You have 5 seconds to impress me.
|
If you have any constructive comments, suggestions for improvements or corrections, please
|
Is there a good reason for THAT?
Given that the purpose of a web site is to inform, you might suppose that all you need is words. But since the Internet is very much a multi-media experience, you will not be surprised to find that the 'information' also includes images and sounds. And the whole purpose of your web site might be to display images, anyway. Nonetheless, a critical evaluation of your pages might be worthwhile.
Several of the worst excesses I have suffered include a 350kb wav file of someone saying 'hello' indistinctly; a 200kb+ animated mailbox as an e-mail link; and a 600kb background image of some highly improbable space scene that was about 2400 pixels wide. Try those on a dial-up link! And of course, who could forget the background music - done with an MP3 file of around two megabytes?
Of course you can have a Flash introduction - if you use Flash imaginatively elsewhere on your site. If you don't use Flash except for a 'splash page' ... why did you have a splash page in the first place?
Notice I haven't said anything about the Lake Applet. The first two times I saw it I thought it was 'neat'. The next ten million times I saw it, I cringed. Slight hyperbole perhaps, but I cringe at it nevertheless.
Ever seen a screen that says "Background loading - please wait"? I have as well, but not for long. Sorry, but my time is valuable and there are millions of other sites on the Internet that do more than tell me to wait ... and wait ... and wait.
A typical 28.8 kb modem - and there are millions of people who use them - can deliver around 3 kilobytes of data per second, assuming reasonable overhead on the Internet itself. So a 350 kb wav file will take almost two minutes to arrive .... but your visitor on a dial-up modem will never hear it. Why? Because they will have left your site long before the two-minute wait is over.
So while you're planning your pages - think less; smaller images, better image optimization, and fewer 'bells and whistles'.
I already know there are 496 shopping days until Christmas, and I have some really good tools for telling the time ... I don't need to get that information from your web site. I already know that today is
September 10 2010, so leave that kind of 'cute' stuff off your page, OK?
That's not to say you should remove everything except the text. Just think about each page element and ask yourself - 'is there a good reason for that?'.
© 2002 - halfadot smallwebs