The return of “Under Construction” – evolution of a malpractice
In the late 90′s most personal and some commercial websites used to place a big, animated, irritating image like this one:
This picture, placed in a webpage browsed at a 800×600 resolution (the most popular one during those years), fills half of the visible area.
This means the page was shouting “hey, I am incomplete, probably I will never be completed so what are you doing here?”
We know a good site is always under construction. This blog is always under construction. I add new content almost every day.
As co-owner of a web agency, I notice almost all customers ask some minor changes to their sites about every six months… no matter if it’s a new set of photos or an update to the “about” page… they are changing.
So we can say all good sites are always under construction… the only “fully constructed” ones are the ones showing “under construction”… most of these sites are updated less than once in a year.
Not to say someone is even able to make typo…
Will you ever come back to that site?
But I have good news: nowadays “under construction” is disappearing… but another menace is approaching our monitors… directly from the Greek alphabet…
From Wikipedia: A “beta version” is the first version released outside the organization or community that develops the software, for the purpose of evaluation or real-world black/grey-box testing. The process of delivering a beta version to the users is called beta release. Beta level software generally includes all features, but may also include known issues and bugs of a less serious variety.
Unlike “under construction”, “beta” has a meaning… the problem is this term is abused.
A good Web 2.0 site is always in beta because new features are added constantly and you may experience strange bugs like the Facebook one… but Facebook does not show “beta”…
And the interesting thing is most “beta” sites show the “beta” status in a creative way… this is a small list of sites in “beta” for ages…
So, if “under construction” means “I’ll never finish this page”, “beta” now means “I don’t know if it will work”… not that interesting.
Do you have sites in beta/under construction?
(9 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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This post has 13 comments
Edward
Why don’t they just make all the changes then re-upload or use some proper software? I know lots of people can’t but still. It is VERY annoying when I visit a website and it’s “Under Construction” for ages. :(
Monkios
GMail anyone ?
Harry
This comment is under construction. Stay tuned…
Mare
My sites are permanently under construction.
Nathan
lol.
GMail was in beta for a while. When’d they come out, last year?
Enzo
Ha I had a netscape page back in the 90′s with DBZ gifs. I didn’t take it seriously back then, but who was going to come to my crappy netscape page.
jaber
Could you do these. Thanks:
1. Put a wider posts area (for easier code copy pasting),
2. Shoutbox. People just want to “talk”
Hopefully no Under Construction thingy while you’re doing this :D.
HiddenSpartan
But when someone has a website that is under construction, they usually aren’t talking about content. They’re more worried about having the structure of the website (blog, forum, etc) feature complete, and generally usable by the masses. Beta on the other hand is nearly finished, and will be finished sometime in the future. Just because a website is a continuous work in progress, doesn’t mean that it is always being constructed from scratch, it just means that it is being improved all the time.
Jonathan D.
What’s with all the crappy posts lately? :(
No offense, Emanuele but you should really stick to tutorials.
Ton Ton
Umm are you saying that Facebook should be beta? Srsly i’t may have issues like all other !beta products. What you are saying here is that everything everywhere should be beta.
I’m not defending facebook, neither do I eaven use it by my self, but what ure saying makes no sense.
Facebook is over 5 years old and growing amazing speed. That will bring up sissues, but wont make it beta.
Emanuele Feronato
@ton ton: no, I am not saying it… I am saying designers are abusing of “beta” status.
For this reason, big kudos to Facebook
Ton Ton
Sorry. Now when I readed again, I figured out that I understood you wrong. My bad. ;)
Claudiu
Hey, nice post :)
I tried to comment on another post but I had an error saying that my e-mail adress is wrong (and I don’t think that’s the case). I saw that my message wasn’tr brought back so I decided I should just skip to another article.
Yes, what you’re saying it’s true, but how do you expect to let users know that some features on your website aren’t functional without displaying an under construction/beta sign? I would really like to know because I also have an under construction advertisment on the side bar and altough it’s not flashy and such, I’m thinking it might still drive people off the site.
Thanks, Claudiu