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April Fools Site: Auto-Fading Text

For April Fools Day 2008, the site faded away . . . 90 seconds after loading it each time. It appeared at the same time as my Website 20 launch, so I put them together to confuse people. The Website 20 launch message included this message:

I’m happy to announce that today, the first day of April, I have launched a major revision to my web site. Version 20 marks my shift from the Joomla content management system to WordPress. The most important new feature made possible by this switch is Auto-Fading Text, which encourages the reader to read my site quicker and more efficiently (and makes the text nearly illegible if they do not). Read on to learn more details about Auto-Fading Text and the other new features.

  • Auto-Fading Text: Auto-Fading Text is a new feature I’m developing in conjunction with the WordPress team to encourage blog and web site readers to read content faster and more efficiently. This cutting-edge technology slowly reduces the brightness of web site content over approx. 90 seconds until it is nearly illegible, making it necessary for the reader to speed-read or risk squinting and eye damage. Users who are slow readers may be required to refresh the page one or more times to finish content, which is annoying and further reinforces the need to read quickly.

Click to enter and see how it looked.

Scott Bradford has been putting his opinions on his website since 1995—before most people knew what a website was. He has been a professional web developer in the public- and private-sector for over twenty years. He is an independent constitutional conservative who believes in human rights and limited government, and a Catholic Christian whose beliefs are summarized in the Nicene Creed. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from George Mason University. He loves Pink Floyd and can play the bass guitar . . . sort-of. He’s a husband, pet lover, amateur radio operator, and classic AMC/Jeep enthusiast.