The Thimble Awards - for Excellence on the Web

It is my pleasure to award, each month, one of each of the above Thimble Awards for excellence in web site design and content. To learn more about these awards or to suggest a site for consideration, follow the links below:

Why give out an award?
Why a thimble?
Award criteria and site submission - click here to suggest a site
View the list of present and past Thimble Award winners

So why do I give out awards for web site excellence?

In a word, "fun". I love to surf and to check out different sites, so why not make it really interesting and give out awards to deserving sites. I think it'll be a great way to establish a large network of links and to meet new and interesting people. That being said, the Thimble awards are not meant to be overly easy to win. Therefore, if your web site does earn a Thimble Award, you can be certain that you have a web site to be proud of. For more information on earning a Thimble Award, see the award criteria.

Why did I choose a thimble as my award?

A thimble was chosen as the symbol of my award because I wanted something that tied in with the overall theme of my site. Given the tartan swatch on the home page and the spools of thread that are prevalent throughout, I figured a thimble would do quite nicely. Originally, I thought of using a shuttle, since it more closely relates to the art of weaving tartans than does a thimble. I could not, however, find a suitable way to differentiate between the three levels of the award with a wooden shuttle. Since the gold, silver, and bronze award levels are by far the most recognizable, I figured a metallic object was the ticket. Therefore the thimble was adopted.

"The Lowlandz's Clan Anderson Thimble Awards for Excellence on the Web" are based on the following criteria:

Please be sure that you read and understand ALL of the criteria before submitting your web site for review and consideration.

First and foremost, all sites considered for a Thimble Award MUST be suitable for family viewing. To this end, I strongly encourage you to have your web site rated by either RSACi or SafeSurf. The META tag for at least one of these services should be on your main/index page, and the tag should be in the proper format and functioning properly. This is not a necessity to win a Thimble Award - but if present, could mean the difference between a gold thimble or a silver thimble for a given month. I personally encourage the use of a PICS rating because the PICS standard is already build into both Netscape and IE browsers. A site with a PICS rating allows families, schools and places of business to easily control what they see on the web without having to purchase additional third party software. Please note that both SafeSurf and RSACi services are absolutely free, and that both services offer a listing of rated sites as a service to the internet community. If your site is already family-friendly, why not take the next step and get it rated?

Adult sites, pornography sites, hate mongering sites, etc. will NOT qualify for consideration for a Thimble Award. Period.

Now, here is the rest of the criteria:

The Thimble Awards are primarily for personal and nonprofit organization pages. Commercial sites are certainly eligible, but must offer SOME content that is not product, service or company related. For example, the inclusion of related information or trivia would be considered "offering something for nothing" and would therefore make your commercial site eligible for consideration.

Your site must be imaginative and well designed. It should stand out from the crowd and offer the visitor a stimulating selection of well thought out and skillfully written (or graphically designed) content. A web site that is little more than a collection of links would obviously not earn a Thimble Award.

Intuitive and easy navigation is a definite factor in the earning of this award. A winning site would have a consistent and esthetically pleasing navigation system. In a well designed navigation scheme, a visitor is able to get to any page, from any page, in only a couple of mouse clicks.

Since I am a graphic designer by trade, I do place a considerable emphasis on the look of a web site. The layout of the pages and the colours used are very important in earning a Thimble Award. I am looking for a well planned and consistent layout with complimentary colours. Certain colour combinations just do not work and should be avoided in web site design, just as they are avoided in wardrobe selection!

There are some obvious design shortcomings that are especially detrimental to a site's consideration for an award. Sites the have a "center" tag at the start of the HTML and a "/center" tag at the end of the code will not fair well in the judging. Backgrounds that offer too low a contrast for the text colour will penalize a site. Backgrounds that just hurt the eyes will disqualify a site. SHOUTING TEXT IS BAD. cAPS lOCKED tEXT IS aLSO nOT sO gOOD. Graphics that have absolutely nothing to do with a site's theme will not be looked upon favourably. Obviously stolen graphics will disqualify a site. Transparent GIFs or PNGs with overly "jaggy" edges are, in my opinion, worse than having no graphics at all. More than a couple animated GIFs per page is too many. Of course, there are exceptions to this guideline, based on the design of a page.

Loading time is NOT a factor (within reason) in earning a Thimble Award. If it was an important factor, my site would not be in the running for my own award! Besides, user connections are getting faster and faster all the time. However, every possible measure must have been taken to reduce the load time. If the content is judged to be worth waiting for, no penalty will be assessed. Alternately, if I have to wait 50 seconds for a full screen, 300 dpi, zero compression JPEG of your cat to load, that would be bad.

Javascripts are fine if they do not crash my system. Having a neat little applet that does nothing to add to the site's design or content is just a waste of bandwidth. Use these applets with discretion. Do NOT use the status bar at the bottom of the browser window for displaying scrolling text - that's not what it is for!

Frames, if used properly and in a way that compliments the overall site design, are fine. I do not look for a "frameless" version of a web site. My site doesn't have one!

Common pluggins are also fine. Even some of the uncommon ones are okay, just do not automatically direct me to a download site for one of these pluggins. Like most people, I like to be in control of where I go.

If your site plays music, it must compliment the theme or content of your site. There MUST also be a way to turn it off. To be perfectly honest, I am not the biggest fan of midi music, but I understand its place in some web sites.

I am the world's worst speller, but I do use a spell checker on my web site. In judging a site for this award, I will be looking at spelling. The occasional typo that results in a properly spelled, but contextually incorrect word, will not disqualify a web site from consideration. Obvious spelling errors, on the other hand, will have a negative effect in the judging of a web site.

Since I speak and read only English, I do not feel that I can properly (or fairly) judge web sites of other languages. However, I welcome bilingual web sites where the foreign language content is mirrored exactly in the English language sections. I will assume that the other content is as good or as bad as the English content.

That's about it. There is no formal scoring system in place, and therefore the judging is still somewhat subjective. Admittedly, the awarding of the gold, silver or bronze awards is sometimes based on personal preference. Also, from month to month the quality of submitted sites may vary to the point that a bronze winner in one month may appear to be a more deserving site than a gold winner of another month. That's just the way it is.

This is not meant to be an impossible award to earn. Web sites that are safe for all ages and that are thoughtfully designed and maintained stand a good chance of winning an award.

And since I asked you to read ALL of the criteria...

Please make the following change to the subject line of the Award Submission email: When you submit a web site for consideration, the hypertext link will open an email message in your email application. The default subject line, "Thimble Award", must be changed to "Award Consideration". If this subject line is not changed, your application will be rejected immediately and without notification. This subject line is my way of checking that applicants have actually read the criteria for the Thimble Award. Congratulations for following the directions!

All sites properly submitted will be visited. Each site will be viewed using Internet Explorer 5 and/or Netscape 4.7. My 15" monitor will be set at 800x600 resolution at 16 bit colour (thousands of colours). This is a fairly standard configuration that according to published data, accurately represents what the majority of web surfers use. If your site doesn't support this configuration, you've got bigger problems than just being disqualified from Thimble Awards consideration.

So...if you think you've got what it takes, please submit your web site URL and a short description by clicking on this . I would love to visit your site. I would also be interested to learn how you discovered the Lowland's Clan Anderson Site Thimble Award for Excellence on the Web.

Some criteria appearing above is based closely on the award criteria appearing on the Clan MacNeil in Canada web site. Their award earning guidelines are by far the best and most complete that I have found on the web!

If you have any comments about The Thimble Awards, please .