Paypal's logo designed to look like a recommendation? • Hacker News Board

Re: Paypal's logo designed to look like a recommendation?

#51

Post by Kliment » Thu, Dec 16, 2010, 5:22 AM UTC

AndrejM wrote: post #39

colanderman wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get this... I have a 90dpi monitor and subpixel antialiasing on Linux is beautiful. I should also point out that antialiasing (and subpixel rendering in particular) is designed for low pixel densities. High pixel density monitors do not need antialiasing. (This is why printed font rasterizers such as Metafont do not perform antialiasing.)

I've noticed that on some monitors antialiasing looks fantastic, while on others not. My sister's laptop has a smaller screen and enabled antialiased fonts, and they really do look great. But on my Samsung 2232BW, which is a 22" 1680x1050 monitor, antialiased fonts just look really bad. So maybe it has to do with more than just DPI, but generally I've read that high-DPI screens have no trouble at all with displaying…

It's likely they have a different pixel color order. If the subpixels are not in the order the algorithm expects, it will look worse than without aa.

Re: Paypal's logo designed to look like a recommendation?

#52

Post by Kliment » Thu, Dec 16, 2010, 5:23 AM UTC

gabriele wrote: post #24

achompas wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's a post dealing with UX and logo design, two topics that are extremely relevant to developers.

I'm still not convinced, the argument is poorly reasoned. The PayPal button might just look oldish style on purpose because that would imply PayPal is the old player (thus more trustworthy) but it doesn't stand out more than the other buttons. Maybe it does look like a recommended choice just because it's the first one in the row.

The way I see it (and it was poorly explained, I agree) is that because the text below the paypal button looks like it is part of the host website, rather than the button image, it appears that the website is recommending paypal over other payment options.

Re: Paypal's logo designed to look like a recommendation?

#53

Post by mgunes » Thu, Dec 16, 2010, 6:56 AM UTC

chc wrote: post #36

lwhi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, point taken - I think most people today, aren't naive enough to take these messages at face value. As marketeers become more sophisticated, and choose to employ more devious methods of swaying opinion - the ability of the general population to successfully decode these messages improves. Take a look at some advertising messages from the 50s, or some propaganda posters from the first or second world war - their…

Do you know how many people get taken in by phishing scams every day? Do you know how many people blindly click the top result for the search "facebook login" and assume it is Facebook's login page even when it's on a different domain? Do you know how many people even know what a Web browser is? The answers to the above questions are, respectively: "A lot," "A huge number" and "Less than 8%, according to a Google sur…

Right; and the people in the "What is a browser?" video [1] are not stupid; they're busy, have adapted very well to the extreme compartmentalization of 21st century Westernized life and knowledge, and are largely uninterested in what we know as computing. To invoke a central theme of "Paradox of the Active User" [2]: they're all experts in one field or another, and would make many a hacker here look like someone who doesn't know what something as supposedly generic as a "browser" is in their respective fields. That's far from "stupid".

You could replace a good 80% of the instances of "stupid" with "busy" in design discussions, and you'd end up with better discussions.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4MwTvtyrUQ

[2] http://www.useit.com/alertbox/activeuserparadox.html

Re: Paypal's logo designed to look like a recommendation?

#54

Post by timdorr » Thu, Dec 16, 2010, 7:27 AM UTC

NumberFiveAlive wrote: post #6

In our online store 'The safer, easier way to pay.' is a part of the page. The logo gif and the markup is part of the specs when you implement Paypal. The code looks like this, and came directly from the Paypal implementation guide: The safer, easier way to pay. Edit: formatting

Which is smart if they're going for SEO. That button shows up everywhere.

Case in point, do a search for "Click here": http://www.google.com/search?q=click+here That's the ubiquity of the default generated code for inserting a Flash file on a web page.

PayPal has likely spent a ton of resources on figuring out exactly what is the best text to put there (and in what format), because they don't get to change it after the fact.

Re: Paypal's logo designed to look like a recommendation?

#55

Post by kiiski » Thu, Dec 16, 2010, 9:03 AM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #47

mlinsey wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your concern is legitimate, but you'd have to look at real data to see if the impact of that confusion is outweighed by the impact of forcing people to register for another payments service just to buy your product. I know that I don't want a PayPal account or Google Payments account. Without the option to use Amazon Payments, I would have not bought the Humble Indie Bundle. I suspect many people felt the same about…

I seem to recall being able to make a payment with a credit-card via PayPal without setting up an account. That was at least a few years ago; is that no longer possible?

It is.