visitmix, now in a retro 8-bit love format
Our favorite web, UI and UX conference site has grown up. It's no longer just a site about the best conference out there, MIX. It's now a site for discussion, learning, ideas, projects and yes MIX still gets some love. MIX has a new URL which is more inline with the conference. It's http://2009.visitmix.com/ And here's a peak at the landing page.
Let's look around a bit. First I like the way the site is laid out logically with Home, Articles, Lab, Opinions and About sections nicely categorizing content.
On the home page we've got a nice jambalya of content.
We've got the latest articles, opinions and labs, along with links to MIX related sites, and events. It's also got a great retro "8 bit love" format to the site. Great colors, layout and no Flash or SilverLight that I can see (bonus).
I really like the new format, with labs being the playground for code. And from the look of it it looks like they will be updated with fresh content. They've started off with Oomph, a lab that teaches you about Microformats and gives you code to play with as well. The code is on codeplex and is open source under the Microsoft Public License. I downloaded it last night and actually would love to see this as part of IE8. Even more, I'd love to have this on my iPhone. Next month, is Descry, Exploring Data and Information Visualization. Looks tasty, can't wait and I'm curious to see what is created.
The articles section has articles that are clean, easy to read (which is important with the amount of info we're hit with today and tomorrow), and they're from folks like John Allsopp. So we are hearing voices from different parts of the web.
Opinions looks to be the blog and discussion section of the site. Check out Thomas Lewis's post which lays out the vision and direction of the new site.
And over in About there's a lavender frog. Huh? I don't know either. But, there is an important statement in the about section.
The last point is probably the most relevant. When I have a business issue at work. It's not a C-Level person coming to me saying "Oh, we need be on technology X right away", and if they do you should question why. They come to you with a business objective or scenario. And that's how we work in everyday life.
Hat's off to the visitmix team. You've done a fantastic job. It's nice to see a different approach.