Noticed an annoying thing today

[Brainiac]

When surfing around a bit today I found this link in the Flash Site Check Forum: http://www.artofficiallab.com

Yet another 2Advanced look alike was my impression. Some of the site took parts of 2Advanced as well. Just look at their Akademiks site. Can someone say DesignInsite?

Anyway what struck as most annoying was that everyone of the sites used pop-ups while they would have blended in just as well without. Same thing with splash pages.

As I surfed around based on links from the pumpkin.nu guestbook I found site after site launching pop-ups. Same thing there. Most of them would have fitted in just as well in the regular browser window.

And the splashes were either minimalistic stuff or something extremly silly. Most times the splashes ridicule the site profile instead of improving.

And using a splash just tell the user that "this site uses Flash 5 - Download it here". Stupid. The "ignorant" user doesn't care whether it's flash or not. And the more advanced users sometimes skip flash site. "Why would you want to wait for 10 minutes visit a crappy site" - a friend of mine said that once. And even if the user doesn't skip Flash, and knows what it is wasn't the splash pretty useless then?

Another thing is when people use pop-up without some sort of auto-centering javascript. Most times the pop-up just gets stuck in the back and when the site is loaded you wonder: What is playing music now?

And another stupid, but perhaps the most useful not that is used is the warning text: Broadband contents ahead. Or best experienced with broadband connenction.

But if you read on http://www.artofficiallab.com/ you can see this

Best Viewed In:
G3 Processor or Faster
Broadband Connection

H*ll ya! Who will a Broadband connection make my site look better?

At least they warn us about the file size, but that's just about what most splashes do now a days, at least in my opinion and experience. Why can't web designers do it the old way. Experiment but follow the rules? Cut down on file sizes, optimize and try to be nice to the user? And stop with ANNOYING pop-ups and use them wisely and when needed?

[gdstudios]

Brainiac, this is actually a funny story. The guy who made this site posted a thread asking people what they thought of "this site that he found." He said he emailed the designer about the site. It was posted in cool sites. Of course, aversion, the always diligent mod of the forum, found that it was, indeed, this guy's site. Aversion also let it be known that this same person started another thread about how so many sites are 2A rip-offs. What was this guy thinking?

[Brainiac]

That was funny.

Just have to ask if anyone knows if that site(http://www.artofficiallab.com) is driven by one person alone because he most certainly goes to a great deal of trouble to make it look like there's a crew behind it.

Does the word "job" seem inappropriate to you, If it does and you understand what we mean then your are probably right along the lines.

From said site above. And I KNOW I've read it before...



Just to continue the issue with pop-ups a bit. It can be used good. Anyone who hasn't seen http://www.egomedia.com should go take a look. I sure wished MicroSoft would have hired EgoMedia to design windows XP but ooh well...

http://www.theory7.com uses another method I'm not fond of: Weeding out users with lower resolution than 1024x768 right away by having a large window.

Chromeless windows though can be used pretty good. Especially like the one at http://www.firstmistake.com

[gdstudios]

Brainiac. I agree with your comments about pop-up windows. The chromeless window is an excellent thing to use for pop-ups. I use them quite freuqently now. Estudioworks here at FK introduced me to them. And egomedia is certainly one of the best. Can you imagine how awesome XP would be if egomedia designed it? Do you know how to make the chromeless window? Very easy stuff.

[Brainiac]

Yup. I started my design with DHTML and no-flash techniques so I know how to create a chromeless windows, I think =). Although Ego Media uses a full-screen window, which is even easier to create.

The only problem with them is that I'm a sucker for browser compatiblity. Even if IE stands for roughly 93% of the web users I still can't help thinking about the missing 7%.

But I agree, used correctly chromeless window make the best option out there, bringing focus to the contents.

And that is kind of my general opinion of web design, used correctly things WILL look good. But used wrong or when unessecary it will just look bad or "too much".

[Chud]

Originally posted by Brainiac
Yup. I started my design with DHTML and no-flash techniques so I know how to create a chromeless windows, I think =). Although Ego Media uses a full-screen window, which is even easier to create.

Hey Brainiac! Don't beat me up too much for askin' but I'm not sure how to make a full screen window like Ego Medias? Do you have to know DHTML? Or is there some actionscripting in Flash that will do it? Any tutorials? Curious.

[Brainiac]

Guess I was wrong...took a quick look at Egomedia again and they DO use a chromeless win, just that's it in "fullscreen mode". Anyway, if you want the chromeless window script visit http://www.microbians.com

The easiest way to launch a Full Screen window is to do like this, it requires no extra DHTML skills:

Put this in your <head> </head> tags of the HTML

<script language="JavaScript">
function open_site() {
window.open('http://www.your-site.com/main.html', 'MyFullScreenWindow', 'fullscreen')
}
</script>

Then call it like this:

<a href="#" onClick="open_site();">Click Here to Open</a>

Or if you prefer

<a href="javascript:open_site()">Click Here to Open</a>

Minor adjustments in the last two otions. The last one is more appropriate if you are using a WYSIWYG editor, but why would you want to do that =p

You mau use either the chromeless window or the FullScreen window. Both solutions are IE only and the FullScreen window uses no extra files so I would go with that and use some JavaScripting to set the width and height to Max Screen size for other browser, that's also really easy. Just two variables to define. No need for DHTML, just JavaScripting.