Multimedia

Multimedia is becoming more popular on web pages, auctions, and ME pages. It is helpful to understand what works and what doesn't, and why. -- Workshop materials prepared by shipscript

Adding Multimedia to your ME page

Multimedia is becoming more popular on web pages, auctions, and ME pages. It is important to understand the distinction between gratuitous images or files that add nothing to the page content and merely slow down page loading, and media that adds significantly to the whole page experience. While we generally discourage many uses of multimedia in auctions, we do recommend using your ME page as an experimental platform for playing with new gadgets. So perhaps this section should be called "Your ME page as a Sandbox".

The common types of multimedia that we see on ME pages are animated GIFs, scripts, music, flash, and movies. We frequently discourage using them on auction pages because they can add quite a bit of overhead, slow page loading, and distract from what you are selling. However, used correctly, they can add just a bit of liveliness to any page.

Animated Gifs

Animated GIF images are perhaps the easiest to use and the easiest to find at free resource sites on the web; and all normal browsers can display them without requiring additional programs. I refer to animated GIFs as those whizzy, whirly, twirly gizmos that mesmerize users. However, as cute as they are, they often have no relationship to page content, and sadly, some of those image files can be larger than the important pictures on the page.

Javascripts

Many web animations are scripted in either Java or javascript. Java is a programming language by Sun microsystems that requires special plug-in software, whereas javascript is an entirely different language that is built into all current browsers. eBay uses javascript on many of its pages. Most of the barely noticeable animations, like rollover buttons (buttons or links that change appearance as your mouse hovers), and image swapping routines like photo click-galleries are animated in javascript. The effects can be very useful and subtle and carry little or no overhead, but there is still a small percentage of users who have javascript blocked by their security software. Several eBay-friendly scripts are provided on Shipscript's ME page.

In addition to the suble and useful scripts, there are more annoying scripts that tend to get in the way of the content being viewed. Such scripts are not allowed on the eBay site, although we may frequently see them. Those scripts include mouse trailers that change or chase along behind the cursor, falling snow or hearts scripts, and memo boxes that float over the screen. While they are fun to play with, they do make it very hard to read a page, thus violating the basic guidelines of good page design. eBay will filter out many parts of scripts that can be dangerous to its site, so you will find that some scripts won't work on eBay.

Music, Video, and Flash

Sound, Video, and Flash files will all be grouped together here because none of them are supported by browsers. In order to run, the appropopriate player must be installed on the viewer's computer. If it's not there, your viewer's system will either show an error message on the screen or stop loading (freeze) while searching for or attempting to load a player. Therefore, before adding these features to a page, it is important to decide how to make them as user-friendly as possible.

A majority of users are on broadband and a majority of users do have a media player installed, so page loading is not an issue for them. However, for that large number of slow dialup users, the first criteria will be file size, so create as small a file as possible. Notice that runtime is not a valid indicator of file size. Many short clips are huge files. There are several methods for including the media, and if at all possible, give the user a clickable option to download and view the movie or sound clip, and tell them how large the file will be. That should prevent most problems that cause users to back out of a multimedia page while that content is attempting to load. Those clickable sound clips or video clips can improve product presentation, but are outside the scope of the design basics we are presenting here.

Then how can sound, video, and flash be used in page design? Flash is the most versatile and can be used to create navigation buttons, photo click-galleries, and sound effects. All of these can be tastefully implemented to enhance a page according to the other design criteria we have presented in other sections, and if carefully prepared, won't increase page loading more than standard photos and scripts. Some users consider background music part of the design element, and that is a valid expectation. To be effective, background music must load with the page, and therefore must be a small file. Keep in mind that some users may find your choice of music or automatic loading of music to be a problem, so generally we recommend that background music be limited to ME pages and that it be avoided in auctions.

Workshop tutorial prepared by shipscript

The Design Basics Workshop Series

Summary  - The 10 Design Basics for a Better ME page
Design Basics 1  - Getting the most from Color
Design Basics 2  - Using Fonts
Design Basics 3  - Effective use of White space
Design Basics 4  - Using Photos
Design Basics 5  - Backgrounds and Borders
Design Basics 6  - Multimedia
Design Basics 7  - Top 10 Common Mistakes

 

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