{"id":83201,"date":"2023-06-29T03:00:21","date_gmt":"2023-06-29T07:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=83201"},"modified":"2023-06-28T17:24:37","modified_gmt":"2023-06-28T21:24:37","slug":"when-flashy-became-constantly-flashing-the-user-experience-got-significantly-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2023\/06\/29\/when-flashy-became-constantly-flashing-the-user-experience-got-significantly-worse\/","title":{"rendered":"When “flashy” became “constantly flashing”, the user experience got significantly worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scott Alexander<\/a> on the irritating advance of meaningless flashing elements on so many web pages where they serve no real purpose, but successfully generate anger in their users:<\/p>\n

Everyone hates flashing banner ads, but maybe they’re a necessary evil. Creators want money, advertisers demand a certain level of visibility for their ad buys, maybe sites are willing to eat the cost in user goodwill. Fine. But what’s everyone else’s excuse?<\/em><\/p>\n

A few days ago I needed to look up an obscure point of Jewish law, as you do, and found this Jewish law website<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The background toggles every few seconds between a picture of a rabbi and a picture of … a different rabbi? There’s no conceivable benefit to this and it makes it almost impossible to concentrate on the text.<\/p>\n

I used to think I must be the only person who worried about this; maybe it was a weird OCD thing. But I asked about it on the ACX survey …<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

… and 88% of people find them at least a little annoying! 16% of people go all the way, and say they wouldn’t use a website that has them!<\/p>\n

Yet websites have been adding them to more and more parts of the user experience. Most aren’t as blatant as the Jewish law site, but they’re still there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scott Alexander on the irritating advance of meaningless flashing elements on so many web pages where they serve no real purpose, but successfully generate anger in their users: Everyone hates flashing banner ads, but maybe they’re a necessary evil. Creators want money, advertisers demand a certain level of visibility for their ad buys, maybe sites […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[831,28,15],"tags":[97,156,58],"class_list":["post-83201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-media","category-technology","tag-advertising","tag-fail","tag-internet"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-lDX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83201"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83206,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83201\/revisions\/83206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}