On the carousel we used to have

There was, for one regrettable week, a rotating carousel on the homepage. Bram built it on a slow Tuesday, the kind where Beatrice is down and a person needs something to do with his hands. It auto-played. It had arrows nobody pressed and dots nobody counted. It is gone now, and we do not discuss the circumstances.

The case against it is short. A carousel moves while you read, which makes you read a moving target. It hides four things out of five and shows you the wrong one first. It asks you to wait for the slide you wanted, then slides past it. Della timed the homepage with it and without it, wrote both numbers in the ledger in fountain pen, and that settled the discussion.

What slides now is the train, and only the train. The 8:14 crosses the homepage now and then because the train is the point, not a thing standing in front of the point. It has no arrows. You can ignore it and still find the coffee, which is more than the carousel ever allowed.

Bram is back on the roaster with Number Nine, where the only thing that turns is a drum, which is allowed. If you feel the pull of a carousel on your own site, sit with the feeling until it passes. It always passes. Put the one thing that matters first, leave it there, and let the train do the moving.