CKEditor 4 Skin Contest Winner!

We are happy to officially announce the winner of our CKEditor 4 Skin Contest:

Winner:

Moono: Rafal Bromirski

Congratulations to Rafal Bromirski! His design has been selected as the default CKEditor 4 skin and Rafal wins $1000 in prize money!

Runners-up:

Ozone: Simon Sturmer

Congratulations also go to runner-up, Simon Sturmer, for his great looking skin, Ozone, and Aleksander Nowodziński for a solid entry with Silver. We also want to thank all entrants for making so many cool skins! The community will definitely benefit from your work, so don’t hesitate to share your skins.

CKEditor’s New Look

We wanted a professional but neutral toolbar to accommodate the widest range of websites. Of all the entries Moono, Ozone and Silver best offered what we were looking for: a professional, simple, clean skin that didn’t detract from the editing experience. We didn’t set out looking for a monochrome look but the best entries were monochromatic. Of the three, Moono stood out the most.

So here is it, the new CKEditor 4 skin, Moono:

In case you haven’t noticed, the final Moono is a bit different from the initial entry. Rafal complied with our wishes by giving us a lighter variation of his original dark skin, which is as good as the original.

Why Moono?

Making the final decision was tough but Moono barely beat Ozone for the ultimate prize (things will never be the same between the judges). As you can see above, what gave Moono the edge was the professional, clean, spacious look. When testing the entries on live pages it became clear that inline editing needed a slim toolbar to be out of the way. Skins with encumbered toolbars pulled the inline editing experience down. Moono’s smaller icons make the editing process more discreet.

Another plus was the original dark skin, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Even though the initial skin was good enough to represent our new default look, the inclusion a lighter design now gives the community two official versions of Moono made Rafal Bromirski! Of course, only one was chosen as the “default” skin and it was the light one.

Finally, of all the entries Moono got the biggest support from the community. You all made our tough decision that much easier in the end, so thank you all for making your voices heard!

What’s Next?

In the next few weeks we will be making a few more modifications to the skin before implementing it to the final release of CKEditor 4. Don’t expect an overhaul; it’s going to be the same skin but with a few changes.

Again, we want to thank everybody for participating. Making the final decision was not easy, not with so many good entries, so your feedback helped. You all did a great job and we are thankful to have such an active community!

We hope you like the new skin!