Remix Mix
Mix 07, Microsoft’s web conference, is coming up and they’ve setup a design contest to go along with it. To win, redesign the Mix 07 homepage CSS Zen Garden style and submit your design. The top 3 are going to Vegas and 10 honorable mentions are getting Zunes. Last year I submitted several designs, but didn’t win. This year I think I’ve got a good chance.
The one problem that always comes up with the remix contest is the markup. It’s unfortunately some of the worst markup I’ve ever seen. It makes me pretty sad because I know there are some people at Microsoft with solid markup skills. Hopefully, they’ll choose one of this years winners to make next year’s site.
I’m also using this contest as an opportunity to try out some new design techniques and get some good practice with Photoshop CS3. Most of the design work I do is either for personal projects or very corporate, so I don’t usually have a lot of chances to flex my design mind. My only challenge now is to find a little inspiration for more designs.
I’ve already made 2 designs. The first is just playing with the Mix Logo the second is a sequel to the Horror Flick design I created last year. The Logo design is already posted and I’ve put a little sneak peak of the second design to the right. I think I may try to clone the vista interface for one, but I’d like to find something a bit more on the fringe for the final designs. I may try some crazy png stuff and just leave the IE6 crowd hanging. All the more reason to upgrade to a decent browser.
Aside from the design contest, the conference looks pretty good too. I heard good things about last year and the sessions for this year are shaping up to be pretty good. There’s a lot about WPF/E, which is a big interest for me, and a repeat of the Getting Unstuck session I missed at SXSW. The one thing that confuses me is the opening party. Are the Pussycat Dolls really that popular with the Microsoft developer crowd? Maybe I missed the memo.
8 Responses so far
April 2nd, 2007
3:06 am
As one of the judges for the REMIX contest, I’d be interested in seeing what your version of the HTML for the homepage would be. Granted, my role is to judge the end design and not so much the code, but I’d still like to see your rendition.
April 2nd, 2007
6:49 am
I’d be happy to put something together and send it over Adam. In retrospect, the markup could be worse. It is better than last year’s markup, it’s just got semantic issues and accessibility issues.
I’ll post about it and send you an e-mail to let you know my thoughts.
April 2nd, 2007
8:21 pm
Came by to check out the competition. ;0) Nice design!
I would agree that the HTML has something to be desired, but, as you say, it could have been worse. My biggest issue was with some of the semantic issues, which it has quite a few, and I felt it could have been done to allow for a bit more flexibility as well.
However, it was good enough to let me work out my CSS and various browser issues (I tested in just about everything) with only a little pain and I was able to do the design I wanted to do. So, I’m not complaining too much.
Best of luck!
April 3rd, 2007
11:55 am
Hey guys, I designed the Ritz Mix on the visitmix.com site and I agree strongly: the included CSS/HTML template was indeed horribly laid out and coded, and chose to merely redesign the graphics and attempt to straighten up the look of the text without messing with the layout too much. Again, for fear it’d break when uploaded. IE6 has horrible issues with the included CSS template; but we all know IE6 isn’t so hot for CSS layout either =)
April 3rd, 2007
4:57 pm
@Cody - I did have a few problems getting my design right in IE6, but it wasn’t all that bad. No hacks anyway. ;0)
Then again, I started out wanting to do something a bit more, well, agressive, and was having a real hard time with that. I really wanted to make sure whatever I did displayed correctly on as many browsers as possible - something I’m not sure some of the other entrants did as when I pull thier stuff up it’s all kind of broken. ;0)
April 4th, 2007
3:40 pm
@Keith - well that’s cool you got it to work no problem
I had some issues (and it probably still doesn’t display properly on IE6 even with the included template it appears) so I scrapped it, re-downloaded the CSS and just used it as is, with a few very minor changes.
The other issue is, since moving to Vista I test in both the latest versions of FireFox and obviously IE7. Its a royal pain to have to keep an extra XP system sitting around with IE6 installed… so after seeing it garbled on IE, I made some changes hoping it’d stick then forgot about IE6 completely for the remainder of testing haha Hoping mine isn’t all broken -but I’m sure it is in IE6, even based directly off the provided CSS-.
People with IE6 should use a real browser anyways, geez! haha
April 4th, 2007
4:08 pm
I was curious yet again… check out these screenshots (1 in IE7 under Vista, the bottom 2 in IE6 on XP SP2). At last, even my Remix is nice and broken in IE6 as it shifts the entire left column down a great deal, but doesn’t have the staggered image problem as seen in these screenshots.
@Keith, even yours is messed in IE6 unfortunately, as you can see in the screenshot.
Follow the link below to see all 3 screens… pretty sad when MS code doesn’t even work in IE6… but I think its a good idea to ditch IE6 support anyhow as ‘unethical’ as that may seem.
http://www.efluxdesign.com/visitmix/
April 4th, 2007
6:10 pm
@Cody:
IE6 in Vista is kind of a pain. You need to download Virtual PC and the IE6 image. There instructions on this post http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=985562&SiteID=1
I also wouldn’t worry too much about your designs being pixel perfect in IE6.
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