The Internet is an interesting place. It has a lot of information, and allows users to interact with that information in ways not possible anywhere else. Similarly, the paradigm of how material is presented to the user changes as well--at least, when done properly.
More and more often, however, impropriety in design and etiquette is creeping into our nestled little web, pushing the collective to an unsavoury state. What offense is it that is being committed? Efficiency. That is, efficiency in how information is displayed; more specifically, spreading text across several pages.
For our example, the offender is GamesRadar.com. You see, GamesRadar likes pages. A lot. It also likes advertisements. Let's take their article, The Top 7 Hated Habits of the Mainstream Media, which is spread across four pages.
Now four pages may seem like overkill for seven items, but hey, pages can cut down on the required load for the intial article. You wouldn't want to burden the user, right? It would only be fair that we judge this on the merits of the page and article themselves.
The total page source consists of 120,360 characters, which after the images and external files are included, totals a page load of 888KB.
The article source for Page 1 consists of 5,141 characters (4.2% of the page source) and after the images are included, totals a load of 76KB (8.6% of the total page load).
Perhaps it's a bit presumptuous of me to expect that the object of the utmost pertinance on a site be the content.
More and more often, however, impropriety in design and etiquette is creeping into our nestled little web, pushing the collective to an unsavoury state. What offense is it that is being committed? Efficiency. That is, efficiency in how information is displayed; more specifically, spreading text across several pages.
For our example, the offender is GamesRadar.com. You see, GamesRadar likes pages. A lot. It also likes advertisements. Let's take their article, The Top 7 Hated Habits of the Mainstream Media, which is spread across four pages.
Now four pages may seem like overkill for seven items, but hey, pages can cut down on the required load for the intial article. You wouldn't want to burden the user, right? It would only be fair that we judge this on the merits of the page and article themselves.
The total page source consists of 120,360 characters, which after the images and external files are included, totals a page load of 888KB.
The article source for Page 1 consists of 5,141 characters (4.2% of the page source) and after the images are included, totals a load of 76KB (8.6% of the total page load).
Perhaps it's a bit presumptuous of me to expect that the object of the utmost pertinance on a site be the content.
Recently Spotted:
*crickets*
- Trolling people anonymously is humanity at it's best (worst)?
But yes, I loath "top 10" lists on websites where there is 1 page devoted to a single image and a line of text for each item.
PS: Retro internet time
The object of utmost pertinance is to create as many page loads as possible to show your advertisers.