Comments on: Dunstan Orchard

Dunstan Orchard

filchyboy — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 22:22:34 -0800

Dunstan Orchard designed his site header to mimic the view and weather of his parent's home in Dorset. To do so he created 90 illustrations reflecting the local weather such as cloud condition, wind, humidity, etc. and matched the pics with a XML feed from weather.com. The design features a panel which folds out from beneath the current illustration and presents detailed local weather for both San Francisco & Dorset. Dunstan's talent and attention to detail are astounding. I've only scratched the surface of what he does with this site.

By: filchyboy

filchyboy — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 22:23:24 -0800

What other sites do you know of which use such time aware tools or design?

By: rafter

rafter — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 22:32:08 -0800

Holy cow, the comment highlighting. What a brilliant and well-done idea. So practical, so pretty.

By: rushmc

rushmc — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 22:38:13 -0800

One of the best-designed sites I've ever seen.

By: melissa may

melissa may — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 23:08:32 -0800

The fascination with weather and perfect attention to detail remind me very much of Oliver Sacks' descriptions of the thinking of autistic persons in An Anthropologist on Mars, and I mean that with high respect. I think Jessica Park would love this site.

By: filchyboy

filchyboy — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 23:41:50 -0800

Henry Darger's Book of Weather Reports.

By: fenriq

fenriq — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 00:02:02 -0800

Pretty neat homage and demo of his mojo skills. Seems like a nice guy too. Cool beans!

By: plep

plep — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 00:31:36 -0800

[this is good]

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 00:40:50 -0800

So elegant; this site is a thing of beauty. And yes, the comment highlighting-- I had the same reaction as when I first saw at Rebecca Blood's that she had differently coloured links for inside and outside the side. Smack forehead, think, Of course, it's so simple, so useful, why hasn't it always been that way?

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 01:07:56 -0800

side=site

By: twistedonion

twistedonion — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 02:01:39 -0800

Beautiful stuff - great design and not a bit of flash to be seen. Accessible too! I want to be this good when I grow up...aaw crap 1976 - that's my age! must try harder

By: Summer

Summer — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 02:59:22 -0800

I'd do it. /GirlFilter

By: lodurr

lodurr — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 03:46:38 -0800

... she had differently coloured links for inside and outside the site ... Sounds useful, but unless done very carefully, probably provides more confusion than benefit. Think about it: People have to have a way to know that's what the difference is. They've probably unconsciously internalized the idea of two link colors: Visited, and un-visited. If they think about it at all, a third color is most likely just to confuse users. I actually don't think the vast, vast majority of users would think about it at all. So the "utility" is to Dunsten and Rebecca, themselves. Which is really to say that the value isn't really in its utility to site users, but in how it fits their own attention to detail. I find that a design aesthetic is often convincing and compelling to others in large part as a function of how consistent and complete it is, internally, to its creator. Damn straight about the DHTML v. Flash. Making DHTML work well is all about attention to detail and organization. That everything here functions is a significant achievement by itself. That it looks good is amazing.

By: donpardo

donpardo — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 05:00:24 -0800

Weatherpixie

By: salmacis

salmacis — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 05:57:46 -0800

I'd do it. /GirlFilter Hit it, Summer, hit it. BTW another [this is good] from me.

By: salmacis

salmacis — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 06:01:54 -0800

While I'm at it, I'm not a million miles from Dorset. The sky is maybe a bit lighter than in the illustration, but it's not a bad picture of the conditions in Southern England right now.

By: shoepal

shoepal — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 06:37:08 -0800

v. nice!

By: digaman

digaman — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 07:02:42 -0800

Melissa, I know just what you mean. It occurred to me too. From his webpage, Duncan seems like someone who got just the right amount of those Aspergerish genes to be wonderful.

By: Summer

Summer — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 07:43:33 -0800

Hit it, Summer, hit it. Not in my part of the world.

By: togdon

togdon — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 07:54:19 -0800

Wow.

By: longbaugh

longbaugh — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 08:11:12 -0800

To add to the running tally, this is extraordinarily cool. Thanks filchyboy.

By: digaman

digaman — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 08:13:39 -0800

Dunstan, I meant.

By: TimeFactor

TimeFactor — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 09:00:59 -0800

Best.of.the.Web.

By: cyrusdogstar

cyrusdogstar — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 09:43:01 -0800

[this is good] Websites like this (and there are others that approach this sort of design, even if they're not quite up at this level) make me glad that the Web has come as far as it has. They not only present information well but are a real joy to look at and use, and that's exactly how the medium ought to be--taking the kinds of eye-candy and layout designs that work so well in print, and bringing that to the higher levels of interactivity and visual feedback that the Web allows.

By: sharpener

sharpener — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 10:14:29 -0800

Dunstan is indeed a very nice guy and a talented developer. I worked (virtually) with him briefly a couple of years ago on the MACCAWS project. Kudos, Dunstan, for making MetaFilter - and for making the web a better place in general.

By: lychee

lychee — Wed, 10 Nov 2004 16:44:58 -0800

I want to eat this man's brain so that I may become as creative and skilled. Guess that won't work... I'll have to do it the old-fashioned way, through hard work and dedication. Drat.