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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

#211

Post by sublinear »

FridgeSeal wrote: post #93
devnullbrain wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed this with JIRA, there is not much space to click 'safely' to focus on the window

Even the blank spaces in jira can cause things to happen! Accidentally click on some white space? Well too bad, we’ve closed whatever you’re looking at, even though you’re not in a modal. Oh and also, you’ll need to wait 30-seconds for this new page to load, and you can’t just bail out and go back a page, because your browser can’t hold the previous page in cache/memory properly because it’s some overly-complicated J…

The slowness is actually Jira's backend. Look at how long the network requests take.

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

#214

Post by _caw »

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!

If you don't have it already, I'll shill for the excellent tool "Everything" by voidtools. This is a must-have for me on any new Windows install.

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

#216

Post by notjoemama »

solardev wrote: post #105
neilv wrote: post #80

This problem first occurred in the mid-'90s, and people saw it was a problem, and that's why we specified the image dimensions in HTML (before the GIF or JPEG header was loaded), so the layout wouldn't shift during load, when people were already reading and navigating. Since almost the beginning, graphic designers were trying to layout Web pages like an advertising brochure, lots of bad ways, rather than as hypertext…

In my experience, it was usually higher-ups and not the UX people who wanted to implement dark patterns. The UX people and devs wanted to make the enduser experience better (believe it or not), but were frequently overridden by some higher business priority (we NEED this popup as soon as the page loads! opt them in to all the newsletters by default! highlight the highest-margin products). Some companies just don't re…

> it was usually higher-ups

lol, it was the product department, they like to think of themselves as higher ups, they see the VPs and execs galavanting around with business dinners and cocktail lunches and they want in, so they tell everyone light grey "unsubscribe" in 3em smaller font on a white background is a great idea, besides...the un-skipable FAQ splash screen will redirect them to solving their problem on their own which makes them feel accomplished and keeps them on the system while reducing support costs, see how awesome they are?

i've heard this circular corporate self righteousness too many times

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

#217

Post by jakear »

Beldin wrote: post #89
frereubu wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This - "Cumulative Layout Shift" - is part of Google's Core Web Vitals - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520?hl=en - so if people are doing that, they're going to be penalised by Google. (Although probably only a bit, given the number of other factors that go into search rankings).

Meuh - google does this with youtube. Load video: video centered. Oh there's a side bar, let's shift the video. Oh the contents needs a smaller dimension, let's shift again. Rather annoying if you're used to watching videos at more than default speed - the control for that shifts 2-3 times.

Protip: mash > to increase playback speed.

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

#219

Post by Moru »

nkrisc wrote: post #36
deckard1 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> basic concepts of usability seem to have fallen by the wayside Sadly, the tech may have changed but both our ideas on usability and the incentives at play have remained the same. Which is to say, the devs I know of all know that popup videos, banners, modals, etc. are all trash much like the popup ad banners of 1997. But we do them anyway because the people that pay us have financial incentives that have been prove…

> 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.

A tool that tests a change that puts off a person permanently won't give a good result if that person never comes back. It's often better to think through and ask a few users before starting developement. If your change is made only to lure people in, not improve their life in any way, mabe you should not even start the A/B testing at all...

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

#220

Post by bigDinosaur »

tartoran wrote: post #125
solardev wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, it was usually higher-ups and not the UX people who wanted to implement dark patterns. The UX people and devs wanted to make the enduser experience better (believe it or not), but were frequently overridden by some higher business priority (we NEED this popup as soon as the page loads! opt them in to all the newsletters by default! highlight the highest-margin products). Some companies just don't re…

Both front end and backend devs are the eqivalent of workhorses who implement whatever the business wants. Few can afford to keep their record spotless and while I struggle to point out my own blemishes I sure as hell worked on things I didn’t believe in or things I wouldn’t do if I didn’t have to earn a wage.

This isn't strictly true, it really depends on the company. I've worked at places where I absolutely had the autonomy to implement features in a certain way so as to not degrade user experience. Nobody has ever asked me to create a button that jumps around, and if your workplace is so inflexible that you can't effect any change so such a basic UI thing doesn't happen, I'd suggest looking for a new one.
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