Re: Animation on a website

Load time is the big reason developers don't like animation.  Clients like
it because it looks "alive" like you say, but my opinion is that animation
drives the average surfer away.  If a page takes too long to load, people
will move on, and the client so fond of animation may have lost some
business.  Most large businesses keep their pages simple so people will
stay.  If a client knows that his audience is people with fast connections,
or the site is on a corporate intranet, then animation is OK.  However, if
the client is trying to reach a general audience, then I would advise him
to keep the animation to a minimum.

Brian Sinclair
Senior Assistant Webmaster
Self-Help & Psychology Magazine
http://www.cybertowers.com/selfhelp/
ICQ: 4167685
Member HTML Writers Guild, International Webmasters Association,
Association of Internet Professionals 

At 10:04 AM 4/4/98 -0800, Demitrius wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I have a question.
>
>When it comes to animation, it seems to me that the consensus among my
>fellow website developers is one of disapproval. Why?
>
>I just now noticed that, among my business clients, the most asked for
>feature is animation. I guess I never paid attention to that fact because I
>*always* pitch animation to my prospects. Indeed, most of my commercial
>websites employ animation to some degree.
>
>But what brought this to light for me - the disparity between what "they"
>want versus what "we" want - was a get together I was at last night. I was
>among friends and acquaintances; people who surf the internet but are not in
>the internet business. Most of them are business owners, some are employees.
>We were surfing the 'net and the comment kept coming up, "There's no
>animation on this site. It looks boring. Static. Not alive".
>
>Bear in mind that these are people in their 30's, 40's, & 50's. Not the MTV
>crowd.
>
>Of course, this was not a scientific study. And I'm not basing this question
>just on the gathering of my friends; remember, I get the same comments out
>in the field pitching small to medium sized businesses and I've been at this
>now for almost 18 months.
>
>So shouldn't we pay attention to what our audience wants and not be so down
>on animation? (Except, of course, for those gawd-awful clip art animations!
>That's *not* what I'm talking about!)
>
>Or is it just my imagination, and you really *do* like animation?
>
>Thoughts?
>
>Regards,
>Demitrius >I<
>------------------------------------------------A. Demitrius Lopez
>       W  E  B  S  I  T  E     D  E  V  E  L  O  P  E  R
>             http://members.aol.com/mrdemitri/
>------------------------------------>I<------------------------------------
>
>
>

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