It's a shame you're being downvoted, hopefully constructive feed back will eventually bubble to the top. There was a similar submission yesterday where this occurred.
Clearly there are a group of elite web designers, UI and UX specialists that parade this site, who, unsurprisingly, have empty profiles. How else are we supposed to see their portfolio of exceptional work so we know what to aspire to?
Art/Creative Directors often have some of the worst, if existent at all, portfolios. Execution has nothing to do with having an eye for it.
This layout might look more modern than the 1998 frames we were expecting, but from a usability standpoint, it's still weak. If your average government site has a lefthand sidebar that contains all of the navigation, that in itself is better than making your user move their eyes all over the page, forcing them to click on a button to even see the rest of the options available. On top of that, they don't look like links (they don't even have a hover state), which is frustrating enough for me, but could be entirely too confusing for average users.
Additionally, that large image is useless; the "View more services" should be visible without needing to click into it.
This is a fallacy. If you need to show something to prove or give an opinion or a reason about 2+2=4 then we will have troubles to discuss on anything.
You cannot use argumentum ad hominem to this point. If people has to shown their portfolios or other stuff to prove their skillmanship you're only wasting time and finding on the wrong place to prove your points, since those designs may not apply or be used as a good example to counterattack the main point here.
Unfortunately, the world is so complicated that we can't make an informed decision based on speech/writing alone, and verification of achievements is one of the easiest and most accurate ways to judge credibility.
We should give opinions based on evidence, proven evidence. The rest are just, personal viewpoints who doesn't care what you prove. I try always to avoid these discussions, but sometimes i feel is a bit unfair to bring up the "show me your X card, sir" to talk about something.
It's no surprise, it's classic middlebrow dismissal that plagues most submissions these days, particularly design based ones. Thankfully 'flat' or 'skeuomorphic' aren't mentioned in the submission to make the comments a real warzone.
I'm not saying that it's impossible to receive some good design advice on HN as there are certainly some experienced design-based folks dotted around, but on the whole it's a bit like asking for database optimization advice on Dribbble.
If you read the article, you'd see it wasn't a post seeking advice. It was a post where a mockup was made, some pie-in-the-sky new features were recommended, and it concluded with the poster saying someone should do this.
This wasn't an invitation to join their project or even any mention that they would spend any time on it themselves. Hell, they didn't even include the source graphics to start anyone off.
It's a responsive issue, not sure if it's intentional or not.
At browser widths of about 1400px and above, a buffer appears on the right hand side of the page. If your cursor is in that area the main content div won't scroll.
I'm thinking it may be an error since the main content div stops expanding at about 1400px but the black header/nav does. At widths lower than 1400px the header and content div expand/shrink together and the scrolling problem does not occur since the content div fills the full width of the page to right.
Pinterest does scroll downwards (infinite scroll as well). And he's right, it prompts the user to scroll down out of curiosity. IIRC Apple have employed this technique in the most recent update to the App Store, except you scroll horizontally.
In regards to the OP, I don't think the examples are related at all. The Pinterest example is more of a functional design choice (which I think works quite well), while the other two are purely aesthetic.
I agree with you on your second paragraph, the Delicious and ALA examples are simply a way to try and look a bit different. The A List Apart logo design choice caused quite a stir when they unveiled the redesign a few months back.
For 512MB/1GB Droplets in their EU location (Amsterdam) they have run out of IPs. I was planning on switching to DigitalOcean but that is holding me back at the moment.
