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Of course animation has its place. There are lots of things that can be more
efficiently shown than told, and I'm all in favor of using what works.
However, I don't think the issue is paramount for most of us, or we would
all be producing instructional videos instead of writing manuals.
The animation I've seen on the Web has for the most part been a) slow, b)
buggy, and c) beside the point. A number of pages (professional ones, I'm
not talking about Jane Javascript's home page) have so much motion in them
that they're almost impossible to read without getting a headache in the
process, and it adds nothing to the page's utility. If I have to put up with
any of the above while I'm trying to solve a technical problem, I'll likely
write off the resource in question as something to be used in last resort,
which is not the attitude I want users to have toward my doc. :-)
Basically, I think we're all trying to tell a newbie "proceed with caution."
Maybe we were bit a bit overemphatic about it, but there are reasons for
wariness when using animation on the Web.
Rebecca Stevenson
Technical Writer
Workscape, Inc.
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