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Since we are on this forum, I'll take a bite: Carousels need to die. Everyone hates them, no one interacts with them unless they have to. The carousel doesn't

by yreg 6y ago

Since we are on this forum, I'll take a bite: Carousels need to die. Everyone hates them, no one interacts with them unless they have to. The carousel doesn't work for the user and it doesn't work for the product. http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/ http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/ https://www.dgtlnk.com/blog/website-carousel/ https://www.dgtlnk.com/blog/website-carousel/ The plane model is nice.

aww_dang 6y ago
Like other generalizations, this is not absolute. Carousels have their place. I used one recently on a simple site which has three nouns in the name. Three small SVG icons scrolling in a carousel fit the theme. However, I agree that they are terrible where a gallery of thumbnails would be more suitable. The controls and auto scroll always seem to be cross-purpose.
colonwqbang 6y ago
When you have a team of designers who can't agree on which image to put on the frontpage, the dreaded carousel is frequently the result. The more bitter their disagreement, the shorter the timeout on the slideshow.
- colmvp 6y ago
  Designers? From my experience as a designer, it's almost never the actual designer who wants it. It's competing stakeholders.
- albedoa 6y ago
  Another designer here. My experience is the same as the sibling comment: I have never known a carousel to be the result of two designers disagreeing.
cylon13 6y ago
Tip for this site: disable javascript. It falls back to just a big list of photos which you can browse at your leisure. If you're somehow forced in to using a carousel, at the very least, make it so that it stops auto-changing once I've interacted with the arrows. There's nothing worse than having to repeatedly click the back arrow to just look at a single photo.
- falano 6y ago
  I was confused with the previous comment until I read your reply :) I disable javascript by default.
saagarjha 6y ago
I actually enjoyed this one, surprisingly. It kept me from staring too long on any one particular piece ;)
gowld 6y ago
Image carousel is 21st century slideshow, which are cliched as a hated imposition.
jmchuster 6y ago
What's wrong with a carousel? Its purpose is to take up space and look nice. No one is meant to click through them, it serves the exact same purpose as an ellipsis, the illusion that there's more content, more examples, etc...
correct_horse 6y ago
Upon first reading, I thought this meant baggage claim carousels
- briandear 6y ago
  I was thinking amusement park carousels! Seems like some kind of Rorschach test..
  - jugg1es 6y ago
    You both obviously do not do front-end development.
Talanes 6y ago
The carousel here serves as a secondary accompaniment to the main article text though. The fact that most people won't look through the pictures is only a bug if you actively care that people look at them. For content that's included in more of a "some people might want to look through this" manner, the carousel feels natural.
tjchear 6y ago
Huh, did not know this. I was just going to implement Carousel as an option in my editor! About your second link, is there a site that gives general advice on UI/UX based on A/B statistics?
coronadisaster 6y ago
Although I don't really like them, http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/ http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/ is made bad on purpose ... I have never seen one that bad actually. What I hate most about them is usually the ads, but in that case it is that it doesn't let me read at my pace (which is a lot worst).
- scubbo 6y ago
  > http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/ http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/ is made bad on purpose... Really? I don't like them either, but what's specifically bad about this? It's among the least-bad implementations of a carousel I've seen: * Next/Previous buttons so I can override the timing * Auto-progression timer resets when you click next/previous * Loops round to the beginning when you reach the end and click "next" * Has a clickable progress-indicator underneath, so you can skip by >1 In fact the only "fault" I can find in it is that I can't swipe left/right on a touchscreen - and that's defensible as a stylistic choice (to prevent accidental motion), given the presence of the next/prev buttons.
  - corty 6y ago
    For one, timing isn't scaled to reading length of the texts.
  - yreg 6y ago
    Yep, it's better than the one used in OP's link.
jugg1es 6y ago
On boring websites, yea. But on Steam, I have definitely bought games after scrolling through that carousel.
- yreg 6y ago
  Steam doesn't use a carousel, it has a gallery with thumbnails. Those two are not the same thing.
  - jugg1es 6y ago
    I can't post images here to prove my point, but if the front-page of the steam store is not a carousel, then I don't know what is.
efreak 6y ago
I'm on mobile, and honestly the only problem I found with the carousel here is that it's actually too small; full screen height would be better. (This may be an issue with my use of Materialistic, some css and js don't work well with it) On mobile, whether the article is long or not, it's nice being able to quickly scroll back to a section of text to find something you read previously; if there's 25 pictures in the way, that gets obnoxious quickly, and I'm more likely to just leave. Having a carousel means the user can see all the pictures (used to good effect with overviews and varying levels of detail/zoom/cutout); scroll horizontally (or tap icons, but scrolling would be better) for more images and vertically for more text. A way to improve this one would be to make it an embed that can enlarge itself to take up the full screen and restyle itself vertically or horizontally; I know I've seen this functionality somewhere, possibly a php image hosting script.

by yreg 6y ago

aww_dang 6y ago

Like other generalizations, this is not absolute. Carousels have their place. I used one recently on a simple site which has three nouns in the name. Three small SVG icons scrolling in a carousel fit the theme. However, I agree that they are terrible where a gallery of thumbnails would be more suitable. The controls and auto scroll always seem to be cross-purpose.

colonwqbang 6y ago

When you have a team of designers who can't agree on which image to put on the frontpage, the dreaded carousel is frequently the result. The more bitter their disagreement, the shorter the timeout on the slideshow.

colmvp 6y ago
Designers? From my experience as a designer, it's almost never the actual designer who wants it. It's competing stakeholders.
albedoa 6y ago
Another designer here. My experience is the same as the sibling comment: I have never known a carousel to be the result of two designers disagreeing.

cylon13 6y ago

Tip for this site: disable javascript. It falls back to just a big list of photos which you can browse at your leisure. If you're somehow forced in to using a carousel, at the very least, make it so that it stops auto-changing once I've interacted with the arrows. There's nothing worse than having to repeatedly click the back arrow to just look at a single photo.

falano 6y ago
I was confused with the previous comment until I read your reply :) I disable javascript by default.

saagarjha 6y ago

I actually enjoyed this one, surprisingly. It kept me from staring too long on any one particular piece ;)

gowld 6y ago

Image carousel is 21st century slideshow, which are cliched as a hated imposition.

jmchuster 6y ago

What's wrong with a carousel? Its purpose is to take up space and look nice. No one is meant to click through them, it serves the exact same purpose as an ellipsis, the illusion that there's more content, more examples, etc...

correct_horse 6y ago

Upon first reading, I thought this meant baggage claim carousels

briandear 6y ago
I was thinking amusement park carousels! Seems like some kind of Rorschach test..
- jugg1es 6y ago
  You both obviously do not do front-end development.

Talanes 6y ago

The carousel here serves as a secondary accompaniment to the main article text though. The fact that most people won't look through the pictures is only a bug if you actively care that people look at them. For content that's included in more of a "some people might want to look through this" manner, the carousel feels natural.

tjchear 6y ago

Huh, did not know this. I was just going to implement Carousel as an option in my editor! About your second link, is there a site that gives general advice on UI/UX based on A/B statistics?

coronadisaster 6y ago

Although I don't really like them, http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/ http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/ is made bad on purpose ... I have never seen one that bad actually. What I hate most about them is usually the ads, but in that case it is that it doesn't let me read at my pace (which is a lot worst).

scubbo 6y ago
> http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/ http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/ is made bad on purpose... Really? I don't like them either, but what's specifically bad about this? It's among the least-bad implementations of a carousel I've seen: * Next/Previous buttons so I can override the timing * Auto-progression timer resets when you click next/previous * Loops round to the beginning when you reach the end and click "next" * Has a clickable progress-indicator underneath, so you can skip by >1 In fact the only "fault" I can find in it is that I can't swipe left/right on a touchscreen - and that's defensible as a stylistic choice (to prevent accidental motion), given the presence of the next/prev buttons.
- corty 6y ago
  For one, timing isn't scaled to reading length of the texts.
- yreg 6y ago
  Yep, it's better than the one used in OP's link.

jugg1es 6y ago

On boring websites, yea. But on Steam, I have definitely bought games after scrolling through that carousel.

yreg 6y ago
Steam doesn't use a carousel, it has a gallery with thumbnails. Those two are not the same thing.
- jugg1es 6y ago
  I can't post images here to prove my point, but if the front-page of the steam store is not a carousel, then I don't know what is.

efreak 6y ago

I'm on mobile, and honestly the only problem I found with the carousel here is that it's actually too small; full screen height would be better. (This may be an issue with my use of Materialistic, some css and js don't work well with it) On mobile, whether the article is long or not, it's nice being able to quickly scroll back to a section of text to find something you read previously; if there's 25 pictures in the way, that gets obnoxious quickly, and I'm more likely to just leave. Having a carousel means the user can see all the pictures (used to good effect with overviews and varying levels of detail/zoom/cutout); scroll horizontally (or tap icons, but scrolling would be better) for more images and vertically for more text. A way to improve this one would be to make it an embed that can enlarge itself to take up the full screen and restyle itself vertically or horizontally; I know I've seen this functionality somewhere, possibly a php image hosting script.