No, I Don’t Want to Subscribe to Your Newsletter
python.sh
python.sh
I did publish the Firefox add-on (desktop only) just so I could avoid having to use web-ext or temporarily install it every time I run FF. It's a complete hassle to set up and configure at the moment. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ssure/?src=se...
Edit: Source is here https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/files/browse/601156... in case you want to try and not worry about it doing something shady.
My need is to remove annoyances like the Kardashians, but I had a thought. Eons ago, I decided to "protect" the Wikipedia page on the clitoris. There was a tasteful picture of an exposed woman, including scientific naming of all parts of the female genitalia. That page's picture was under constant assault from religious zealots who deleted the picture. I constantly returned it. Their reasoning was that having such a picture would make the page haram, not-halal, or a sin for people in developing countries. I countered that their issues with an encyclopedia were exactly that, their issues and it was their responsibility to block offending images. We should not censor the internet to the most easily offended.
Why does all that story matter? Well it got me thinking you could tweak (and maybe monetize?) your add-on to remove haram, non-halal, or sinful content on the user side. The type of people that don't want to see clitoris and porn links are exactly the type that don't want to accidentally see certain content. They may even want to pay for this~~
My 2 cents.
I've looked for something that does this without luck and had been toying with making it myself at some point.
Edit: Here's a screenshot of Google after adding the rule and searching "Kardashian" http://imgur.com/a/ltuAk
This is why machine learning was invented. Context smart blocking of annoying things.
"..Host your data in our high availability butt..."
Thanks OP.
I realize I'm well off the curve here, but I'd still love a browser killfile plug in with:
- fine-grained cookie management by name/secure status/path
- Make every cookie a session cookie in a given domain
- "Cookie pipes": I'd like the ability to execute scripts on cookie value changes, optionally returning a new value
- Javascript exec turned on/off by domain
- Access to various Javascript methods controlled by domain/path
I'm probably forgetting some things from a list I made a while back.
Opera used to have this ;'-( before they fired the entire Presto (browser engine) team and switched to webkit/chrome.
I've been giving the "modern" Opera a test run for the past week and while it's still way snappier by miles (compared to firefox and chrome, on a slow laptop) but it still misses so many features I used to depend on in the 2000s.
Yes you can get add-ons for almost all of the functionality, but you'll grind firefox or chrome to a halt before you even get close the the functionality of the old Opera that just came with all that stuff, batteries included.
(before accusations of bloat: installer/executable size was tiny, I seem to remember below 1MB for medium-old versions)
That one you can get with uMatrix, which gives you a table of Domain x {cookie, css, image, plugin, script, XHR, frame, other}. You can use this table to selectively decide what gets loaded, and what gets blocked. The default rules are, everything "first-party" (from the domain you're visiting) is allowed, but only images and CSS are allowed from any other sources. Beyond per-primary-domain overrides, you can also whitelist all or some of the content permanently in settings.
I've been using it for the past year or so, and while occasionally annoying, it makes the Web a saner place to visit, and it also makes it very obvious just how much useless crap people make you download to display their site.
EDIT: also, favouriting your comment for future reference. Maybe one day I get pissed enough and write the plugin you describe.
Write an ad blocker you're celebrated, write an add-on that's hides divs that mention <insert political movement here>, you're a villain.
1) Shows the text even if a modal has already tried to obscure it.
2) Ensures a legible font and contrast.
3) Undoes stupid scroll jacking. Yay, the text scrolls smoothly again.
4) Fixes the scroll bar so that it provides an accurate indication of how far through the page I've read, since the non-text crap I don't care about isn't part of the view now.
5) Allows me to copy text w/o worrying about anything else getting inserted to the clipboard.
6) Doesn't disclose to the site how far I've scrolled, which is none of their business.
And probably other good things I'm forgetting. Tapping the reader view icon as soon as the page loads has become habitual.
I obviously run an ad blocker as well.
This is in both iOS and macOS. Reader view FTW. It's the next best thing to disabling Javascript entirely.
Chrome and Firefox should include an as good reader view built in.
I prefer the Evernote 'simplified article' mode through safari or chrome extentions. It provides a simplified article, background colour similar to HN, and enables highlighting and brief comments.
That being said, the safari one works fine. I use it for 99% of articles, and on the 1% I go back to Evernote if I want to save the article, make a couple of highlights, or leave a comment.
Sure you and I never click on those boxes, or disable javascript on offending pages, but the majority of web users do not. Many people do stick in an e-mail address, even if it's a bulk mail/spam address. Still, some people put in an address they actually check. That tiny amount of people, generate revenue.
I mean really ... the problem is people. It's okay though, one day we'll go extinct .. or we'll colonise beyond our solar system .. or someone already did that 2nd part and we're just in a simulation of said creatures.
Sleep well.
If you have good content people will search hard for a way to get on your email list if necessary, i've done it before.
I ask, because that doesn't match up well with my (anecdotal) experience as an end user. When I'm searching for software to either replace something I'm currently using but dissatisfied with or when I'm doing something new (to me), I want to demo candidates so I can get a feel whether I like them or not. I don't mind paying for quality software (though much quality software is free), but requiring credit card info for even a demo is the exact sort of hurdle which I won't put up with. The cost (in time, and potentially wasted time in the future) is just too high.
[1] I'll fill out short "email, name, company (if optional), industry" form but only if I don't think some salesperson is going to give me a call.
For business purchases, the compliance and other risk is way too high for me to do that. You get knocked off the list if you require that.
Some companies don't want "users" they want paying customers. The article does not do a good job at all at explaining the context of their frustration other than "Ugh I don't like being treated like this, therefore other people don't, therefore it's bad".
I'd say the article is downright bad. It assumes there is only one use for a modal: abuse.
For work, where web applications like Google suite matter, I use Chrome.
Some time ago browser developers realized that letting Javascript open new windows was a bad idea and every browser now has a setting (on by default) to block pop-ups. IMO now it's time to introduce a few other anti-abuse settings. My candidates are:
- code execution on "scroll" events
- CSS animations (web devs, your transitions are NEVER smooth, even of MBP)
- position:fixed (auto-replace to position:static)I've gotten pretty good results from a bookmarklet that converts `position: fixed` elements to `display: none`.
javascript:for (let e of document.querySelectorAll('*')) if (/fixed|sticky/.test(getComputedStyle(e).position)) e.style.position = 'static';
But, they won't be added to Firefox unless they are first added to Chrome, and they certainly won't be added to Chrome.
Firefox was I believe the first browser to include blocking of popups, and it was said to be irresponsible and harmful to advertisers. But the days of Firefox being at all disruptive are long over.
No it was Opera. Same for tabbed browsing (can you imagine not having that today? only spawning new windows?).
So please stop beeping at me and popping up a chat modal.
One of our clients (selling clothes targeting 40+ women) had their sales almost double when we added in a simple livechat widget.
Since I discovered that they actually put helpful people behind those chats I've started to use them. Now I ask questions with all my online transactions. "How is the warranty? Do clients return this product a lot? Do you have any similar products to recommend me?", etc.
The worst is WPEngine. I already pay for their service, but whenever I look at an article on "How to do X", I hear beep!, and there's a sales chatbox in the corner.
I've taken to starting a chat, letting them know their site is annoying and I'll never use it again, and then closing the page.
The beeping and popping up of some stock image with a 'nice' name is incredibly annoying though.
But yes, I fucking loathe that little "plink" noise it makes. Please don't play sounds while I'm browsing.
"sticking a big ole pop-up in their face can be one of the most effective ways to jolt their attention & grab their email for a return visit." Peep Laja. https://conversionxl.com/popup-defense/?hvid=2EcGFw
But, I counter, so does spamming or making 10000s of automated phone calls.. and we've agreed those things are damaging and unethical - I agree with Dave, it's about time we as an industry considered full screen modals to be dirty and unwelcome.
You'll get a few false flags from people trying to Ctrl+C but so many people use the right-click context menu to copy/paste...you can probably ignore Ctrl+_ entirely and just focus on that window near the top. Most users will pass by that area when going to:
1) Change to another tab
2) Close the tab
3) Type a new search/website in the Omnibar
If somebody is interested in subscribing, then a subscribe box at the bottom or side of the content is fine.
>whenever you go to change tabs with the mouse.
Only fire the event once, as most people will be leaving. Not flipping between tabs.
>If somebody is interested in subscribing, then a subscribe box at the bottom or side of the content is fine.
Research and A/B tests say otherwise. I was sharing a popular method - I don't use it myself. I don't agree with it and I don't browse sites that make use of the annoying pop-up modals.
But the trade off of driving away some users to capture many more is one many people and companies would make.
Or at least, that's me. If I want to go back to navigation, I hit the Home key (the vast majority of systems do have one or two of them...). If I'm scrolling up, it's to read.
I'd much rather close an email-gathering overlay once on a new site, than get inundated with spam or junk calls.
(I say this as both a user and a marketer.)
Spamming and automated phone calls are unsolicited. These popups are not. You are the one in control. You can avoid popups by not going to those sites.
I avoid sites like Forbes because of their weird splash pages but if it's something new what can you do apart from not return?
Not returning is what you can do.
I'm not saying it's not annoying. I'm saying lumping it with telemarketing is different. Telemarketing is annoying even when you do nothing. Whereas with these popups, if you do nothing, you will not get the popups.
The popups are not invading your space. You are going to their space.
The clear trend is just tuning out what you don't want to do deal with, from rantings about religion and politics, to someone trying to sell you shit.
[1]: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users-easi...
A lot of these popups specifically target based on various segments of Google keyword traffic. It's a good start.
You cannot link out without thinking twice, you cannot get links in without worrying about consequences, you grow at exactly the pace that pleases the gods over at the google-plex, and better think twice before you do any guest blogging, and remember the 200 ranking factors at play, and finally, never, ever, ever get on their wrong side.
Oh, and to keep it more fun, just wait till you need to stand in line someday for their customer support. That is a whole another level of batshit psycho crazy.
Why, Thank you, Google. Without you, what will the poor little people of the world do?
If you put one on your site the metrics show a definite upturn in conversion, be it sales or sign-ups or whatever you're pushing. Then you take it down for awhile maybe, then you put it back up with something different and you get the upturn again.
I personally despise them with every bone in my body, but I don't see them ever going away.
Some time ago I've noticed that a few of my friends really enjoy going through newsletter emails and finding out about items that are on sale etc. They wouldn't necessarily look for a newsletter signup form on a website, but when a popup appears something clicks in their brains ("OMG, I really need this!") and they sign up.
I don't like these popups but well, most of the time I'm just not their target.
On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that there were times when I actually got converted by a popup.
When you think of that, if it offers something that's useful to you, clicking on it feels so natural and you don't analyze it too much.
I hope that soon enough a popup blocker will become available that solves the irritation of popups too.
It's very frustrating when you're trying to read something and the page keeps changing its layout for 10 seconds, especially on a mobile device where you can accidentally click on a link or ad pretty easily. Makes me wonder if they do this on purpose...
Can't see any value in these questionnaires, since the population who answers to them must be highly biased. If you spend many hours per day on web, there's probably a dedicated section in your brains scanning for clickable [X], "No thank you", "Close" entities on the view and giving direct commands to your mouse hand.
The equivalent of a pop-up newsletter modal is somebody on the street PULLING you aside, standing directly in front of you and preventing you from going any further until you answer their question. All without bothering to observe what you were doing beforehand. Your choice then is to step back the way you came to avoid the creepy sidewalk-blocking people. Ridiculous, creepy and unacceptable in real life but essentially exactly how web sites treat their visitors.
I agree with you, it's not acceptable (and that is an excellent analogy). Aren't content consumers also to blame here as well though? Viewers put up with it anyway. I'm surprised by top google search results that bring up click-bait junk that requires waiting for a page-full of ads to load and then requires that you click through 10 more pages before you even get to all the information you needed. I think this is an indication that the majority of people are willing to put up with it because otherwise those sites would have a high bounce-back rates and wouldn't have ranked so high.
Edit: I actually read the article and the author makes this point better than I could:
> The only solution is to unite in changing our behavior. We need to give website operators an ultimatum: Remove the modals, or we leave. And we need to make good on that promise. By closing the browser tab, we can let the bounce rate demand what we as users cannot.
Also, in many states, just looking like or actually being over 21 isn't good enough. The liquor license people require that every person in the bar or drinking be able to prove with a valid ID that they're over 21, no matter how old they look or actually are. They're not checking that you're over 21; they're checking that you have a valid ID on you that proves you're over 21, because they get in trouble if you don't.
I'd personally rather spend my free time at a business that doesn't harass me, so when it's up to me I go to more chill bars.
My point being, this behaviour happens in real life too... and some people would rather go to bars that have high-security, dot their Is and cross their Ts. But ultimately the choice is up to both the business and consumer, it doesn't have anything to do with being acceptable or not.
Which is exactly what many stores do, except on the way out (at the register.) They also tend to get pretty annoyed at you when you say "no thanks" to providing a number.
Years ago I remember it being much worse (especially at Radio Shack!). Employees would have to do stuff like enter a fake phone number because the system often didn't have any bypass mechanism etc, so I can understand their annoyance. I recall aborting one sale out of principle when neither of us would budge. I'm pretty sure that wasn't the playbook the store clerk was supposed to be following but oh well!
Which behavior, the asking for phone numbers or the getting annoyed?
Many major chains in the US have some sort of "loyalty" program that requires a phone number, email address, or both.
As for the getting annoyed, I've gotten countless eyerolls and a few snide comments when I've politely declined to give a phone number.
Automatically with a browser plugin, with an address that will even accept your mails. Unfortunately no human will read them in the end, but I'm sure your metrics will be great. I might even accept a cookie so you know I'm already subscribed to your great newsletter.
Now if everybody were to do that...
PS, when forced to give an email (like 5 min ago for this Wifi) just use @mailinator.com with anything prepended.
Of course they will then begin to make automated sign ups harder, maybe with captchas or confirmation links etc. which will also discourage real users and maybe kill this concept in the long run.
In general, I agree. My reaction to most modals is to simply close the tab. Often it's halfway through an article. I can't be bothered to finish it if I'm being interrupted rudely.
1) Subscribe "abuse@(sitedomain)" to the newsletter. I don't know if anyone still uses that convention but it reduces my frustration.
2) Add the site to my ad blocker blacklist so I don't waste my time by visiting again.
Software interfaces are becoming common even in car consoles and heavy equipment. Bad UI is moving from annoying to life threatening.
'9' != 'yes'
Is a life threatening inequality if the '9' on a phone keypad, and the 'yes' is the confirmation of a popup. Are you calling 911 or agreeing to upgrade the os? Dramatically different intents yet indistinguishable if they should occur at the same time.
Popops are perhaps one of the best known examples of user hostile GUI patterns. Popups induce 'mode errors' and violate user security and safety by redirecting input at random and potentially critical moments of user interactions. We've known for a very long time, perhaps since the 90s that the correct way to notify a user must not assume user awareness and must not steal focus. Notifications should be added to a list that can be reviewed buy the user at any time. Never steel focus, never obscure users activity, never assume you have the users full attention or or mental capacity to make choices. The time for such considerations must be chosen by the user.
Old guys like me saw this coming from miles away, it's just history repeating itself.
To give you all a heads-up: in the future browsers will ask you "This site wants to open a new javascript dialog. Show/block"
In the future, every other website will ship their own rendering engine (from some big CDN, of course) that prohibits you from messing with their precious spam. Heck, I honestly do expect some startups doing just this kind of "innovation" as soon as WebAssembly gets slightly more polished and cross-browser, so probably just another year or two from now.
(That shit will be fought with AI/ML nextgen ad-blockers, that would try to "see" what that positioned <div> is - a spammy modal or some legit navigation sidebar... and I don't dare to think any further, as we approach the singularity.)
1. The crowdfunding sites themselves maintain HUGE newsletter lists and use very advanced analytics to determine what to place in those newsletters.
2. For campaigners, the size and activity of your email list is a huge factor in determining your campaign success. Just like this web tool https://www.thunderclap.it/about sending a direct email blast to a good list can mean the difference of a successful hard launch and campaign, or a lackluster or failed campaign. The email lists of the sites themselves which feature several campaigns, are hugely influential on campaign success, and in my experience has at least once lead to the production of 4x our total raise goal in a single platform newsletter feature of our campaign.
Sometimes people do want to be notified. Newsletters are something of a different issue, but the case above seems like a newsletter to me. Especially because we used our first campaign backers + second campaign + interest landing pages and social media gathering email campaigns to continually send emails about new campaigns and products.
Essentially therefore I'm arguing, the ability to gather a quality, targeted email list and generate a recurring newsletter without a 10%+ attrition rate [1] is both difficult and valuable.
[1] CANSPAM compliance requires unsubscribe link, my personal interpretation is 1-click unsubscribe should be the rule, no loading email setting pages behind login walls. Good design is honest. Crowdfunding requiring physical good production in quantity is very difficult for the uninitiated. And then it remains difficult, time consumer over time, and requires constant attention. This is essentially scaling issues but in the physical world. So many of the failed to deliver crowdfunded projects are not so much dishonest as naive, but also consider Jobs' thoughts on the subject
> great artists ship
though Dieter Rams (most famous living Industrial Designer) says
> designers are not fine artists who we are often confused for
This is not a "web tool", this is a spam tool.
> Sometimes people do want to be notified.
No they don't.
> Essentially therefore I'm arguing, the ability to gather a quality, targeted email list and generate a recurring newsletter without a 10%+ attrition rate [1] is both difficult and valuable.
The web is a beautiful dream. It's being destroyed by people that talk about "attrition rates" and "targeted whatever".
> This is not a "web tool", this is a spam tool.
So let's not put the link in as many threads as possible!
Aside: You seem very argumentatively aggressive in your comments. Is that serving you or those you're communicating with?
The first sentence from Wikipedia on "spamming" is:
"Electronic spamming is the use of electronic messaging systems to send an unsolicited message (spam), especially advertising, as well as sending messages repeatedly on the same site."
Do you disagree with this definition?
> Furthermore, this said tool is recommended by Indiegogo's Field Guide, a direct publication of Indiegogo.com, the world's second largest Crowdfunding Platform.
I have nothing against Indiegogo, but it's not very hard to figure out that they have a vested interest in their users spreading their crowdfunding campaigns as far and wide as possible -- they make money if they get funded and they get free advertisement as a side-effect. Why should I care what they think about this issue?
> Aside: You seem very argumentatively aggressive in your comments. Is that serving you or those you're communicating with?
Yes.
Second, newsletter popups, with exceptions such as {Pinterest; Quora; Cook's Illustrated} these popups are not a pay-wall.
The better criticism is of the poor interaction design of such systems that don't treat any click outside of the modal as a modal exit command.
An add-on to dismiss modals should be possible. Most people do ad-removal add-ons by looking for explicit HTML text, but there are more general approaches. Look for a big box that has a high Z index. That's the modal. Then proceed up the tree until you rejoin with the main document text. Delete the subtree with the modal. Then force scrolling behavior to return to the default.
document.getElementsByTagName('html')[0].style.overflow = "scroll";
The css property you're looking for is "overflow," usually on the body or html tag.
It may also be necessary to remove event listeners.
Actually, 90% are from the same few plugins. Unfortunately, those plugs are designed with dark patterns to prevent Element Hiding Helper or Element picker from removing anything from that domain.
Some use use randomized IDs each page creation. The worst offenders remove the page scrollbar during the modal so even if you can hide the modal, you can no longer any pages on that site.
A website covering its content with trash is a good indicator that the content wasn't worth spending your time on in the first place.
Some pages still require Javascript, and SSO is usually a pain, but for those cases I have a Chrome profile with Javascript enabled and a simple Hammerspoon script that launches that profile in incognito mode for the url I have on my clipboard.
Oh, and Gmail basic html mode is so snappy!
I also think we have to differentiate between behavior that is user action based vs. default case. Pop ups were stopped by browsers because they were triggered on page load for example, it was an action that should have produced a deterministic outcome. If part of a page that is not tied to a user action is blocked that is a passively executed scenario and can be used arbitrarily to censor anything by anyone and that's not a place we should move to.
I don't know what to do about this situation other than to write my own paste-in package for newsletter signups, which I don't really have time for. I guess the best thing I can do is announce: if your newsletter prompt doesn't cover the main content of the page, I'm much more likely to subscribe (~20%) than if it's a modal + windowshade (0%).
Extension would delete that DOM subtree rightaway. + some kind of cloud harvest from users reporting false-positives.
Plus how do you determine when it's an unwanted modal? You don't want to block the login popup, for example. Maybe you can block all modals except for the ones generated from a "click" event, but what if the site sets a "click" listener on the <body> tag?
[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/MutationObs...
If more people would do this they could penalize the host.
Is it not true that automatic things are better when experienced at the hands of a human, than a machine? I think this factor is at play here ..
Firstly: most of these modals only show up on exit intent and only once per ~90 days (if you allow cookies), so this ultimatum is fairly hollow.
Secondly: do you value your pageview so highly that you think web publishers must respond to your demands? Are you paying these sites for their content/whatever else you're looking at? If not, then maybe clicking out of a modal once per 90 days is a fair price to pay for whatever it is that you're looking at.
Thirdly: as you mention, the reason these modals are all over the place is that they work. Fortunately, all highly-effective marketing tactics get repeated perpetually until consumers become immune to them...that will surely happen here, you might just need to wait a bit longer.
should note that, like @petecooper below/above, I'm in the newsletter business and don't use these modals. But I also see no reason why people who want to use them shouldn't use them
Another solution is to have ad blockers also block modals, like there is to be for popups
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stoppity-poppity/a...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/behindtheoverlay/l...
I personally only install highly trusted Chrome Extension, I will review those at some point.
On the other hand, if there's a non-popup at the end of post that asks for my email address, and if I liked the content and think more would be useful ... I'll provide it.
Sure there is:
1. Alt-F4
2. Ctrl-Alt-DelIt's almost become a reflex when the page suddenly goes dim to thwack the key before whatever garbage they decided to shove in my face finishes loading.
It's doubly annoying when you have to press that tiny little X with sausage fingers like mine. Not to mention when they are coded to only display an image of an X rather than an actual close link and you get redirected anyways.
I hate these thing with a burning passion.
2. CMD-W
4. CMD-Q