Keiki Bulls

"Great attention to detail" my ass =) the body background colour isn't even set.

Fantastic code anyway: a stunning example.

Good to see (I think) simplicity / minimalism running rampant in the last two entries to Stylegala.

Sorry, but I'm not impressed at all. Sure, the code is nice and the design is okay, but this entire entry underwhelms me.

I'm a big fan of simple sites like this. I think it is well done. Very easy to read and the different graphical headers keep my attention just enough to brows a bit.

Simple okay but where's the design? Are we getting back to text-only?

I agree with Joshua. Sure, it has clean code, but from a design / graphical standpoint, I don't think its a typical "Style Gala" representation.

Thats just me though.

It feels almost TOO basic to be considered a great CSS design.

just my 2 pennies.

gotta agree with others - simple and clean, but nothing that "wows" me like so many other featured sites here.

Is there supposed to be a (rather) annoying blank area above the body text? (I keep waiting for an image or some flash to load.)

Doesn't good design have everything to do with context? Which particular wow factor is going to enhance the ultility of this site?

I have to disagree with both the "too plain" and "I like simple" crowd, to a certain extent. The best designs are targeted and purposeful. They show full understanding of the inherent needs they are made to address. Sometimes that means color, motion, and complexity; sometimes artfully arranged whitespace.

Maybe Style Gala is meant only to be a gallery for the former. Personally I am inspired by a design that understands its users and does nothing to get in their way.

Well, for what it is, it's very well done. Clean, minimal and organized. The logo and image become the focal points of the design, which are great elements for the user.

But... it is lacking in any sort of design element to grab you - the site is well designed, but a bit bland and doesn't keep the users' attention (well, not mine anyways, which is short).

It seems it needs a tad more structure... like the design is about 80% there... maybe a little more emphasis on the navigation to designate that it is a navigation to the site. just touching that up would really bring the site up another notch, without heavily changing or editing anything.

Like I said, it's very well done for what it is, but it leaves me expecting more.

I for one love this design. Call me cliche, but less is more in my book. There is a place for graphic-heavy work, but a child's soccer league site, which will be viewed by busy parents is clearly not one of those places. I think everyone can learn something from this design. It's all in the details ;).

Does it bother anyone else that the entire body content is bold?

I like it very much; neat and tidy - I don't much care for gradients, dropshadows, mock reflections, lens flares, glows etc etc for much of the time, so this one pleases me for its sparseness.

It is odd to have the entire body content bold, I grant you that.

When will people stop torturing <dl>?

Sorry for being off-topic, but what happened to rating?

I really like clean and minimal sites like this one. Especially when the markup is just as minimal as the design. The large picture on the front page immediately gets the user's attention, so the user will probably first read the white text replacing the h2 tag that explains what the site is about (I did). I just wonder if the user gets the right 'feeling' when loading the site. There's not much color to do this, although the pictures under the headings say a lot.

(By the way - and I think that's what John meant: why use a definition list for an address instead of just an address tag?)

For me, one of the interesting issues I have with this site is the the conflict I have in my own mind about 'subject matter' versus 'design'. I was tempted to post a comment t'other day about how non-plussed I was about the design. But, after reading about what the 'project' was about, I suddenly felt amost guilty about posting any critism about the site. My initial critisism about the design was along the lines of: 'nothing new here'.

I think this raises a good question about what is 'good' design and 'bad' design. I, therefore, feel subject matter does play a part in whether a site is 'good' or 'bad' ...

"Style gala is a CSS resource and inspiration guide for web agencies, designers and developers who build websites using web standards and CSS as their primary tools"

I think, regardless of my thoughts, this site falls into the catagory of the quote above - so 'hats off' to to those involved in the deisgn and development - well done!

Kevadamson: Thanks for putting my review in context and helping balance things out. The responses to this site prove to me that attempting to please all with a review is pointless - the community will always have differing viewpoints and tastes.

There were so many other sites I nearly reviewed, but trust me, all were let down in some way that went directly against the section Kevadamson quoted.

I just don't get it with this site. If such a site is to be showcased then why on earth don't all the preceeding sites that look exactly the smae. This site is nothing special in terms of design or code. How can people say the code is excellent when it is bog standard. The real skill in css/xhtml is fitting design around the code without disrupting the code. There are hundreds of sites better than this that I am sure have been submitted. It makes me wonder sometimes that is there some exclusive buddy club on stylegala that gets sites like this showcased? Sure - showcase what you want but to me it just devalues your site and patronises people looking for unique groundbreaking sites. Sorry but this site just stinks.

"Style gala is a CSS resource and inspiration guide for web agencies, designers and developers who build websites using web standards and CSS as their primary tools"

Er...so why does stylegala show sites that use flash, as their primary tools with css thrown in as an afterthought. Where's the logic in this?

Why does stylegala say one thing one week then another thing the next week. Stylegala was criticsed very heavily about this time last year for writing reviews and trying to justify flash sites. All the comments were deleted just to make stylegala look good again.

Pardon the pun but stylegala widens the goalposts more times than any other css showcase site on the web.

Ahem...it breaks one of the fundamental rules - all the body text is in bold type. Since when was this webstandards? You should get your facts right stylegala. This is completely thoughtless for it's users 1.You cannot put emphasis on a line of text. 2. In internet explorer, text size set to medium, the fonts cant be rendered correctly. 3.Many people at these font sizes have difficulty reading bold text 4. Bitmap fonts are clearer to read when they are in normal size with no attributes 5. Red and black combinations are known to cause problems for people who are colour blind. If this site is so marvelous and banging the drum about webstandards then why oh why does it break these simple rules? Web standards are web standards and this site is far from perfect.

Grant:

"There are hundreds of sites better than this that I am sure have been submitted."

How are you sure? Did you break in and have a look, or maybe you are submitting hundreds of sites. You'd be very disappointed at the quality actually. Like I said, often sites look incredible, but are very poorly made.

And...

"It makes me wonder sometimes that is there some exclusive buddy club on stylegala that gets sites like this showcased?"

No. Don't be so cynical. I can't stand that kind of accusation. If this were the case I'd dare review some more British sites - but I never will - not after the outrage from bitter commenters when I reviewed a couple ages back.

Oh, Alison - you're right about the bold text. I stand by everything else though.

Am I the only one that actually likes that bold arial?

I know that in theory all-bold text is weird, but I guess its perception depends heavily on readers' browser font settings and OS text rendering engine.

On my XP box with default text size and cleartype enabled, it looks really ok.

It is far more legible than normal weight without looking bold.

Without cleartype, I agree it is not that beautyful, and I didn't check it on OSX quartz, which has better thypographic fidelity than cleartype.

Anyway, personally i like it, and it improves readability for me.

And also... (hope not to start a flame anyway)

... I don't like when someone's work get criticized on merely theoric assumptions.

Alison, for what concerns your points:

1- Since the text is gray, in this case you can easily put enphasis using black text, as it's done trought the site.

2- I checked it in IE and had no problem. This is an assumption based only on your settings.

3- Again this is an assumption based on your taste. I find it far more legible than normal weight.

4- This means nothing out of context (size, colours, rendering engine).

For instance dark text on white background can be far more legible with increased weight, as long as the counters don't suffer too much.

5- You're plain right on this. At least for red-insensitive dichromat, don't know about other colour deficencies.

cheers

This fails to amaze me.

"No. Don't be so cynical. I can't stand that kind of accusation. If this were the case I'd dare review some more British sites - but I never will - not after the outrage from bitter commenters when I reviewed a couple ages back."

hmmm ... think you should rethink this one Simon. Sites should get on the site due to merit - whether they have been designed and built in the US, UK, the north pole, the moon - wherever. The reaction of others should not cause the exclusion of sites because of the geographical location of where they were designed.

Every site included on stylegala can be learnt from, regardless of whether the markup is considered slick enough, or the design is to an individuals taste.

Kevadamson, don't take my comments too seriously, though I agree with your views about merit.

That said, I did get a few too many personal emails about reviewing UK sites, which I was unhappy about, and the "buddy" accusations really annoy me.

At the end of the day, everyone's taste is different, and that's what makes it interesting.

Look out for my next set of reviews featuring the work of Andy Budd, Malarkey, Oxton, anyone from Nottingham... He-he.

"If this were the case I'd dare review some more British sites - but I never will"

My (British) site is listed and well received on a few other CSS showcases. Is that why it wasn't reviewed here - because it's british? I've never posted or emailed anyone to complain about British sites and I think that's a pretty narrow minded and conceited thing to say Simon!

By the way - your form field wont accept all of my email address - fix that bug dude.

Stuart! Whoa, please take my comments as intended - tongue in cheek. Anyway, I'm one of many Stylegala reviewers, and I wasn't being serious.

Just because you haven't sent me a distasteful email doesn't mean nobody else has.

Please, no more comments about this here. Email me privately, we're not being fair to the site reviewed above (and I also accept responsibility for flaming the debate with my off-hand comment).

If all you look at are sites that pop up on the various CSS galleries, I could see how this design and layout would underwhelm. But speaking as someone who's not immersed in the world of web design, I think this site is nearly perfect. Best I've seen on stylegala.

Hai guys-

I have yet another opinion :) I think the code looks great and is formatted and organised well. Great accessibility!

As for the design, it is very simple, very basic, this works. The graphics are the focus here people, the kids, the game, not the site. I think designers and coders lose sight to often the focus of a webpage is the client and their audience not you and yours.

However I will give credit where credit is due, I think that this design lacks two things. The first being a sensible site architecture, the current lacks an intuitive nature. Second, and probably most frequently discussed here, "Is the site too simple?". I think it lacks a final touch to the main focus, the images, the kids. Some subtle, accesible effect should be used here I think, maybe using javascript to fade in the image if available, otherwise some css or graphic effect to draw the eye a little more.

Overall I like it, I just think its only 90% there. I think it deserves to be here

This site looks good... and is a lot different than regular soccer sites where I see way too many tables, tabular data, boxes.. i guess the only soccer site that has impressed me so far is the one on Nike.com ... other than that does

know of any trendy soccer sites?

Great site.

It's not all that easy to produce a soccersite without consentrating on results and games.

The only thing I'd like to criticise is the way the 'real' content appears rather lang down on the pages.

First whitespace, so the meny, so more whitespace, so the picture and than, finally the text I'm looking for.

Otherwise a great site.

A quick note that will likely shut quite a bit of people up: how much do you think someone got paid to design this site?

I can only imagine what most local sports teams web sites look like, so let's get real about the target here. This isn't for Nike or Viacom, it's a small time project; we should be glad there are designers willing to do these kinds of projects.

It's clean, simple and pretty well organized. Consider how much worse this site could be...

Well...It's fairly easy to see from the ratings what the majority of people think. What good design prionciples does it follow? Does it mak you sit back and say "wow"?(No) Does it look good accross all browsers? (No - in IE6 the text looks bad). The red and black scheme's are not the best and the bold text - why??? There are too many points against this site than for it. Personally, I think it's pretty uninspiring and I think some of the reviews here are trying to "over justify" it's inclusion. In the words of Shakespeare - he doth protest too much. Who's better loooking - Haley Berry or Dame Edna Everidge? One of the worst sites I've seen on Stylegala.

I think this design is extremely well executed in it's minimalistic well-balanced way. I like how the large arial stands on it's own and creates a natural visual flow. I get that european government feeling over the typography, which is always nice...

The vectorized bull is a beauty, but the left side logo could do a lot better. Also, the airy header could probably be optimized to minimize scrolling on each section.

Absolutely perfect. Haven't seen something this clean or fresh for years. Certainly not a bad thing that this site isn't an overripe advertisement for itself. Kudos.

sorry for the irelavance but, sheffield fc was the first football club you bloody fool!

Mitch: How dare you. Anyway, I used the word "allegedly", so don't call me a fool.

From Wikipedia:

"Notts County were formed in 1862. The club predate even The Football Association and are considered to be one of the pioneers of the game. They are the oldest professional football club in the world."

Now, back to topic.

Text should be seen as part of the design. It is not necessary to have an ultra-busy site.