Hacker News Reader

Comment by summitsummit | Hacker News Reader

The best method I've found to increase positive engagement is actually to just have a fake 'x' such that clicking it just triggers the ad. I've noticed this more frequently on the web nowadays, and based on the click through rates, the target demographic is absolutely _obsessed_ over this feature.

View on HN

Don't get me started on dialog boxes that put the "cancel" button on the wrong side. Much like toilet paper, there is one way to display it, all other methods are heresy worthy of nothing less than immediate exterminatus.

(partially kidding, but only partially.)

If you have cats, the 'proper way' to hang the TP is the opposite way of what you absolutists think is the One True Way.

I'm starting to suspect that the loudest voices are cats who have either learned to type or to pay for lobbyists, trying to push your feline agenda on the rest of us.

Have had two generations of cats in our house, and always the toilet paper the proper way. Never had an issue.

On the other hand, we have to keep the toilet seat down or they'll try to drink toilet water.

Cats are the devil, and I have reasons to believe they've recently entered into an alliance with the human infant community.

I begun suspecting that one day when my wife was preparing dinner. Soon after she took the meat from the fridge to work on it, our baby started crying and making noise for absolutely no reason. My wife immediately dropped everything and went to investigate, and the cat used this opportunity to attempt to steal our dinner meat.

Ever since, I've been noticing many more cases where the baby and the cat are either simultaneously attempting to do things they're not allowed to, or the baby starts distracting us while the cat goes out to carry out some mischief. It's all coordinated too well to be happenstance.

My friend had a pug like this once. Dog was as old as father time. Needed help making it outside to relieve himself before he finally left us. But I SWEAR that dog moved like greased lightning if you left a plate on the table to go check on the kid, as he'd make it from one side of the living room to another in the time it took you to take three steps and check in on the other room, hop up on a chair and your dinner very rapidly became his dinner.

I thought our cats were generally stupid because they could never do the jigsaws I assigned to them, solve a Rubiks cube or see 2cm in front of their faces (they are long-sighted).

But I have come to believe they are far smarter than me, particularly with scheming methods of sneaking around to quietly appear when they can get food. One used to push donut boxes off the side so that they would burst open, and would then run off with a donut. I have no idea why he wanted to eat donuts. He also tried to eat bread through the wrapper. Or they fein illness. Our one cat had an operation on his leg so we put a little box as a stepping stone so that he could get onto the bed, and then onto the window sill. Turns out he didn't need it at all and could jump perfectly fine, but would still use the box all the time.

They're really clever, just not at jigsaws or sudoku.

>Our one cat had an operation on his leg so we put a little box as a stepping stone so that he could get onto the bed, and then onto the window sill. Turns out he didn't need it at all and could jump perfectly fine, but would still use the box all the time.

The problem is cats are really good at hiding pain - being physically able to jump doesn't mean it isn't uncomfortable or painful for him.

We have a pair of very senior cats (18/19ish years old) and make sure the house has little staircases dotted around to make getting on to their regular lounging spots easier, as we noticed they prefer to use a step if something happened to be available - while they are still fairly mobile, I suspect they are developing some level of arthritis. Given they've been good companions for nearly two decades it's the least we can do to make sure they're comfortable.

This is a good point. Sadly our fluffy friend had to be put down due to FIP and I hope we made him as comfortable as possible during his life - we didn't take away his step anyway. I still miss him and it has been years.

Try 3x water dishes, non chlorinated water, change them every day. Stopped mine drinking from the toilet.

Same goes for toddlers. It's harder to unspool the entire roll if it's "the wrong way". I hate it.

But there isn't only one way to order it. Some OS' (I forgot which) had convention dictate that the positive confirmation button was in the rightmost corner, with other lesser buttons to the left. In this order, "Cancel" appears first, but further from the corner.

As long as you're consistent.

Apps which lay their buttons out contrary to the conventions of their platform are evil. Apps which randomize the positions of their buttons are unspeakably worse.

Cancel button is obsolete, the customers want to be reminded later.

No! I detest the dialog boxes that ask a question and then the only options are "Yes" or "Skip for now"/"Set up later". I want to confirm "No".

impossible, statistics show that 0% of customers chose "No" when not given a choice. Ergo you do not exist.

Those stats explain everything! It certainly sums up my experience on the modern web - awful and slow!

Reminds me of Zelda, Ocarina of Time. They switched up the cancel and repeat buttons for different dialogues just to mess with you.

> have a fake 'x' such that clicking it just triggers the ad.

I always, always thought this is what X buttons do, so I was simply closing the tab :))

I've seen a lot of clickbait pages where the next button shows up and 10 seconds later at the end of the page load there's reflow and then an ad is placed where the next button used to be! So you end up clicking through an add on every page unless you wait for a long and random amount of time!

That's the evilest thing I can imagine!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com