Charles H. Revson Fellowship
The Charles H. Revson Fellowship site definitely has a more modern design and that’s achieved with an unorthodox layout — the type of layout that will make it stand out for the right reasons. Having the content displayed in a compartmental method like this effectively highlights the appropriate sections. Additionally, if you want to see an example of a perfect hand held Cascading Style Sheet (CSS), you should take note as this is how it should be done.
Conversely, this site has some issues around semantics and the markup used, particularly with the headings and many <div> elements. In addition, more testing with Internet Explorer (IE) would be needed as issues were found with some presentational elements as well scrolling issues when the text is increased past its default size. Aside from this, the site is still very aesthetic and serves its purpose well.
The Charles H. Revson Fellowship website was designed by Jonathan Phillips. After a detailed review, has been deemed eligible for an Award Level of: “Notable Universal Design.” Congratulations Jonathan!
David Zemens responds:
Posted: February 26th, 2007 at 5:37 pm →
This is a terrific website. I particularly like that imagery is used sparingly, yet the site still looks sharp. Turning off images has no significant impact on the site’s appearance.
It sure is. What a beautiful job Jonathan Phillips did on this project. I intend to take a much closer look and try to learn a few things from this site.
Jonathan Phillips responds:
Posted: February 26th, 2007 at 6:05 pm →
I knew when I submitted this site to Accessites.org that the nested DIV elements would be a point of criticism. Many will recognize the method of rounded corners as one that has been presented in various posts on Roger Johansson’s 456 Berea Street . For the time being, however, I chose not to insert the extra markup ex post with the DOM as Mr. Johansson does. The reason for this choice had to do with the client’s project brief: that an atypically high percentage of anticipated visitors to the site a) might not be particularly well versed with internet use, b) might be using outdated hardware/software, and/or c) might be using workstations at an institution or organization where they have little or no control over the preference/security settings of the browsers, i.e. potentially have JavaScript disabled. (Given my own experience in the non-profit, public, and higher-education sectors in New York City, from which the audience of the Revson Fellowship website will be drawn, I had to agree with the client’s assessment). At first I did prepare the style sheet to account separately for users with and without JavaScript, but in the end, I decided that it was worth serving the visual effects in a way that it could be enjoyed by a larger part of the potential audience.
That said, the extra markup is drawn into each page via PHP , so that removing it in the future when it is no longer necessary is a simple matter of deleting a few lines of PHP from a single template. At that point, either the DOM or CSS 3 selectors could be used to achieve the same effects. (My provisions for the future, of course, are not something the evaluators would have been able to take into consideration since they concern scripts that are exected server-side).
One last point: while I respect the opinions of the evaluators, and while I would prefer a cleaner markup myself, I don’t agree that the extra DIV elements make the markup unsemantic, just (sadly) unaesthetic.
I will look into the issues with regard to IE and am thankful that the evaluators have brought them to my attention (and disappointed that I aparently overlooked them in my own tests).
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: February 26th, 2007 at 6:40 pm →
“Unsemantic” was probably a poor choice of words. We did know the reason for the
divs. We felt it might have been better to make them withspans I suppose since they don’t carry the meaning actual page divisions do. I guess that was the reason for the use of that word. Withspans it’d be three perdivsince the boxes are liquid (or two perdivif fixed), using a method like this one.Very good work, though. Admittedly we were torn as to whether or not to give a quality award — it was very close.
Shane H responds:
Posted: March 1st, 2007 at 10:59 am →
Very nice work Jonathan! I really enjoy the layout. Awesome job, and congratulations!