Splash pages. Remember that crap from 20 years ago? That was a home page with some "click to enter" nonsense to get to the actual home page. Laughably stupid.

Today's empty home pages where you have to scroll down to get to any real content is exactly the same moronic pattern, just by another name: showing off useless design wankery and forcing user interaction to bypass it. Fuck you if you still do that shit.

Pro hint: unless you're a megabrand such as Amazon, your home page has one fucking job: telling the user at a glance what your stuff even is about.

As in, you're e.g. a plumber? Tell me that, tell me where you are, how to reach you, what your business hours are, and whether you can fix a toilet that @b2plane has dumped an Ancient Egyptian pyramid of shit into.

@Fast-Nop let’s talk about splash pages that warn of adult content and ask you to confirm your date of birth or asking if you are at least 18 years old before allowing you access. You think kids wouldn’t lie about these things??

@TeachMeCode Ofc kids will bypass that, so it's pretty pointless. Maybe some stupid legal requirements kick in, usually made by Christian farts who can't get a boner anyway.

I totally have a live one, written in straight html/css (not even scss)... with 2 spans, to swap text completely on hover.

That said, it's for a site that was to act as a intro example for babydevs while also being nostalgic towards old school RPGs. Aside from content warnings for porn sites and the occasional temporary maintenance/countdown timer (though there's certain more modern approaches often much more logical) they don't have much current, valid usage.

Fyi, the one I put up literally says: Future Home of a Much Better Version of this Site

spans - Enter Anyways
On hover - Are You Sure?

Apparently it's seen as super cool and unique by many young'uns ...not totally sure why.

All tech / startup websites are so annoying

It's always little information and you scroll down the page to find equally disappointing information

I don't know why they keep doing these

@Fast-Nop i recently used a contractor company of a trade akin to plumbing in this context. They literally have a company email address @yahoo.com but own a site/domain... i left them an open offer for me to fix that nonsense... they arent sure who has/where any publishing info/creds exist.

@jestdotty it honestly reminded me of (better) sites I built professionally, back in middle school. Except back then you couldve made the whole page with zero css or style tags.

The vast majority of the effort was in formatting my code. I highly prefer just writing very unformatted blocks of code in notepad... and my naming schemes... well, they work for me, just not anyone else, even if they happen to know german and dutch. The class .poorly_named is likely to stay that way.

@Fast-Nop u made my eyes open now. I'll definitely alter my saas so that the home page says what the site does

@awesomeest Formatting shouldn't be any effort at all - you can just use autoformatting tools like in Chromium's dev tools.

These made some sense for huge Flash sites that needed some downloading before they could run - otherwise, without a splash screen, you would let the thing load in the background and it would play regardless of whether you're there looking at it.

@kamen Only that huge Flash websites sucked all by themselves. If a website needs loading indications, it's a sign that it's trying to do things that usually shouldn't even be on a website - the modern equivalent being tons of JS molasses.

One exception was browser games, but when Flash was popular, computers were also slower, and Flash was always slow, so that was never really a good idea.

@Fast-Nop not exactly... i cant stand the vast majority of auto-anything while writing code. I have had mixed results with the tools that are meant to allow for formatting after the fact... apparently i break things with my legacy walls of code. Even so, most of those tools only work for basic webdev, which i dont do too much of nowadays.

Last time i tried chromium tools it really didn't like my box-shadow arrays in css, and wasnt too fond of scss.

Regardless, my real issue is that i need to change my habits that are unhelpful for babydevs to mimic... in all languages... especially my ineptitude with commenting.

It's interesting how most web designers now laugh at the concept of a splash page. But when sites that try to showcase a fancy design (be it a homepage for an agency or a unique deep dive article ) it easily devolves into basically a splash page where you have to scroll down to get content.

I guess it's hard to get around the idea of having a "cover" as it's so prevalent in other media.

If you want a cool experience it’s easy to think of doing it like a book with a cover or a movie with a long intro

@jiraTicket It goes even on: some people care about likely "above the fold" stuff and even go as far as to inline critical CSS (bad idea IMO) to optimise the loading time for that area...

... and then don't present anything actually useful above the fold anyway.

@Fast-Nop also internet was slow when flash was popular, and there was Flex, MXML and RIA that is now called React and SPA as we go in circles.

Splash screen is still visible for example in youtube videos embedded on page or as article links on any social network :)

The functionality exists but in different form.

@TeachMeCode Specifically splash pages over NSFW content are great. I'm over 18 but I might not want to fill my screen with boobs just because I misjudged the redirect chain of a link

@lorentz good point. Never thought of it that way

@lorentz Yeah that's indeed a useful application of what's normally an anti-pattern.

I think it would be a better strategy to warn that there’s adult content and click the button to proceed without having to waste someone’s time entering in a birthdate. Of course it’s not needed at all if the site is something like porn.com bc that’s damn obvious it’s an adult site

@TeachMeCode go tell that to law makers... depending on location (at least last time i dealt with that bs(>6yrs ago) it was required by some child media safety act.

Imo (somewhat researched) it's basically a concept of 'well at least we tried' and since (at least back then) it was primarily teenagers (which legally are often charged as adults for crimes based on their knowledge/maturity/intent and understanding consequences.)

So a loose argument can be made that because it couldn't simple be a misclick or sudden, passing impulse... as they show clear intent to deceive by the effort to lie in the age field... it kinda acts as a way to defer judgement and gives both the judicial system and the ones putting up sites, a platform of "we tried" implicitly blaming the minor... which can be accepted or rejected based on several factors (most rel to social opinion and noise/interest that typically none of the 3 parities want)

@TeachMeCode
TL;DR
Legal/media shenanigans and loopholes so the judgin can be more subjective and/or heavily influenced by everyone from corporations, DAs(and elected judges)who want good press to the minor's parents who want their troublemaker kid to forcibly get some court ordered/paid for treatment for general deliquency that may actually have nothing to do with a porn/whatever addiction.

@TeachMeCode

Side lesson you clearly havent learned:

Clients (as in in client side/the ones using the Internet without knowing shit) are typically wilfully ignorant dumbasses that are too lazy/inept/whatever to even look at their url.

Most browsers dont even show the url... most Clients still wouldnt look if they did. Keep this in mind a few days, nearly ann social platforms have been removing any potentially obfuscated links... txt/mms u could sent a like "youtube vid" that went anywhere. Same with telegram... href and labels still can be totally different (for now).. this isnt because there was no way to tell without opening it... its because the ones wanting large payouts for being "tricked" into being "hacked' (ie, like drama, over a valid place in society/ job) arent gonna right click a link or even look at url bar. most browsers its nearly childproof and most big sites(finance etc) directly warn for that the url needs to say. Saving ppl from themself== double edged blade.

@awesomeest well it makes sense to my drunk brain now. Blame the kid for lying about his age, not our fault so we can’t get smacked bc we tried to keep them away.

I should’ve worded things better, sorry for that..when I said porn.com I meant a site that literally says porn.com on the splash screen as it’s actual name. I should’ve used pornhub lol

I know for real clients are dumb as bricks, im not sure how they can figure out how to tie their own shoelaces without getting hurt. You can convince them they can download a new laptop

I like splash pages. I think they’re neat.

Or they can be, if done well.

@AmyShackles Yeah, they're neat as in "geez isn't that cool". Users don't give a shit, they don't come to websites because they're neat, but because of content, and the neat shit is in the way.

(With the possible exception of NSFW sites as mentioned above where it doesn't provide value to users who want to get there, but to those who didn't want to get there.)

@Fast-Nop I think it depends on the site and the purpose for it. Sometimes I just want to have _fun_ and _enjoy_ something. 😂

@AmyShackles Sure you can make a site that sucks for actual usage - maybe it would suck enough to be nominated on Awwkwards. :) Or, more seriously, an impressive demo that isn't even meant for usage. You watch it once, then never again, but that isn't how most sites are intended.

@aviophille You could study anything for 5 years, 10 year, 20 years - doesn't matter, you still wouldn't get it.

@jestdotty Reality check: sites are freezing. Smartphones have gotten faster only at the highend. In mass usage, they have not gotten faster, but cheaper.

Oh, and the reality of mobile networks is far from the advertised bandwidth because it's a shared medium.

What looks just goofy on the high-end laptops and phones of the devs close to their rooter is atrocious in practice.

Oh, and slow sites increase the bounce rate because people aren't patient, so goofy shit bleeds real money.