AJAX tooltips are to 2005 what the spinning 3d logo was to 1998
I noticed a strange virus infecting websites over the last few months. The virus uses AJAX to insert tooltips into web pages. The tooltips apparently are intended to display useful information about the item the mouse is over. The Ajax tooltip virus adds value to the infected site at the onset of the infection. As the infection progresses though the tooltips become more and more ludicrous.
Some symptoms of a ludicrous level of infection include:
- Whole pages of information compressed into teeny weeny fonts in a 100 pixel by 100 pixel box.
- Mysterious disappearance of tool tips in reaction to slight movements of the users mouse.
- Use of tooltips to display a majority of a web pages information.
- Placement of two of more tooltip hot spots so close together that the user has no idea what will appear.
The Web Professor labs recommend the following steps to prevent infection of websites.
- Go to your nearest store and purchase your design team a book on user interfaces.
- Reflect upon the lesson of the marquee, blink tag, and drop down menus of yesteryear and use discretion when applying advanced techniques.
- Prior to recursively adding AJAX tooltips ask yourself these two question:
- how much value does this add ?
- does the information in the tool tip deserve its own section and/or page?
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| Filed under: Content Creation, General, Misc, Web Technologies — Scott @ October 12, 2005 4:33 pm |
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Hilariously yawn inducing stuff.
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The whole point of Ajax type widgets are so the user isn’t taken away from the main page. Why would you want people to go back to page refreshes, and clunky back button functionality?