Most sites that display links lists, especially the social bookmarks sites tend to display information about each link in a repeater style (vs in a table or simple list). Since the PractiProj static Links pages were resigned into a Links base, I was looking into the various link repeaters styles to get ideas and design inspiration.

Below are screen captures of 18 hand picked link repeaters that stand out in design or simplicity.

Few Observations from those samples:

• White is a dominate color for background (17/18)
• ~50% use dividing line between links
• Blue is a dominant color for headings ~50%
• ~40% show small favcon of the user who submitted the link
• Only 1 used hover to highlight the current viewed link.
• ~25 display a small picture of the destination site. It is colorful and add visual effect to the site. However how useful it is? Small thumbnails hardly mean anything. On the other hand big thumbnails take too much space.

• Technorati
  
• Digg
  
• Dzone
  
• Kirtsy
  
• Magnolia
  
• Misterwong
  
• mixx
  
• Pixel2life
  
• Plime
  
• Pslover
  
• Diigo
  
• Scribd
  
• Seorank
  
• Shoutwire
  
• Slashdot
  
• Sphinn
  
• Autospies
  
• Citeulike
  

Mini-icons are essential when developing applications. Good icon sets should be visually nice but not too dominant, so they don’t steal the attention from the application. Good sets should be big enough to cover common application actions such as: add record, delete record, edit, save, Next, prev, mark as favorite, vote up, vote down, bullets, arrows…

When you need to quickly develop a prototype and get feedback, you probably don’t want to spend too much time looking for the perfect icon set. Save in advance the icon sets that you like, they will be very handy at time of need. Nice simple icons can make big difference in your prototype and add the wow factor. Later on you can decide to stick with them or have custom icons made by graphic designer for your application.

Many of the icon sets are free to use, check the exact license agreement in each site.

• Mini Pixel Icons
  Nice collection of 320 mini icons (14 x 14px)
  
• FamFamFam Silk icons
  Over 700 16-by-16 pixel icons
  
• PI Diagona Packc
  Another nice icon set
  
• Tango Icon Library
  Nice collection with several icon sizes
  
• Phoenity Aura
  Simple and sleek icons
  
• ASP.NET
  Free to use on ASP.NET web applications
  

And… if you need more fancy or unique icons check the following Icon Sites:

More icon resources:

• 20+ Free And Fresh Icon Sets
• Icons For Your Desktop and Icons For Your Web Designs
• 35 (Really) Incredible Free Icon Sets
• Free Developer Icon Sets
• 33+ Icon Resources For Commercial & Personal Use
• 101 Free Icon Sets that Kick Ass

Several web applications do so well, although on the design side they are mediocre at best. On the other hand, Many well designed and inspiring web applications are not doing so well…

When starting up a new web application, if you have a good idea with identified market need, focus on: Functionality – giving an added value, with capabilities other web apps are lacking and Simplicity for ease of use.
Users will like it and adopt the application even if design in very basic

In several projects I was involved in the past, customers and sponsors didn’t put emphasis on design and didn’t dedicate budget for graphic designer. It was frustrating. For me design is a hobby and it was hard to understand the lack of focus on design

But when seeing sites like craigslist, del.icio.us doing so well with basic design, it give some food for thought

So… how much energy should be spent on perfecting a web application design?