(Hat tip: Adam Keiper)
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Sunday, July 12, 2009
"How to Lose Traffic and Alienate People"
A nice piece outlining one writer's most-hated web UI practices, from intrusive advertising to dumb searches.
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Conlon is spot on with his remark that tooltip ads "prey on the way we've been conditioned to use the Web, i.e., the notion that links take you to relevant content." I didn't even know these existed until my Windows install deteriorated enough to disable Firefox and my cherished Ad-Block Plus. Until I can reinstall Windows, I'm using Chrome. As the child of über-advertiser Google, Chrome does not and never will have ad-blocking, so for the first time in years, I've been faced with the full ugliness of website advertising.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's very ugly. Without Ad-Block, web pages are minefields of tooltip ads, mousever animated ads, and flyout menus. In Chrome, I've developed the habit of keeping my mouse pointer at the far right of the screen, in the safety of the vertical scrollbar channel. When I need to mouseover or click within a page, I weave the pointer to it as if I were dodging mines.
It took me awhile to get the difference between single- and double-underlined links. Now I know.
Several of the comments after the article bashed "banner ads that grow," pushing text down the page, then retracting and moving the text back up. I haven't seen those, but I do see a lot of banner and side ads that spray graphics downward or sideways, covering the text I'm trying to read. Some of them act only on mouseover but some act independently, on some programmed schedule.
Chrome has some slick features. My favorites are its URL auto-completion, which is better than in any other browser I've seen, and its ability to grab a tab and drop it over the display area, opening that page in a new window. (That last feature is a bit hair-trigger and would be better if its reaction time was slowed.) But Chrome's lack of ad-blocking means that once I can go back to Firefox, I'll never use Chrome again except for testing.
so, speaking of annoying web sites... there was a quote from the site you linked to that I wanted to share with you (a subtle slight at Nebraska's noteworthiness), but there's some javascript that prevents cutting/copying/pasting in blogspot's comment box (the arrow keys and possible others are also disabled). while javascript must be enabled before the submit button will work.
ReplyDeleteany thoughts on that?
Re: lostandfoundpets:
ReplyDeleteI've always found ad-blocking features to be overzealous, and I've largely learned to live without and ignore ads. Chrome blocks pop-ups, which are the only type I consider essential. I believe Chrome has plug-ins, though -- you might try looking around for those.
Re: Gabriel:
ReplyDeleteThat's odd, I'm not having that same problem. What browser are you using? And are you indicating that Javascript is disabled?
I'm not sure what Javascript is being used for in the comment form, so it's hard to say right away whether it's necessary. I'm mostly fine with Javascript as long as it doesn't interfere with regular functionality (as it so often does when used to implement links). I know some people disable Javascript on their browsers, but that disables so many legitimate features that it seems like a bad idea to me.
I'm using firefox. And I'm not a fan of disabling javascript. I only did it to see if I might be able to get around what was annoying me. Actually, I probably only did it to make conversation with you. Normally I'd just move on and forget about it.
ReplyDelete... maybe there's some slight difference where you're not catching that little annoyance in chrome?
Huh, you're right. It won't let me copy-paste or even use the arrow buttons to move the cursor in Firefox, but it works fine in IE and Chrome. Very annoying.
ReplyDelete