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Front end developers: stop moving things that I’m about to click on

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Re: Front end developers: stop moving things that I’m about to click on

#62

Post by frereubu »

Tiddles-the2nd wrote: post #48
pull_my_finger wrote: post #42

Honestly, everyone knows this. If you're creating sites that do this in 202X you're just being willfully ignorant/lazy. There are plenty of component libraries for rendering placeholder components in the popular frameworks, react has the suspense API etc etc for exactly problems like this.

When it comes to ad links I've always wondered if it's ignorance or done deliberately to make you click on the ad.

It could well be naive A/B testing. "Oh, this configuration has really increased our click-through rates", not realising that it's because people are trying to click on something, and an ad jumps into the space that they're just about to click.

Re: Front end developers: stop moving things that I’m about to click on

#63

Post by ptx »

pulvinar wrote: post #4

This is also a problem with seemingly stationary UIs, where a button is only shown when the pointer gets close to it. Especially when that button is within a clickable area, such as a thumbnail image. The ideal solution to all of these would be for the UI to keep track of drawing events and disable any click that occurs in proximity to a just-redrawn area, and beep instead.

The recently redesigned Gmail UI is a good example of this: Chats now show up as minimized icons, and moving the mouse pointer over the icon to click it causes a close button to materialize under the pointer.

Re: Front end developers: stop moving things that I’m about to click on

#64

Post by pc86 »

ianai wrote: post #19
NikkiA wrote: post #15

A particular bane of mine is the self-oscillating UIs, youtube is particularly bad at it these days - if the mouse pointer is in 'just the right place' (which is bigger than it sounds) then you get the seek-bar preview frames popup, which moves things just enough that the mouse pointer is no longer over the area that triggers it, so it vanishes, and the whole thing starts again.

That sort of stuff is outright user abuse.

No, it's just a bug.

Re: Front end developers: stop moving things that I’m about to click on

#66

Post by brokenmachine »

krick wrote: post #28

Oh, it gets better. On Android (at least, LG-flavored one — never used any other android phone) I have an issue with inter-app "Share" button popup. It somehow manages to re-shuffle all the suggestions (apps/recipients) exactly in the same amount of time that is natural for me to spend before clicking on the desired contact. Which several times made me send something to a wrong person, which resulted in extremely awk…

The inconsistency of the UI is ridiculous too.

There's countless examples, but the one that really annoys me every day is when the alarms go off.

I have alarms to wake up in the morning, and on the alarm screen you have to swipe to dismiss, but to snooze you have to tap the other button.

Sleepy me has a lot of trouble remembering which one's which, even though I've done it probably a thousand times at this stage.

And even though it's a big 6.7" or whatever it is screen, they make the buttons absolutely microscopic.

Re: Front end developers: stop moving things that I’m about to click on

#67

Post by pc86 »

keltex wrote: post #55
Tiddles-the2nd wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to ad links I've always wondered if it's ignorance or done deliberately to make you click on the ad.

It also has to do with the ad networks. For example with Google adsense, they really encourage you to use responsive ads: "You can use responsive ads to provide a great user experience on your pages. They look good on desktop, tablet, and mobile devices. " But when you use a responsive ad, google can dynamically decide the height of the ad. They don't want you use use a fixed height container: "The parent container h…

Which is strange since Google will also penalize your site for shifting all the content after the initial paint. So they won't let you define a maximum width or height, but will also penalize you for having dynamic width and height elements.

Re: Front end developers: stop moving things that I’m about to click on

#68

Post by vidanay »

NikkiA wrote: post #15

A particular bane of mine is the self-oscillating UIs, youtube is particularly bad at it these days - if the mouse pointer is in 'just the right place' (which is bigger than it sounds) then you get the seek-bar preview frames popup, which moves things just enough that the mouse pointer is no longer over the area that triggers it, so it vanishes, and the whole thing starts again.

YouTube also has the problem that there is almost no dead space to "park" your cursor. You have to carefully place it in between autoplaying previews.
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