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Comment by JoeOfTexas | Hacker News Reader

I can't focus with this circle thing.

> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This transcends tangential - it's so annoying it's unusable.

The guideline is there specifically because these things are super annoying. So annoying that talking about them can eat up the whole thread, as this thing is threatening to do.

The guideline seems to be about the common annoyances. That massive yellow thing is definitely not common, and personally had me immediately "nope" off the page.

No the guideline is about not filling threads with one's irritation, however righteous. If it was too annoying to read, that's regrettable but largely interesting to the person who didn't read it. If a wasp is pestering you the entire time you read a piece you probably don't feel the urge to comment about it on HN right? Same thing.

I'm sure the New Yorker wouldn't tolerate this level of irritation. Or were you not shown there?

Maybe they can't use you.

Sweeney shifts from ham to ham
Stirring the water in his bath.
The masters of the subtle schools

Are controversial, polymath.

If the HN link directly resulted in wasps showing up heck yes I'd be commenting about it

The cursor issue was the single biggest takeaway from the article, positive or negative. The headline should have been about it.

Is there a rule about backseat moderating?

registeredcorn posted a workaround. I've pinned it to the top of the thread. Let's stay on topic now please.

It's even more annoying than usual because if you disable scripts you'll find that there's no cursor at all, because the page's css has

    main {
        cursor: none;
    }

Same. Based on a glance through the minimized JS here[0], it looks like it's a custom animation implemented using GreenSock's "TweenLite" [1]. I'm crossing fingers that this isn't a sign of a larger trend.

[0] https://sarahguo.com/script/minify/blog-post-text-min.js

[1] https://greensock.com/tweenlite

Thanks, I went from "neat!" to "arghghlgh" in 3 seconds tops.

Why bother writing words if you're going to deface them with a chew toy?

Ironically "how not to drive your web content off a cliff" applies here.

Running these two lines in the browser console removes the circle and restores the cursor:

  document.querySelectorAll('.container-mouse,.mouse-pointer,.circle-path').forEach(n => n.remove());
  document.getElementsByTagName('main')[0].style.cursor = 'initial';

Agreed. I can't even tell if the circle is the worst thing, but it doesn't behave like a cursor as it moves off the screen while scrolling, but jumps back (with visual noise) when the mouse if moved even 1px. Anyway, this grabbed my focus and I did not finish reading the article.

The content actually looks really nice on mobile. But on desktop it is a travesty. We left these cursor modifiers behind in the early 2000s for a reason.

Maybe this entire website should be re-submitted as an anti-user experience.

I don't like it a lot as an implementation but thinking about how I read webpages I will often highlight sections of text I am reading as I go so I don't actually hate it as an idea.

I also enjoy reading non-narrative physical books with a pointer.

EDIT: I think I find the blueness intrusive. I would prefer a smaller yellow circle with pure black text maybe.

It's brutal. For an otherwise bit of decent advice, that is some really bad design.

Paste in console to remove:

var style = document.createElement('style'); style.innerHTML = ` main { cursor: auto} .mouse-pointer {display: none} .container-mouse {display: none} `; document.head.appendChild(style);

Firefox reader mode made it readable for me.

I scrolled it off the bottom and used the mouse wheel.

Still annoying though since I like to keep my place with the mouse pointer.

Looks fine in w3m. Granted, the modern web mostly stopped being usable years and years ago...

Can't figure out what the purpose of the circle is.

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