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The greatest usability story of the year?

Posted on February 03, 2001

in IA/Usability

by peter van dijck (pedrito)

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peter van dijck

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User since: October 22, 1999

Last login: August 30, 2005

Articles written: 23

Can big, flash ads be the saviours of usability? Can they be the biggest usability story of the year?

Cnet redesigned its website and I am impressed. It is clean, it is usable, and it has a really great feature that I'll talk about later.

But first the homepage.

I really like the navigation, and the features at the right hand side. It says : "Today's hot topics", and each topic is only one (1) word. Like "Privacy." Or "Outages." Right underneath that is the search box. Obviously a lot of thought went into this redesign.

The new cool feature: Big ads! Big Flash ads!

Why do I like them? Because you can have a little navigation within them, never have to leave the page, and then go on reading. It just fits with my browsing style. But I mainly like them because efforts like this may keep content sites in business. It's creative thinking.

I might not keep liking them though, maybe because I'll grow tired of them, maybe because people will abuse them. If such a big ad were really flashy that would be seriously annoying. I hope Cnet has a policy on the type of ads they accept.

Actually, I really like them because they clearly have thought about them: they are toned down, informational, there is a little explanation at the top about the fact that you don't leave the page (although that could be clearer), and check this: they change position. Sometimes they'll be at the left, sometimes at the right. That's clever, in a non-annoying way.

Why the greatest usability story of the year?

Cnet set standards! Only blue, underlined text links will take you out of the website. If other sites don't mess this up, (and chances are they won't, because the advertisers won't want to make two versions of their ads), then this can be the greatest one time usability improvement on the web ever (certainly greater than new monitors nobody can afford yet).

Am I the only one excited about this?

Links:

Peter Van Dijck is an Information Architect with an interest in localization, accessibility, content management systems and metadata.
  • poorbuthappy.com/ease Weblog
  • petervandijck.net Portfolio
  • Easytopicmaps.com
  • liga1.com Accessibility and localization
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    CNET commentary from Dack

    Submitted by MartinB on February 4, 2001 - 17:44.

    dack.com has some commentary on the redesign, and on a study of where users expect common navigational elements to be:

    It seems like users - both novice and experienced - have been conditioned to expect things to be in certain places on a web site. Turns out, the web site we expect is designed an awful lot like CNET circa 1996.

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    Obnoxious by design

    Submitted by pixelgeek on February 5, 2001 - 16:18.

    I think the only factor that doesn't make the C|Net site (and also the ZD Net site) unreadable is that these Flash ads are the only advertising in the articles.

    That said they are very annoying. Its hard to read the text of the article (which is ultimately the point of being there) with all he whizzy Flash animations going on.

    But then it must be said that the Flash banner isn't nearly as intrusive as some sites (Salon especially) that plaster each page with ads and also use pop-ups.

    So from the "less of two evils" POV it works but...

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    internal/external links

    Submitted by mattie on February 6, 2001 - 20:23.

    IMHO, the blue, underlined links that take you out of the site is not a new standard but an old one. The general problem is that blue/underlined is used for both internal and external links, and nothing distinguishes between the two. In the Flash ads blue/underlined stands for 'external', and in the rest of the Cnet content blue/underlined stands for both 'internal' and 'external'. You can't tell just by looking at the link if it will take you to a new site or if you will stay within Cnet, you have to figure it out by the context ('a link below banner ad usually takes you out of the site', 'an embedded link in an article usually takes you to another part of this site'). The site should be designed so that the user doesn't have to learn to remember how links behave in different interfaces, as having a non-consistent way of using links just adds to confusion. Use one standard for all interfaces and stick to it. Usually using blue/underlined for internal links and blue/underlined with some kind of special icon for external links works ok, as the users only need to learn to recognize the special icon that warns them about external links. When it comes to the Flash ads used on Cnet, I have to admit that I like them. Like you said they don't interrupt the reading. Some of them actually managed to catch my attention, and that doesn't happen often (online advertising tends to make me just feel annoyed). Let's just hope that they keep them the way they are, because the real content is still my priority #1, not the ads.

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    cnet set's the standard

    Submitted by dry on June 2, 2001 - 15:55.

    cnet is a true leader in usability. Infact, they even have great stories on the topic. the content priority, structure and functionality is really good. you can just tell they know exactly what the user wants. i.e. just look at how deep they relate content on the site. in a new s story you can quickly access quotes, other news on the companies mentioned, related downloads. GREAT. They really know how to bring a large content network together.

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    Flash

    Submitted by Martin Tsachev on June 29, 2001 - 07:23.

    I don't know what you find interesting about Flash. It's awful, I hate Flash especially when it's on web sites.

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    Flash

    Submitted by Stefan_K on September 8, 2004 - 05:38.

    Flash for some funy games is ok, but i think a good site shouldn't use flash. Especially when some fancy ad-popups appear as a layer on the site you are currently visiting. I've seen a lot of sites where those layers couldn't be closed, althoug there was a button for it. And it disturbs me while reading a page when all of a sudden such a flash-layer comes up. For Navigation it's also quite unnecessary, there are still a lot of ppl out there who dont have a flash extension installed.
    What about them?
    And last but not least, flash ads instead of banners can really drive you crazy. I've seen quite a lot of ads that come up with sound. If it is repeating, and which animated ad is not repeating itself?, it can really drive you nuts and that was the last time i visited those pages. Everbody has to know for themselves, but i really dont like flash.
    regards, Stefan
    --
    Hungry ? Cooking :)

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