AOL News fails hard at usability. Click that link. Good. Now just do what seems natural. Clicked on the next arrow, didn’t you? Popup window annoy you? Me too. Closed it without a second thought, didn’t you? So did I.
I understand that they’re trying to increase ad revenue. I get that. What I also get is that people don’t like popups. In fact, they instinctively close them. And then they close the page that caused the popup. So, instead of double or triple the ad revenue, you now get none. Way to shoot yourself in the foot, AOL News.
The fix to this one is easy. Use AJAX (or, *shudder*, an iframe) to load the next (or previous) photo inline (or use a modalbox), when the user clicks on the next (or previous) arrow. Easy!
