Hacker News Reader

Comment by Grimm665 | Hacker News Reader

> Have you not heard of timed popups (such as those that trigger past a certain element), or popups that don't make you want to immediately close the site?

How about NO POP-UPs? Remember when browsers came with built-in pop-up blockers so users didn't have to deal with them at all? Newsletter sign-ups are the same bullshit as 90s style pop-ups, and everyone agreed we should block those then, why are these different?

I don't want timed pop-ups, or pop-ups that are more convenient, I want NO POP-UPs, and as soon as I see one I am closing the tab and writing off the website as not worth my time.

I don't mean to call you out specifically, I don't think you're arguing in favor of pop-ups, but I'm just confused why your initial response was to ask for lesser evil pop-ups, rather than no pop-ups at all.

View on HN

The popups you're thinking of were much more harmful than these. Those were separate browser windows that opened third-party sites and downloaded and ran insecure code.

This is a popup in the visual sense. Although to be fair lots of sites use third-party scripts to handle these email asks, so maybe it's not that different!

You're certainly not wrong about the malware / insecure code...

But a popup that opens an in-page modal vs a popup that opens a new tab or window are pretty much equivalent from a user experience point of view in my opinion. I don't want either, and neither is less or more evil to me.

At least the pop-up windows had a consistent way to close them and you could use keyboard shortcut. Now I have to think about the right way to close each custom popup.

With the back button, if a random click/tap outside the popup doesn't do it.

I'd go even further: I don't want ANY pop-ups of any kind in my computing experience, period. When I set out to do some task, I don't want my attention to be yanked away by anything. Computers should essentially be REPLs. Read my command, execute the command, print the result, and then read my next command. And the equivalent function when using a GUI: I click on something, the computer does that thing, displays the results, and then it waits for me to click on something else. They shouldn't be doing a bunch of stuff on their own in the background. They shouldn't be trying to decide what they want me to be doing. I decide what the computer should be doing!

We have drifted so far away from the light--when the user was 100% in charge of everything the computer was doing.

> I'd go even further: I don't want ANY pop-ups of any kind in my computing experience, period.

And I don't ever want my focus dragged away from the window that I'm currently on.

Whatever it is that the app developer thinks IS SO ABSOLUTELY FUCKING IMPORTANT THAT THEY NEED TO STEAL MY ATTENTION AWAY RIGHT THIS GODDAMN SECOND, just isn't actually that important to me.

My relationship with a lot of applications is like a clingy sidepiece that I'm about ready to dump if they get any more annoying.

I am convinced that twitch video games are the largest influence on UX/UI today.

And it stands to reason. What does a nerd do in his misspent teenage/college years but get a gaming rig and get on Steam for some AAA action. He builds reflexes and the ability to track and demolish targets.

Therefore when he graduates college and becomes a slinger of code, he writes a UI that capitalizes on video game reflexes that everyone must share. The ability to react within 50ms to a dramatic change on screen. The steely nerves to track a moving target with our finger and tap "Undo" before the interstitial vanishes forever and our action is set in stone. Navigating endless chains of hover-menus by threading the needle, because if you go 3mm off track, you'll need to start all over again.

GUIs today actively punish the user for attempting to anticipate and go ahead with actions before the computer is good and ready, but when that computer starts throwing up dialogs, you'd better be able to keep up.

I had 6502 and 286 based machines that had UIs that were able to react instantly and stably to every input I could give. How can response time and latency worsen in the intervening 30 years?

The reality is that in a lot of cases, losing you is acceptable collateral damage. Some percentage of people will close the site if they see a popup (I do some of the time, depending on how much I care about seeing the site's content and how easy it is to close the popup).

> everyone agreed we should block those then

They didn't, though. It's very plausible that everyone in your social circle agreed on that, but there were a lot of people filling those popups out then, and there are a lot of people doing it now.

That is not to say that you're not right - they are annoying, and I'd generally rather be rid of them. The reality is, though, people who immediately close websites upon seeing popups are a small minority, and for many websites the value lost by those people closing the website it meaningfully less than the value gained by some percent of people giving their email.

Arguably these in-page pop-ups can over some value if used judiciously, and unlike traditional pop ups cannot flood the whole screen or otherwise break out of the tab.

I don’t want to use unsolicited synchronous interfaces ever. For any reason.

Nor do I, though I can see the argument from those paying for the hosting and content.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com