Getting more out of images
Been working a lot on trying to reduce the amount of information displayed on/around album art lately. Mostly around how to best display additional information about an album without forcing the user to go to the product page. Sometimes I am of the mind that its probably better just to force users to go to product pages to learn more. So I’ve been experimenting with only showing the album art and displaying additional information on interaction. Ultimately, I’m not convinced this is best for the user, but a friend sent me these two really cool jQuery plug-ins that I thought I would share.
Fullsize – its a plug-in but also a plea to the W3C to implement an additional feature in html to make it easier to display thumbnail and then show the full size without javascript. I’m not convinced this is a good idea at all, but the plug-in he’s got works pretty well.
Sliding Boxes and Captions – This one I can get behind. Slick animations while allowing the user access to additional information. I’m not for hiding everything because there’s no call to action, why would the user mouse over album art unless they know its going to do something? But there are several different ways to approach this issue, as shown in the demos.
Enjoy!