In the past, I’ve made a bunch of  ’Themes’ for PivotX. All of those are available on the PivotX Themes Website. The problem with that website is that it doesn’t display a lot of features for each theme.

But from now on, I will also present my themes in my newly opened PivotX Sandbox. Feel free to browse around!

Of course, the PivotX Themes website is the place to go if you want to download the themes…

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Download Wichita Theme.

The frontpage

Wichita Front Page

A detail of the navigation bar at the top:

Navigation detail

A detail of the sidebar (with WZUP extension):

Sidebar detail

A screenshot of an entry page (with comments):

Entry Page

And a screenshot of the search results page:

Search results

Like I said, the theme previewer on the official PivotX website has its limitations. Pretty soon, Windmill Web Work will have its own Theme Previewer for all our themes, so all the bells and whistles can be showed, and previewed in a ‘real’ environment. More news about that soon, stay tuned!

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Let’s dive into the “Deep Discount and Limited Assortment” segment of supermarkets. Walking around in those establishments is not a nice shopping experience to start with, but the prices are low, and that is their priority. We can only imagine where ‘web design’ is on their list of priorities. Let’s take a look:

First, we have Aldi, a chain based in Germany, that has about 1000 stores in the USA. Aldi specializes in own-brand staple items, and does not decorate their stores. The website of Aldi USA looks surprisingly pleasant:

Aldi USA Website

The main section actually looks really nice. I’m a bit disappointed by the header and the top navigation. The navigation does not jump out at you, and that is mainly what you’ll be looking for once you enter the website. The same goes for the little blocks on the right, where you can find a store locator, something a lot of people will be looking for if they’ve never been to your store. SEO wise, the site is not all that bad, but the XHTML is not valid.

Next up is Food 4 Less, a smaller chain. I’ve never been to their stores, but if their website is an example of what the store looks like, I wouldn’t mind shopping there:

Food 4 Less Website

The quick navigation at the very top right is nice, and has the most sought after navigation items right there. The whole website uses a color scheme that’s easy on the eye, with subtle gradients here and there. The logo could use a little updating, but that’s just a personal preference, and changing that could get very expensive, because they would have to change the signs on the stores too of course.

The website is missing a meta description, which does not seem very smart if you look at SEO. The source code doesn’t validate either, which may or may not be a result of using Microsoft Sharepoint.

For the next one in this category, I’d like to take you to Marc’s, a small chain that’s local to my area. If you think this website looks bad, you’ve probably never been in an actual Marc’s store.

Marc's

Again, I’m surprised by the website. At first sight, there is not much wrong with it. The navigation is somewhat messed up, because apparently the menu items “What’s New” and “Health & Beauty” do not fit in the allocated space, which is just plain ugly. I’m also glad I said ‘at first sight’ because upon inspection of the source code, we find out it is made with HTML tables. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind a good table, if it’s used for actually displaying data that belongs in a table. And why a supermarket website needs a picture of the CEO in the header is a mystery to me.

There is also a lot of work left to do on the search engine optimization, and of course the page does not validate, as seems to be the standard in this business.

The last, and in this case the least of this showcase would be Discount Drug Mart, which is also a local chain in Ohio. Although their stores do not look as bad as Marc’s, their website is definitely the ugliest:

Discount Drug Mart

You don’t even have to look at the source code to see that his is just one big HTML table. Looking at the site, you feel overwhelmed by the amount of information on one page. If you follow the links on the left, you are shown a variety of different lay-outs and fonts. Of course, Comic Sans belongs on a website like this, including the occasional spelling error (‘Heathcare’ instead of ‘Healthcare’). Looks really professional.

I didn’t really want to test the validity f this website, but out of some kind of morbid curiosity i did. The score is 75 errors on the ‘Home’ page, but on some of the other pages it gets closer to the magic number 100. Also interesting (by lack of a different term) is the SEO report. Luckily, you can find them on Facebook and Twitter. That should help.

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These web pages are then referred to as ‘minimalistic’. If you look up ‘minimalism’ in a dictionary, you’ll find something like:

design or style in which the simplest and fewest elements are used to create the maximum effect

Examples of minimalism in art are for example the paintings of Piet Mondrian. I’m not going to give an opinion of minimalism in art here, but I must say that for web design, minimalism usually works really well.

Let’s look at some examples that I personally really appreciate:

Finch

Finch

Sleepover, San Fransisco

Sleepover, San Francisco

Hot Meteor

Hot Meteor

Being Wicked

Being Wicked

Design Intellection

Design Intellection

Full Cream Milk, one of my all time favorites.

Full Cream Milk

Of course, let’s not forget my own attempt at a minimalistc web design, for Keller Rigging & Construction

Keller Rigging & Construction

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Because all those ‘home page makers’ had to wait until 1989 before Tim Berners-Lee finally invented the World Wide Web, most of those early designs got lost, you know how that works with home pages and stuff.

But, just like wooden shoes, the art of making ‘home pages’ never really got forgotten. It was one of the trades that you see at a fair or when you visit a farmers market or something. There would always be an old guy sitting on a stool somewhere, drafting pages with a set of old quill pens and a bunch of different colors of ink. Of course, hyperlinks and ‘back’ buttons were not invented yet, so browsing a corporate website of let’s say the Dutch East India Company required a lot of patience and concentration. Luckily, there were no animated GIFs either.

Anyway, after HTML was invented, everything went really fast. All of a sudden, all those weird guys that used to still work as a ‘home page maker’ at fairs and such, suddenly had a real job! They started calling themselves webdesigners, and within no time they were driving around in Ferrari’s. That didn’t last long, because apparently Ferrari’s are not made to be driven while you are wearing wooden shoes. The few webdesigners that survived, started wearing Italian shoes, and from that moment on things really got going.

We all know where it went from there. If it wasn’t for those early webdesigners, you wouldn’t be looking at this website! Of course, something like the AOL – Time Warner disaster or Internet Explorer 6 wouldn’t have happened either, but that’s just a minor detail in history.

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