Contest Rules

The objective of the "eXtreme Web Designer Award" (the "Contest") is to encourage Hong Kong students to create high quality websites by promoting the use of Web standards and good usability and accessibility best practices as well as aesthetically pleasing visual designs. This year the "eXtreme Web Designer Award" is co-sponsored and organized by the Hong Kong Computer Society.

The competition is open to all full-time/part-time students in any tertiary institute in Hong Kong.

Organizing Committee

The Contest Organizing Committee consists of members from the following organizations:

• The Hong Kong Computer Society
• Dr. Andy Chun, The City University of Hong Kong, Department of Computer Science
• Dr. Steven Choy, The Open University of Hong Kong, School of Science and Technology
• Dr. Ho Wai Shing, The University of Hong Kong, Department of Computer Science
• Prof. Keith Chan, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Department of Computing
• Dr. Raymond Wong , The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Contest Awards

The total number of awards to be presented will be at the total discretion of the Organizing Committee. The current target is a maximum of 25 students to be awarded. Award winners will get an award certificate (issued by the Hong Kong Computer Society) and a nominal prize.

Objective

The objective of this contest is to encourage students to use a balance of well-proven Web engineering principles coupled with good Web design guidelines to produce high quality Websites that follows Web standards and good usability/accessibility best practices.

Eligibility

• Any full-time/part-time students registered to any tertiary institute in Hong Kong.
• All programmes/majors/departments are welcomed.

Individual/Teamwork

Each entry can be from one student or from a team of students. There is a maximum of 2 eligible students per team. Each student can at most join one team. Each team can at most submit one entry. Any violation of this shall lead to disqualification.
Participants’ full names, schools, and email addresses must be clearly listed in website entry.

Contest Start/End Times

Contest starts immediately and shall end on 4 Dec 2009 at noon time.

Contest Rules

1. Good Content and Design
   To participate in this contest, all you need to do is create at least one web page, with content and design related to this year's Design/Content Theme. Higher points for original and creative content as well as original and creative designs/visuals.
   Design/Content Theme: "cha siu bao" 叉燒包
   
   
2. Must Follow Web Standards:
   All websites must be W3C validated for XHTML 1.1 and CSS 2.1 to qualify for this contest. Any entries with XHTML/CSS errors will be disqualified.
   
   
3. Good Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
   At the specified contest end time, the combined top 30 top-level search results from Google, Yahoo! and Bing will be considered as the finalist of this Contest. The search will be performed using the specified set of Contest Search Keywords. The contest organizers reserve the rights to perform this search any time within 24 hours after contest end time.
   Contest Search Keywords: HKCS eXtreme contest "cha siu bao" 叉燒包
   
   
4. Good Usability/Accessibility
   From the list of finalists, usability and accessibility will be assessed manually and/or with tools. These scores will be combined with other usability/accessibility guidelines to determine the quality of the overall design. The top resulting scores will be used to determine the winning entries.
   
   In order to test your accessibility skills, you page must contain the following items:
   
   • At least one table of data, any data related to this year’s topic
   • At least one HTML form, such as registration form. The form itself need not perform any real function, i.e. no need to perform any action on submit.
   • One or more images
   
   
5. Web 2.0 Visual Aesthetics
   We know "Web 2.0" is not about aesthetics, but "Web 2.0" applications have created a unique visual presentation style. Higher points for web pages with "Web 2.0" looks. However, it is not necessary to actually use any Web 2.0 tools or libraries. You may if you wish to. There is no requirement that your Web page is a Web 2.0 application. In this contest, we are only looking for Web 2.0 visual aesthetics and not Web 2.0 technical features.
   

Disqualification

• Entry will be disqualified if it used any form of spamming to improve its page ranking.
• Entry will be disqualified if it violates any copyright or intellectual property laws.
• Entry will be disqualified if it does not list participants’ full names and contact email within the HTML code.
• Entry will be disqualified if participants submit more than one entry.

Intellectual Property

If you include any 3rd party content (including text/images) in your Web site, you must not violate any copyright or intellectual property laws. Make sure appropriate acknowledgements, consents, approvals and/or licenses are obtained if required before you make your website publicly accessible. DO NOT use the 3rd party content in your site if you are uncertain of your rights to any copyrights, patents, trademarks or other intellectual property.

Judging Panel

The contest judging panel will consist of members from the Organizing Committee. The decision of the judging panel is final. The judging panel may at their own discretion award less than or more than 25 award winners.

How To Participate

Simply create your website and make sure it is accessible from search engines. To join the contest, there is no need to register or submit your website; we will find them using search engines. However, all contest participants must add the following statement in their website:

Agreement

This website was created as an entry to Hong Kong Computer Society’s "2009 eXtreme Web Designer Award" contest. The authors of this website agree to abide by all the rules and regulations of this contest as specified in: http://www.cs.cityu.edu.hk/~hwchun/extreme/

Any webpage without this statement will not be considered as participating in this Contest.

Use of Entries

By participating in this contest, the participant agrees that the Organizing Committee may use screen images and/or source code of the participant's entry website as well as use and publish the participant's name, photo and entry in any type of media without compensation. Participants may be required to participate in the Organization Committee’s publicity activities related to the Contest. Entrants further agree that their submitted statements are expressions of their personal belief and opinion.