[lisper]

I had to stop reading before getting to the end because the cloud animation was too distracting.

Web site designers please take note: just because you can doesn't mean you should. Animated backgrounds are the <blink> tag of the 21st century.

[dang]

"Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting. Exception: when the author is present. Then friendly feedback might be helpful."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[lisper]

Heh. TIL. Sorry about that.

[dang]

It's a new guideline actually - I meant to mention that.

[lisper]

Ah. :-)

[dredmorbius]

When the site is utterly unreadable (this one is) and fails to render in simplified views (this one does), the heads-up is useful.

Bad guideline.

[dang]

I hear you, but such comments are so common and by and large so offtopic that I think it's probably better to treat them as weeds.

[detritus]

It's funny for me to read you berating 'web designers', presumably as a profession, because I can't think of ever having seen a professionally-designed website deploying an animated background as egregiously as this site here has. I can sort of vaguely recall a few 'subtly animated geometric backgrounds' over the years, but usually in an experimental context.

The site here looks to my eye to be the product of an enthusiast looking to make their own site and present their own voice - which they have every right to do - not a 'web designer' per se trying to be fancy.

[rplnt]

Videos on background are way too common on product pages - you must have seen many.

[detritus]

I genuinely don't recall ever seing any full background videos on product pages. Large embedded videos, sure.

There was tha fad many years ago for having fairly low quality, low contrast greyscale video set under halftone or pixellated filters to make the apparent quality better, but I'd still class that as not-so intrusive. They tended to be on multi media or 'design'-centric sites anyway.

[lisper]

> presumably as a profession

No, I just meant: people who design web sites. Whether the person who designed it got paid for the work is of no concern to me.

And my comment was intended more as venting of steam than well-considered critique.

[whoisthemachine]

It was driving me crazy as well. I actually used Firefox's "picture-in-picture" mode to move the background to a screen in my peripheral vision.

[sidewndr46]

I feel like we should bring back the blink tag each year for a single day.

[h2odragon]

i cranked the zoom to 160% and the background was no longer visible. didn't help the article much, alas.