Users are a pain in the butt sometimes.
There are entire fields of study and people dedicated to just..designing things. And their work is immensely important and wide-reaching. And all sorts of these people and others work together to create these awesome things. And there are users who just don't give a shit that that effort is spent at all.
Recently I posted that flickr pic I took at the Descanso Gardens. My mom wanted to post that and a couple dozen other pictures on some sites she visits (old friends from high school and things). Here's basically what happened.
me: gallery on my website?
her: no, too complicated.
me: gallery on my website using this theme I thought was pretty simple and Gallery.
her: too complicated
me: lightbox?
her: too complicated
me: link to flickr album?
her: too complicated
me: link directly to flickr SLIDESHOW.
her: too complicated
me: shiny picture to click to go to flickr slideshow.
her: too complicated
me: ajax gallery/slideshow on my website.
her: too complicated
me: really pretty ajax slideshow on my site that doesn't need your friends to do anything, it'll automatically start on its own.
her: too complicated
me: flash slideshow?
her: too complicated
me: insta-redirect from your post to my website or flickr showing SOME sort of ajax or flash based slideshow.
her: too complicated
me: embeddable slideshow in your post, even though that's going to be somewhat of a headache..but there are enough holes in that website to exploit for a long time..(do not get me started on disclosure)
her: too complicated
me: then what ISN'T too complicated?
her: can you have all the pictures all on one page? my friends say they don't look at pictures otherwise, because it's too complicated.
me: WHAT THE HELL?!?
Okay, so let's recap. I suggested a gallery, an ajax-based gallery/slideshow solution, and a flash-based one. They all range from needing to click on each picture to automatically starting a slideshow by visiting the page. Some of them may have been embeddable so the user doesn't even need to do ANYTHING but look at the shiny rotation of pictures fading in and out.
In lieu of ALL of that, she wants me to use![]()
tags to directly put these pictures on the page. One after the other. In their full 3264x2448 8 megapixel glory. That is one entire page consisting of about 90mb worth of images. I wasn't aware that browsers were capable of resizing...hell, VIEWING that many images embedded in pages like that. And my poor server will have to deal with the problem of hosting 90mb worth of images for each person that views that page. If they can even load it.
And she actually asked if her friends preferred it this way over samples of what I was mentioning above, and something like twenty of them actually said yes.
What. the. fuck.
Recently I posted that flickr pic I took at the Descanso Gardens. My mom wanted to post that and a couple dozen other pictures on some sites she visits (old friends from high school and things). Here's basically what happened.
me: gallery on my website?
her: no, too complicated.
me: gallery on my website using this theme I thought was pretty simple and Gallery.
her: too complicated
me: lightbox?
her: too complicated
me: link to flickr album?
her: too complicated
me: link directly to flickr SLIDESHOW.
her: too complicated
me: shiny picture to click to go to flickr slideshow.
her: too complicated
me: ajax gallery/slideshow on my website.
her: too complicated
me: really pretty ajax slideshow on my site that doesn't need your friends to do anything, it'll automatically start on its own.
her: too complicated
me: flash slideshow?
her: too complicated
me: insta-redirect from your post to my website or flickr showing SOME sort of ajax or flash based slideshow.
her: too complicated
me: embeddable slideshow in your post, even though that's going to be somewhat of a headache..but there are enough holes in that website to exploit for a long time..(do not get me started on disclosure)
her: too complicated
me: then what ISN'T too complicated?
her: can you have all the pictures all on one page? my friends say they don't look at pictures otherwise, because it's too complicated.
me: WHAT THE HELL?!?
Okay, so let's recap. I suggested a gallery, an ajax-based gallery/slideshow solution, and a flash-based one. They all range from needing to click on each picture to automatically starting a slideshow by visiting the page. Some of them may have been embeddable so the user doesn't even need to do ANYTHING but look at the shiny rotation of pictures fading in and out.
In lieu of ALL of that, she wants me to use
tags to directly put these pictures on the page. One after the other. In their full 3264x2448 8 megapixel glory. That is one entire page consisting of about 90mb worth of images. I wasn't aware that browsers were capable of resizing...hell, VIEWING that many images embedded in pages like that. And my poor server will have to deal with the problem of hosting 90mb worth of images for each person that views that page. If they can even load it.
And she actually asked if her friends preferred it this way over samples of what I was mentioning above, and something like twenty of them actually said yes.
What. the. fuck.