Microsoft Dreamspark: I hope they didn’t use their own tools to make this page
Microsoft is running a promotion for a bunch of their developer tools right now. One thing I love about the company is that they really do have competitive pricing. In all of my Economics classes, I’ve learned that price discrimination (despite “discrimination” often connotating something negative) is actually a great thing for both the producer and the consumer. Essentially, it allows both parties to pay/sell at what they’re willing to pay/sell at — while keeping as many people in the market as possible.
Anyway, Microsoft’s latest is Dreamspark and under this brand, a bunch of pretty good MIcrosoft developer tools are being given away for free. Microsoft already gives great pricing to students through it’s “The Ultimate Steal” program as well as the MSDN Academic Alliance. In fact, under MSDNAA and an agreement with my school, all students enrolled in classes in the College of Engineering get all kinds of Microsoft software for free.
Dreamspark software includes an impressive, extensive list. Some of its highlights are Windows Server 2003, Expression Studio, Visual Studio 2008, and Virtual PC. Yeah, all for free. Pretty cool indeed. No sarcasm! I wish more companies (such as Adobe) would provide pricing models as competitive as Microsoft. I guess Microsoft’s view might be something like “rope them in while they’re young college students, then when they’re out in the real world they’ll have experience with our tools and create stuff with them.” It’s really quite a good model!
So where am I going to criticize Microsoft? Certainly not on the idea behind Dreamspark. I’ve already praised it many times. In fact, I’m downloading Expression Studio as I write this entry! My criticism lies in the quality and site design behind the Dreamspark page. I mean, really, how could this thing pass QA? It’s creative, sure. But it violates so many user interface web standards it’s not even funny! Margins are non-existant. The page is too wide and doesn’t scale down. The navigation and masthead are unexpectedly on the right. There’s little-to-no consistency in terms of text placement and font sizes.
No, that’s not a bad screenshot — that’s the way it looks in a browser!
I love the art. It’s the same overall design used on Microsoft’s Channel 8 website. But its implementation went sour. This site screams “great mock up artist” — then whoever sliced it up and created the code that spits out the HTML took a few wrong turns in the process. Oh well. It won’t stop me — and I’m sure many others — of taking advantage of Microsoft’s latest fantastic student software program.
Hit it up: Dreamspark!
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