Commentary on the original top 10 usability mistakes in web design - scrolling text, marquees and constantly running animations

The third usability mistake in the list of original top 10 usability mistakes in web design by Jakob Nielsen (1996) has been a bane of web users ever since blink- and marquee -tags were introduced for web designer's disposal. Anything that blinks, scrolls or constantly fidgets tends to grab the users attention and distract from the main substance of the web site and is therefore very bad for usability. Blinking or scrolling text is very difficult to read because the natural flow of reading is interrupted or distorted every time text disappears or user has to wait for new text to scroll visible. Anything that moves in any way tends to distract the users, but nowadays users who have long since been bombarded with web ads have started to develop some kind of cognitive filter to weed out anything that blinks, scrolls or is animated. So if you have something important to tell to your users and you blink it, scroll it or animate it, there is a good chance that your users will simply ignore it. Unless you really know what you are doing and are certain that using blinking, scrolling or animation in any way will bring more benefit than harm to your users (and I think that will almost never happen), you should think twice and use other means of attracting the attention of your users. Be a responsible web designer and just say no to blinking, scrolling and animation!