Apple.com to be redesigned...

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
http://www.macminute.com/2003/08/27/apple



Quote:

Apple.com to be redesigned by Zeldman, Bowman



Apple has contracted Jeffrey Zeldman of Happy Cog Studios and Douglas Bowman of Stopdesign to collaborate on a redesign of the company's site...



GASP!
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 39
    ast3r3xast3r3x Posts: 5,012member
    Apple gets in in the top 10 or whatever for website greatness and they decide to change it!
  • Reply 2 of 39
    macsrgood4umacsrgood4u Posts: 3,007member
    Refreshing the site is a good idea. Also, current design is a few years old. Change is good.
  • Reply 3 of 39
    pscatespscates Posts: 5,847member
    Ooooh, I can't wait! This is neat! It'll be interesting to see what comes of it. And yes, change is good. It's time for something different.







    Now, about that whole marketing thing...



    Perhaps they can revisit THAT as well and give someone else a shot at creating a campaign(s) that does the company justice.



    \



    Cause this current crap just ain't gettin' it, fellas.



  • Reply 4 of 39
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    i think the current design has been in use since the first public display of the aqua interface, which would put it during public beta. i guess fall/winter '99?



    by the way, it really was a great design, and based predominantly on the previous design submitted by chiat/day. i mean, do you remember the hideous red sidebar mess that was pre-'97 apple.com?



    but it is time to start giving the site some new life.
  • Reply 5 of 39
    cubedudecubedude Posts: 1,556member
    Maybe they are redoing the tabs to make them look more like the new Panther tabs.
  • Reply 6 of 39
    murbotmurbot Posts: 5,262member
    Awesome. The man looks like a freak in a toque, but he knows his stuff.
  • Reply 7 of 39
    Quote:

    Originally posted by rok

    i think the current design has been in use since the first public display of the aqua interface, which would put it during public beta. i guess fall/winter '99?



    Looks like it. Apple.com went from this to this around the turn of the century.



    Quote:

    by the way, it really was a great design, and based predominantly on the previous design submitted by chiat/day. i mean, do you remember the hideous red sidebar mess that was pre-'97 apple.com?



    Ugh. I know zip-point-squat about web design, but looking back at this "capture" from archive.org, the site looks down-right clunky at best.
  • Reply 8 of 39
    drewpropsdrewprops Posts: 2,321member
    Note that the second guy mentioned has updated his site to mention that they'll be working with Apple's in-house webdesign team and that they're more-or-less providing that team with an understanding of designing a site using STANDARDS. This "standards-compliant" website design will no doubt make its way into one of Steve's keynote speeches as he touts Open Source and Standards.
  • Reply 9 of 39
    Really I see no need to change the website at all. I mean if they wanna change some graphics or make the site more standards compliant, great. I think the layout of the site itself is perfect. Think about how much information is on that site and its all really easy to find. Ever try and find something on Microsoft's site?
  • Reply 10 of 39
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by CubeDude

    Maybe they are redoing the tabs to make them look more like the new Panther tabs.



    It's all about teh tabs. Once Panther is out, and depending on what they're doing with Safari, they're going to be an anachronism as-is. The organization can remain the same, but the looks might change.



    But it's always kind of bugged me that Apple feels compelled to keep the same number of tabs, squeezing out Switch when the Music tab appeared, and before that, they had the more useless iTools with their own tabs in some cases.



    I still think the user's support page, especially the "personalized" one, plus all that signing in crap could be handled better too. It might be nice to leverage emerging more flexible web standards to make a more personalized user experience of the home page.
  • Reply 11 of 39
    That red sidebar design was actually partly implement by Studio Archetype, a design house I held a lot of respect for.
  • Reply 12 of 39
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by LoCash

    That red sidebar design was actually partly implement by Studio Archetype, a design house I held a lot of respect for.



    The sidebar isn't the problem so much as the mess on the right. Tabs and sidebars are roughly equivalent functionally, just a question of what seems more space efficient and what you put in them.
  • Reply 13 of 39
    Hmm...



    My feelings on this are very similar to how I felt with El capitan saying good-bye.



    I saw el-capitan(and all it's later g4 derivatives) to be the. perfect. case.



    it had everything. easy on the eyes, handles, easy-open hatch, clean interior...etc.



    then when the g5 case was introduced my first reaction was "well...it's no El Capitan, but it's not bad"



    upon seeing the interior I fell in love, the interior of the g5 is a work of engineering art, it is absolutely stunning.



    so... I feel similarly to an apple web-page change as I did to the case change.



    I'm sure whatever apple comes out with will be just as intuitive, easy on the eyes, attractive, user-friendly..etc. as the current page(which should have been ranked #1 in all high-tech webpage shoot-offs )



    I'm sure that Apple's new webpage will be more "sharp" and "powerful" looking, as that seems to be the latest trend seeping into apple's design.(alubooks, g5, brushed metal...etc.)



    it will likely have the same general layout though, with one big headline picture, subsequent smaller headline pictures, tabs, and hot news.



    so I'm sure whatever it ends up being it will still be very easy to use, and adapt to.



    \
  • Reply 14 of 39
    Quote:

    Originally posted by segovius

    A redesign doesn't necessarily mean a change of aesthetic. If it's Zeldman in control, it probably means a switch to Web Standards/tableless CSS.



    They could just recreate the site as is without the tables and tweak it a bit. But this is seismic if they do - it basically means a giant leap for the Standards lobby and also a huge move towards browser compliance. Actually, btrowsers mostly are all compliant anyway with exception of one company's product and this will be bad news for them because where Apple leads everyone else follows when the ground has been safely broken and the risks minimised.



    It's great to see Apple seem committed to innovation at all levels of the company not just in product design.




    Well, I think in the context of what I've read so far, we can expect a change in aesthetics that will employ more modern development methods. The problem you mention that Microsoft will have because IE is a far cry from W3C compliant... I wouldn't be surprised if they started to take some initiative to change that a bit. The problem is that, and will be for a few years, we still have a large install base of older browsers that are most definitely not standards compliant. The problem is that we usually design for the lowest common denominator. I think we're on the verge of being able to get away with losing tables in favor of CSS. I wouldn't do it for 60% of my clients, but I could see Apple doing it.
  • Reply 15 of 39
    bartobarto Posts: 2,246member
    It's not really upgrading the browser with the operating system.



    It's building the rendering engine into the OS (like Apple has just done), and having explorer.exe (the Windows Finder.app) use that engine to display web pages.



    It is one legitimate way to do it, except for the fact that 90% of users stick with the defaults. And that's bad in a monopoly.



    Barto
  • Reply 16 of 39
    discodisco Posts: 83member
    I think it's clear from Bowman's statement that they weren't actually hired to redesign the site, but to "coach" Apple's web team on creating a standards-compliant site. A standards-compliant website makes Apple more accessable to everyone, reduces development time, and enables the display of content on multiple platforms/device. If you haven't picked up a copy of Zeldman's book yet, Designing with Web Standards, I suggest you do. I've been designing & developing sites for 8 years now, and this book has broken me of some bad habits I picked up during the Browser Wars. The time has come to cast Netscape 4.7 aside and build to standards, not to the quirks of 5 year old browser code.
  • Reply 17 of 39
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    Maybe Apple will finally use (Gasp!) Flash on their site! Imagine that happening!
  • Reply 18 of 39
    aquafireaquafire Posts: 2,758member
    Like Klingon's in a china shop..totally rampant..
  • Reply 19 of 39
    applenutapplenut Posts: 5,768member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Placebo

    Maybe Apple will finally use (Gasp!) Flash on their site! Imagine that happening!



    why? especially when they have QT with Flash support built in already
  • Reply 20 of 39
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by applenut

    why? especially when they have QT with Flash support built in already



    But Flash sites have such nice feels, small file sizes, and offer an overall better experience than an HTML site. QT is not the same thing.
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