10K Apart: The Responsive Edition (via MIX Online)

Last year, in partnership with An Event
Apart, we debuted the 10K
Apart Contest. The challenge was simple: build the best application you can
with no more than 10K of code.

If our analytics are telling the truth, the 10K was a smash hit. The contest
reaped 367 entries in less than a month. And in less than a year, the 10K domain
has been tweeted over 11K (sorry, I had to) times.

With that kind of encouragement, how do you expect us to behave? So, without
further ado, say hello to 10K Apart: The
Responsive Edition.

New Game, New Rules

Holy Responsiveness, Batman!

As the title indicates, this year’s 10K contest requires that your
applications be “reasonably responsive” (yes, it’s vague by design). The Responsive
Design movement Ethan
pioneered is still learning how to walk in the real world. We felt it best to
leave some wiggle room to encourage new discoveries.

This is also why we’re going to allow the use of the bleeding edge CSS
Grid Layout Module. Since IE10 is the only browser that’s implemented Grids,
we worked with Aaron Gustafson to create a JavaScript implementation in the form
of an eCSStender extension.
It’s incredible wizardry, and we recommend you check it out even if you’re not
participating in the contest. If you do, using it won’t count towards your
10K.

Speaking of size, we’ve changed the size limit from 10K unzipped to 10K
zipped, a necessary evolution to accommodate applications that will need more
code and larger images due to responsive needs.

Check out the FAQ section to
get the full view of changes.

New Site

How much fun would this be if we didn’t build a brand new site for the
contest?

Some of you may remember the high bar Things That Are Brown helped us set
with the first contest site. We figured if anyone could hit that bar again, it
would be the three’s company of Paravel.
With the help of Ian and Joshua‘s
development jujitsu, we were able to design and build this site in a few weeks.
We hope you like it.

We also documented some of the interesting aspects of our design process. In
a somewhat sensible order: my Back
to the Future of Wireframes, Reagan’s Designing
the 2011 10K Apart Contest, Trent’s 10K
Apart: The Responsive Edition, & Dave’s Tiny
Apps on Tiny Devices.

What Else

We left all the good parts untouched.

Prizes include infinite glory, hordes of cash, a free pass to an AEA event of
your choice in the next year, and copies of Ethan’s Responsive
Web Design and Aaron’s Adaptive Web
Design. Prize categories remain the same: a grand prize winner, three
runners up, and nine notable mentions. A lot of love to go around.

The judges panel brings a lifetime of experience and lots of street cred:
Jeffrey Zeldman, Eric Meyer, Ethan Marcotte, Aaron Gustafson, Karen McGrane, and
a very humbled, yours truly.

But that’s enough words for now. Everything you need to know is at http://10k.aneventapart.com.

Aaaaand… GO!

What are you waiting for? The only thing between you and a horde of cash and
glory is Dave’s Colorrrs application in
the gallery.

Is your idea 10K apart from the rest?