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Comment by cameronh90 | Hacker News Reader

You think people actually read what's on the screen...?

Never done tech support I take it!

So how do you expect them to use your product if you strawmen them as people incapable of reading?

Because they’ll only read what they believe is essential to their goal. Small text below a form element does not scream “critical” it doesn’t get read. I’ve watched many users use websites: they only read what they think is important and skip everything else.

Not just naive users either. I am very computer literate and yet I find myself in situations where I've skipped that text and only find it when I go back.

It makes me think when I'm designing things. If I have problems with stuff like that, how can I make it better.

Really, if people read everything they'd never get anything done. They see dozens to hundreds of things marked visually as important that they'll do fine ignoring, every single day. Of course they often miss the one or two per day that they actually needed to read.

Then there's the way styles are so different, especially on the web. Horribly user-hostile. How does this site mark something as important, assuming it bothers in the first place? Who knows. And if I'm only planning to be on it for 30s, I'm not going to learn that.

>. And if I'm only planning to be on it for 30s, I'm not going to learn that.

It's a standard UI control and it is used pretty often.

I guarantee you fewer than 50% of people who use a desktop computer at least once a week know how to multi-select and range-select using shift and ctrl on them, though. That's why you need the text—which many will, for reasons that are actually pretty good, ignore.

Or you could just use a better control.

It is standard but it is not used often. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I saw one used that want some ancient, intranet application built on Cold Fusion.

Many users don’t even know you can use a key shortcut to copy/paste.

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