Re: Flash, Glitz, Images Off

>I agree here as well. I, too, really like those menus, which by the way, are
>featured on www.msnbc.com as well. I wonder how their site is doing? Now
>*there's* a real flashy site. Java, GIF animation, Active-X (I think) for
>those menus; all on the same page.

Actually, MSNBC is moving away from Java (because of its long load times)
and, surprisingly, never embraced ActiveX.  Inter@ctive Week discusses
MSNBC.com's transition to DHTML:
http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/printhigh/40698/n(at)w406.html

>So, group, what do you think? Visit the site (you'll be asked to download a
>plug-in, but it's painless, trust me) and let's hear from everybody about
>MSNBC. Is it too much? Or just right. Did their theory about website design
>and features hit the mark?

Okay.  Checked out http://www.msnbc.com, using NN4.05 (MacOS), Java off,
on a fast network connection (although local network topology does
considerably reduce some transfer rates.)  It took about 45 seconds to
completely load the page.  For all of that time, I looked at a blank page:
no graphics, no text, nothing.  When it did finally load, the design was
very nice.  There's wasn't much content, though: just a couple of
headlines, and links to other sections (where I could presumably drill
down and find some more headlines.)  The site didn't attempt to give
me any plug-in; perhaps it determined I already had it, or that the site
didn't have a need for a plug-in at that time.

I compared it to another news site, CNN Interactive (http://www.cnn.com).
Both have similar goals, one would think.  And both pages completely
loaded in about the same time.  That's where the similarities end, though.
CNN uses a mix of text of graphics, so within a few seconds of loading
the page I could see the headlines, including links to articles.  A short
time after that the rest of the text of the page loaded, with an extensive
list of article headlines, all linked to the articles.  The images on the
page loaded in the remaining time.

Consider a likely user of a news Web site.  Someone who wants access to
news now, who doesn't want to wait until the top or bottom of the hour
for a recap of the news on TV or radio (or who doesn't have access to
them.)  For those folks speed is essential.  It would seem like CNN meets
that need far better than MSNBC, and provides more information to boot.
In the time it took for MSNBC's page with limited options to fully load,
I could have checked out the extensive list of headlines on CNN's page,
aborted the download of the remaining images, and started (and maybe
even finished!) loading an article on a topic of interest.

Still, that MSNBC design is nice.  Hope more people get a chance to see it
before giving up and moving on to another site.  (Believe that won't happen?
See how impatient users can become when things appear to stop working:
http://developer.netscape.com/viewsource/bickford_wait.htm).



Jeff Foust
jfoust(at)mit.edu
http://reudi.mit.edu/

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