I just need to vent a little bit about new trends in Web site design. What’s with those Snap Preview links? If you don’t know what I’m talking about, thank your lucky stars. They’re a new useless Web technology that throws up a tiny thumbnail preview of whatever web page a particular hyperlink would take you to. I don’t know what the point of them is since the previews are too small to read any of the text and they just get in the way of reading the web page you’re on.
Same with those silly inline advertisement links. Those are the double-underlined hyperlinks in some pages on random words. If your mouse passes over them (not clicking), up pops a usually irrelevant advertisement based on that word.
Another annoyance are self-playing videos, like the one the NASCAR site used to have but apparently got rid of in the re-design or, worse, web-page banner ads that start audio-video playback when your mouse happens to hover over them. Yes, I know that advertisers want us to see and click on their ads, but don’t act like a street urchin in a Third-World country assaulting tourists in the local marketplace: “Hey, Mister, you want nice shiny Rolex watch? Only 10 dollars!” Getting in my face and obstructing my view of what I came to the web page is not going to endear me to whatever you’re hawking. The new UPS “whiteboard” ads are especially annoying since they will load even in the background so you have to find which of 10 open web pages are making all the noise.
The danger here is that the utility of the web will be lost in a mind-numbing barrage of flashing virtual-neon, like trying to read a bulletin board in the midst of Times Square.
Okay, enough ranting on that. Whew!
Technorati Tags:advertising, Internet, Snap Preview
