Text Images

Graphics cause file bloat. Remember, half of the world is still using dial-up connections. It's common for people to leave a site before it even finishes loading.

Text images are sometimes appropriate for snippets of text such as buttons , but not for large blocks of text. Designers who want to use fancy, nonstandard fonts sometimes attempt to circumvent the issue of browser compatibility by making the text an image. While a few judiciously chosen areas of text images are fine in most cases, a Web site based on graphics is problematic for several reasons:

Graphics cause file bloat. Remember, half of the world is still using dial-up connections and has low patience for sites that load slowly. It's common for people to leave a site before it even finishes loading. Even if you're planning to use graphical buttons and headers, think about how many you'll have on your site and multiply that by the file size of each element. It could add up to be very a large amount. When it comes to reducing file size , don't underestimate the power of plain HTML. It's also easier to make changes to HTML text.
Graphics-based text is not searchable, and we repeatedly hear people complain when they can't search for words on Web sites. PDF documents and sites that have graphics-based content are flat, making it nearly impossible for people to use the Search feature on their browsers.
Graphical text is not selectable. When doing research, people like to select an area of content and paste it in a program such as Word for future reference or printing. Also, it's common for people to copy an address and paste it into mapping programs to get driving directions.
Graphical text doesn't scale. Even if the text on your Web site is resizable, the graphics remain the same size.
Screen readers can't readily read graphical text. Alternate text must be specified for the text to be read by the screen reader.

Make sure the areas that people may want to copy and paste, such as addresses, are selectable. The Flash-based version of this site neglects to make the content on this page selectable. There is an icon for a printer-friendly version of the page, but it will be missed because its design is too obscure and it is far away from the main area of the page. Even worse , the site overtakes the browser window, robbing people of their browser controls.

www.bacararesort.com

Moving Text

People are annoyed by blinking or moving text on Web sites because it distracts them from what they are trying to do. They also associate dynamic text with advertising and are likely to ignore it. Ironically, moving text is one of the tactics intended to grab people's attention that actually ends up driving them away because they think it is promotional and untrustworthy.

People are annoyed by blinking or moving text. They want to control their own reading pace, and dynamic text takes that control away.

As we saw in our studies in Japan, moving text is particularly problematic for international users, who sometimes have to look up foreign words in a dictionary as they read. But it is really not good for anyone . People want to control their own reading pace, and dynamic text takes that control away. Text that moves too slowly is also irksome. People typically can read static text much faster than dynamic text, and they hate having to wait for missed text to reappear. People with impaired vision or conditions that cause lack of head control, such as cerebral palsy, may not be able to focus on and maintain continuous eye contact with displays that constantly move or change.

Very few people in our study even noticed the moving text at the top of the U.S. Social Security homepage. Those that did could see only a little text at a time in the miniscule content area, and if they couldn't read it fast enough, they had to wait for it to recirculate. Scrolling text may be effective on specialized venues such as news sites to create a feeling of excitement and breaking news. But it is inappropriate for the Social Security Administration's target audience, who wants direct content and isn't looking to be entertained.

www.socialsecurity.gov

More Information

For details on our test of 24 Web sites with teenagers, visit www.nngroup.com/ reports , and see "Teenagers."

We asked people to use Pergo.com to figure out what supplies they would need to install a new kitchen floor. The site included a big animated graphic with flying phrases such as "room planner," "set up room size," "length," and "width" that were supposed to draw users' attention to a feature to help them calculate their room size . But no one saw it. One poor user was cursing as he tried to calculate his kitchen floor size by hand. To test the usability of the Room Planner application, we actually had to direct people to it