[danso]

Is there another design pattern that is so universally appealing to clients but reviled by developers than the carousel? I don't like them either but honestly, it's such a great idea theoretically...we're all accustomed to the pattern of a box with moving images, since at least e 1960s...and we also know the frustration of cramming a variety of content into a screen size worth of real estate...so why wouldn't a web carousel work?

Unlike other flawed design patterns, such as horizontal scrolling or a reliance on mouseover popups, it's hard to assert, without referring to "studies", why the carousel is just bad in a way that doesn't sound like I'm only stating my hoity-toity developer preferences.

[jcromartie]

How about the "splash page"? Clients want to shove their brand in the user's face, but users just want to get to the content/work already. 90% of the time (doing iOS apps) I have to fight over ditching this anti-feature.

[cloverich]

Honest question - isn't the point of the splash page in iOS to present something to the user while the content is loading. i.e. can't the Splash be (one way or another) instantly loaded. In that regard, is it supposed to be used to reduce the perceived load time of the app?

[tsm]

If you read the HIG, Apple wants devs to use the splash page to show a picture of the app's UI elements--just with not text. All of Apple's apps do this--if you open up the address book, for example, it'll show you a picture of an empty UITableView and such. And once the app loads peoples' names will appear in it.

They specifically recommend against using your logo as a splash page, but most people do it anyway.

[potatolicious]

There are good reasons to use a splash page rather than a "fake UI" image. For single-purpose apps (say, Calculator, or Weather) the state of the UI post-launch is easily predictable, so you can actually make a splash image that lines up with what the user sees after.

For more complex apps, especially apps that maintain state, this becomes impossible. You can make your splash image your "home" view controller, but if the app is launched from a URL (a large use case for many apps) the user will see an "empty UI" that is not what they're looking for, suddenly replaced by UI they are looking for.

Making matters a bit worse is that, at least up until iOS6, switching between apps (not just a cold launch) can also show the splash image briefly - but your app snapshot remains in memory, so you cannot guarantee the "empty UI" is what your user actually ends up looking at.

Splash images suck, but for a lot of apps they are the least of several evils.

[untog]

I actually really, really hate that concept and I wish Apple didn't try to get people to use it. Numerous times I've tried to interact with a UI that is actually just a flat PNG image.

It feels like Apple is advocating using a really ugly hack to make it look like app loading times are shorter than they really are.

[neilkimmett]

Exactly. From the Apple Human Interface Guidelines (https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/usere...)

"Avoid using your launch image as an opportunity to provide:

- An “app entry experience,” such as a splash screen - An About window - Branding elements, unless they are a static part of your app’s first screen

Because users are likely to switch among apps frequently, you should make every effort to cut launch time to a minimum, and you should design a launch image that downplays the experience rather than drawing attention to it.

Generally, design a launch image that is identical to the first screen of the app."

[jcromartie]

I'm not just talking about using the iOS launch image for branding. I'm talking about delaying the user after the app is loaded and ready to go. People ask for it to display their logo a little bit longer than it actually takes to load the app, sometimes 3 seconds or so.

If you do this, as an iOS developer, you should have your developer program revoked...

[Millennium]

Don't forget end users. They hate carousels just as much as developers do, and maybe even more.

[danso]

But do they? I've worked with clients who are, at some degree, just normal web users who now want their own website. And "how about a carousel?" is a very common request...I think that end users may get annoyed by them when actually trying to use them but as passive viewers of most webpages ("Oh there's a carousel. That's a pretty picture. OK time to do a search query for the shoe brand I'm looking for") they probably don't give them any mind...which is, of course, dangerous if you're the site owner...but end users themselves shouldn't really care because they just don't use the carousel.

[roc]

So the argument is that users don't hate carousels, because they've learned that they're useless and to be ignored?

I'm not sure that's a strong argument in their favor.