Animation
Placing any animation on a Web page can distract attention from the rest of the material on the page. Does the animation deserve that much attention?
The Web Accessibility Initiative at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) suggests that there should always be a means whereby the visitor can stop the animation themselves.
Perhaps, the most important question of putting anything on a document, including multimedia, is the need, relevance and the context. Why is it needed? Why is it needed here? Will the users have appropriate tools to view it (for example, GIF89a is but Flash is not natively supported in current browsers)? If not, are there any instructions to obtain them?
Again using the software analogy, how many times do we see software with buttons all over like a Boeing 747 cockpit, which are there just for the aesthetics?
There are various contexts where use of an animation can be useful:
Navigation - use of Flash (text-based animation) for example at Macromedia's Web site.
Promotion - including an animation that consists of a few frames from a video.
Education -Physics. Motion of a pendulum.
Mathematics. Illustration of evolution of an ordinary differential equation under change of initial conditions/parameters. In both the above cases, "time" is an implicit factor. Hence, the justification.
Advertising - such as banner advertising. There are many good examples around.
Animation can be split into several distinct areas:
Animated GIF's
Consider why your site needs to display animated GIF's. The larger the image and the more frames the animation has, then the longer the download will take. Will your visitors stay on the page long enough to see the whole animation?
Placing too many animated GIF's (to some people one animated image is considered as one animation too many) should be avoided. It is likely that the animations will be out of sync with one another, and give the impression of animation overload.
Avoid using an animated GIF from a graphics library. There are several tools available that you can use to create your own. Creating your own animated GIF that blends with the rest of your sites look and feel will be more acceptable to your visitors than one that clashes.
Animated Dynamic HTML
There are two major types of uses of animation with Dynamic HTML (DHTML): moving images and text around the screen for the sake of it; and presenting an interesting interface to condense or hide information until it is required.
Obviously the former is to be condemned and the latter condoned.
An good example of the practical use of DHTML is the hidden article synopsis on the main index pages here at irt.org. When people are looking for an article they are presented with list of headings and dates - when they hover their mouse pointer over a heading then a brief synopsis of the article is revealed - giving the visitor the opportunity to decide whether the article is of interest to them before deciding to view it. Displaying all the text for each article would generate information overload and would make it much harder for people to quickly identify the items of interest.
An bad example of DHTML use, would be if your home page takes a while to load all the images and text, and it is invisible whilst it is all loading. Your potential visitors might feel that there is something wrong with your site and then go elsewhere.
If your visitor does hang around long enough for all to be revealed, will they then return later to your page, to again be presented with your masterpiece? Possibly not. They may instead bookmark a page within your site that they feel more appropriate for their later return, almost certainly avoiding your front door.
If your site doesn't have an appropriate page, perhaps the whole site is animated, and no matter where the visitor enters it, it still takes a while to get upto speed, then your visitor might not bookmark your site, and might never return. Most people regard an individual who bookmarks their site as a success. Bored people often revisit their bookmarks!
Revisits all depend on how useful your visitor finds the site, and how often they return. If the pages are still held in the browsers cache, then the download delay will not be as long. If your pages and images have been cleared from the cache over time, or because of the lack of space, then the download delay will be as long as the initial visit. This may give the impression to visitors that your site, or the host that is situated on, is "slow".
Scrolling Status Text
You've seen them: "Hi, Welcome to my cool site..." scrolling across the bottom of the browser window. This is normally people's first attempt at JavaScript, usually copied from someone else's site, because they were "impressed", and want to impress others. All it does is show that you can "cut 'n paste" someone else's code - resist the temptation at all costs.
The status bar is for status messages, for example: the location of the link beneath the mouse pointer, the progress of a page download. People do read these messages. It's unprofessional to hijack this area of the browser for a gimmicky scrolling message.
If the message is that important, place it in bold at the top of the page, or consider using a Java ticker tape, or a scrolling text box.
Clocks and TimersUnless your site is time related, or needs to highlight the time of a deadline, then consider whether there is a need to tell your visitors their own local time.
Most people who can afford a computer can also afford a wristwatch. Most operating systems provide their own internal clock, and a GUI clock application, some even provide a clock on a toolbar.
Telling people how long they've been on your site is only likely to remind them that they've spent too long on your site, and that they should be doing something else.
http://tech.irt.org
Placing any animation on a Web page can distract attention from the rest of the material on the page. Does the animation deserve that much attention?
The Web Accessibility Initiative at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) suggests that there should always be a means whereby the visitor can stop the animation themselves.
Perhaps, the most important question of putting anything on a document, including multimedia, is the need, relevance and the context. Why is it needed? Why is it needed here? Will the users have appropriate tools to view it (for example, GIF89a is but Flash is not natively supported in current browsers)? If not, are there any instructions to obtain them?
Again using the software analogy, how many times do we see software with buttons all over like a Boeing 747 cockpit, which are there just for the aesthetics?
There are various contexts where use of an animation can be useful:
Navigation - use of Flash (text-based animation) for example at Macromedia's Web site.
Promotion - including an animation that consists of a few frames from a video.
Education -Physics. Motion of a pendulum.
Mathematics. Illustration of evolution of an ordinary differential equation under change of initial conditions/parameters. In both the above cases, "time" is an implicit factor. Hence, the justification.
Advertising - such as banner advertising. There are many good examples around.
Animation can be split into several distinct areas:
Animated GIF's
Consider why your site needs to display animated GIF's. The larger the image and the more frames the animation has, then the longer the download will take. Will your visitors stay on the page long enough to see the whole animation?
Placing too many animated GIF's (to some people one animated image is considered as one animation too many) should be avoided. It is likely that the animations will be out of sync with one another, and give the impression of animation overload.
Avoid using an animated GIF from a graphics library. There are several tools available that you can use to create your own. Creating your own animated GIF that blends with the rest of your sites look and feel will be more acceptable to your visitors than one that clashes.
Animated Dynamic HTML
There are two major types of uses of animation with Dynamic HTML (DHTML): moving images and text around the screen for the sake of it; and presenting an interesting interface to condense or hide information until it is required.
Obviously the former is to be condemned and the latter condoned.
An good example of the practical use of DHTML is the hidden article synopsis on the main index pages here at irt.org. When people are looking for an article they are presented with list of headings and dates - when they hover their mouse pointer over a heading then a brief synopsis of the article is revealed - giving the visitor the opportunity to decide whether the article is of interest to them before deciding to view it. Displaying all the text for each article would generate information overload and would make it much harder for people to quickly identify the items of interest.
An bad example of DHTML use, would be if your home page takes a while to load all the images and text, and it is invisible whilst it is all loading. Your potential visitors might feel that there is something wrong with your site and then go elsewhere.
If your visitor does hang around long enough for all to be revealed, will they then return later to your page, to again be presented with your masterpiece? Possibly not. They may instead bookmark a page within your site that they feel more appropriate for their later return, almost certainly avoiding your front door.
If your site doesn't have an appropriate page, perhaps the whole site is animated, and no matter where the visitor enters it, it still takes a while to get upto speed, then your visitor might not bookmark your site, and might never return. Most people regard an individual who bookmarks their site as a success. Bored people often revisit their bookmarks!
Revisits all depend on how useful your visitor finds the site, and how often they return. If the pages are still held in the browsers cache, then the download delay will not be as long. If your pages and images have been cleared from the cache over time, or because of the lack of space, then the download delay will be as long as the initial visit. This may give the impression to visitors that your site, or the host that is situated on, is "slow".
Scrolling Status Text
You've seen them: "Hi, Welcome to my cool site..." scrolling across the bottom of the browser window. This is normally people's first attempt at JavaScript, usually copied from someone else's site, because they were "impressed", and want to impress others. All it does is show that you can "cut 'n paste" someone else's code - resist the temptation at all costs.
The status bar is for status messages, for example: the location of the link beneath the mouse pointer, the progress of a page download. People do read these messages. It's unprofessional to hijack this area of the browser for a gimmicky scrolling message.
If the message is that important, place it in bold at the top of the page, or consider using a Java ticker tape, or a scrolling text box.
Clocks and TimersUnless your site is time related, or needs to highlight the time of a deadline, then consider whether there is a need to tell your visitors their own local time.
Most people who can afford a computer can also afford a wristwatch. Most operating systems provide their own internal clock, and a GUI clock application, some even provide a clock on a toolbar.
Telling people how long they've been on your site is only likely to remind them that they've spent too long on your site, and that they should be doing something else.
http://tech.irt.org
