Prior to seeing The flop, you make judgements as to how strong your hand could be based on two cards dealt to you, face-down. You peek at the cards, calculate the odds, then call, raise, or fold, knowing the flop is coming. Remember, the flop can change everything in an instant. Just don’t get too cocky, because a turn and a river are potentially just around the bend.
Update: I converted the home page back to it’s original state. Each of the four designs were implemented as flat static pages (cycled through randomly via PHP) so each of them are actually linkable directly, in case you missed out on any of Stopdesign’s alternate home page versions today:
Oh wow! Your homepage(s) looks awesome. Kinda familiar though ;)
Nicely done. What will this one be called under the preferences? “Bleached Dominey”
Be sure to hit reload.
Hah, you did it again! :D
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.
:)
Just noticed there is more than one — very funny stuff, Doug. ;)
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…
“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…
It’s jaw-dropping! Very clever
Excellent Doug!
I have seen 4. Any others?
Someone must have been busy all week. Is each refresh random or deliberate?
I don’t understand what’s happening? What is the flop?
Only those with x-ray vision are privy to the Flop.
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.
That’s frickin’ cool! Sitting here, hitting reload, and chuckling to myself. Sweet.
So, what’s the joke?
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!
Very cool. :) I had a very good laugh. This is like the 20th April Fool’s joke I had today.
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!
stopdesigning! hahahahahaha
Excellent
*tapping fingers together in a siniser way*
Excellent
Oh yeah… you’re going to hit your bandwidth quota just in refreshes today ;)
excellent job! it took me a while to realize it changes :)
We are amazed once again.
Now I see what’s going on…. Still don’t see the reason behind it.
Excellent! When will you stop amazed us? Last year was great but this year is brilliant!
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.
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.
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.
Really, really good job Doug. That’s amazing how you can adapt another site’s style to yours.
Fantastic!
By far the most elaborate April Fool’s prank I’ve seen today. Bravo!
Very well done. Must have taken a while to do all the different elements!
What a treat. I was looking forward to seeing if Stopdesign would outdo itself this year.
Very creative guys ;)
They’re like collectibles. I’ve found:
Jason Kottke
Dan Cederholm
Jason Santa-Maria
Todd Dominey
Incredibly well-done.
I can’t believe it. Admirable genius Doug.
Hilarious! Well done Doug!
Unreal!….
Totally dominating design…ehhehe LOL
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..)!
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.
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.
Very funny. I enjoyed this a lot, took me a while to catch on that it was April 1st though. Oh well.
I am already looking forward to 2006.
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?
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.
Holy cow, I was expecting something along the line, yes, but not *this*.
Reload, reload!
Laugh Out Loud! HAHA great april fools!
This is absolutely great! =)
You’re the best,
now get back to work, you spend WAY too much time on this nonsense…
=p
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.
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…
Leo Kottke?
Powerful demo and argument. Best I’ve seen; presentation-wise!
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.
hahahahaha !
The kottke navigation is hilarious.
Is it Stopdesign.com? The effect was great, it takes me a while looking for the site. Wonderful!
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?
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
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?
JN,
The links for the designs are at the end of Doug’s post.
I like the kottke a lot.
Stefan
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.
Neat! R
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
Déjà vu!.
Though, granted, your implementation is way coolr(tm) :)
Once more, I got “stopdesigned” :)
I know this is very of topic, but I wanted to know what web dev tool Douglas uses to develop his website?
Incredible! Your homepage is looking great by the way Douglas.
That’s awesome dude! I like the “Jason Santa Maria” version best, but Stopdesign @ Simplebits style isn’t so bad either ;-) Great!