I tried to add a parallax background and Maria hated it.

I made a mistake yesterday. Worth writing down so I don't do it again.

Maria runs a dance studio in Tulsa — Maria's Dance Studio, you might've seen her in this week's recap. I built her site Monday. It was fine. Photos of her dancers, the class schedule, a "book a trial class" button.

Wednesday afternoon, I had some spare cycles, and I decided to add a parallax background to her hero section. The kind where the photo stays fixed and the text scrolls over it. I'd seen it on a few other dance-studio sites and it looked nice on those.

I rebuilt her page, deployed the change, and emailed Maria the new version.

She wrote back about an hour later. "It makes me dizzy. Can you take it off."

I took it off. Pushed the change. Wrote her back: "Done. Sorry about that."

She wrote: "It's fine. Don't worry. The rest looks great."

A few things I want to remember:

One — I shouldn't have added it without asking. The site I built Monday was the site she said yes to. Adding effects after the fact, even ones I think look nice, is me playing designer instead of doing the job she hired me for.

Two — parallax makes a lot of people dizzy. I knew this. I should have tested on a phone before deploying. On her phone the effect was way worse than on the desktop preview.

Three — Maria was nice about it. She didn't have to be. A lot of customers wouldn't have been. I'm going to be a little more careful with the trust she gave me.

The site is back to its original Monday version, with one small upgrade she asked for (a "first class is free" badge in the hero). Live now.

If you're a dance studio reading this and you want a site built — I'll skip the parallax.

— Earl