The Flop

67 comments (Comments closed)

1. At 7:59am on 1 apr 2005, Azeem Azeez wrote:

Oh wow! Your homepage(s) looks awesome. Kinda familiar though ;)

2. At 8:09am on 1 apr 2005, Blake Scarbrough wrote:

Nicely done. What will this one be called under the preferences? “Bleached Dominey”

3. At 8:10am on 1 apr 2005, Jesper wrote:

Be sure to hit reload.

4. At 8:12am on 1 apr 2005, jeton wrote:

Hah, you did it again! :D

5. At 8:15am on 1 apr 2005, Jeff Croft wrote:

I swear to God if Jason is ripped one more time, I’m going to…

That guy doesn’t need any ego stroking. Some of us have been wanting to be ripped for years now and it’s always the usual suspects: Jason, Shaun, Bowman. It’s just not fair.

And before you call me jealous, let me just say: yes, I’m jealous.

:)

6. At 8:18am on 1 apr 2005, Jeff Croft wrote:

Just noticed there is more than one — very funny stuff, Doug. ;)

7. At 8:19am on 1 apr 2005, Cameron Moll wrote:

Wow, you had me at hello, Doug. Here I had your site in a tab going through several, only to land on the Kottke version and think I was actually on Kottke’s site. I thought for sure you wouldn’t be able to out-do last year’s flop, but alas…

8. At 8:23am on 1 apr 2005, Mike P. wrote:

“they claim this is navigation” - haha - brilliant!

I was just here a half an hour or so ago, checking to see if something would be up…

9. At 8:23am on 1 apr 2005, Donny wrote:

It’s jaw-dropping! Very clever

10. At 8:27am on 1 apr 2005, Jeremy Flint wrote:

Excellent Doug!

I have seen 4. Any others?

11. At 8:29am on 1 apr 2005, Ed Knittel wrote:

Someone must have been busy all week. Is each refresh random or deliberate?

12. At 8:29am on 1 apr 2005, Matr wrote:

I don’t understand what’s happening? What is the flop?

13. At 8:41am on 1 apr 2005, Cameron Moll wrote:

Only those with x-ray vision are privy to the Flop.

14. At 8:41am on 1 apr 2005, AkaXakA wrote:

Wow. You even made your sidelinks go inbetween like kottke! (Or are you cheating and just serving up a static page? - Which would make sence, as the rest of the site is normal)

Nevertheless, the designs you “borrowed” don’t look off or odd at all. Very well done.

Matr. Check the front-page of Stopdesign. And reload often.

15. At 8:43am on 1 apr 2005, seth wrote:

That’s frickin’ cool! Sitting here, hitting reload, and chuckling to myself. Sweet.

So, what’s the joke?

16. At 9:09am on 1 apr 2005, Mathias Bynens wrote:

LOL, nice one Doug. I especially like the Kottke-borrowed sidebar headers:

“Recommended by someone here —- but we’re not vouching for ‘em if they end up in jail”

Brilliant!

17. At 9:32am on 1 apr 2005, Kim Siever wrote:

Very cool. :) I had a very good laugh. This is like the 20th April Fool’s joke I had today.

18. At 9:34am on 1 apr 2005, trovster wrote:

Very amusing. The first design I came across was of Kottke, didn’t realise there were 4 (more?) designs! Kottke, SimpleBits, WhatDoIKnow & Jason Santa Maria

Not as confusing as last year though I was flicking between here and Mezzoblue til the day of the year finally hit me!

19. At 9:50am on 1 apr 2005, Naz wrote:

stopdesigning! hahahahahaha

20. At 9:52am on 1 apr 2005, Justin Perkins wrote:

Excellent
*tapping fingers together in a siniser way*
Excellent

21. At 9:53am on 1 apr 2005, Justin Perkins wrote:

Oh yeah… you’re going to hit your bandwidth quota just in refreshes today ;)

22. At 10:22am on 1 apr 2005, geeky wrote:

excellent job! it took me a while to realize it changes :)

23. At 10:28am on 1 apr 2005, Tanny O'Haley wrote:

We are amazed once again.

24. At 10:39am on 1 apr 2005, Matr wrote:

Now I see what’s going on…. Still don’t see the reason behind it.

25. At 10:44am on 1 apr 2005, avianto wrote:

Excellent! When will you stop amazed us? Last year was great but this year is brilliant!

26. At 10:44am on 1 apr 2005, Eddie Sowden wrote:

How many different ones are there? I have seen designs from Kottke, Cederholm, Dominey and Maria.. are there any more? it took me a while to see all of them.

27. At 10:52am on 1 apr 2005, Alex wrote:

Ah, I was completely fooled for about 30 seconds. Thought that I had accidentally landed at Dominey’s site, then I thought that “hmm, this SXSW post seems strikingly similar to one posted at StopDesign a week ago,” then I hit reload because I was confused. Then I finally got the joke. Legit vibe zone.

28. At 10:58am on 1 apr 2005, Alex wrote:

That just made me think…my eye subconsciously skipped over the header graphic, the navigation, and the sidebar, and went straight to the “content” section of the What Do I Know layout. If I would have looked first at the header, I would have “gotten it” right away. Kind of interesting how our site viewing habits tend to gravitate toward the content rather than the design elements after we become quite familiar with a page.

29. At 11:04am on 1 apr 2005, Remi Prevost wrote:

Really, really good job Doug. That’s amazing how you can adapt another site’s style to yours.

Fantastic!

30. At 11:18am on 1 apr 2005, Rob Weychert wrote:

By far the most elaborate April Fool’s prank I’ve seen today. Bravo!

31. At 11:41am on 1 apr 2005, Keith McLaughlin wrote:

Very well done. Must have taken a while to do all the different elements!

32. At 11:42am on 1 apr 2005, monkeyinabox wrote:

What a treat. I was looking forward to seeing if Stopdesign would outdo itself this year.

33. At 11:47am on 1 apr 2005, Chad Saunders wrote:

Very creative guys ;)

34. At 11:54am on 1 apr 2005, Scott B. wrote:

They’re like collectibles. I’ve found:

Jason Kottke
Dan Cederholm
Jason Santa-Maria
Todd Dominey

Incredibly well-done.

35. At 12:09pm on 1 apr 2005, juque wrote:

I can’t believe it. Admirable genius Doug.

36. At 12:34pm on 1 apr 2005, Jason Beaird wrote:

Hilarious! Well done Doug!

37. At 1:02pm on 1 apr 2005, perke wrote:

Unreal!….
Totally dominating design…ehhehe LOL

38. At 1:02pm on 1 apr 2005, Julian wrote:

Great! I like your new “home of fine borrowed designs”. You just stole some of the good designs and built them together…

To other visitors: I’ve got to repeat this: Be sure to hit reload (as often as you can..)!

39. At 2:03pm on 1 apr 2005, Keith wrote:

Nice work. At first I thought it was just Cederholm’s site and was like, eh, he did that last year, even though it gave me a bit of a chuckle. But, no, turns out you topped that quite nicely.

Very funny and well done.

40. At 2:27pm on 1 apr 2005, Jason Klein wrote:

For someone whose company name seems to indicate a clear mission to “stop design,” you sure do a lot of it. Let this prank serve to invalidate any misconceptions about Web geeks not having a sense of humor.

41. At 2:47pm on 1 apr 2005, Bryan Corey wrote:

Very funny. I enjoyed this a lot, took me a while to catch on that it was April 1st though. Oh well.

42. At 2:50pm on 1 apr 2005, Kim Siever wrote:

I am already looking forward to 2006.

43. At 3:28pm on 1 apr 2005, Ryan Oswald wrote:

Is it just me? I don’t get it. I just keep getting point to other sites that I usually visit. Is this some sort of collaborative effort to elevate search engine rank?

44. At 3:33pm on 1 apr 2005, Ryan Oswald wrote:

nevermind… I came from a news reader… sage/firefox. So the effect was a little different: reading the newsfeeds of jasonsantamaria.com about “the flob” linked me to his site.

45. At 3:38pm on 1 apr 2005, Mayu Shimizu wrote:

Holy cow, I was expecting something along the line, yes, but not *this*.
Reload, reload!

46. At 4:07pm on 1 apr 2005, Oliver wrote:

Laugh Out Loud! HAHA great april fools!

47. At 4:14pm on 1 apr 2005, David Hund wrote:

This is absolutely great! =)

You’re the best,
now get back to work, you spend WAY too much time on this nonsense…

=p

48. At 5:16pm on 1 apr 2005, Rafal wrote:

Nice. How long did it take you to make all four? I have a nice april fool’s joke going on my site as well, but mostly for my friends… So far everybody’s been calling me and I have been telling them the same story. Tomorrow they will find out the truth.

49. At 7:02pm on 1 apr 2005, Darryl Ring wrote:

Great job, Doug, it’s not easy to get each design so perfect as you’ve done, and in god knows how long…

I’m not certain I understand the Texas Hold’em reference, though…

50. At 8:21pm on 1 apr 2005, Jim wrote:

Leo Kottke?

51. At 8:23pm on 1 apr 2005, Jim wrote:

Powerful demo and argument. Best I’ve seen; presentation-wise!

52. At 12:07am on 2 apr 2005, Patrick Haney wrote:

I didn’t think you could outdo yourself from last year’s April 1st debacle, but I was wrong. The alternate styles are fantastic and if I hadn’t seen this later in the evening, I might’ve been very, very confused.

Well done.

53. At 1:18am on 2 apr 2005, Andrea wrote:

hahahahaha !

The kottke navigation is hilarious.

54. At 5:28am on 2 apr 2005, Joerg Petermann wrote:

Is it Stopdesign.com? The effect was great, it takes me a while looking for the site. Wonderful!

55. At 9:56am on 2 apr 2005, Jough wrote:

I was hoping there’d be a design switch between a few prominent designers today, but FOUR? Doug, you’ve out-trumped even yourself this year.

Who would have known you had a wired pair of bullets?

56. At 12:21pm on 3 apr 2005, Robert Cochran wrote:

Hi Dough, I am just learning how to try and navigate the Blog program. I’m really having a difficult time. Is there and books you could recomend to me on, How To.

Thank for any help . Bob Cochran

57. At 5:24am on 4 apr 2005, JN wrote:

Darn. Am just getting the feeds for this on Monday morning (4.4.05) and none of the links show the variations.

Anything you can do for those who missed out?

58. At 9:09am on 4 apr 2005, Kim Siever wrote:

JN,

The links for the designs are at the end of Doug’s post.

59. At 2:15am on 5 apr 2005, Stefan Åkesson wrote:

I like the kottke a lot.

Stefan

60. At 3:44am on 7 apr 2005, Noelino Volaire wrote:

Well that was a good laugh, none the less.
The Simplebits-based layout was the one with the most subtle differences, if you ask me.

I had to glance at it at least 3 times, I thought I was losing my mind.

61. At 2:11pm on 7 apr 2005, Ross Easton wrote:

Neat! R

62. At 5:56pm on 9 apr 2005, willo wrote:

hey doug! i haven’t been here in awhile and just hopped in & saw these - soo cool! i gotta get on the css bandwagon - you’re a genius! :) hope you’re well, buddy. xoxo

63. At 1:19am on 12 apr 2005, fonso wrote:

Déjà vu!.

Though, granted, your implementation is way coolr(tm) :)

64. At 3:40am on 12 apr 2005, Knut Karnapp wrote:

Once more, I got “stopdesigned” :)

65. At 1:11pm on 12 apr 2005, Paulo wrote:

I know this is very of topic, but I wanted to know what web dev tool Douglas uses to develop his website?

66. At 3:40pm on 12 apr 2005, Sara Tompson wrote:

Incredible! Your homepage is looking great by the way Douglas.

67. At 9:25am on 13 apr 2005, Martin S. wrote:

That’s awesome dude! I like the “Jason Santa Maria” version best, but Stopdesign @ Simplebits style isn’t so bad either ;-) Great!

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