logo (on the right below) looks to me the same* as the one on the front cover of the 2005 Annual report (on the left).
*OK, they added the Registered Trademark symbol.
Am I missing something?
It looks good but for some reason the first thing I thought of when I saw it is that it just looked like an older version of the site instead of newer. Just something about it gave it that feeling, maybe it’s just me. 