CSS Reboot – Fall 2005

CSS Reboot Complete!

For those folks out there who don’t know what the great CSS Reboot frenzy is all about, let me give you an overview. It’s about taking some time to redesign with standards. We know it’s a good practice to keep the look of a site ‘fresh’ and give it a facelift periodically, and this is what that challenge is all about. Most of the CSS Rebooters who signed up put in some serious effort toward giving a fresh look to their sites.

While I didn’t formally participate this time around, I did reskin The Useful Web and upgrade quite a few features to it. I’m also in the middle of (going kind of slow) entirely upgrading my business site. For now, I’d like to give a big thumbs up to a few of the Rebooters that really caught my eye.

• Designer Diary — Has a nice clean layout, but I particularly like the top graphics with the silver fading on the edges. Adds a slick touch to a very clean design.
• Rida Al Barazi — Very nice color and graphic use in this one. I definitely think the color theme appeals, but I’d probably have used a bit of a more rich color of yellow, instead of the brighter one used. I do like the graphic hover effect of the graphics around the ‘R’ in the top left. I do not, however, like the static bar that always makes the pages drag. I would have preferred that to move on with the rest of the page and avoid the jumping text. Overall, nice.
• Error500 — I definitely love the clean lines of this layout. I do not, however, have a great fondness for the background wood look. Just doesn’t seem to fit in an smoothly, and I would suggest swapping that out for a background of a more burgundy color with not so much in the way of pattern as the wood has. Other than the background used (super easy to change) I love this layout.
• Robert Sable Consulting — I think this design really has it all put together nicely. The rebooter managed to blend in a highly patterned background well with the color scheme, and I think the layout of the sections is something to that should inspire quite a few bloggers out there.
• Phil Renaud — A good layout, risky colors and a bold scheme used. I think my only complaint about it is that the amount of posts shown on the main page make that page super long, and you might miss the great graphics at the bottom. The appeal of this one is definitely all about the graphics.

If I come up with some more, I’ll add them on to here, but for now, those are my favorites as I review the Rebooters list.

~Nicole