Here are the winners of Microsoft’s 10K Apart web page contest

Microsoft and An Event Apart partnered up to offer prizes for people who managed to build a website with only 10kb per page. Finally, we have our winners. Microsoft announced, in a blog post, that the winners and honorable mentions have been chosen and that over 270 of the entries have been accepted into the gallery.

It’s truly amazing to have full websites running with such a low memory print, and it would seem impossible for some, but not for these honorable mentions:

We had so many amazing entries this year that I was glad we’d doubled the honorable mention spots. Without further ado, the honorable mentions for this year’s contest were (in alphabetical order):

• 3.5KB Date Calculator by Sunmock Yang with Russell Baylis
• 10 Slides by Hans Sprecher
• Dungeon Wanderer by Paweł Brzeziński
• Bleeding Edge Web APIs by Lubos Belak
• Color Flashcards by Matt Stow
• Conway’s Game of Life by Toby Mackenzie
• Country Hopping by Joke De Winter
• Cryptojam by Triskaideka
• Olympics Results by Bruno Stein with Filipe Guth
• Responsive Book Layout by Carpe Numidium
• Semaphore by Morten Rand-Hendriksen
• Tor Explorer by Luke Childs

Such an amazing group of entries! I highly recommend you check each one out. Do yourself a favor and set aside a few hours to really tuck into them.

But there are a couple of websites that take the crown. The winners are divided into a few categories. The first one is “People’s choice”, and as the name suggests, it’s chosen by regular people from the community.

Firstname Basher

Once the entries were up, we gave you the chance to have your say and pick our People’s Choice award winner and you picked a cheeky little entry by Emilien Schneider, Pablo Barral, and Romain Petiot called Firstname Basher. This clever site helps you pick a name for your child, not by telling you its good qualities, but by telling you what’s wrong with it!

The next winner is the “Best Technical” one that suposedly means that it’s the most advanced one. 10K UK Weather may not have to work so hard as the result will always be “rain” but it’s still pretty impressive.

10K UK Weather Analyzer & Visualizer

This was a hard-fought contest between a handful of stellar entries. Ultimately, 10K UK Weather Analyzer & Visualizer by Yash Raj Singh took home the prize. Judge Rachel Andrew had this to say about it: “I love the use of open data in this one and the various little touches to help bring that data to life, obviously a lot of careful work has gone into this entry.” Judge Heydon Pickering was equally impressed: “Incorporating several impressive features including data visualizations and a little meta game, this was perhaps the most ambitious entry.”

The next one is “Best Design” and it does look really good. The website is a little “Pixel Art Character creator” and features a really sleek and elegant look to it.

10KB Pixel Art Character

This was another toughy. We got so many beautiful entries this year. Ultimately, Hannah Malcolm’s 10KB Pixel Art Character took home the prize. It’s a fun little app for building your own 8-bit avatar. Judge Lara Hogan had this to say: “Super cute and it seems tremendously extendable.” Well done!

And it’s time for the “Best Overall” 10KB website: the Dashingly Responsive.

Dashingly Responsive

I think the judging panel was geeking out big time over the winning entry. Judge Rachel Andrew nailed it when she said “Each time I looked I saw another small detail that impressed me, and the use of simple technology in a creative way seemed to sum up the competition for me.” Mat Marquis felt much the same: “There are a lot of sharp little details in the design of this page, implemented well—and coming in at only ~8k in total, including audio, is pretty impressive stuff.” High praise for Emil Björklund and his deceptively simple-looking Dashingly Responsive. Under the hood it was anything but simple.

This years 10k Apart contest has been really cool, with awesome entries and we want to congratulate the well deserved winners as well as the honorable mentions. Everyone did a great job and deserves an applause for the stunning work they have come up with.

“Let’s do it again soon!”