These were commonly done in Flash, and when a ???skip intro??? link wasn??™t
present, forced readers to suffer an inexcusable download time (remember, this was the
age of dial-up) and an even more inexcusable self-serving propaganda piece that rarely??”
if ever??”had any content of value.
Thankfully, designers and (most) businesses have come to their senses about splash pages,
and they are rare today. However, because of their legacy??”and because some naive people
still insist on having them??”it must be reiterated that splash pages present one of the
biggest usability blunders of the Internet age, and justification for their existence resides
tenuously in two narrow exceptions:
THE HOMEPAGE
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1. A site with content specifically targeted toward a minimum age group. Alcoholrelated
sites are an example, where sites ask readers to verify they are 21. There are
also certain sites needing kids to verify that they are 13 or 18, depending on the
content.
2. Truly international business sites asking users to choose a language before proceeding.
This functionality can be accomplished different ways. For instance, all
users will land on the default page written in the most common language (for
instance, English, German, or Spanish), and then provide alternate versions in the
navigation.
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