Tumblr redesigned their website sometime in the last few months or so. The new design is very simple, with a few nice touches.
The signup process is unbelievably easy. You can’t miss it, for one thing, it’s right in the middle of the page. The fields are few, and very clear. I’ve always been a fan of oversized form elements, which do seem to work well for signup forms.
My favorite part of the design is the URL field in the signup form. Conventionally, the “.tumblr.com” part would be shown to the right of the input field, which would naturally be smaller in width. (Which would mean the form fields wouldn’t all be the same width.) Tumblr seems to be using some sort of jQuery trickery to add the domain to the inner part of the form field, while keeping it from getting in the way on the user’s interaction with the field.
My only major complaint about the homepage is that existing users have to click a link and go to a second page in order to log in to the site.
