Are rollovers obnoxious?

[Cyburbia]

I had a complaint from one of my board suers about the table cell highlight rollover feature; they said it was very distracting, and that it made the text underneath difficult to read.

My board is at http://www.cyburbia.org/forums/. (I'm in the process of designing new buttons, so the buttons you see won't be there for much longer.) Does my implementation of the cell rollover hack seem "obnoxious?"

[Admin]

The only reason I dislike rollovers is that if you click the CELL (not the link), it will take you to the forum, which is very annoying. I have nothing against the visual effect tho.

[nik0]

nice ****

[Recluse]

Originally posted by FireFly
The only reason I dislike rollovers is that if you click the CELL (not the link), it will take you to the forum, which is very annoying. I have nothing against the visual effect tho.

i had the same grip, i somehow fixed it or messed it up, not to for sure how i did it but it was fixed then the members started complaining that i took it away go figure lol

[Sigon]

Firefly,
I didn't like the whole clicking bit either. So I edited it and now it works great. I have the mouseover but you still need to click the link.

[N9ne]

My members love the rollovers

[galt]

Possibly older eyes, and older monitor. But here is what I see with the rollovers.

My eyes scan down the rows. I see something of interest. So while I continue reading the remaining test in that area (Forum description, etc), I am moving my mouse towards where I am looking. All of a sudden, the background color changes, along with the text contrast against it. My eyes stuble in mid sentence, and I have to pause for a econd before continuing to read.

I think it is annoying, and provides only minor usability improvements. I much prefer text rollovers and use them as I think appropriate. As I think about it now, I might like it if you increased cpntrast ionstead of decreasing it. Perhaps you could changed both text and background at the same time to maintain or even increase contrast. Maybe a while background rollover would be better.

[Stylez]

Originally posted by galt
Possibly older eyes, and older monitor. But here is what I see with the rollovers.

My eyes scan down the rows. I see something of interest. So while I continue reading the remaining test in that area (Forum description, etc), I am moving my mouse towards where I am looking. All of a sudden, the background color changes, along with the text contrast against it. My eyes stuble in mid sentence, and I have to pause for a econd before continuing to read.

I think it is annoying, and provides only minor usability improvements. I much prefer text rollovers and use them as I think appropriate. As I think about it now, I might like it if you increased cpntrast ionstead of decreasing it. Perhaps you could changed both text and background at the same time to maintain or even increase contrast. Maybe a while background rollover would be better.

Yep, I pretty much agree. But if I were to use the mouseover on my forum, it would be without the click.

[Cyburbia]

Thanks for the feedback!

What I've done for now is lighten up the table sells a bit, so the rollover effect won't render a cell unreadable. I'm trying to figure out a hack for hover highlighting, where the entire background of the text changes color. I'm also working on a new button set with provisions for a subtle contrast change with a rollover.

Still, I can understand why some might find the feature to be a but obnoxious, and their arguments certainly have merit. I'll see if I get more complaints about it; if that's the case, I'll probably drop it in favor of text background highlighting.

If it means anything, my forum rules include no "no animated avatars."