Dancing baloney

Dancing baloney is animated GIFs and JavaScript that changes colors, shapes, or jumps around as well as any other technology that contributes to the business of a web page or email, but does not contribute anything to its Usability or usefulness. The alternative approach to dancing baloney is the concept that content is king. What is being said is more important than the way it is being presented.

As with any continuum, the optimal presentation probably lies somewhere in the middle. Too much high tech , and the interface becomes difficult to figure out. A good example of this is the hi-fi portion of the http://www.michaeljackson.com/ website. Its obvious that someone has spent a lot of time and money devising a completely new way of presenting and browsing the available information. However, since it does not take advantage of the standard methods for user interaction that have been developed over the last two decades, it takes a while to figure out how to get to that information. It is analogous to driving a car with a touch pad. If you are James Bond, then you can do it from the back seat, but most of us would have a great deal of difficulty driving a car in this manner.

A simple web site like http://www.google.com/ leaves no doubt about what can be clicked, and what will happen when you click there. There are no surprises, but it s not terribly eye-catching or distinctive either. Then again, it was cheap, fast and nobody would have any problem getting at the information.

Most business sites choose to be somewhere in between these two poles.