A little backstory: They stole my site (socketstudios.com) which showed up on my analytics as they for got to remove it. They also left the contolling javascript file on my server. I modified it to load images of dogs that have no idea what they are doing.
Using Firefox 12 with NoScript installed, your site is entirely unviewable. Even in its most permissive mode (which works for the vast majority of sites), NoScript does block cross-site scripts that it considers dangerous. On your site, I get this in my Error Console:
I suspect that fixing the error mentioned there would make your site usable to more people (and more secure). But can I put in a plug for web design via progressive enhancement, rather than web design that just gives a blank grey page with a border and a few non-functional buttons if the scripts fail to load?
Sorry, forgive my ignorance (I'm a designer not really a developer) but are you saying I should host all my JS myself?
As for the fall back to a working site should JS be disabled, or the scripts fail to load you're entirely right of course. There is a lot I could still do to the site, but it serves no real purpose and was largely just an experiment so isn't very high on my to-do list at the moment.
You gotta earn epsilon trust to get me to whitelist your site for JS. If your site is 100% broken with JS off? You haven't earned that trust; you've instead told me that you're sloppy. Double points if your site is something that could get its basic functions done with JS - I have seen blogs, sites whose job is present straight text, that completely break with JS off. What that tells me is that I should be deeply suspicious of the technical chops of the people responsible.
It's not like it's hard to earn epsilon trust! Slap in a < noscript > element that says "here's what our site does, please turn on JS" is usually enough. "Please turn on JS" by itself, though, is not.
You don't have to cater to people who have JS turned off - you just have to not give us the middle finger! When site designers let their sites break when JS is off, that tells me that they're not worth my time.
Well, grandpa, it's the age of the rich javascript apps. Backbone and Ember, and all kinds of client-side templating engines are widely used.
Javascript is NOT a huge security vulnerability. There are occasional serious bugs that get patched nearly instantly by all major browsers (except maybe stupid IE).
Javascript IS a right, only 1-2% of users disable it, and I generally don't give a shit about them.
First off, name calling doesn't encourage polite conversation.
Second, progressive enhancement isn't "grandpa" thinking, it's good design, and more important today than ever. (A cursory search turned up .net magazine declaring it the #1 web design trend for 2012.) Skipping it for an experimental prototype is probably fine, but it's essential for serious work.
Third, as I mentioned from the start, the site in question here fails even when browsing with almost all scripts enabled: something essential in its design gets caught even by NoScript's minimal anti-XSS protection. That suggests an actual security risk to me.
And finally, I won't get into an argument about security bugs, but you haven't commented on the privacy issue at all. In its default mode NoScript prevents the vast majority of tracking systems that I've seen, while having a minor and entirely manageable impact on day to day browsing once you've used it for a week or so. You may not like that tradeoff, but it would be nice if you'd give some minimal level of respect to those who do.
When NoScript is in "Allow scripts globally" mode, the only things it blocks are particularly nasty vulnerabilities (its anti-XSS and anti-clickjacking features, mainly). As I said from the start, that mode presents no problem at all for the overwhelming majority of sites (script-heavy or not), so when it renders a site unusable that's probably a sign of a serious design or security problem. I've only seen that happen once or twice, so I figured it would be nice to point out the issue.
Did you try to contact them? (By them, I mean the site owner. I feel like this is a solo operation)
On other notes, there's no stopping you from replacing the content of this area where you tell your own version of their description: (from site via Google Translate) "We have been working since 1999, incorporating technology and knowledge towards the design and communication, both institutional and business."
Tangent: these kind of sites (the site that was stolen from), I'll call them "concept" sites, make me want to throatpunch a baby.
If you are seeking to demonstrate your jQuery/HTML5/CSS3 skillz then do it in a way that has some applicable context. Don't break so far from established usage conventions that users have to invest their the majority of their focus figuring out the site at the expense of examining the content.
After looking at several panels my understanding of what you do is still a guess. But I think you're a designer of some kind. If you are, the problem is that your site told me you care more about cool/flashy/pretty more than ease-of-use/user experience. As someone who engages designers on a weekly basis, that is not a positive differentiator.
> these kind of sites [...] make me want to throatpunch a baby
That's the most viscerally disturbing thing I've ever read on HN. For as popular as HN has gotten, it's still one of the more civil discussion forums on the internet. I'm not a priss, but how about a bit of decorum, please?
I liked it. I also browsed the entire portfolio which is something I rarely do. This site was so effortless, I went through every piece of work on there.
As someone who was a designer, has engaged hundreds of designers in the past, and works closely with designers every day, I say well done. I would definitely ask this designer to pitch if he wasn't full time at another agency. I don't think a designer could ask for much more from a portfolio website.
In conclusion: I don't think you know what you're talking about.
While we're on the subject, I found the navigation to be obvious and intuitive, and the site to be beautifully designed. And the portfolio was lovely, too.
It was a 'concept' site largely for my own amusement (and to teach myself a little bit of js). I do have a private portfolio site that shows more of my work and has no javascript in it at all.
I like the aesthetic, but I found the navigation to be confusing. It gives the impression that you're simply navigating a 2D grid because there's no indication that the rows slide independently of each other (and reset after switching to another row). So it was pretty disorienting to get to the end of the top row, go down, and then not be able to go left.
I know you just said it doesn't really matter, but I thought I'd offer something a little more constructive than "it's too flashy".
-seeing the whole picture
- how many items do you have in your portfolio, how can I just find one that looks cool
-nagivating quickly
- i want to go to the bottom of the site but there is 5 seconds of just waiting for the thing to load correctly
-understanding usage
- i go right 3 times then go down, i didn't realize that when i went down it automatically sent me to the left
I am all for cool design styles (nullrecursion.com), but standard conventions are standard because they are good. Get a solid understanding of why they are used before trying to reinvent the wheel
Would be nice though if contact information and info about the company was easier to get to. It is only available on the initial page or after scrolling through the entire portfolio (at least I couldn't find it anywhere else). At least if the site were designed to draw in business, that would be the case. It definitely is not obvious.
