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Comment by eviks | Hacker News Reader

The explanation doesn't make sense without addressing the elephant in the room - why not teach users to use the universal "tab close" action via a common shortcut? That one is immediate unlike loading another page

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If yours is the only tab, "close tab" will usually close the whole window, potentially leaving you with an empty desktop. Being caught staring at nothing would be suspicious in the situations where "exit page" is supposed to be used. The weather page is comparatively innocuous. (Until the word gets around...)

First, you wouldn't be staring at nothing, you'd be reopening the browser / opening Solitaire or something

But also a better way would be to ask the user to open a second tab (or another app) so that it's not the only tab/app.

Still beats remembering a unique shortcut.

Time is of the essence when you're hitting an escape shortcut. That's why this component blanks the page immediately, then loads the decoy, there can be no delay even for the browser to tear down the page as it fetches the next. If you have enough time to just go and open Solitaire, you have no need for an escape button.

If you are with someone who cannot know what you are doing, who has appeared suddenly, you are quickly closing what you're doing and, yes, you will be looking at a blank page without some sort of escape mechanism like this. And if it's sudden and unexpected, you might not have been anticipating needing to pop open some decoys.

This seems like a complete misunderstanding of the situation.

If time is of the essence, why are you wasting it requiring 3 key presses and a site load? It take longer to do that vs a single shortcut, and is more visible (pages don't load immediately)

> If you have enough time to just go and open Solitaire, you have no need for an escape button.

You don't have enough time to complete that, you do that not to appear just staring at a blank screen. Activity of opening Solitaire is enough in itself.

> who cannot know what you are doing,

which is easier achieved when the browser is closed vs. when a browser is opened, since in the latter case it's easier to think about checking "previous" browser history

> This seems like a complete misunderstanding of the situation.

Indeed, so much so that this overengineered-but-underthought solution has none of the supposed benefits under the conditions people come up with to defend it

At this point I have to assume that this is willful. You are continuing to ignore things that have been addressed by both myself in my last comment and the article. I invite you to read the article more deeply and look into the actual research backing these UI patterns if you are genuinely struggling to understand.

Likewise I assume you have no arguments left, so "have to" resort to the meta "read more" and imaginary research

And I'd advise against thinking that you that you have thought of things within 5 minutes that, inexplicably, researched, data-backed experts have missed so easily. That's a mindset that does not lend itself to intellectual growth.

In almost all cases, it's not just so obvious that the experts in a field are so misguided. It's that there is complexity and depth that is not perceivable at a glance.

The army of "researched, data-backed experts" behind you is imaginary. So instead of repeating the same appeal to an imaginary authority I'd advise you cite a single good UI research study where a slower site-specific shortcut is better that a more common faster one when "time is of the essence" (and whatever else you think is based on "expert research")

Anyone who is smart enough to use this weird triple shift key shortcut is intelligent enough to preload a different site in another tab and use the close tab shortcut. I would guess there is almost complete venn diagram overlap between people who can learn this weird shortcut and people who can deal with this threat in any other way using normal browser functions.

> staring at nothing would be suspicious in the situations where "exit page" is supposed to be used.

This is actually not true. Having a browser opened leads to the thought of "let's check the previous page/browser history" easier (since the browser is right there to remind you) than a situation of "oh, I've just logged in" or the activity of doing anything else leads to the thought of having to check a browser

Many people in abusive situations have very limited opportunity to use computers, and may well not have time to learn about things like "tab close" actions. This doesn't stop people who do know about those shortcuts from using them.

So how do you imagine they'll learn about Shift-Shift-Shift???

I query that in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41796257

https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/exit-a-page-qu... Government sites that use this component will include a page that explains this feature and how to use it, they have considered this. This is generally used on flows/pages, where the site is walking you through a proccess or a guide.

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