Making a Splash

by Heather Champ

Web designers and developers incorporate a splash or pre-home page into a site for a variety of different reasons.

They can be very helpful to inform a user about the minimum browser version needed to best take advantage of all a site has to offer. Additionally, they can provide links for installing any plug-ins that might be needed, links to high or low bandwidth versions of the site, or even "your browser should/must be this wide." Functional and to the point, with road markers to the various paths available, but perhaps not the prettiest welcome mat.

While the Men in Black are protecting the earth from the scum of the universe, the site's splash screen protects the cyberuniverse from experiencing the site without all the appropriate technologies. Check out Enigma's site created for the launch of the group's third album for a more elegant solution to the splash.

Zoecom and Borderequalszero simply use a splash screen for the initial presentation of the site's brand. Borderequalszero incorporates a GIF animation with an individual presenting the title in American sign language. MetaDesign presents a mission statement along with an animated series "beliefs."

Other sites use a splash screen to set the tone, ambiance or mood. This pre-home page is a theater or stage to wow the user without the real estate considerations of the welcome text, navigation, or other elements usually found there.

HotWired changes its splash page or front door weekly, enlarging a small square GIF to fill the entire browser window. It will be interesting to see if the designers will continue to use the rapid animation motif, used twice since the introduction of 4.0.In contrast, ada'web's splash screen is restful and somewhat inscrutable, much like the site itself. ada'web works with a number of artists to create some of the most beautiful online art. Jodi is quite famous for its blinking splash screen, a seemingly incomprehensible clutter of characters, which upon viewing the document source, reveal the plans (unusable) for creating an atomic bomb.

There may be more to some splash pages than first meets the eye. Designers and developers are using this pre-home page to pre-load images used throughout the site. It's an interesting way to change the perception of download time. The main page will appear to load much faster as larger images can pop in having been cached from the previous document.

An image can be cached in two ways. The first by creating a document with multiple framesets, with the images loading in a document hidden within a 1 pixel high and wide frame. If the use of frames is unpalatable, it's possible to pre-load images by changing the attributes within the IMG tag to HEIGHT=1 WIDTH=1. It's best to include a number of break tags to move it down the page, preferably below the information first viewable in the browser window.

It's always interesting to view a document's source to see if there is more beneath the surface. That splash screen may not be as gratuitous as it seems.