Gallery
March 27, 2006
Rating
Rated 6.5 from 29 votes
Tags
Share
ITA Media
ITA Media is a [tag]Website Design Company[/tag] in [tag]Australia[/tag] (explaining why they misspelled “website optimisation” ;) ) I liked their site the moment I saw it, but I have gone back and forth on featuring it for more than a week now. The design is fantastic, but I was immediately turned off when I looked at the code: tables all over the place, links that didn’t work and code that didn’t validate. So, I let the designer know that I would like to feature the site, but the code would have to be cleaned up first.
He went to work immediately and got it very close. The only remaining issue is the extensive use of tables, which is a byproduct of the [tag]Joomla[/tag] [tag]CMS[/tag] that he’s using. He didn’t have the time to dig into the code to weed out all that.
So, I looked long and hard at our submission guidelines. This site is certainly on the line, but I ultimately decided to feature it for two reasons. One, I think the design is worth seeing. They’ve done a very nice job of creating a very clean, very usable interface that clearly demonstrates their design proficiency. Their use of [tag]Flash[/tag] is a nice touch, too — not overdone, not annoying, just a nice touch. Second, I respect the business decision not to weed out the tables. I agree with him that in this case, the cost far outweighs the benefit.
I want UMS to be examples of design in the real world — not filled with sites that, while impressive displays of CSS mastery, are nonetheless impractical. ITA definitely straddles the line, but I felt that they were worthy of at least a look. Go take a look for yourself, though, to see what you think. Then let us know.
Add Your OpinionMore Opinions on ITA Media
Add Your Opinion
Resources & Links
- Wireframe Showcase
- All About Typographic Hierarchy
- How to use Textmate - Zeldman
- HTML5 Boilerplate
- Take My Texture
- CSS3 Generator
- Check domain status as well as social media names at the same time.
- What does 320dpi mean to designers?
- iOS Icons made in Pure CSS
- HTML5 Rocks
- styleguide.yahoo.com
- I’M COMIC SANS. McSweeney’s Monologues
- Launch List - This is such a cool idea.
- HTML5 & CSS3 READINESS
- Steve Jobs’ thoughts on Flash
Design is good, but I would remove the second logo from the page becouse I think that the one in header is enough.
The code should be much better : they have 2 content-types, 2 link rel for favicon etc…
overall I`ll give it 5.
Excellent comments. Very specific about what you liked and didn’t like, and explained your rating. That helps all of us.
Thanks!
Tables aside it is a very attractive site. The content is laid out nicely and easy to navigate.
The large header is an interesting touch. I didn’t like it at first but it’s growing on me the more I look at it. I would say that there was no need for the Flash though…it’s not bringing anything to the table that a static header couldn’t accomplish. Not to mention I got a Flash error in Firefox when I first loaded the site.
What’s so hard about replacing a table with an styled list for the site’s links?
Nice, clean design, odd coding decisions.
Quite a nice clean design and I agree about the sparse and effective use of Flash. I love the colors too - red, black, white - entirely classy!
“I want UMS to be examples of design in the real world — not filled with sites that, while impressive displays of CSS mastery, are nonetheless impractical.”
Good call, I think we see too little good –design– these days due to most site galleries focus on perfectly clean code. Quality design and usability should have their own ranking I believe, outside of code quality (yes it’s highly important but, as you said, it’s not everything).
Only nitpick about the ITA site - when you load it without Flash the replacement images are broken.
I love the look of the site, but I too wonder why the menus are in tables. I can’t criticize too much, though, I get a little non-semantic from time to time as well. Besides, this is a very nice site!
As a fellow Joomla! user, I can sympathize with the table thing. It is one of the few drawbacks of using Joomla!. However, I think this site is a great example of the flexibility of the Joomla! framework, because they were able to overcome the limitations.
As a side note, future versions of Joomla! will allow the webmaster to override the default content display to implement a true tableless design. I can’t wait!
optimisation is the correct spelling!!!!!
we speak English here!!!