Brochureware

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A brochureware website is a business website that has very infrequently updated content, and little of it. Often the site has been developed as a direct translation of existing printed promotional materials, hence the name.

Brochureware sites therefore take little advantage of the capabilities of the web that are missing in printed publication. Often the only hyperlinks on the site are in the site's navigation menu.

Brochureware sites can be produced using WYSIWYG web authoring software, and consequently are often authored by people with little or no technical knowledge. Major elements of pages in a brochureware site are often delivered as inline images, even when these elements can be rendered perfectly well as text. This is very poor accessibility practice, as well as having a negative impact on the site's search engine rankings.

Other common traits of brochureware sites include fixed width layouts, stock photographs of smiling models, and excessive use of information-free content delivered by web browser plugins such as Adobe Flash.

Alternatively, brochureware used to refer to a planned but non-existent software product like vaporware, but with the added implication that marketing is actively selling and promoting it (they've printed brochures). Brochureware is often deployed as a strategic weapon; the idea is to con customers into not committing to an existing product of the competition's. It is a safe bet that when a brochureware product finally becomes real, it will be more expensive than and inferior to the alternatives that had been available for years.[1]

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Jargon File