We're a Webby Award Honoree!
Tom Kiss has been at Double Fine since 2022, and is responsible for doublefine.com, having redesigned and built its current iteration. He's a Web Master of old.
We're stoked to announce that we're a Webby Award Honoree!
Which-Webby-what now? I hear you ask. Well, although we didn't specifically win an award, it means we came pretty close. So close in fact, that the Grand High Web Wizards at The Webby Awards have bestowed upon us a badge of honor (in PNG form).
The category we've been honored in is Websites and Mobile Sites Best Practices 2024. Here's their official definition of just exactly what that means is:
Best Practices sites serve as an industry benchmark for the most current, innovative, and advanced practices in web development; from offering personalized data experiences and beyond. Sites must demonstrate unparalleled excellence across the Academy's six criteria: content, structure, navigation, visual design, interactivity, functionality, and overall experience.
Unparalleled excellence? /tosses hair, checks nails
In all seriousness this is a great category to be appreciated in.
Here's our badge!
Since we relaunched doublefine.com back in 2021, we've worked hard to keep the site updated with our latest news, as you'd expect. Plus, since then we've added new features, such as DFTV (with its own pages for PsychOdyssey and our other documentaries), Merchandise and Games on Sale, our latest addition, the Double Fine Supportal and plenty of smaller things like a highly self-indulgent page to record all our awards ever. But, under the hood we also carry out regular maintenance and performance improvements which, well, may even go unnoticed.
Privacy
Don't you just love accepting cookies on every. single. website? Well, we don't. And that's why, back when we were redesigning doublefine.com, we stopped to ask the question - Do we actually even need cookies? And it turns out, that no - no, we didn't. All it required, was to stop using a few services like Google Analytics (something that many website owners use without a second thought), switch to using a cookieless analytics platform and consider more carefully the design in terms of storing user data (i.e: don't). We're really glad we chose to do this. Admittedly, this is only possible for us due to the nature of our website, and not every site out there could take this approach - but it's something we'd sure love to see more of on the web, and if we can do it, so can others!
If we had actually won an award, then this is what it would've looked like.
Yes, like something to replace a broken bedspring (because that's something people definitely do).
Accessibility
These days, all website owners have a duty (and legal responsibility) to ensure their website content is inclusive and accessible people with disabilities. The Double Fine website makes use of best practices in this regard, and undergoes thorough annual testing to ensure new content and features are put through their paces; with any issues flagged and fixed. We test the website using tools such as Accessibility Insights and screen readers like Windows Narrator and macOS VoiceOver. Whilst the website is by no means perfect, it's an area we are always improving on.
Performance
The Double Fine website has plenty of rich media content, including thousands of images, comics and videos. Plus, it also has a visual design that's got plenty of graphics and color. To prevent it chugging or being slow to load on lower bandwidth connections, the site makes use of built-in browser technologies to streamline the loading of assets and content. The benefits are huge; as a website that loads quickly is not only good for the user experience but it's also good for their computer and the server. A server dishing out fewer, or smaller-sized assets, is one using less energy.
Efficiency is something that we've had in mind throughout development, as our website and the CDN it uses ("Content Delivery Network", i.e: where media assets are stored), are hosted only on data centers which use 100% renewable electricity. And that's very much something we specifically chose to do.
Google Chrome's Lighthouse Performance report for the doublefine.com homepage, Desktop browsers, May 2024.
Dammit, we really need to figure out that last 4%.
Whilst performance metrics are not the be-all and end-all, tools like Google's Lighthouse are excellent at identifying small issues to make incremental improvements. We like to keep our scores high, but... there's always room for improvement! For instance, our performance on mobile devices could be improved, which is something we'll be addressing over time.
There's always more...
That's the thing about web development, it never really ends. Not simply because a website might need updating now and then, but there's nearly always something to improve upon. And, with new and changing specifications to HTML, CSS and Javascript - there's always something new to learn too. Which is probably why I've enjoyed building websites since the first one I worked on in 1997.
I mentioned that to another web developer recently who pointed out that he was 2 years old then. I laughed because that was a joke, right? Right!?