One trend in web design that I believe will be overused this year is the slide effect. The javascript effect consists of panes sliding left and right. I have first seen this effect in the Panic Coda’s presentation website. It brought a nice touch and made sense considering how the software works.
Later I saw on Apple’s website the slide effect and thought: “oh, just like iPhone”. But when Dell started to use the same effect to present the Dell XPS One PC(though the effect is made by using Flash) I started to see a trend.
”Users spend most of their time on other sites” — Jackob Nielsen
This may cause some usability problems if the only way to navigate through it, will be the arrows. I’ve noticed non savvy friends having difficulties with this type of navigation. I suggest having tabs attached as the labels give more scent. I suspect it won’t be a problem on Apple and Panic’s websites for reasons mentioned earlier.
A plugin for jQuery appeared already and I am sure others will follow. If the technique will be used in the wrong places it will become blunt and annoying—just as lightbox and accordion effect infected websites.
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