Reasons why news scrollers are bad
This is the most complete list of pros and cons for vertical scrollers. Hopefully we’ll have a chance to discuss that on our next meeting with a client.
Reasons why news scrollers are bad:
- They are tacky, and reek of end 90ies web design
- They are annoying attention seekers
- They lure designers into thinking they can define the size of the screen, they don’t, the visitors do, each of them for themselves.
- They lure editors into adding far too much content to the page - hidden is not gone, think of the screen reader and text browser visitors.
- Considering “banner blindness", they might be useless
- They might cause memory leaks and slow browsing in some browsers on low spec machines
- They might confuse visitors with attention deficits or other disorders.
Reasons why news scrollers are good:
- Clients love them
- That other site has them (you know, that really cool, bleeding edge one, the… what? Bankrupt? Well, it was a cool site though!)
– source
Ran to it this morning, when I was searching for as painless as possible (standards-wise, at least) solution for an information slaughter.
What I like about the DomNews is that there’s a stop function. Every accesibility savvy developer is a star.
Now, if I could just find a way to explain how those Add to Favorites and Make this page my Homepage links shouldn’t go into main navigation area.
~ Already 9 comments · Sorry, comments are off ~
9 Comments
Who cares ;) I do not like anything that starts running by loading the page… I love animation, but only if I want them to be animated… ;). Thats the same with pop up commercial banners… I don’t like them when they are popped up as soon as you enter the website, but, if i clicked on a link and it pops up it’s ok ;)…
“Clients love them” - that’s a fact ;) And i spent hours just to tell em why they shouldn’t use em…
Comment (#) by Whizzler — 17th January 2006.
Ah, the scrolling thingies again. Alen wrote about that not so long ago, too. Definately a pain in the behind.
Comment (#) by bojan — 17th January 2006.
Yes, I actually found it over there at Alen’s. And thank you for the tip!
Comment (#) by marko — 17th January 2006.
Don’t mention it, I actually think I first found out about onlinetools.org after you linked to an article from Heilmann’s blog a while back.
About client issues, you mention some of the problems we have with clients here in Croatia. More of those are opening links in new window and useless intro pages. Ah, well, it’s just the way things are, I suppose :)
Comment (#) by bojan — 17th January 2006.
It’s not just the Croatia thing. However, lately and more often then before, we’re in position to persuade a client about what’s good for the site.
Hopefully, user experience predictions for this year will come true.
Comment (#) by marko — 17th January 2006.
The pro’s are great. It’s exactly what of all of us love to hear, right.
Comment (#) by Jens Meiert — 17th January 2006.
Don’t you love it when the client is always right? We just finished an all-flash website for a client. Yes, all-flash. We started off doing it as XHTML/CSS with some image gallery-esque flash movies, but:
I’m not even going to make a case for pros and cons of an all-flash website. It’s a horrible idea. Fortunately we were able to separate all the content and images out into XML so we don’t have to rebuild it every time they have an update, but I don’t think the site is going on our company portfolio.
Comment (#) by Jason Beaird — 18th January 2006.
Jason, my deepest condolences on the all Flash site. If you need anything, I’m here for you, man.
The only thing worst than the all Flash web site is the Save as Web Page option in MS Word.
Comment (#) by marko — 19th January 2006.
Yes, that’s the worst thing ever :) And when clients come to you with that mess and say “this is half-done, I just need you to spice it up a bit".
It gets hard to work with some clients. Some people rarely think out of the picture. They want to have site that THEY will like and not an accessible, usable masterpiece :)
And it’s not just in Croatia…
Comment (#) by Alen — 20th January 2006.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time, but if you have anything to say, please send me a message.