Final Word on Splash Pages

Are splash pages -always- wrong?

No, not -all- the time.  Just -almost all the time-.

Is your use of them one of the exceptions?

Probably not.

There are certain types of things you can do on the web, that lots
of people rush to do, for whatever reason -- usually not because they
are the creative genius innovators that some on this list have claimed,
but because they're simply aping what someone else has done.  "That
was cool on such-and-such a page, it would be cool on mine."

However, the problem is that most people don't really think through
actions before doing them, and will use something because "it's the
thing to do" -- without considering the consequences.

One good example of this can be found in the ubiquitous "guestbook"
code common on the web -- which allows a visitor to your site to
post a message to you on a guestbook.  Which seems like a good 
idea, until you think about it a little further, and realize that
you're giving anyone the right to post anything to your website
without prior approval from you.

Do you really want _all_ comments about your website to be public?
Do you want to spend extra time moderating the guestbook, removing
anything inappropriate?  What will you do if someone posts something
you simply don't agree with, and other people read it before you
can take it down?  (Such as using your site to advertise pro-abortion
web pages, if you're personaly strongly anti-abortion.)  What if
someone uploads a huge text file that's 2 megs in size, and it fills
up your quota?

Now, all of those questions actually _can_ be answered; if you plan
carefully, you can sit down and work out technical or procedural
means to address each potential problem.

The problem is, however, that 99% of the people who slap a "guestbook"
on their website never _do_ think it out.  They think "hey, I can
get feedback", and for some reason, they think the only way to do
this is to use a guestbook, and they never examine the consequences
(or they might, when it's too late).  Who ever considers the legal
liability of their guestbooks when putting them on a website?

Other examples of -very- common pitfalls that people willingly
inflict on themselves without even thinking about it include web
counters and frames.

And splash pages.

Now, whenever the subject comes up, I could probably post as many
of you do and say, "Oh, splash pages (or guestbooks, or counters, or
frames) are okay, go ahead and use them if you want."  Or I could
say "well, if you use them right, they're okay, but if you're not
careful they can be more trouble than they're worth", and spell out
the ways in which they could be used wisely.

However, most people don't tend to listen to that, and so they
will never actually be confronted with having to justify, even to
themselves, their own use of splash pages (et al).  And so in these
cases -- for the purposes of a provocative and thoughtful 
intellectual debate -- I'll usually take a more hard-line approach,
and leave it up to those who disagree with me to supply the 
opposite opinion.  I know I can trust _someone_ out there to 
disagree, and thus we arrive at the truth "in the middle" between
us, and any reasonable observer can decide for themselves where
the correct balance lies.

Usually you don't expect people to start painting you as a horrid
person, out to squash all creativity and drive web pages back to
the 19th century technology; craven cowards who hide behind their
strong opinions due to the anonymity of email; a fool who can't
see the true reality that no matter what, you have to do what
anyone with money says you should do -- just because you've taken
a viewpoint that may prove to be unpopular.

This seems to be what's happened here, so I suspect that I may have
attributed too much maturity to the members of the list, by thinking
we could disagree on issues of theory and refrain from making it
a personal conflict.  I apologize for this mistake on my part,
especially to the more quiet list members who merely read the list
and don't try to score points by publically slamming someone whose
views on web design are different.

I do hope that everyone's had an opportunity to think about this
issue, and consider the possible effects of including (or not 
including) a splash page on your website; learning from each other
is why we're here (not to defeat each other in email "battle"), and
I hope this thread has been thought-provoking for everyone.  For
me, it's made me re-examine my viewpoints on splash pages, and 
justify, to myself at least, why I believe they're a bad idea most
of the time.

Thank you, and good afternoon.

--
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn(at)idyllmtn.com>             http://www.idyllmtn.com/~kynn/
Chief Technologist & Co-Owner, Idyll Mountain Internet; Fullerton, California
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