Team Viget

Guarded enthusiasm is usually the order of the day around here, but what the heck... Who will be the next kid in the candy store, lol!

One problem with the sliding-page navigation is that it breaks the back button on the browser. (Even web geeks use the back arrow - at least I know one that does).

Also, I would consider putting some explanation on the homepage about the site's relationship to the mother site vignet.com. It's not immediately clear whether this site is the main shop-front or not (it isn't) and that could be a little confusing?

How hard would it have been to make it work without Javascript?

I'm not a fan of sliding navigation, so I usually disable Javascript on sites that use it.

Hey presto, none of the navigation works.

Also, no offense, but what the hell is "(x-d)html".

@ Ryan

I know what he meant, it was just a rather poncy way of saying it.

@Derek what the hell is poncy ;)

what the hell is an @derek?

Touché.

"navigation is that it breaks the back button" - perhaps the history plugin would avoid this issue.

"How hard would it have been to make it work without Javascript?" - not impossible I would say though perhaps some parts would have to be reworked.

I myself am working on a personal project that will be similar to this site (in its use of jquery) I hope to be able to use the above to make everything sweet. I find jQuery is perfect for make JS enhanced site that are unobtrusive.

Using Opera 8.5 here. Click Sweet staff or Killer designs and move across. But click back and it doesn't go back. And the browser back button also is not available.

Result: yes again another unnavigable site, just like some other recent stylegala sites. Methinks, designers are very clever but not quite got it mastered yet.

The back button issue is minor, imo. They still have named anchors that'll allow users without JavaScript enabled to easily make their way around the page.

My problem: the paper PNG is enormous. There's no reason for transparency if you're going to slide the entire background behind the element when you transition between sections, or if you're not going to make the element scalable (try adjusting font sizes). It could just as well have been an optimized JPEG, which would've loaded faster and not required PNG transparency hacks (css/ie.css).

But at the same time...who cares? Their target audience is going to have JavaScript and PNG support. I don't think they're looking to hire any visually-impaired IE users on dial-up...

"The target audience and their browser of choice."

So we're back to browser specific sites?

Only took me three clicks on the individual jobs before the white panel failed to properly resize, thus hiding the "close" button at the bottom. I had to click on other jobs just to get the page sized properly again so I could return to the main menu.

This is a nice design student site. This is not a good professional site. I would be very wary of submitting my resume to a company that clearly puts style above usability, functionality, and testing.

I think professional, successful design is about communication, not using every crayon in the box.

There's an obvious wow factor at work here but disable Javascript and watch the site fall flat on its feet.

Gorgeous website; most refreshingly original design Ive seen in quite a while. I particularly like the real life features such as the book shelf; looks a little bit like mine at home ;)

The JS sliding effect is awesomely smooth (at least on my machine, anyway) and well executed, though I have to agree that it does begin to tire and slow down the user experience after a short period of browsing. However for their target audience (other designers/appreciators of technical excellence) I reckon it's pretty near perfect :)

First off thanks to Tyler for the great write-up. We appreciate the time you took to explore the site and understand our goals for this project. And thanks to everyone for your comments, questions, and concerns. We’re glad to see it sparked some great discussion.

Like Tyler mentioned the purpose of the site is to create an awareness of our hiring needs as well as a ‘buzz’ around the CSS community in ways that our main corporate site (www.viget.com) couldn’t. We’ve received a considerable amount of traffic and good feedback, even being linked to from Cameron Moll, since the launch three weeks ago and feel that we accomplished our goals. Due to the tight internal timeframes we were forced to make some hard decisions regarding accessibility. We decided to focus on the design and functionality foremost assuming our core target audience would be using FireFox 1.5 or greater, IE6 or 7, Safari, JavaScript, and have a broadband connection. It’s becomes difficult to justify a significant amount of extra development time for a quick recruiting site when you have a lot of client work to focus on.

Accessibility is an extremely important part of our business and theology here at Viget. Although this site becomes hard to navigate with JavaScript disabled it was a tough call we had to make with a limited time table. We decided to take a risk and in the end I think it was worth it.

@Michael – The reason for the large PNGs is due to the top sliding functionality. Without the opacity the background pattern becomes mismatched when the top jobs section scrolls down. If we could achieve the same functionality and look with optimized JPGs we surely would.

Thanks again to everyone for checking out the site and sharing your thoughts.

Well, a typical SG site!

Not that I don't like it ;)

Looks great.