Let's turn that around, have you ever done anything at all that you thought was truly original ?
"If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."
- Carl
Poll: Have you ever "borrowed" other people's code/layout etc?
31–39 of 39 posts
Re: Poll: Have you ever "borrowed" other people's code/layout etc?
#32In my last year of school (1999), I created the web site for our journalism program's annual publication by mimicking the layout of Salon.com, which I liked because it had clean lines and its design was reasonably easy to recreate in Notepad.
From what I recall (and I hope a View Source of the HTML corroborates this), I didn't simply rip off the Salon.com HTML verbatim - instead, I first pasted in all the text I needed on each page, and then added the paragraphs, fonts, tables, and images by hand, because I didn't want to bring along any unnecessary scraps of code. I didn't know CSS at that time, so the HTML was really simplistic, to say the least.
Salon.com, circa 1999: http://web.archive.org/web/19990423201101/http://www.salon.c...
Langara Journalism Review, 1999: http://web.archive.org/web/19990528124312/http://www.langara...
Re: Poll: Have you ever "borrowed" other people's code/layout etc?
#33I was planning to copy a CSS layout for the first time, ever, and I was going for Shopify's. I am not fucking kidding. It was either Shopify or this http://www.plenus.hr/?locale=en_US
See how similar the two sites are? I have been scoping them out for more than a month now :-/
What does it say about me when the one site I wanted to plagiarize is already in the news for being a victim of plagiarism? I am pretty much a Kansas teenage waitress who lost her virginity to Tiger Woods 2 weeks ago.
This is not cheating. It takes vision to clone others' work, mainly a vision over their shoulder.
Re: Poll: Have you ever "borrowed" other people's code/layout etc?
#34I tend to borrow little things rather than the whole. Sort of 'thats a nice effect - how do they do it', 'ooh that file upload progress looks nice, I could use that'
Which is when you find that they are just using a standard library that you have not heard of or some technique that the whole world and his dog already knows :(
Re: Poll: Have you ever "borrowed" other people's code/layout etc?
#35Code - no
The odd Javascript one-liner - of course
HTML/CSS - yes, on occasion
Layout - of course. Mostly subconsciously.
Re: Poll: Have you ever "borrowed" other people's code/layout etc?
#36Do you really think the one you're borrowing from coded everything from scratch? So who do we credit in the end?
In any case, I mostly 'borrow' when I find an elegant solution to a problem I'm having, and always use it just as a starting point to get it right my way.
Re: Poll: Have you ever "borrowed" other people's code/layout etc?
#37I once designed a site where the client basically asked us to clone Etsy screen by screen, to the point where we were even using their copy and I had to majorly intervene (etsy has some major usability problems). Not like a little shady outfit either, celebrity ceo with plenty of VC too. Sickening. Needless to say they bombed HARD.
Ha, that's great. I'd love to know which site that was.
Really, Etsy doesn't have anything worth copying other than the basic idea and well, their success. Their copy and wording least of all... anytime there are words on the site, they are the wrong words.
Re: Poll: Have you ever "borrowed" other people's code/layout etc?
#38I once designed a site where the client basically asked us to clone Etsy screen by screen, to the point where we were even using their copy and I had to majorly intervene (etsy has some major usability problems). Not like a little shady outfit either, celebrity ceo with plenty of VC too. Sickening. Needless to say they bombed HARD.
Ha, that's great. I'd love to know which site that was. Really, Etsy doesn't have anything worth copying other than the basic idea and well, their success. Their copy and wording least of all... anytime there are words on the site, they are the wrong words.
Tell me about it...
Wish I could drop who it was but I'd rather not burn the bridge.
It was a ridiculous project, they had an India team that took the "just like Etsy" wording so literally that if I designed a screen that didn't look & function 100% identical to Etsy (ie: I improved it) they would have a hissy-fit. I have over a dozen emails that say "please revise to work like etsy.com. we can not move forward until design looks like etsy.com"
Re: Poll: Have you ever "borrowed" other people's code/layout etc?
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ha, that's great. I'd love to know which site that was. Really, Etsy doesn't have anything worth copying other than the basic idea and well, their success. Their copy and wording least of all... anytime there are words on the site, they are the wrong words.
Tell me about it... Wish I could drop who it was but I'd rather not burn the bridge. It was a ridiculous project, they had an India team that took the "just like Etsy" wording so literally that if I designed a screen that didn't look & function 100% identical to Etsy (ie: I improved it) they would have a hissy-fit. I have over a dozen emails that say "please revise to work like etsy.com. we can not move forward until…
Thanks, I'm pretty sure I know who you mean now, actually. I ran into a couple posts on a freelance site where and Indian company said 'We designed a clone of Etsy.com, check out _____.com'. Not exactly the way I'd go about creating a site, personally.