From an artist view, a splash page is a place to put up some fancy art thing to make add to the site's cosmetic value.
Though it certainly isnt neccesary, are splash pages a good thing or a bad thing from a design prospect? From usability it might be bad since it slows the pace a person enters a site to look at the content or something, i duno.
What you guys think?

most of the time, i will skip intro page.
If i will wait for intro, most of the time is Movie website.

U may put intro page. Pls remember to place a skip button for unfriendly surfer like me.

Yeap, true. I agree with dinodog. We won't like to spend much time on a fancy intro, unless it's fast or else SKIP.

Splash pages actually has a value to offer.

However, it's never been thought of HOW to use it effectively. Just like those Flash sites who ask you to click Enter or choose an option and you are greeted by an 'intruded' pop up window.

I don't like splash pages because half the time it doesn't offer me any new significant value. Even for an artist, if it's the same old the user will just click in the next time they visit.

I think a splash page can be taken advantage of depending on its website purpose and its goal.

how can one take advantage of a splash page?
show news updates on it?

well, from my point of view, splash page have its value... especially when the developers are very good in animation, or very good in designing... they show off what they have first before visitors can view whats inside... i think, splash page is good if you are great, bad if you are not... haha... no offense...

Yeah...I also feel that splash pages has its values... It just depends on how you could use it effectively... especially trying to impress audiences before entering your site... to let ppl expect more in your site... I do feel that informations e.g requirements of your site could be included...juz like flash sites which requires newer flash player... or maybe a front page selection for two versions of your site (e.g Flash or pure HTML)...

i like to view n click on splash pages .. it gives me a first impression of the whole thing..

when you're working or when you're surfing during large amounts of free time..?

anyway, for a company who isn't in the entertainment sector.. i believe splash pages are a waste of time and space. not to mention that you're not using your homepage well enough to climb the search engines.

sumtime..


skip button for tooo loongggg loading

I'll add in my 2cent on splash page, both experience and from the articles i read.

Splash page does serve for its purpose back in the days of 56k modems or slower, and the plugin wars, remember bonzi buddy era? you can't imagine yourself downloading 999999 different plugins just to go into a site and enjoy the experience, luckily now, we had flash to top the wars and won.

now let's go back to the topic, imagine going into a site without a warning that it uses special plugin that normal fresh OS doesn't come in one package, and you get a big red 'X'. so what? what you going to do next? and the site is the only place you want to go?

There comes the splash page, where it acts as a information counter to tell you about what is the content is about inside, and to ask you to prepare the necessary plugin, for this instance, Shockwave Flash Player 8 or higher. Or back in the old days, they let you choose in between high-band or low-band site for slower connections. The reason we felt it's not necessary now because of auto detection or connection script or whatever

But since then we've seen so many abuse on it, that is so ignorant with putting splash page because it's fun. Well, that defeated the purpose of it at first. But of course now there's even more use of splash page to it, some people use it because they want it to act as a branding front page, a welcome door.

I disagree to put a splash page because of the search engine friendly purpsoe. The search engine rate your web depends on the content , content and contents, if you put a flash intro, search engine will think that your index.html have no content at all, thus hard to get indexed for your target keywords.

This post has been edited by gpyong: Dec 29 2006, 10:03 AM

exactly.

and you know what just came to my mind when some of you are saying that we should use it to tell people what are the requirements the person needs before they enter a website..\

I think that is so unfriendly and inaccessible. Not to mention it doesn't make a difference to the person visiting because whether or not he/she:
1. Reads the requirements.
2. Understands the requirements.
3. Thinks what he/she needs to do.
4. Asks someone what they need to do.

Regardless of all that, they will still enter your website because they've already reached their destination and they will proceed on with their journey.

When a visitor gets to your website, they've a set goal to either find information or etc. So even with those requirements/recommendation on the splash page it's no use because hardly anyone would read their website.

They'd oversee the requirements and just click the Enter because of two very common reasons. They don't understand the technical requirements and they'd only question why isn't the website working later.

I guess this is one of the things web standards proof..accessibility.

to me, splash page is just something to show or give the viewer a prelude to the content. other than that, it's not something important.

after all, the SKIP button does indicate that the splash page is not important.