What is the best designed site you've seen?

[goldy30]

What is the best designed website you've seen? ...which was a question asked to us at Tafe. I found this site and it still gets me thinking Wow... Awsome!! Very very nice site. http://www.2advanced.com

Whats yours?

******************

Also,

I tried to use a whole image similar to 2advanced for a guy but he didn't like it. I know the banner sux but what do you think? http://goldy30.uuuq.com/lastlife/

 

[GrandeMike]

I'll have to look at that site a bit later. For some reason it is taking FOREVER to load.

As far as large image backgrounds, I came across this article a couple weeks ago. Dos and Don'ts of large background designs.

Another article from the same blog that has some awesome sites in artistic design.
Have Fun!

Even Better!
One-page Designs

 

[VPmase]

Newgrounds is a good one.

Also, Blizzard makes their sites really good using XML

 

[bookworm99]

http://www.google.com/

'nuff said.

 

[Armacci Design]

I randomly stumbled upon "Deva Studios," a motion graphics firm for major films, TV, etc. While their current page is pretty average, their old one was really top-notch. It was flash based, with a (surprisingly) eye-pleasing use of an orange color scheme. There was music overlayed, and it wasn't obtrusive at all: everything fit so perfectly that I had to download the songs for myself by looping them through my sound card.

What really struck me was the fact that the background had depth. 3D objects moved in the background - the best way to describe it was that they were building objects out of themselves. It was totally surreal and simply cool.

I realize this doesn't paint a good picture, and it's been years since I've seen it because they "updated" (read: made boring) their layout. But to this day, I've never seen a site anywhere close.

 

[Agenator]

Okay just to clarify something on the 2 advanced sight, they got away with a large background because it was part of the flash animation. That means that the entire animation loaded including the background. You werent able to because your image was large, fairly poor quality, and the last life logo didn't flow well with it. But on the other hand it did look good, and I'm sure you could come up with something that the client would like. But yeah I havn't found really good designes in a while. Too bad about that deva studios, I would've liked to have seen that 3D transform.

 

[aarplane]

Dan Cederholm's SimpleBits is constant inspiration.

http://simplebits.com

No competition.

 

[stunna]

http://www.fullsail.edu/ is pretty cool.

 

[Teensweb]

Have you ever seen mine?(not that it's excellent, but its not that bad, you know!)

 

[Parsa44]

Personally i am really not a fan of flash sites.
A website is somewhere you go to get information not view graphics. I understand the odd flash effect but not the whole site based on flash.

 

[farscapeone]

I have to say 2 advanced. I found out about them a long time ago (with attractor version 2, it's 5 now).


P.S. Sites/blogs like this (below) are weary nice to add in your everyday favorite site tour.

http://bestwebgallery.com/

 

[Teensweb]

My dear friends, have you ever seen crystalxp.net?
Or wallpaperscript.net ?

 

[Zdroyd]

I find that the developer and game sites are always nicely made with flash.

LucasArts
StarWars
RockstarGames
Bungie
NBC
etc...

Large companies spend a lot of money to get attractive sites.

 

[xav0989]

I'd have to say the apple website http://www.apple.com
it's minimalistic, and only includes what you need to see. The top navigation bar is simple. And they don't use to many colors. They use white and shades of grey.

 

[datumon]

I agree Parsa44 - take Google as an example - one of the most frequently-viewed pages in the world, and not a single flash animation...

 

[Jonthefisherman]

I agree Parsa44 - take Google as an example - one of the most frequently-viewed pages in the world, and not a single flash animation...

It may be one of the most viewed web pages, but it isn't the best designed.

 

[diabolo]

It may be one of the most viewed web pages, but it isn't the best designed.

I also agree that it isn't the best design. The reason that I belive that it made it so big was usability. Even though people still today can't seem to Google it, before making a post. To use google is easy. Type and press enter.

Now for my addition. I think flash is good when used sparingly, 2A is an example where I think it was too overloaded with flash, but it didn;t turn out horrible. Just long load time for some people, and you would have to have interest in their services if you actually wanted to stay on their site. So I think the best design site would be: www.whitehouse.gov or www.recovery.gov
they both implement a nice sleek design, accomadates JS, and virtually everybody can read it and quickly too

 

[dariusdr]

STOP ALL DISCUSSIONS: All the answers you're looking for are already here --> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2006/12/21/creme-de-la-creme-of-css-list-of-css-galleries/ :biggrin: