Considering the content of each of the points, I would argue that at worst only 2 and 7 focus on form over function. If you're a person that has a hard time telling if a design is good or not this is a great list.
Also, design must start somewhere. You cannot A/B test starting from a blank page.
And even then, item 2 is a simple example of how attention to seemingly slight details can draw the eye to site features without resorting to a big button.
It also sets ambience and establishes your brand image subconsciously. You wouldn't try serving $50 steaks in a run-down diner, so why would you try to sell an upscale product on a site with no attention to detail?
Not that a big button isn't always out of place. I do think that the elegant details applied to a relatively simple design can help bring the quality of the design up. Simple touches help make a simple design a pleasure to use.
I found it amusing how awful the text (or should I say "the typography") for the introduction and table of contents from that site looks in Firefox on Linux (on my machine). I'm sure it is due to the site using fonts not availble in my installation, or something similar to that. Still, it was amusing. I'd be curious to hear if others had the same experience. In case anyone cares, I can't remember the last time I had the text on a web site look so bad with this setup. I visit a lot of sites, and I haven't had one look this bad for a long time. It is still readable, but if it was my site on web typography, I wouldn't want it to look that way.
It looks pretty great to me (using a Firefox 3.5 nightly under Linux), but then I've configured Firefox to use the Android system fonts, and unticked "Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above". It's amazing how much better pages look when they use a nice font, instead of whatever lowest-common-denominator font the original author put up with.
wow. this severely disappoints me. i've never posted or really read reddit ever. i tried to be a little clever in my response (operative word: tried) and get crushed. if i would've rephrased my response it would've likely gone unnoticed.
this anti-reddit fervor that has been developing over the last few months seems to have converted itself into a "no fun allowed" atmosphere, and that just plain sucks. that is not how a community works.
i know, i've been here for more than a year and was on the top 100 list for a while. no need to patronize.
what i wrote was not present in the parent post. this article literally made me go back and check, revamp, and do mild redesigns to almost every site that i have control over. this is statement of fact that i tried to express in an apparently disagreeable manner in my op.
and again, like i said, i was attempting to be clever/funny. clearly failed, and i admit that. but that doesn't mean there wasn't content there. two innocuous, inoffensive words actually ruined the post?
The many misspellings and grammatical errors in an article pushing the importance of pretty, colored, 1px borders as an indicator of "quality" just looks like the same old advocacy of flash over substance.
No thanks. We've had enough of that over the last decade.
The subtle touches that indicate actual talent went into the design, not a programmer's afterthought, does make me appreciate web sites more.
I really have no idea what you're suggesting with "We've had enough of that over the last decade". This isn't all or nothing; you can have gorgeous design with worthwhile content and functionality.
Though perhaps we should question the increasing (IME) emphasis on grid systems in web design. Sure, using grids is easy, and we shouldn't be different just to be different, but who says there is no more effective way to present a site than a load of rectangles with a bit of space between them? A lot of the Web is becoming rather cliched in this respect, just like frames and table layouts before.
Good point. To me, the emphasis on grid systems is mostly to improve designs made by people not necessarily talented in design. In that it's something one might not know about even though it improves a design without doing much.
Moving completely away from grid systems to have something different probably needs more talent in the design department and can not be achieved by anybody.
Grid systems are a staple of tool in print graphic design, but only seem to have been picked up by the web design community in the last year or so.
It seems there is a lot of misunderstanding, grid systems are an invisible structure for laying out content with some consistency. Every newspaper, magazine, book or poster you see is usually designed to a grid of some description.
What we're seeing at the moment is a lot of web design taking the idea of the grid very literally, applying it in a very self conscious way, treating the grid as an aesthetic afterthought rather than as a functional underlying system.
I think it's part of an evolution. Some web-designers are discovering the (long established in traditional printing) grid systems but not all of them really know how to use it or really what to do with it, besides the fact that it's a tool that they should probably use. They end up using it more prominently than they should because it's new to them.
To me, it feels like it's the result of learning the domain backwards, where you have a finished product and then learn about how it's usually done, so you correct here and there some aspects. And it shows.
To be honest, I'm saying that without knowing either how to properly use grids. As many others, I have seen many descriptions of it and how, for some designers, it's the ultimate thing and for others, a tool that they don't want to stick to (e.g. as presented in the documentary Helvetica.)
In the end, do you feel that it's better or worse that people with no "proper" design background apply the grid systems "too much" rather than not paying attention to it at all? I believe that it's good that that kind of knowledge gets spread out, even it misused at first.
Maybe adding the golden ratio would be a plus... I am not that great at web design either, but I hope reading articles like this and practicing bits of the recommendations will be like working at keeping a smile on my face - It lifts my mood.
In the end, detail to what converts users matters, not typography or richness of color.