less is more. Not for me, I like my baked potatoes loaded and a good side salad to boot with my dinner. In the past couple of years CSS built sites have been increasing exponentially. Fortunately, there are web designers out there that do not follow the trend and CSS Sites, when they are done well, look great and can be changed with relative ease. I guess you could design a site taking from the white pages of your local phone book. Thats fine, you present your information to the people who are in search of it. I would like to see a little more of a hybrid between the yellow pages and the white. The point that I am trying to drive home here would probably be that rounded corners, gradients, and reflections does not make a site golden. If it does you are among the millions of "golden web 2.0" sites out there.

For example..

Why yes, yes it is a joke.


In defense of the last, I did like the turtles.

When its done right it looks something more like this.


Not too busy, just a little eye candy, the baked potato with bacon bits and chives. Don't be afraid to put in a flash element, animated gif, or just some nice stock photography. If you want to go all out put in a nice background I.E. ilovejackdaniels.com.

O.k. so I might be a bit biased toward a web developer that loves jack daniels but, the background, scroll work images, and most importantly the grey Old no.7 png really ties the site together and makes it pleasant to look at without going overboard. I know he used the rounded corners here and there but I'll have to bite my lip because I use his cheat sheets sometimes and don't want to bite the hand that feeds.

In the pursuit of web 2.0 perfection don't be afraid to think outside of the reflected box, with rounded corners and a gradient of course.

tags: web, design