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video in background


cmpapineau

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  • 2 weeks later...

That is really a bad idea. You need to speak to them about it. Remember, we are the experts and they should be listening to you. Wanting something is not the same as needing it.

 

The usual "Say again?" reaction would be overhead. A large screen video running the whole time? That is gonna slow things down and use up data transfer limits fast! Or simply speaking... it is going to get expensive hosting that kind of data flow.

 

Another OMG argument is load time, there are many folks in America who still have dial-up, or at least something slower than broadband. Think of really small towns in the boondocks or isolated farmers. Also the companies, what they are capable of transferring and what they really do transfer can be drastically different. Not every internet provider goes out and lays their lines to your house, most use existing lines that they rent from a larger carrier. These carriers do not really want competition so they often drossel the transfer rate. You may get a rate that is only a third as fast as what the lines can technically carry. It is that way here in Alaska. GCI owns the cables and allow speeds to their customers that the renters customers do not get. Also as an example, We have native fishing villages all up the coast who do not have broad band connection, villages with populations in double to triple digits.

 

From the accessibility side, What about the elderly with vision issues? Don't you think a constantly moving background will make it difficult to concentrate on the content. Ask them how many of their customers have ADHD? Asberger or some other Autism based issue? How many of them are dyslectic? How many have a mental based issue that causes them to have issues with distractions? How many of them suffer from epilepsy and how many are highly sensitive epileptics? The answers will be something like "How should I know?" and that is the issue here. You can not know. It may be 1% or 90%. How many users is an acceptable number to make their site worthless for? If a business, are they the only ones? If not, they just handed some of their customers to their competition because that video is needless.

 

Then their are "normal folks" who may just find it irritating and leave.

 

Your customer can want everything they wish... but it is your job to give them what they need. What your customer needs is not what they want, it is what their users want. Of course in the end it is their decision, but do not just give them something that will damage their web site more than make it better without a fight. If you cannot change their mind so be it. But most are not thinking about their users, they are of what they would like, what they think is cute. Your job is to be the go between, what the user needs to have to successfully use the web site and what the owner thinks they want. We get paid for watching out for their interests, user and owner.

 

Will this video improve my ability to get what I want from this web site? Or is it just a cutesie idea with no real world support to me? This web site is owned by them, but it must be built for me, the user. It is my tool for dealing with your customer. Are they paying you to create a tool for me to use to deal with them or just a "Look, I have a web site now!" ego trip?

 

Clarifie this with them. Am I building a web site to make you happy or is this meant as a tool for your users to use and make them happy return customers? I can add this video background if it is really what you want, but why? You hired me to create a web site for your users and this will not help your users to quickly do whatever it is that they came to it to do. It does not support them, so in my honest opinion it should be dropped as it is simply drag on the site that will make it cost more and not help the end user. Do they still want it? Then you give it to them. Until then you should be the end users advocate. They hired you because you are the expert, they should listen to you.

 

Just keep this in mind when making decisions and designing a site, it is all about the end user.

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Thank you all for your comments. They are all very helpful. I was able to convince my client that a giant video in the background would be a bad idea. I ended up putting a large picture instead. He actually came over and showed me his phone which has a video screensaver and thought I could do the same thing. I basically told him no.

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Photos are not allot better. Again they are big and slow down the loading of the site.

 

The accessibility factor remains in that photos generally have light and dark areas and mixed colors and this can cause text to be almost unreadable. Such a busy background can also cause eye strain and be problematic with users who have dyslexia for example.

 

This is of course a general rule as I do not know what sort of picture you used. Best is to use small simple squares that can tile to cover the background and are one basic shade (it can have some texture to to it to keep it interesting.)

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The picture is clouds. Something I think is very hokey, but my client loves them and puts them in all his ads. They don't interfere with the text because they are only around the outer background area of the webpage. The content part is cleaner. I've told him it could slow the website from loading, but he doesn't care. I'm just glad he doesn't still want a movie file.

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Then it sounds like it should not be a problem then from the viewing.

 

We walk a line in this job. The movie was a bad idea with reasons. The clouds, if it does not effect the user than you have to pretty well have to give it to them weather we like it or not.

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