CommandShift3: A Site for Web Design Battles
Design is a challenging thing for non-designers to wrap our heads around, but we think we know it when we see it done right ("I want it to look 'clean!'"). CommandShift3 is a website that lets you choose between two website screenshots in a "battle" and vote for the one you find most appealing.
It's a fun site to play with and some really nice pages get voted up allong the way. CommandShift3 is the keystroke combination to grab a full screen capture on a Mac.
Built at a New York co-working event called Jelly, the site offers best and worst lists for each day, week and all time. You can also view the best sites by tagged category.
A javascript bookmarklet makes it easy to add any page around the web to CS3 and submitters are encouraged to credit page designers when they are able. I've added ReadWriteWeb to the site already. We'll see how well the new design can hold its own in head-to-head contests.
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Maybe this comment should go in the 'New Design For ReadWriteWeb' post, but this current posts breaks the design.
I am currently viewing this post with no sidebar on the right. The sidebar has dropped below the post and I am an average user with Windows and Firefox on 1024x768. If you want any screenshots, feel welcome to e-mail me.
Hi Anne,
There is a currently a formatting bug on posts with no comments -- we're aware of that, though, and are working to fix it. :)
Yeah because immediately after I posted the comment the formatting seemed to be fine again. If not for the screenshots I thought I'd lost my mind. Good luck with the last bugs. Kick 'm out! :)
A great idea, but not that well executed, unfortunately. Design is not art, but is always (should always be!) made with a certain goal in mind. Therefor, design must also be judged with this goal in mind, and with knowledge of the environment where it is supposed to work. A great design will in most cases be aestehically attractive, but it isn't a must. Look at many cheap gossip magazines, ugly as haggis but (in many cases) with a perfect and fitting design that does a great job.
CommandShift3 is a good start, but what would make it more relevant and interesting, is if different type of web pages could be compared in categories. This would make it possible to compare e-shop pages with e-shop pages, artist promo pages with artist promo pages, blogs with blogs and so on. And it could give a better picture of what is good design in the popular view, and not, which is the case today, just what is good looking.
When you first twittered about this, I originally ignored it as noise because I thought it was some kind of game similar to WoW or something just because I saw CommandShift. It just sounded like a war game to me.
#5: technically speaking, this is a social website as a game.
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/social-websites-as-games-digg-youtube-facebook.php
#4: The game can be improved upon to do exactly what you suggest. There is no reason they couldn't add in that sort of functionality. T
Hey Marshall,
simple correction. CS3 was spawned from couple of guys who were chatting at a coworking event called jelly. thats why in the footer of the site it states
"built in New York City at Jelly "
and not
Built by New York design firm Jelly.
be well, do good.
~michael
Hey Per,
I couldn't agree more that design is all achieving the goals of the content it defines. It's certainly early, but we're trying out ways of battling similar sites against each other. Check it out:
http://commandshift3.com/tag-battle/design
Thanks for the feedback!
Darrell