DescentBB

Ok so our website http://www.bakercountyonline.com/fbla didn't even place YET somehow http://mnhs.dadeschools.net/fbla/pod/main.htm got 3rd place and http://www.northviewchiefs.com/FBLA got 5th place. I haven't found the others yet, but you guys let me know what you think. We're gonna get our score sheet and protest this one...

I don't see what you're complaining about with the 3rd place one -- they don't have a flash intro, which automatically makes them better.

The 5th place one sucks, though. Their flash intro doesn't have a "skip" button anywhere easy to see...

If it makes you feel any better, I happen to like yours more than either of the other two. The third place is too bland, and the fifth place has that annoying, unskippable intro. I like your intro, though.

an intro is worth points, you have to have one. also, the only thing I did was the actual layout, other team member did flash, which is better than I could have done cause I have 0 flash knowledge... and they did have a flash intro... here's the root http://mnhs.dadeschools.net/fbla/pod/

Your site is too wide.

I don't think a Flash intro ought to be worth anything. Those things are damned annoying. In fact, I surf without Flash for that very reason.

2 words : too busy

If it's worth anything, I think yours has both better professional and aesthetic qualities than those two examples you gave.

I'd lose the cheesy trance in the intro though. A minor complaint, relatively speaking.

splash page = wank.

242KB of navigation flash sucks also. That's 50 seconds for a 56Ker to get just the navigation. Pure unadulterated webmaster-wank.

Web sites need to be fast.

Web sites need to be simple.

(This doesn't mean the back end, the back end can be ultra complex, but the front end has to be very simple. Simplicity on the front end often hides ultra complex behaviours at the server side)

Web sites should NEVER use flash except in banner advertisements (You therefore have no control over the advert content) and in certain situations where you have no convenient way in HTML to display your content.

Flash is 99.9% bad in it's current usage trends.

There ARE valid reasons to use it - such as at www.becominghuman.org (Take the documentary - it rocks!) but the instances where flash is wisely used are few and far between.

Imagine how good the design could have been, if all the effort that went into the flash was spent studying usability guidelines, testing cross-browser compatibility, and doing nifty things with CSS and web standards.

I know that my site isn't perfect. And I didn't want the topper done in flash and I didn't want an intro. However the rubric gives extra points for things such as this. I actually designed the topper using css styles for districts, but was told to convert over to flash. I realize there are several flaws to the site. many of which I was planning to fix for the next level of competition, however my point is that even with all it's flaws the other sites shown should have NEVER placed higher.

I can design good simple websites. Like, no images. Except for maybe a logo... I just think websites look cooler simple.