Sliders Suck | Hacker News Reader

Sliders Suck

krogsgard.com

15 pointskrogsgard12 comments

When did slideshows become sliders, which used to mean something else?

Why does Android call its drop-down menus spinners?

"I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary."

I don't know what they're supposed to be called, but I've looked at more than one source-code and saw it called 'accordian.' Whatever they are called, I think they are a massive eyesore.

This is one of those things where I wish people wouldn't arbitrarily change names. Makes communication more difficult than it needs to be. Seems to be the irritating UI patterns that get refurbed into new names (same shit in a different box). Who would dare rename a button? Buttons are cool. Accordian / slider / moving billboard / whatever is just awful.

This is an accordion: http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/navigation/accordion.ht...

Which brings up the fact that Yahoo did give us an organized Design Pattern Library replete with nomenclature, descriptions, and examples.

http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/

Thanks for those links. I have the ypatterns bookmarked.

I agree with you, and so does Google image search for UI+slider. This is what a "slider" UI widget is in my book:

http://jqueryui.com/slider/

BTW, real sliders can suck, too, if they don't offer a textbox where you can type in the value.

FlexSlider, Nivo Slider, Basic Slider - all the types of sliders I discuss. The verbage is confusing for sure. I just used what I commonly hear them referred to in the WordPress community.

I agree, sliders are for portfolios and that's about it. Every web design team has a portfolio, so they have a slider on their page, so their clients ask for a slider on their page for no reason.

I think sliders that clearly give the users control are awesome as shit though. Best example is from my company's direct competitors http://mobelux.com/

Great slider

I think that's a good example of how sliders can be used effectively. But most of the time, they're just not. Sliders definitely have a place, but right now they have far too big of a role in web design.

edit: and we, web professionals - suck at saying no. Especially when they're willing to pay for it. That's what we need to change.

Agree with the sentiment.

It seems like sliders are there for gratuitous sex and violence (to paraphrase a line from Never Say Never). In other words, on commercial sites that don't have much to say, but they just want something even remotely flashy, they go with a slider.

Seems like if you're really into content marketing, you've got something to say, and a slider wastes way too much space versus say something more like the home page of a blog (albeit often laid out in multiple columns).

If you don't have much to say, I'd do something more along the lines of 37Signals and just pitch your products and vector them off to the appropriate one.

By comparison, sliders seem to be wasting the viewers time. FWIW, both of the two I looked at from links here, mobelux and infomedia were awesomely slow to load the pages too.

Lead Wordpress Developer at http://infomedia.com/ and what's the first thing they have on their homepage? A slider. "What We Do" - slider. "How We Can Help You" - slider.

So why is your company using sliders? What was the "heck of an argument" that changed your mind on your own site?

I've worked there for a year and a half, and the site is older than that. I can assure you our designers and me all want it to go away. And there are 25 people in our company, so I don't get to do whatever I want whenever I want. If I had posted that on our company site, your point would be valid.

And we're actually in early stages of a redesign (it's not even in WordPress right now), so it'll get taken care of : )

I find sliders great for e-commerce. A slider of highlighted products/specials feels a bit like window shopping.

Bonus points for those dots that show you what slide you're on and let you jump around, and a link to the product page from the slide. I've actually bought quite a few things that a site made me aware of through a slider.

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