Death to JavaScript Rock Stars!
We’ve been listening to your feedback today, about the new jQuery site redesign and one thing has become clear:
Death to JavaScript Rock Stars!
Poor dude didn’t even last 24 hours. We wanted to have some fun with the home page, but this bordered on a little too “extreme” for most tastes.
We plan on bringing some further revisions to the homepage in the future, but in the meantime here’s a quick overhaul, put together by the always-excellent Scott Jehl, that’ll help tide everyone over:
As a token of our appreciation for sticking with the “JavaScript Rock Star” for a day we’ve included a little Easter Egg in the new site. It would be useful if you knew the Konami Code.
Naturally, the whole redesign still has many tweaks that’ll be made over the next couple weeks, especially to individual page fonts, font sizes, and colors.
I want to, once again, thank Scott Jehl for all the hard work that he’s been putting in to the site design – and the excellent Varick Rosete (of nGenWorks and Happy Webbies) for the great illustration that he drew for us.
Here’s to many happy days of rockin’ out with jQuery!
I don’t even know what to say, but I’ve been into some little to medium but import graphics projects and part of some real creative design process, nothing really big. I’ve heard and seen a lot of crazy ideas, but far from being not the perfect thing for the jquery branding I think it has some powerful and strong effect, I personally would consider that radical move with the rockstar thing. I know maybe some people even call the police because the crime against their eyes, but isn’t jquery that cool and radical enough to do this?, I almost would bet that this type of design is going to be a trend anytime soon. Why don’t you guys put that design against a real poll and see what we, the jquery fans really want or like? I just love the rad factor of the rockstar! or at least put the old DEVO hat somewhere in this new website! please. no matter what happens, jquery… respect.
In my opinion, space is expensive and there is too much free space left. You could make less vertical margin and padding, and try to keep the first page with no (or few) vertical scroll…
Excellent, thanks!
Pingback: Bram.us » Death to JavaScript Rock Stars!
Well that didn’t last long! I wasn’t particularly keen on it but then I don’t look at the homepage very often so didn’t really bother me that much – nice to see that the community rules though…
On a separate note, love the Konami Code easter egg!
I liked the old design better and i feel like sitting in a dark room when the page has dark design.
I used to think the jQuery logo was weird but now after redesign the site it just feels like jquery turned from “write less, do more” to “bling bling” JS library.
It is still my favourite though.
Much better. I still don’t prefer the dark layout (hard to read), nor do I like the very narrow design (horrible for reading the docs on my widescreen monitor).
I’ve already fixed the width problem with my own Stylish css, and I may do the same for the dark colors. As long as the content is there, though, I can always fix the styles I don’t like.
Heh! This whole mini-soap-opera has been a bunch of fun!
I think it would have been be ultra amusing if the Rock Star illustration (the actual character himself) was replaced by a super geeky nerd in a jumper (cardigan) with spectacles! Juxtaposed with the flashy “ROCK STAR” tagline, it would have made me laugh. And, hopefully, angered an even bigger crowd ;)
Pingback: Eric Martin » jQuery.com Redesign Causes Pandemonium
It wasn’t “extreme,” any more than a Crest ad featuring a rock guitarist is “extreme.” It was just silly.
But thanks for removing it.
Great redesign, but I have a small suggestion. I’m suscripted to plugin’s RSS. Sometimes I get updates on plugins I don’t know (and using a very cryptic names), for example: http://plugins.jquery.com/node/3764. On the old site it was easy to go back to the plugin’s main page, to check some demos, navigate the author’s website etc. But on the new design its difficult even to find a description of what the plugin does. A breadcrum will be useful on this case.
Keep the good work!
Score 6039, lol. Now all we need is a lite/brighter version of the design… Bright on dark background makes my eyes bleed and causes headaches. No joke, here’s a good article on it: http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200608/light_text_on_dark_background_vs_readability/
Apparently there are also people who have the same issue with dark on bright, so if a design uses such high contrast in design, then ideally the site should have stylesheets for both contrast versions.
Bravo on the game and on removing the illustration. I actually really like the color scheme, for what it’s worth.
And another vote for making radio buttons look like radio buttons.
Thank you.
I know you guys just wanted to have some fun, and I can’t blame you for that. I guess the lesson to be learned is there are always superficial and opinionated assholes, like myself, who will ruin that fun. :)
Nice one, that image was truly cringeworthy.
I had to paint my keyboard so I could play the game!
Thank you for listening to the community! JQuery is an excellent framework, and I am glad to see that you are so responsive to your users needs. Keep up the great work.
Sorry for the spamming, but my eyes couldn’t take it any longer so I made a userstyle, since I still want to browse this site. Maybe it’s useful for others, so here’s an easy fix for people with the same bright-on-dark issue: http://userstyles.org/styles/10122
It makes the black go away, replacing it with a more comfortable blue that still matches with the rest of the site. If it’s still too dark for you then it’s an easy 1 line edit. :)
I liked the rock star. You fucking nerds disdain anything resembling a life. Fucking nerds and your emo faggotry.
It’s pathetic if people complain about an image on jquery.com. Don’t they have better and more important things to do? This is just a website, and having a rock star image on the front page doesn’t make jquery any less awesome.
It was defnitely the right decision to get rid of the rock star. And concerning the ester egg: that’s the kind of style and humour that’s unique for jQuery. Really cool!
Awesome easter egg!
It’s a bit fast for me; is there a beginner mode? >_
Nice. I thought the rockstar bit was a little weird.
I *liked* the Rockstar Guy. I thought it was a funny caricature of the Web 2.0 mentality.
I have preserved the Rockstar Guy for like-minded individuals to enjoy:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3026/2809148861_45a9c46390_o.png
Sorry, but on this page, jQuery For Designers, of the tutorial, the MarkPanay.com example links don’t work. Thanks!
The Site looks to dark.
At first I wasn’t convinced about that rock star thing, but it added some lightweight feel to the front page. Now it looks just dull, not fun anymore. Working with jQuery is fun, and the page should show that.
Probably many people are just to serious about how a JavaScript library should look like. I would be glad if the rock star would make a come back of sorts.
The comments here give an impression that most jQuery users are total complaintFags.
Anyway, thanks a lot for building this awesome tool.New design looks great.
It’s annoying how the Netflix logo moves to the bottom right when hovering, but the other logos goes straight down without moving over.
Put the rockstar on the blog page. The blog is a non-serious area where you can have fun. The front page of the framework though is where you want to attract as much people as you can rather than alienate a large demographic (people older than 15 and the corporate users.)
John; We loved your fun banner.
We are a very serious company and jQuery is for some of us (some shit developer still prefer prototype or dojo :D) a professionnal tool.
I think that many people complains but I’m sure that the average thought that was a cool and great banner, but you know it’s always the same : people only post when it’s bad and to complain, not to congratz …
By the way, for me the design is not so important, it’s the global ergonomy of your website, which is very nice don’t worry ;-)
Continue this way, you are doing great work and the community is proud to use this nice framework.
kisses from Belgium
What about some Easter Egg bringing back the Rock Star for us who actually loved it? :)
Thanks for your responsiveness. I still think the site is way too heavy for me–jQuery is all about light&simple and this design just screams “enterprise bloat” somehow–but the rockstar was the single worst thing and it’s great that you heard us out. Personal taste aside (I just didn’t like it), it’s important for me to be able to “sell” jQuery to my boss and to my clients — and that is a sell that is a thousand times easier to make when the site is crisp, straightforward, and professional. I know we’re all rockstars at heart and there should be websites and communities where we can get our Javascript rock-out on… just not on jQuery.com.
Thanks for listening.
It wasn’t that the image was bad, it was just that it totally didn’t fit with the site. The drawing itself was awesome. I still think the logo doesn’t work for what this is — a Javascript library — but it may grow on me.
It’s great that you actually listened, so kudos for that.
Thank god, you’ve fixed it
Line 115 of screen.css needs the width set to 47em (instead of 46) as the secondary and footer navigation is wrapping to a second line.. at least with FF3 on XP..
Otherwise, the new site is nice.. my only request would be to link the quick API function list to the actual reference pages??
I’m really pleased to see this go.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who would consider ditching jQuery, at least in public, if it leads to accusations of being a “Rock Star”!!
A points about the web design.
The text does not change size if the user wants it to.
if you’re going to write a javascript library, then naturally you would make sure it works in all browsers, ya? now I know it’s most likely not the library messing up here but whoever wrote the HTML; but someone who is deciding on a library and has to develop on ie6 browsers is going to skip by yours when they see this:
http://img520.imageshack.us/img520/1761/jqueryie6hw6.png
just sayin.
Ola Pessoal,
Realmente o Bolg da um Worload danado no IE6, alem de zuar todo o estilo da pagina, o estilo tenho certeza que é o CSS, mas esse esquema do workload deve ser o javascript do jquery que esta mal-configurado ou mal escrito,,,no FF 2.16 vai bem legal…parabens pelo design novo do site e bons codigos…de CSS também…
t+
You should use remove() on the feature popups… when you hover over them quickly, the previous popup remains as the new one fades in. If you move back and forth quickly then stop, they will continue to popup and hide long after mouseout!
Great image – I mean the artwork is very very cool.
But, as others suggested, it wasn’t a good fit for jQuery IMO.
Thanks for taking it down – some bosses/clients out there wouldn’t understand – and sometimes its hard already to sell ‘open source’ to them.
Thanks … for the best JS library in the world :)
Pingback: The Javascript RockStar Dude Is Dead. Long Live The Konami Code! | ajb{log}: learn something new each day
i would really love to see the red back in action. jquery is always red to me
I had no problem with rock star and ninjas stuff. Largely because i do not care.
What i care about is usability. It seem like the worse usability feature right now are the popups that occur on mouse over following text:
* Light weight
* Cross-browser
* CSS compliant
Not only they hide the actually text making hard to understand which popup refer which text, but also they overlap other text resulting in confusion.
Oh thank Google. The rockstar is gone.
Now to do something about this new logo…
ohh good grief. It was a graphic for goodness sakes. GET OVER IT FOLKS! I actually liked it. It gave me a chuckle, and anyone that whined and complained about it needs to get out and get some kind of a life. I don’t think you should have caved on this one. Screw the masses! That’s what makes a true rockstar! Ya don’t like it? Go use mootools or something. Jquery is for true coding rockstars, not stiff as a board nerds!
Next time have a graphic with a dude holding up his skateboard shaped keyboard labeled: “code or die” or something corny like that. I vote bring the rockstar back!
I find it interesting that many of the comments here that are the ‘most passionate’ are generally the least useful in terms of valuable feedback.
Objectively critiquing a design and analysing it’s success against a set of objectives is not ‘complaining’ – it’s par for the course in any graphic and communication design process.
Subjective references to cool, rad, hip, edgy, exciting, different, powerful, strong, non-serious, fun, humor is irrelevant if the design doesn’t achieve it’s goals.
Although people are treating this as a taste war over the inclusion of the illustration – the real discussion is – whether http://www.jquery.com is aimed at individual ‘Rock star’ aligned designer / developers or aimed at a broader target market.
If it’s the latter, then the original execution failed to communicate that, regardless of anyone’s like / dislike for the illustration or the resulting adjective inducing community reaction.
This process would (or should) have been done by the web team before the design progressed and for the reaction to be so strongly opposed to the end result – they either didn’t invest enough time researching and assessing that, or made too many assumptions, or deliberately elected to do it knowing that this would happen. Either way, it will be a valuable learning experience for them.
Being serious about design is not synonymous with producing ‘serious design’, it’s about communicating the message effectively to the right audience and for the right reasons.
As for some of the more colourful and passionate remarks from people about their fellow users – anyone that makes statements like that either hasn’t or doesn’t work in a commercial design / development environment, or if they do, is someone I’d certainly not want to work on a project team with.
jQuery is a fantastic community and a great project, let’s work together to keep it that way by keeping feedback constructive and objective.
Thank god for people like Ian – being one of the earliest negative commenters on the redesign, I felt kind of guilty being in the boo section. Still, I think people need to step away a bit and stop calling people names based on their expressed opinions. What is this, the 19th century?! C’mon people.
Having said that, I congratulate the team on making the community-based approach so centric to the whole redesign of the site. We appreciate and love that you are striving to bring the tool closer to us.
And to all the profane commenters lamenting on the removal of the rockstar banner – if *you* liked the banner, that doesn’t mean the whole community cares you do. A site is meant to attract a wider community of professionals, amateurs and hobbyists, not narrow-minded jackasses such as yourselves. And selling a site that features an icon that is frowned upon within the professional community (you know, like people that actually pay for you to play with JS!) makes it hard to sell the library to the people you have to work for. They’d rather you choose Prototype or Dojo, since they’re more clasically aligned with the whole API scene (even though they are laymen, but that’s how the ball rolls). With good reason!
Um… a clarification is in order – my last parenthesis was aimed at bosses, not Prototype and Dojo. They have both earned merit in my eyes, and the clarification will hopefully avoid a flame war over it.
I like the new design, but am I the only one seeing horrible banding in the blue background gradient? I’ve seen this happen before, and I believe it to be caused by lossy compression of a 1px-wide image (I’ve tested and confirmed this). Try using GIF or PNG for the background image, or a 5px-wide JPG.