The moving image
Think of our ancestors, our ancient ancestors. Wherever they lived — on the veldt or the steppes, in the jungle, or in the forests of Europe — they had to find food — and avoid becoming food. This is a problem faced by every species, of course, and our ancestors already had some extremely useful abilities which they got from their ancestors, going well back beyond the point at which our lineage deviated from those of the other apes which eventually became our cousins, the chimpanzees, gorillas and the other apes alive today.
One of the most crucial pieces of survival equipment was the visual apparatus: the eye, optic nerves and the development of the occipital cortex to process the information coming in from the retinæ. The human eye and its connections in the CNS form a system exceptionally good at one thing in particular: detecting movement.
That makes a lot of sense, when you think of it. Anything dangerous is likely to move, probably quite rapidly, and the earlier you detect such movement the better your chances of avoiding, say, ending up in a lion’s stomach. The same applies if you have to hunt to survive: the ability to spot motion gives you a better chance of finding your prey.
We still have that optical system evolved to aid survival over millions of years, and our eyes are still drawn irresistibly to any movement in our visual field. Perhaps that is one reason why blatantly moronic Hollywood blockbusters are so much fun: they provide a lot of movement for our eyes to watch.
Our fascination with movement has implications for the design of web pages. I have mentioned before that what has made the Internet suddenly become enormously popular after almost thirty years was the development of the Web, and the ability to have pretty pictures with your text.
It was not too long before designers wanted to incorporate some form of animation in sites — we love seeing things move.
The problem with animations
The problem is, there is a tendency to think that “I can do this” equals “I should do this.” That tendency is true of many things, but it is particularly true with animation because we find movement so captivating. I know that when I was preparing one page, I had to resist, hard, the temptation to make the logo in the top left of the screen rotate. Yes, I could have done it. Yes, it would have looked “neat.” For a while, anyway. But…
The problem with using animations at all is precisely that they are so distracting. If you have a page of text with even one animation on it, reading the text is very difficult because your eye keeps going to the animation. That is just one animation; too many sites seem to be put together by people who clearly believe if one animation is good, many are better. Trying to read anything on a page like that becomes the visual equivalent of attempting to listen to Holst’s Neptune in a foundry.
A second point you need to remember is that the neatest, coolest, grooviest animation on the planet gets boring very quickly. After very few minutes, visitors get sick of seeing the damn thing. Unlike simple graphics, which can become part of the background landscape, the movement grabs our attention whether we want it to or not.
It is irritating. It is obtrusive.
The question of size
Everything said elsewhere about the need to keep the file size of graphics down is equally true about animations — but more so, because graphics by their very nature tend to be significantly larger than plain image files. Even one animation will probably have significant implications for a page’s load time.
You better think!
I’m not saying never use animations. I am saying, think very hard before using animations. If you are doing it simply because you can do it, don’t. If you are thinking of using animations on a page of text you actually want your visitors to read thoroughly, don’t, because they won’t.
Perhaps, though, you have a really good reason for using one; or at least you think you do. If you are absolutely determined to use an animation, make sure it’s in keeping with the rest of the content, that it doesn’t overpower the content, and keep the size down.
Even so, your page would almost certainly be better without it.
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