Outstanding Website Design - This award recognizes outstanding website design of an online comic, where the design and interface of the entire site enhance the experience of reading the comic.

This year's nominees are:

• Alpha Shade by Christopher & Joseph Brudlos
• The Curious Adventures of Aldus Maycombe by Janine Harper
• PVP by Scott Kurtz
• Starslip Crisis by Kristofer Straub
  

I don't see anything wrong with the above sites - although I think PvP and Starslip are very good examples of a clean, more-then-the-comic approach to webcomic website design. Aldus Maycombe is in that vein, although it also seems to be have made a few nods to its comic's theme in the website's visuals.

Alpha Shade is really the apple to the other oranges though. It's home page is a busy criss-cross of stuff but the pages for the actual reading-the-comic is an attempt to create a comic-book-like experience on the screen.

This category is much more important then it gets credit for but it also suffers from not having nominations that reflect really innovative stuff. Not that I'm positive there actually was innovative stuff done last year but for the most part the above isn't it. Which sounds harsher then I mean to - the above are all well-executed versions of a very safe type of website that many webcomics have settled into (with the possible exception of Alpha Shade although again - the two page comic book visual approach isn't "new"); it's just that I would like to see and recognize really amazing websites that immerse you completely in the comic.