Add-Art Notes

I've been using the Add-Art plug-in for Firefox, because I love the idea of replacing advertising with virtual art exhibits. I have noticed a few usability problems within the past two months, though.

1. The most recent show featured animated artwork that was really annoying in conjunction with browsing. It distracted from the main content of the pages I was viewing, and I often found that I had to turn the plug-in off in order to focus. I have no problem with animated artwork, but it just doesn't work for me in this format in the same way that animated ads don't work for me.

2. Prior to the animation, there was a series of election related photographs. There was nothing wrong with the photographs. Actually, they were quite good. The problem I ran into is that a lot of pages write articles and place advertisements next to them. Replacing the advertisement with a news oriented photograph that wasn't related to the article caused some temporary confusion. It didn't take long to realize what was going on, but the problem occurred several times.

So. I'm still all for replacing ads with art, but these are exhibits that didn't work for me on a practical basis.

3 comments:

moif said...

A lot of the 'Art' seems really lax too. I hate both those you mentioned, and the current lot of odd words isn't inspiring my confidence either.

Cyan said...

I'm not fond of the current exhibit either, but it doesn't interfere with my browsing experience, so I can deal with it.

moif said...

Its certainly better than the ads...