RE: Site for critique - take 2 - Paul's comments

The inclusion of gratuitous content is such a pet peeve of mine that I have 
push my soapbox over beside Paul's.

The vast majority of people online have zero, nada, zilch interest in the 
technology of the internet. Site content either works and interests them or 
not... and then they leave immediately. They don't care why it doesn't work.

My list of gratuitous content includes visible counters, all approval 
buttons, animated gif's (unless they demo a product or service), IWA & HWG 
logos, all outside links industry cool or whatever(unless you have a true 
portal site), and all third party ads (unless you have a true portal site).

Steve

At 09:29 AM 5/7/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>Class instructors are telling people to use the XHTML, HTML, CSS, and Bobby
>Approved buttons on their sites? Why do they say you should do this? The
>reason I ask is that I have seen these on a lot of the crits posted here
>lately and I find them totally unnecessary.
>
>If Bobby approval was truly important to the viewer of your site, it should
>be at the top of the page, not the bottom. Better yet, they could find out
>ahead of time and avoid all the sites that are not bobby approved. If a
>site's content is interesting to me, I am not going to leave just because it
>is not up to the HTML4.01 spec.
>
>Both of those comments assume someone has an idea of what these buttons
>mean. Most of the world has no idea why those buttons are on your site or
>what they might mean.  What value is there in giving someone extra Kbs of
>unwanted data to swallow? Besides the bandwidth, they are using your
>valuable real-estate as well. Perhaps I am missing something here, can
>someone help me out? I could see some reasons for using these buttons, but I
>don't find many people using them for those reasons.
>
>Rene', I am sorry to use your particular crit for my soap box. Don't take it
>personally, I did see you intend to remove the buttons later. But your
>audience is a good example of a group of people who really wouldn't care
>whether this thing is written in HTML4.01 or some abstract form of Martian.


>paul

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