PC Magazine has poor web design
Hyrum sent a link today to a PC Magazine page about the "Top 100 Undiscovered Websites."
Here's the page, but don't try clicking any of the snapshots yet: http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/0,1206,l=213934&s=25234&a=213919,00.asp
Being a skilled browser, I start right-clicking snapshots and opening them in new tabs (hooray, tabbed browsing!). When I've selected the 25 or so I want to view, I close the main page and start looking at the first tab I opened. Except it's not one of the ones I selected. And then it changes right before my eyes to another entry in the list.
Turns out I'm looking at a slideshow of the snapshots, and the default option is that the slideshow is turned on. This means that I have 25 tabs open, all of them cycling forward through the list and getting farther and farther from the items I actually selected to look at. So now for each tab I have to hit the Back button a bunch of times until I can't go back any farther, and then click the Pause button to stop the slideshow. See, because for some reason the slides are set to cycle every 15 seconds, which is fine if you're looking at a picture but just fast enough that I barely have enough time to read the summary and not have enough time to look at the snapshot.
And of course this means that tabs 2-25 are getting progressively farther and farther along, meaning it takes me more time to back up through the slideshow to the one I wanted to look at, which means the last ones are actually reaching the end of the slideshow before I get to them.
Why force this sort of immediate-attention on your user? It's like autostarting a movie, sound, or animation on a page ... it's bad form.
And note that because I got this link from a friend (rather than by reading PC Magazine's main article, which has a link that says "here's our slideshow) I don't actually know that this meta-snapshot page is the main part of a slideshow ... the only thing on the page indicating it's a slideshow is a (smaller than any of the snapshots) button that says "Play." In fact, the word slideshow doesn't even appear on the page at all. So it's entirely possible that someone could reach this page in the way I did and start clicking, not knowing they were looking at a slideshow.
Making your user's experience more difficult is bad web design. And here's me being snarky: it's not surprising coming from PC Magazine, a mag that focuses much of its attention on Windows-based computers, as Windows is a notoriously user-unfriendly and unintuitive interface. But I suppose Windows should be another blog entry....
Am I weird for opening 25 tabs at once? Maybe, but tabbed browsing is part of web 2.0 and web designers should plan for it. Whether I open 1 tab or 25, PC Magazine started a cycle where things are happening to the page even before the user looks at it. I could have opened one tab, gone back to another tab or window or application or gone to lunch, and when I came back the slideshow would be on something totally different than what I wanted to look at. Yes, I can go back and fix it, but I shouldn't have to.
Why make me work harder to view content that you want me to see? (Yes, that also applies to the D&D 4th edition sneak peeks ... if you wan't me to get hyped about your new game, don't make me jump through hoops--even one easy hoop--to look at the hype).
Here's the page, but don't try clicking any of the snapshots yet: http://www.pcmag.com/slideshow/0,1206,l=213934&s=25234&a=213919,00.asp
Being a skilled browser, I start right-clicking snapshots and opening them in new tabs (hooray, tabbed browsing!). When I've selected the 25 or so I want to view, I close the main page and start looking at the first tab I opened. Except it's not one of the ones I selected. And then it changes right before my eyes to another entry in the list.
Turns out I'm looking at a slideshow of the snapshots, and the default option is that the slideshow is turned on. This means that I have 25 tabs open, all of them cycling forward through the list and getting farther and farther from the items I actually selected to look at. So now for each tab I have to hit the Back button a bunch of times until I can't go back any farther, and then click the Pause button to stop the slideshow. See, because for some reason the slides are set to cycle every 15 seconds, which is fine if you're looking at a picture but just fast enough that I barely have enough time to read the summary and not have enough time to look at the snapshot.
And of course this means that tabs 2-25 are getting progressively farther and farther along, meaning it takes me more time to back up through the slideshow to the one I wanted to look at, which means the last ones are actually reaching the end of the slideshow before I get to them.
Why force this sort of immediate-attention on your user? It's like autostarting a movie, sound, or animation on a page ... it's bad form.
And note that because I got this link from a friend (rather than by reading PC Magazine's main article, which has a link that says "here's our slideshow) I don't actually know that this meta-snapshot page is the main part of a slideshow ... the only thing on the page indicating it's a slideshow is a (smaller than any of the snapshots) button that says "Play." In fact, the word slideshow doesn't even appear on the page at all. So it's entirely possible that someone could reach this page in the way I did and start clicking, not knowing they were looking at a slideshow.
Making your user's experience more difficult is bad web design. And here's me being snarky: it's not surprising coming from PC Magazine, a mag that focuses much of its attention on Windows-based computers, as Windows is a notoriously user-unfriendly and unintuitive interface. But I suppose Windows should be another blog entry....
Am I weird for opening 25 tabs at once? Maybe, but tabbed browsing is part of web 2.0 and web designers should plan for it. Whether I open 1 tab or 25, PC Magazine started a cycle where things are happening to the page even before the user looks at it. I could have opened one tab, gone back to another tab or window or application or gone to lunch, and when I came back the slideshow would be on something totally different than what I wanted to look at. Yes, I can go back and fix it, but I shouldn't have to.
Why make me work harder to view content that you want me to see? (Yes, that also applies to the D&D 4th edition sneak peeks ... if you wan't me to get hyped about your new game, don't make me jump through hoops--even one easy hoop--to look at the hype).