Comments on: Page Dimming

By: Jakub Linowski

Jakub Linowski — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:58:29 +0000

Agreed. Good point.

By: Peter Severin

Peter Severin — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:47:00 +0000

It's a very useful technique and I had users that specifically requested support for it in WireframeSketcher. Technically it's easy to implement using a semi-transparent rectangle overlay. Here's how it looks in WireframeSketcher:
http://wireframesketcher.com/samples/PageDimming….

By: Emily Leahy-Thieler

Emily Leahy-Thieler — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 02:43:58 +0000

I've found that same thing and sometimes it appears as if it has a crosshatch pattern fill. I usually convert to JPG and then from JPG to PDF to prevent that. It's not a fast process, but a viable workaround.

By: Emily Leahy-Thieler

Emily Leahy-Thieler — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:26:39 +0000

I really like page dimming when I experience it in software and online. It's a nice way to remove distractions without forcing the user down into a tunnel and then back out again. I've used it a few times, but had a lot of pushback from engineers. It's always a negotiation!

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:23:16 +0000

It's a handy technique, but I've found that when you open up a PDF of a Visio doc with transparent elements, it near as crashes Acrobat Reader completely. Anyone else experienced this?

By: JamesD

JamesD — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:54:51 +0000

I do this from time to time (usually using a semi-transparent layer in Omnigraffle) but there is a slight danger if used improperly. If you're doing it to demonstrate an actual behaviour – such as dimming the page behind a modal layer – it's fine, but if you're doing it to highlight something for the purposes of the documentation, it can cause confusion.

I once used the technique purely to draw a client's attention to something in the document, but they thought I was proposing a behaviour on the page.

By no means the end of the world, but something worth bearing in mind when using this technique.