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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

#241
post #233

Front end developers: Stop making SPAs. 99% of the time I'm forced to use a site that turns out to be a horribly bloated SPA that I only get to see after enabling JS, and which will do irritating things like what is described in the article, among others, it's to do something that could've easily been done with a simple HTML form and perhaps a bit of JS enhancement.

What is a SPA? It's not as if Googling this word will enlighten me.

Single-page app. Basically JS takes over most browser functions and you have your application running in a single "page", so to speak. For example, clicking on a link is a state transition in the app, so instead of telling the browser to go to the new link, the app will push new history to the browser history stack and do the transition itself.

Think youtube.

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

#242
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 Android share menu was trash for many years, but it's definitely been getting some love lately. (If you don't have a Pixel you might still be rocking an older Android version.)

Perhaps a year ago they drastically improved load times, but the recommendations became much more stupid, and in recent builds I feel they've actually struck a good balance.

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

#243
post #73

Google with its 'related searches' that pops up because I clicked on a link and I am almost never interested in this extra information. When trying to filter the relevant javascript it breaks some other stuff on the page (last time I tried a few years ago). Grrmbl

Yes. Has to be the dumbest injection of "stuff" onto a page ever. I wonder if anyone non-accidentally clicks on that stuff.

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

#244

A lot of the responses are talking about how apps should fix this, which I agree with, but I'd also like to see it at a higher level... I'd like to see frontends (browsers, Android, iOS?) remember their widget hit points for ~400ms, and if you've touched somewhere that had a different widget hit point within that time, use the old widget.

Or simply ignore clicks on elements that haven't been visible for longer than a few hundred milliseconds. I'd be happy to click again.

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

#245
post #71

Something that really frustrates me is when an alert pops up on my screen just as I'm about to tap something, so my tapping then dismisses the alert before I've had a chance to read what it said. Hopefully the contents of said alert weren't important, but in most cases I'll never know…

If this is for Android, there's a notification history you can look in. You may have to turn it on first, can't remember if it defaults on or off.

I love Notification History. Before that feature became available, I relied on a third party app to log my notifications so I could check them if I accidentally dismiss any.

However, that unfortunately doesn't help with in-app notifications/alerts.

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

#246
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to check that someone had mentioned this and I’m not the only one. No clue how the article didn’t mention this because I get burned by it daily

It drives me absolutely nuts to the point where I run a UserScript to disable it.

Link?

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

#247

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…

> 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 thei…

Don't forget about "modernizing" the design. It needs to be modern. AKA it needs weeks of design people to copy what some popular website or app did that they personally think looks rad.

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

#248
post #7

I agree with [this][1] idea: > an autocomplete has one chance to reorder per keystroke. if you got it wrong and you have a better ordering a bit later you must “swallow the sadness” (as per the original author of this wisdom) but never change already displayed items [1]: https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/1470751551568363530

I want foo. - Type 'f' - foo appears in the search. - Type 'o', because I type with 10 appendages and getting them to work together requires pipelining. - foo disappears from the search This should never happen.

Concrete example from my firefox url bar -

type 'for' - forums.overclockers.co.uk appears, this is where I'm going, I go here once on most days

type 'forums', because my fingers didn't get the memo to stop - forums.samygo.tv appears at the top, a site I haven't visited (on purpose) in almost a decade, mostly because I don't have that tv any more.

Massively annoying.

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

#249

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 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.

I love the optimism about human nature implied by the use of the phrase "not realising".
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