It all started when the new city buses came out. They’re pretty comfortable and quiet, but one thing really bugs me about them. Whenever you use the back door, the door takes ages to open, in addition to an annoying voice telling you to “touch yellow tape to open door” every time the bus stops. I press the yellow tape and about 5 seconds later the door starts to open. I usually just shove the door open, because when I’m tired after a long day I have no patience at all.
How does this relate to web design? Simple, make your interfaces work quickly, don’t put any lag or delay. On certain websites you have to hover over a dropdown nav button for 3-5 seconds for the dropdown to appear. That’s really annoying, so don’t do it.
Thanks for the tip, Dan.
lol
Agreed. Now how about a .5 second fadeIn, and fadeOut?
Let’s go quicker than that, no fade. At all.
But then I have an element that just appears? That’s not very smooth.
Okay, .2 seconds.
How about .25 seconds?
I would say that anything that takes more than .3 seconds to load is too long. (Of course there are some exceptions, most notably slide shows with which you can be a little more lenient.)
By the way…you really should enable replying to comments…it would help separate the discussions on this blog.
While pointless arguing over a standard fadein and fadeout time is fun and all, it is just that; pointless.
Things like transitions and fades are best left to be chosen by the designer based on each individual design and what would fit best.
Nah fades are good as long as they’re quicker than half a second. More than that on every link would make browsing around a very annoying experience and would just make the user think their computer is slow. Short, quick fades aren’t too annoying and they add that little bit of extra polish (ex: iPhone OS).
@CodeDude: Yeah it would help to add that but I usually don’t get too many commenters, so it probably wouldn’t be too useful.
So how ’bout them new posts? cough
Come on Dan, almost three weeks! I’ve never seen this happen from you!
Ack….the suspense is killing me