[Sigia-l] summary responses to violating a usability principle issue

[Christopher Hadden]

On 8/4/06, Samantha Bailey <samantha at baileysorts.com> wrote:

> 2) Many people commented on the ills/evils of popups--one thing I
> mis-stated (my team gets after me about this, as well) is that it
> isn't actually a "popup" (that's just how I think about it because it
> "pops up" during the interaction and part of the normal flow)--it's an
> interim screen...

Interstitial is the term, I believe. Dictionary.com has an entry for it:

in·ter·sti·tial (ntr-stshl)
adj.
<World-Wide Web> A World-Wide Web page that appears before
the expected content page. Interstitials can be used for
advertising (intermercial, transition ad) or to confirm that
the user is old enough to view the requested page, etc..

> One thing we've been considering doing
> is the version of alert where a semi-transparent overlay is put over
> the screen so you can still see the page underneath (no worries that
> you've lost the page) and the message is in the middle of the screen.
> It looks like a popup but is unavoidable and functions like an
> interstitial page. I've encountered it a few times--most recently at
> Writely.com on their "should we go out of beta" survey. I'm not clear
> on the technical underpinnings of how this is done but I can send a
> screen shot and source code file to anyone who would like to see
> it--just email me off list.

A cookie would determine whether the layer should be set to visible or
not. Using a layer would eliminate a page load if they choose to close
the overlay so it's pretty user friendly in this regard.

- Christopher