I applause LL for trying to revamp and attract punters making it easier for them to join/assimilate into the societies but they should be trying to celebrating all the aspects of SL.

*shrugs* i am still waiting for a newbie out of the box furry av… seemed it was missed when they remade the others.

The design doesn’t matter if the first impression is that SL if a frivilous environment. Hope MY CEO doesn’t see something like this…bye bye budget!!

It conveys no cohesive message, but many fragmented ones, and the user has no idea which one to look at first. You’re looking at it as someone who already understands SL. You’re not looking at it from the point of view of someone who needs one simple statement answer to the questions : what and why.

That’s the whole point. There is no boundary! That’s why the thing SCROLLS to right and left!

And did you even read Crap’s mention of the verbs they chose? Stupid. I don’t think anyone’s found those meaningful.

If you didn’t already know what SL was, this page wouldn’t help you one bit. As for the predictable criticism stuff, I was neutral on it, and in fact was hoping they’d come up with something nice and useful. I have nothing against LL, if anything I probably come down on their side of things more often than not, just because incessant whining by the residents irritates me.

THIS. SUCKS. It has nothing to do with anyone wanting anyone else to fail. They failed without our wishes.

So its derivative? So what. *Every* design is derivative. Every one. Design, especially commercial design, exists within its time and echoes current trends and styles or else its not timely. Web sites are not designed for the ages. They’re designed for the here and now, and in 3 years when this looks dated and stale, they should be designing a new look. And, anyway, its a grid of images. Who owns the rights on grids?

And “Basic Rules of Design”? Are you kidding? I have a Rule of Design too. “Those who quote ‘design rules’ should never be allowed anywhere close to a design in progress”. Rules serve only one purpose: to be waved around by non-designers when they want to reject a design out of hand.

There are no “Rules of Design”. A design serves its purpose or it doesnt. THAT is the only rule that matters.

In the rush to cry “Fail”, everyone’s completely missing what this design actually does really well.

The flat black actually works very nicely, despite “rules” to the contrary, by receding to the background and focusing attention where it is supposed to be, the pictures, which look like windows into a world. There are so many possibilities and things to do in this world that they had to be arranged in a grid which is still too big for the page and has to overflow to the right and left. That’s how much stuff there is in SL.

Someone also said “Never horizontal scroll. Always vertical scroll.” Another one of those “design rules” which is just rubbish. Again, design choices have to suit the purpose and the message. For me, horizontal scrolling conveys “open”, “panoramic”, and “unconstrained”. All qualities that Second Life should be communicating. Vertical scrolling suggests sequentialness, and lots of stuff I have to read through.

And that’s without even knowing what kind of interactivity there’ll be on the live page. Who knows what clicking the menu items or the verb boxes will do? Or what’s beyond the page to the right and left?

Remember, the one and only purpose of this page design is to entice the new visitor to click deeper into the site and learn more. Now there’s no telling how well the live site will perform and if it will be annoy people away with too much Flash gimmickry. That’s a very strong possibility.

But, based solely on the layout of this static page, I say it works. If I was visiting this page for the very first time, having never heard of Second Life, I would be intrigued enough to look deeper, and I think many many other people would too. And THAT is the only measure of success that counts.