Kulchur and Bouncing Harlequins

Kulchur – Canto the Third

I am a big Harry Potter fan, but in all the books and films, there is one thing which I am glad is only a magical fantasy (at present), the thought of a newspaper having animated pictures is something I consider bad news.

I study the way people use the Internet – the “hot zones” of a page and the acceptance of animation, pop-ups and a sqillion other things which will affect the way a page is considered and used in the few seconds a web designer has to get the attention of someone visiting the site. Currently animation is not rated as being a good thing. If I want a video or flash I prefer to have the choice to activate it and so do most people it seems – the current fashion for flash animation is a nonsense perpetrated by web designers.

I respect the “great” pages – like Google news and other major sites, and anyone reading my notes knows my respect for Craigslist. These are sites which work, with not an animated gif, moving image or scolling text in sight. One of the worst sites I ever saw actually had a bouncing Harlequin jumping around the page to bring your attention to features and links – their branding works as I remember the horror of seeing this weird image, but I cannot remember what it was about or what the site was for – I often went there to remind myself of the absurdity of their bad design, but they sure lost the plot as I have no idea after many visits what it was for and have forgotten the url now – the only thing I remember is that it was a French site and something to do with France.

So perhaps this is a French thing, flashing animation is still de rigeur used on many French sites and by French designers. An excellent site about Herault which I found today, about tourism in our department, is spoilt by flashing words and blinking spots – but it is still a very useful site.

I once tried to make an interactive map of information sites in France for each department – if each of the 95 departments had a website like this – and I am sure that most do – it would be a breeze to make a useful linking structure around a main map – but search as hard as I like and this very good site I found today does not have links or any information how I find the neighbouring departments of Gard, Aude and Lozere.

I could sit and Google for a few days to select a group od sites, but it just seems sensible to me for a local tourist office who spend a fortune on these sites, to at least say to their colleagues a few kilometers away “hey, how about exchanging links” – but this is another cultural blind-spot (read my earlier cantos on Kulchur).

Still Herault Tourism is a useful site and if anyone can tell me of similar ones in othe rdepartments I will make that map.