Slashdot's Vastu

nanopolitan writes "Wired has a story on harmonious website design according to Vastu, 'the Indian counterpart of feng shui'. The graphic accompanying the story has an analysis of Slashdot's design by Dr. Smita Narang. Her verdict? This site is 'in desperate need of balance'." From the article: "Thirty-year-old Smita Narang is rapidly becoming one of India's hottest Web designers. Her method: applying vastu shastra, the Indian counterpart of feng shui, to the online realm. The process entails mapping page attributes - HTML, colors, graphics - to elements like fire, water, and air. 'Any disturbance of these established elements can cause an imbalance in the site that directly affects its business,' Narang says."

Shouldn't there be a foot icon?

I thought it's funny and laughed.

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Well, there's this thing that most nerds are really bad at. Even - perhaps especially - when they think they're being good at it (e.g., "skins".) It's called aesthetics.

Feng shui and vastu and the like are, at least partially, non-western models for someth

Standards!

If he encourages the use of the blink tag I vote we brand him a heretic and burn him at the stake.
I'm not kidding.

Re:Standards!

I know "this thread is useless without pics" is a Slashdot faux pas, but calling this chick a dude is pretty harsh.

We don' need no steenking standards...

Irrespective of the gender confusion of parent, or the relative merits of using Vastu Shasta in preference to Feng Shui or one of the western astrological website balancing methods, this website designer needs some serious help:

• 2 CSS errors, such that some elements of the design will not render the way intended
• over 70 CSS warnings— enough to discourage anyone from taking this website as a serious authority on website implementation
• total failure to validate under W3C standards-- since the website is not written in standard HTML but in a bastardized variant of HTML issued by HoTMetaL in 1997.

A website designer needs to be held to a very high standard of compliance. This website designer fails it.

This post deserves to be modded as very, very funny...

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...the point is that HTML is not a programming language and as someone who has been using HTML since 1994 I don't see why it should be thought of one now.

Actually, HTML IS a programming language: it is one of the semantic mark-up languages of the SGML f [wikipedia.org]

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For instance, you say this is morally bad:

<a href = http://amazing.com/>amazing.com</a>

I say it's much easier to write than

<a href = "http://amazing.com/">amazing.com</a>

and far less prone to error

Less prone? It'

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"is just plain silly. The numbers are completely umambiguous unquoted."

When was the last time you wrote a parser? Regex engine? Context free grammar?

These things exist for a reason. English is hard to process in a computer because it's contextual. Woul

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5 elements? Milla Jovovich is prett hot but that was just a movie [imdb.com].

And like feng shui, IT'S BULLSHIT!

Seriously, all crap like this is, is a way to justify stupid expenditures based on some self-riteous asshole's personal opinions.

Only people with double-digit IQ or a severe case of money poisoning actually listen to these jackasses.

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Me an' me bro...uh...Cletus went thar' an' won that thar' lottury.

Momma, she says, "Boys, you best git on' them thar' web saytes up an' stuff."

So, I'd a' like to...uh...su..sub..subsc...git that thar' newslittur your have.

Feng Shui is correct

And like feng shui, IT'S BULLSHIT!

While the explanations claiming "energies" for Feng Shui may not be correct, the human psychology behind it is. Those same principles may or may not be applicable with regards to web design, but don't discount entirely that which you clearly do not understand.

Re:Feng Shui is correct

"While the explanations claiming "energies" for Feng Shui may not be correct, the human psychology behind it is."

Yeah. There's a sucker born every minute.

"Those same principles may or may not be applicable with regards to web design, but don't discount entirely that which you clearly do not understand."

Yeah. And my cash-mishandling invisible man in the sky who is going to sentence me to eternity of fire and brimstone and suffering...but loves me can beat up yours too!

The problem is, I DO understand it. This is why I call it like I see it. Bullshit. First to last.

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What you CLEARLY don't understand is that anything based on a false premise is not correct, and is not a science. (...) What are you doing on Slashdot if you don't understand basic scientific principles like this?

I think it's you who doesn't understand "ba

Re:And like feng shui, IT'S BULLSHIT!

ANYONE who does web coding should see right through this bullshit - a simple examination of the jokers website http://www.webvastu.com/ [webvastu.com] Should send up warning signs to ANY but the greenest of nubes. The 'three piece' image (WHY the hell do people do this?!?) isn't compatable with Opera or Safari... the three 'section boxes' to the right of the image have some of the ugliest formatting I've seen (It's called side padding - use it! At the same time cut back on the top/bottom, that looks like crap)... The site renders as a crappy little stripe justified left (Much like wired, it's not bad enough having a shitbox amatuer fixed width layout, but for crying out loud center the damned thing)... fixed px sized fonts that are too small to be useful to 'large font' users... (anything LESS than 12px needs a brick upside the head, and I'm hesitant to go below 'EGA fonts' - 14px) and the validator chokes on the doctype... Seriously whiskey tango foxtrot is this nonsense: Wow, I wish I'd thought of finding some whack-job eastern art form to use as justification for a lack of knowing how to design a website... My BULLSHIT alarm hasn't gone off this hardcore since I first heard of "Web 2.0" ... and much like Web 2.0, Penn and Teller could easily devote 30 minutes to this one.

Page length

Wtf .. she called it a negative .. I like a long page length .. seriously who the heck wants to click through multiple pages??

People who advocate short page lengths probably don't use the web for information.

And yes I think google should default to 100 results .. why not?

Re:Page length

Wtf .. she called it a negative .. I like a long page length .. seriously who the heck wants to click through multiple pages??

People who advocate short page lengths probably don't use the web for information.

Gotta agree with that. People who want multiple pages are usually trying to pump ad views. This chick just seems to want to make things pretty, or her version of pretty anyway. I guess if you can spout BS well enough to sound knowledgeable, people will throw money at you. Serves no useful purpose to anyone else, but must be nice.

Re:Page length

You've got my vote as well. It seems to me that the shorter the page, the more devoid it is of content. Scrolling down works incredibly well with monitors -- it might be a hassle with actual paper but the web doesn't always have to be a metaphor for the physical world.

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In web design there are two schools: "The Card Sharks" and "The Holy Scrollers".

Both schools have advantages and disadvantages. The specifics will always be root for discussion between webdesigners.

preferences on google search results

Uh, under preferences.
The link just to the right of the text box that says preferences.

Penn and Teller

Penn and Teller had a decent show on Feng Shui, and I agree with with their conclusion.

It's all bullshit!

Just like the subject of this news post.

Re:Penn and Teller

Being something of a sinophile, and the owner of a modest library on feng shui, let me digest what it really says.

Don't live so close to water that it washes your house away. Don't live so far away from water that it's an inordinate pain in the ass to get. Don't live close to the edges of cliffs which might collapse, or which you might fall off of. Do live in a location where your dwelling has as much protection from the elements as possible. But putting it directly in the path of the tree that looks kind of rotted and is about to fall it probably a bad idea too. Don't shit where you eat or are likely to drink. The sun is bright and hot, avoid suffering it unnecessarily. But the sun is also helpful, make sure you've got enough of it.

All it is are a set of building codes set to a spiritual narrative that's supposed to make it easy to remember. A smart person with good aesthetic sensibilities is required to make it work. Well compensated professionals in Asia, they get paid because they have some measure of the later, and more than some skill blending Confusian sensibilities with modern needs and tastes. The people on Bullshit! that's not what they're doing. They're banking on the ignorance of others.

The real tenents, with the mysticism striped away, they make a lot of sense to me. Except for the living underneath a rotting tree thing. Look, you buy the home you can afford.

I've known for a long time....

... that the average /. poster is 'unbalanced'.

Windows

Windows Vastu.

It's clear that Microsoft's GUI designers have been smoking some pretty serious weed and studying arcane bullshit notions and ologies of myth when you use Vista or IE7.

You made a funney.

Thanks a fucking lot, my 2-month-old kid was finally falling asleep now that it's nearly five in the morning, and then you had to go and write what you did.

I suggest submitting the name change recommendation to Microsoft along with a suggestion that the

I sense a great disturbance in the Force

Of course Slashdot's Vistu is bad...The site is full of the Dark Spirits of No-life Geeks and Noob-bashers. ;)

Her website is damn UGLY!!

http://www.webvastu.com/ [webvastu.com]

"When houses, restauants, shops, shopping centers can be made according to the ancient science of Vastu Shastra then why cann't the Websites also follow the same rules"

-Dr. Smita Jain Narang

Gee .. I dunno maybe cuz .. CAUSE IT'S AS UGLY AS GORILLA ORANGUTAN BALLS!!

(btw, what's a "restauant"?)

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Holy crap. That site is hard on the eyes. People pay her to do stuff like that?!

Re:Her website is damn UGLY!!

http://www.webvastu.com/ [webvastu.com]

I wish I hadn't clicked on that link.

The goggles... they do NOTHING!

Bunch of horse hooey

While I agree that Slashdot is ugnly as sin, that has to be the worst "evaulation" I've read in a long time.

The page should have less articles so it's "proportionate"? What do they think it is, a book?

People in glass houses...

Erk, has anyone taken a look at Dr. Narang's website, The fusion of two sciences, Web Vastu [webvastu.com]?

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LOL, good spot. She needs to apply some vastu to her site, or perhaps just a soothing balm.

LAFF at "The fusion of two sciences" bit on there.

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GGAAHH, that site is far from perfect.

Press Section [webvastu.com]: multiple videos autoplay, forcing you to either mute you speakers or rapidly click all the pause buttons.

The three boxes ("About the book", "What is...", and "How to order") don't have enough black

Re:People in glass houses...

Erk, has anyone taken a look at Dr. Narang's website, The fusion of two sciences, Web Vastu?

It reminds me of Powerpoint presentations from '97.

*Shivers* So.. cold..

Design of the Book's site

Assuming that the site for the book (http://www.webvastu.com/ [webvastu.com]) was done according to the principles within it I don't see what this text could offer. My knee-jerk reaction to the aesthetics of the site is that it looks as if it were done using the Frontpage WYSIWYG in 1997. Looking at the HTML the site uses table based design, has presentation markup in the html, and contains a host of other minor errors (i.e. uppercase tags). The CSS http://www.webvastu.com/style.css [webvastu.com]) is a mess and demonstrates a lack of understanding of modern 'best practices'.

I might be able to accept the idea of some people using such a whishy-washy approach to design if the end product could stand on its own but that's not what I'm seeing by any measure.

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The funny thing is that the page has this as DTD:
!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//SoftQuad//DTD HoTMetaL PRO 4.0::19971010::extensions to HTML 4.0//EN" "hmpro4.dtd"

Look how harmonious Webvastu is !

http://www.webvastu.com/

Yes, it's a picture of beauty which adapts web standards from, er, well from a few years back really.
The site looks like a large blob of curry stains, but boy, is it ever harmonious, with the use of white text on a curry brown background !

Note how the footer is in black italic text and how the whole construct is cunningly created in tables!

Note the subtle use of a ruddy great drop shadow on the logo!

Hear the stunning web page background music when you visit the news page - that sounds like it's playing out of a toilet after a heavy nights drinking in a curry den.

Yes, folks, it's a far better layout than Slashdot, indeed.

After all, who needs good design when you've got Webvastu !

It's harmonious darnit, because we all love muddy brown websites!

Good Water flow

The graphics and sans serif font induce good Water flow.

So will several cups of tea or several glasses of beer.

(As for "...Rob Malda chose an excellent URL, even though it's confusing when read aloud", one wonders why the good doctor thinks the domain na

Says it all really

http://validator.w3.org/check [w3.org] says Result: Failed validation

If you can't get that right you've got no chance.

Hilarious.

What a load of bollocks. What follows next is the sales pitch to glue some special crystals into the web server to help it reverberate with only good juju, like a cosmic drum ... or whatever.

These are pretty tall words coming from someone with such a shi

So in case you were wondering...

According to her analysis, the ideal slashdot web design is this [vt.edu].

What can hurt business is a technical site that is

Relying on someone whose design is somewhat scary and made in glaring colors only (yes, there is an audience for sites like that, no, I don't think tech people would be fond of permanently blazing colors), has no sense of space and prefers to mush things together and applying arbitrary set of rules to all sites no matter what the target audience is. It's like asking Paris Hilton to design work clothes for a fireman.
Plus, even that short recommendation is full off weirdness.

A) Instability of "horizontal layout" is stupid. Put the pencil down horizontally. Is it unstable? How about standing on it's end?

B) In case of established site URL does not matter, so this point does not apply. If people know that site has interesting stuff on it, they will put a bookmark or remember the address. Easy to type ones are good for radio/tv commercials

C) Yellow? Even CNET toned down their yellow colors lately. Say hello to the world of Taxi Web sites? Green and blue are present as main elements. So... off the point

D) What little graphics there is it's actually not the best feature of the Slashdot :) Logo is squished, icons are a bit scary, though been around for so long people are used to them

E) I wonder if she never reads anything that is more than 2-3 pages long. Or has that obsessive clicky-clicky-syndrome where person wants, no, needs to click on something NOW! Hence desire to split everything into tiny pages and users that have to use tricks (such as "Print this page") to re-assemble stuff back. Again, technical field pretty much demands more text than, say, some short poems collections

F) About the footer... She has to wear bell-bottoms then ;) ALWAYS! Because footer needs to be thick. Frankly many pages have no footer at all. Footer and footnotes can't be overloaded as that means "footnote" becomes primary content. These days footers are pretty much reserved for stuff that makes legal department happy. Of course Slashdot has links in the footer too ;)

Conclusion: more bullshit than usual, less design and pretty things than one'd think. Slow news day at Wired. Slashdot is not for the customers of Vastu-fied sites (but *gasp!* you already know that ;) )

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as much as i don't believe in feng shui; some of it does serve a purpose with common sense, in design we do have things called balance and these are represented by different shapes with different weights when they have an equal mass, not only shapes but al

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Whoa watch it with that reasonable attitude. That could get you hurt around here.

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Did you use feng shui to determine the aesthetics of your post's punctuation?

Slashdot was just redesigned

This design is older then that individual.

Um, the current slashdot site is a redesign from earlier this year. Did you miss all the posts from CmdrTaco evaluating the various design submissions?

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Sure, but the basic site structure hasnt changed. It got prettier bars, some new cosmetics, a much needed update on various usability features and hopefully a new, working, css based threshold system soon. It looks a bit sleeker and less 90s, but /.s "look

Dr. Narang, meet Dr. Dre

She said, "Well, Daddy, if I had some nuts on my chin would those be chin nuts?"

I said "Hell no bitch, you'd have a dick in your mouth! mouth! mouth!"

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...if I told someone that they should arrange their house to suit some passages in the Bible, they'd likely tell me to go piss up a rope.

If I wrapped it in Eastern Mysticism, they'd get a guru, moving company, and reed sandals.

That depends on the America

Re:You understand not the truth. Let me guide you.

I don't get it. Colored flashing orbs. Nothing else. Someone say "whoosh" and then explain it to me please.