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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

I really wish UIs would stop doing things on hover events altogether. Just because I stop my mouse doesn't mean I intend to do anything, let alone auto-play a video or have some pop-up explain something to me. Let me rest my goddamn hand for a second!

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I'm totally fine with tooltips on hover. In fact, quite often they should appear quicker. And sometimes they don't appear at all when I really want them to. No idea what's going on with that.

But yeah, hover is just for info about the thing you're about to click, not pretending I've already clicked it when I haven't.

The stupid thing about Youtube is that sometimes a video starts playing on hover, in the thumbnail and without sound, and then I actually do click it because indeed it is something I want to watch, and then I miss the first couple of seconds because it's already shown those, with the sound off. It's just the most bizarrely stupid UI decision I can think of.

I'm sorry to inform you that, by hovering over the video, you have Engaged with the Algorithm and thus demonstrated that the auto-play is Good, Actually.

Short-sighted optimization for engagement is the cause of an overwhelming majority of the problems on the Internet.

On an Android TV the YouTube app auto-plays videos if you stop moving the selection cursor for about a second.

It feels so fantastically “pushy” to start playing the audio of some random junk that just happened to be under the selection reticle.

They helpfully added a configuration option to turn this behaviour off, which is a tacit admission that it’s a misfeature that users want to disable.

It does nothing.

The videos still play.

wow must have been really bad because Google rarely adds configuration options and they pride themselves in ignoring user complaints.

I agree. There are sites and apps where I need to make a conscious effort to put my mouse pointer in that one place where it does not trigger any hover actions, so I can just read the text. Incredibly annoying.

Nothing should ever autoplay because of a hover. The only acceptable use of hovering is to change the color of something to highlight it, without changing any layout. The only exception is if you've already clicked and are engaging with a game or simulation inside a defined area.

What do you think about hover slideshows on video thumbnails in a search feed?

I think that's okay as long as they don't enlarge or anything when you're hovering over them. And as long as they don't start playing audio or downloading an entire video.

For me, hover events should not be able to modify the size & font size of the element in question: Only the element's colors (text & background), & text formatting (underline, bold, italic) should be modifiable.

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