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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

#201

Post by plorg »

vidanay wrote: post #68
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.

Relatedly, many websites have nowhere to tap that doesn't do anything. If you try to select some text then want to tap away (to clear the copy/select all/etc popup) you can't do so without navigating away from the page or causing something else unwanted to happen.

This gets doubly frustrating when navigational elements don't contain actual anchor links. If you long-tap on mobile to open in a new tab, the browser decides you are selecting text and there is almost no way to dismiss the resulting copy/etc popup without tapping elsewhere on the page - which you cannot do without navigating elsewhere or otherwise causing an unwanted action.

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

#203

Post by bhauer »

The iOS keyboard's suggestions are the worst offender here. They always lag more than other virtual keyboards I've used, and I routinely end up selecting a different suggested word than I intended because they change from beneath my finger. I can't tell you how infuriating the iOS keyboard is.

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

#205

Post by progre »

cm2187 wrote: post #90
bombcar wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot figure out how "upd" shows Windows Update but "update" does not.

But most of all it doesn’t seem to be deterministic. Very often I get a different behavior on the second attempt. Search in windows puzzles me. Like I don’t get why it takes so long to search files in explorer, while traversing the same folder structure programmatically takes milliseconds. Hard computer science problem!

I think search in windows makes a stab at searching content as well, and not just straight text. This means unpacking zips, loading excel files etc.

But, yeah, it sucks.

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

#206

Post by scubbo »

ryandrake wrote: post #182
soulofmischief wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

I'm sorry to inform you that, by hovering over the video, you have Engaged with the Algorithm and thus demonstrated that the auto-play is Good, Actually.

Short-sighted optimization for engagement is the cause of an overwhelming majority of the problems on the Internet.

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

#207

Post by bhauer »

mcv wrote: post #110

My biggest frustration for this is the typing completion on Android. I'm typing, and while I'm typing another character for the word, I see the word I want listed above the keyboard. But just as I hit the word, the suggestions update and my word is replaced by another. And often my word is still listed, but in a different place, which js incredibly annoying. Or sometimes the word disappears, despite it still being a…

Same thing happens all the time to me on the iOS virtual keyboard. The root problem, in my opinion, is that word suggestions lag far too much. They are refreshed at least a few hundred milliseconds after your last keystroke.

I know Windows Phone is long dead, but its virtual keyboard was consistently superior at providing suggestions that were well-aligned with user intent and not awkwardly delayed such that options shifted while the user's finger was in-flight.

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

#209

Post by bhauer »

ajjenkins wrote: post #8

I agree that this is extremely annoying. It happens to me all the time with the iOS keyboard suggestions. For websites, Google calls the Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) and it’s one of the Core Web Vitals they use for measuring website performance. https://web.dev/cls/

Same here. All the time with the iOS keyboard. It's infuriatingly slow with suggestions. They always refresh well after my finger has already started moving to select one.

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

#210

Post by stuart78 »

I don’t disagree with the points here, certainly have my own list of this category of pet peeve. One other peeve is “do better” as a linguistic device which we’ve see flourish in the last few years. To me, it consistently reads as arrogant and condescending towards the person in need of correction. Rather than this simplistic mandate, perhaps a more specifically helpful call to attention.
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