In the latest installment of "[No man can...|http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061512/]" challenges, we bring you the Active.com Product Developer Pepsi Challenge.  Can any of these fine men drink 2-liters of Pepsi in less than 4 minutes?  Let's, as they say, go to the video tape...

New advertiser, and a "fun" new way to feature them on the site. We built a Gaiam "skin" for our Mind and Body channel.

I think it's a nice way to strongly brand the page without being obtrusive and getting in the way of the content that the user has come to the site to find. It's also not the most difficult implementation ever - which is nice. The trickiest part was getting the logo on the background image to be clickable. It took an anchor tag being blocked and relatively positioned to make that happen. Of course the hardest part of that was - and isn't everything - dealing with cross-browser DOM/box model inconsistencies.

As you may have seen on the way here, we've redesigned... "refreshed" in the parlance... our home page.  If not, do check it out.  We'll wait.

So?  What do you think?  For us it is hopefully a big improvement in that it will get you the user to where you want to be on Active.com quicker.  Now there's a lot to that statement, so let's unpack it a little. 

First of all, the page should load faster.  We've done a lot of fun things to the code and creation of the page.  We've done everything we can to streamlined our HTML, stylesheets, and javascript code.  One fun new approach for us was using CSS Sprites to reduce the number of images we load on the page.  In all, we've cut about 30% off our file size and our load time; and we're not going to stop there.

As for the layout of the page - we've replaced the duplicate left navigation menu with an expanded global navigation across the top of the page.  We also removed the tabbed content from the page because it hid more than it helped to display.

The page now has a nice focus on what our tag line says - and please forgive me if this crosses (or has crossed) the line into cliche - "your guide to an active planet".  We've got lots of content, clearly displayed, to help you become a better, stronger, healthier runner, softball player, yogi, whatever.  We've got videos, message boards, and blogs where you can share stories or ask and answer questions.  And we're giving the core of our site (It's all about the Core) - our directory of events, races, classes, campgrounds, tournaments, etc - the prominence it deserves. 

Again, all this should help you find what you want on Active.com quicker and easier.  The organization of the page, the colors, the speed in which the page gets to you... it's all done for this same reason.

Of course, we could always use your help to make it better.  We can look at all the stats, and we all have our own opinions too.  But how are you finding the site? 

Thanks, and now get out there and participate!

Jeremy Spitzberg

Codehisattva