Stupid Animated Characters; or, Your web page might not be the only one I have open right now
Web pages with stupid animated characters in them are annoying enough in their own right, but they get me all the more annoyed when the stupid animated characters start talking the moment the page is loaded.
Nokia's Park WiFi page, for example. (WARNING: Stupid Animated Characters.)
What bugs me so much is the assumption on the part of the site developers that just because the page has been loaded in my browser, I am looking at it immediately.
Tabs are not new in web browsers, no matter how new they might appear to IE users. A lot of us have been using tabs, and what's more, opening pages in background tabs for years now. That's how I do the vast majority of my browsing.
It follows that I'm rarely looking at a page while it loads; I'll open it in the background and devote my attention to it when it suits me, ta. To open a bunch of links in background tabs and then have to guess which bastard one is talking at me is hugely irritating.
Please, developers who insist on using Stupid Animated Characters: can you not at least give us web users the opportunity to load the Stupidness and play it when we like, perhaps with a large "Play" or "Talk" button? Please?
Grumph.
