I’m always interested in the ways people learn to browse the web more effectively. This learning seems to center around getting better at filtering out noise and getting straight at the stuff they care about. We have a constant battle between the human capacity to adapt and the desire for publishers and designers to get people to pay attention to ads and appreciate their design skills.

Jakob Nielsen has a new study that shows that people have gotten good at ignoring images that don’t add value what’s on the page. People have figured out how to identify and ignore images that are not “real.” It seems that the leading practitioners of Web design have already figured this out. Most advice these days seems to be to cut the fluff, and this study confirms that instinct is correct. People are getting better and better at filtering out non-meaningful things on Web pages anyway, so it’s better not to put them there in the first place.