21 June 2004

Open Letter to the 4 Guys

Notes

I just popped over to the 4GuysFromRolla.com web site to get some help on an ASP matter. When the page loaded, a redesign appeared.

I looked for their news to see what had happened, and there was an entry asking for feedback on the new design. So I took the opportunity...

Dear 4 Guys from Rolla,

In regard to your recent redesign, I have to ask why you are still using tables for page layout? It seems to me that you guys would save so much money, and time, by implementing better web standards into the site. Everything you have on the 4guys sites is doable with a simple XHTML & CSS mark-up. Your Code weight would become less than half of what it already is, saving you half of your current bandwidth! Also, the XHTML code would be much more manageable since you wouldn't have to deal with all those nested tables.

Graphically, I am torn over your new design. I like the header, and the new 4 silhouettes logo, but I don’t think that you should be using the exact same logo across all your sites. Users will get confused because they wont always realise that they have left one domain, and are now on another. Maybe just a separate colour scheme on each domain would solve this.

Apart from the header, I don’t think I like the over all redesign. The Information Architecture is a bit messy, and things just get confusing.

I do hope that you guys don’t mind me saying these things. I have used the 4guys sites for years to get help with ASP, and ASP.net. It just seems to me that you need to get up to date with other web technologies, and promote the best practices that are shaping the way we will develop web sites, and web applications, in the future.

Yours truly,
Phil Baines.

Comments ( 2 )

  1. Scott Mitchell

    Thanks for the feedback...

    Thanks for the feedback, I agree with a lot of what you said. Unfortunately, I was given very little input on the implementation of the redesign, as it was done by the design team at Internet.com. I agree, CSS would have been better, and had I seen the HTML markup, I would have advised such (I was just shown a Photoshop template). Also, I was as surprised as you when the various sites has a non-unique color scheme, and voiced my concern, but they wanted unity among the domains w.r.t. the design.
    21 June 2004 at 13:35

  2. Phil Baines

    When was the last time you saw an open letter on a weblog, and the first comment is a response from the people it was aimed at? I don't think that I ever have!

    Thanks Scott for such a prompt reply. I am impressed with the speed of it all. I do hope that you don’t mind me posting the letter on my site. I was just hoping that this 4Guys redesign would be a good example of how something great, could be even better if it used web standards.

    I am glad, in a way, that it was the internet.com team that is responsible for the redesign, and not yourself or other contributors to 4guys. I didn't want to come over as someone who was biting the hand that fed me for so many years, with ASP, and ASP.net, and so much more.

    After your comment I appreciate that you agree with my points, and I can see that you must have been put into a very hard situation to deal with. It is a shame that we can’t get big faces on the web, such as internet.com, to see the benefits that web standard based design would bring.

    I hope that somehow this feedback of mine will also make it into their hands, because with you, it seems I am preaching to the converted!

    Again, thanks for the fast response.
    21 June 2004 at 16:17

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