can't use it

You remember Clippy from Office 97? Yes, we all hated it.

10 years later, Clippy made its comeback in web pages in the form of annoying embedded videos in the page, which appear spontaneously as you open a page. Some lady starts explaining what the site is about and how you navigate within the site.

So, instead of making their sites more usable and simple, they just slap some talking lady in the website. So nostalgic.

I am pretty sure the companies doing these will get very successful in the Turkish web market, where the web users are as clueless and ignorant as the clients getting these websites done. These gimmicks would especially appeal to the e-ignorant crowd that for example send chain e-mails. There are a lot of them, so why wouldn’t you?

One company implementing such system claims that it adds a sense of trust and professionalism to the website, but I think the exact opposite. I get the feeling that a shady company is trying to gain trust using a fake face. I mean, whenever somebody pops up in the screen and starts talking, they either are trying to sell something or get people in some ponzi scheme :)

It’s difficult to get Flash animations right, but let’s see a good example:

It doesn’t annoy you with sound, it’s well integrated in the layout of the site (thus doesn’t cry for attention), it is simple and to-the-point.

Should web designers/developers sacrifice good practice for the sake of clients’ requests? That’s an eternal question, I guess.