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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

#181

Post by userbinator »

aendruk wrote: post #116
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #20

Related to this, here's a pet peeves of mine. When YouTube is buffering a video, it shows a spinner and you can't press play or pause. Usually if something is buffering a lot I'm in a place with spotty internet, so I'd like to pause until I'm somewhere with better Internet. If I say pause, you should not continue playing the video under any condition. I have made my intent clear.

Reminds me of my Dell monitor. Years old muscle memory is: 1. Unplug laptop from monitor 2. Power off monitor but step one triggers some automatic input detection mode for about 10 seconds during which the monitor ignores its power button .

I have my monitors set to always use the same input, but the reponsiveness of the buttons/OSD on some of the newer monitors is noticeably laggy for some reason. At least 100ms if not more between pressing a button and seeing the response. Ironically, I also have some Samsung LCD monitors from around 2 decades ago (they still work, but are rather small) where the OSD response is instantaneous.

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

#182

Post by ryandrake »

soulofmischief wrote: post #128
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.

A general golden UX rule is to never cause layout shifts on hover events, preventing this sort of thrashing. Unfortunately, Google/YouTube and others have lost the plot and no longer employ good UX professionals in their flagship products.

I really wish UIs would stop doing things on hover events altogether. Just because I stop my mouse doesn't mean I intend to do anything, let alone auto-play a video or have some pop-up explain something to me. Let me rest my goddamn hand for a second!

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

#184

Post by X-Cubed »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #138
princevegeta89 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slightly unrelated, but all these media streaming apps and services like Netflix/Prime Video/Youtube etc. are so horrible by automatically playing whatever the fuck I am currently focused on, although I am just scrolling to somewhere to find my content. There is no way for users to focus "out" of the thumbnails, other than focusing on a different thumbnail, and it keeps playing the nonsense. All I would do is go back…

At least on YouTube you can turn that off.

You can turn it off on Netflix too: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/2102

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

#186

Post by yieldcrv »

All the product teams think your accidental clicks on their broken UI are “engagement”, validating the continued use of that layout

And they also think your frustration is “longer engagement”, validating their KPI and job security and companies ability to sell shares

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

#187

Post by blurbleblurble »

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…

This is so so so so bad. It's always such a risky situation too. The instant-send shortcuts pop up right as I'm about to tap something else, causing me to send something directly to the wrong person with no intermediate step. What if I'm sharing something confidential or sensitive? Way too much room for error.

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

#188

Post by pixel_tracing »

I thought this would be about frontend websites with ads, to me that is much worse problem than these mobile apps. At least mobile apps (native ones) provide a unified UI and framework, front end sites insult the user by ads which move the html around on the fly.

Anyone know what I mean? Can anyone relate to my frustration?

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

#189

Post by nkrisc »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #97
nkrisc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's the whole shell game of A/B testing. You're testing your way to what works best for you and not your users. A/B testing is a tool. Any tool can be misused.

On one hand: If a tool is being constantly and egregiously misused at large scale, might it not be reasonable to assign a degree of blame to the tool (e.g. tool has a “pit of success” that encourages/permits misuse. On the other hand: marketing and execs could misuse and abuse an empty room if they do desired, so I wonder why we bother giving them tools in the first place.

> If a tool is being constantly and egregiously misused at large scale

That’s quite the claim.

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

#190

Post by climb_stealth »

jamiek88 wrote: post #163
Godel_unicode wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least on YouTube you can turn that off.

You can?! Investigation time!

Holy cow, I had no idea. This is how to do it: when on the youtube page, click on the profile button in the top right -> settings -> playback and performance on the left -> disable inline playback.

/edit: It still plays videos on hover after changing it. Only now there is no player popup anymore.

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