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Comment by saalweachter | Hacker News Reader

I'm barely a third of Betty's age, and I have the same problems browsing the web on mobile devices.

I click on things by accident, I have trouble scrolling on some websites, sometimes the text is too small and crammed into a column that is too small for it, pop-ups and strange noises happen constantly.

I too would like it if more web documents were available as simply formatted blocks of text and pictures, with links that I didn't accidentally click constantly.

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I think the biggest problem I have is clicking or the wrong link because some banner thing finally loaded at the top of the page and pushed everything down. (I don't have great internet at home.) It drives me crazy, because then I have to back up and wait for the page to reload again.

Another tip for helping people with slow internet: don't break your article into multiple pages! I think the primary reason for doing this to get more ad traffic, but I promise I will leave when I see that your list of ten items is separated into ten pages.

I feel the same way, it feels very deliberate the way the ad loads just enough to shift a call to action I to an accidental ad click. It cannot think of a solution to resolve this type of blackhat trickery.

The simplest solution might be to use the "Reader view available" button at the top left of the iPad / iPhone. It tends to show just the text and relevant images when it works well.

This is the only way I find it possible to visit news websites anymore. Otherwise they are all filled with banners and popups. If the article isn't available in reader view I click back and don't bother with it.

Is the "reader view" generated locally, or does it send the URL to an Apple server for processing?

It's done locally.

Perhaps have the browser disable clicks within the human reaction period during and after a layout reflow?

That's a super cool addon idea. Appended to my TODO list.

The NoScript add-on can help ... on desktop browsers, anyway.

Unfortunately they have the data that shows that breaking up the pages increases ad impressions even with the lost users.

And then a little while later the added revenue is lost due to more adblockers being used on their site.

My parents go out of their way to install iPhone apps on their iPad. With retina assets (and the fact they still have non-retina screens), it's not crufty looking anymore.

Problem is many apps have universal binaries now so you can't force the lower-res (larger touch target) UIs.

Accidentally clicking a link wouldn't be a problem if you got the chance to back out early once you realized you'd touched it. For example, touch and hold might work. You press on the link, and it starts visually zooming into the link to alert you. If you keep pressing for half a second, it takes you to that page. If you let go, it zooms back out - no harm done. If you drag, it zooms back out and scrolls.

   I too would like it if more web documents were available 
   as simply formatted blocks of text and pictures, with 
   links that I didn't accidentally click constantly.

That's probably not going to happen. For my part I would be happy if I could recover quickly from an accidental click. That would be a start.

Safari on iOS is my typical example: Click on link by accident, notice your mistake, go back to original page, Safari does a full reload. If you have no network you can't continue reading. Why can't Safari cache the page and allow quick navigation, like any desktop browser?

Better yet, you go back, and the same page refreshes, because it hijacked your back button. It's 2015 and this problem has still not been resolved in any of the major browsers on the market.

I realise that in those situations I just have to click fast twice, so that the second click takes place before scripts have been loaded - but I'm sure Betty does not know that.

> I realise that in those situations I just have to click fast twice, so that the second click takes place before scripts have been loaded.

Oh, that's why rapid clicking works! Funny how for some problems I only want a solution and don't bother at all thinking about how it works.

At least I think so...

On desktops a new "feature" is to continually spam "pop ups" whenever I highlight text. I am aware that not everyone repeatedly clicks/selects/de-selects as they read (I used to think I was the only one...) but with no way to turn that shit off I'm stuck. And on any new site where it is encountered I end up spend more time undoing accidental clicks on suddenly appearing windows than I do reading.

The FT is a good example, the site is unreadable for me. So I no longer visit it.

I feel your pain, and you are not the only one to do the weird select-then-scroll thing (it's also how i copy text into my clipboard). Does NoScript (for Firefox and friends only i believe) perhaps solve your gripes? I find the modern web unusable without NoScript and RequestPolicy installed (plus AdBlock Edge for good measure, but in principle just the first two should suffice).

Fanfiction.net disabled selecting text. I stopped using it. It's just so frustrating.

Fortunately the only story I read there is available on its own page (hpmor.com).

I bet you're looking forward to the last episode of HPMOR on Saturday.

:) obviously.

I do the selecting thing as well, and hate Wired for hijacking ⌘→ (sends you to next article).

Reading about the new macbook, and its pressure sensitive touch pad, and the pressure sensitive keyboard cover Microsoft sells for their Surface range, makes me wonder if something similar would be possible for screens.

Yep, it is something of a throwback to resistive screens. But with resistives at least there was a distinction between resting the finger on the screen, and interacting with a on-screen object.

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I've noticed with older folks that it becomes more difficult to apply granular amounts of pressure to objects (especially if you have a motor control disorder like Parkinson's). I don't believe pressure sensitive touch pads would help in this regard.

Well it does not have to be using all tiers, just that you have to make it deliberate. the details has to be worked out, and likely you can't make one size fit all given the wide range of age related issues.

This is true, but I'm not sure it's relevant in this case. AFAIK old people generally have more trouble controlling how far they push things, but the only distinction we're interested in here is whether they're pushing or merely resting their hand.

This still wouldn't be enough for people with diseases that cause major tremors, but I'd imagine it's enough for people who have lost fine motor control, because we're only trying to distinguish pushing from not-pushing.

Nope. The older you get the less mechanoreceptors are left in your skin. This has 2 effects then: You actually do feel less pressure or vibration from touching something and You can't control your fingers as well because the feedback system has less input for fine motor control into the cerebellum. You cannot feel nor control as well.

Additionally, human touch sensation is incredibly good in the fingers, hypothesized to be related to our use of tools. That we can at all use such a touch screen is a miracle in the animal kingdom. Replacing this is not possible at this point in time as we age. However, larger and more clear buttons will help, along with a training period and good motivation for the person. As we age, we need to have the motivation to access the world and the opportunity to do so. The future requires all participants of every age.

A good place to start on the sources is here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2563781/ . Let me know if you want a .pdf and cannot access the site past the abstract.

>That we can at all use such a touch screen is a miracle in the animal kingdom.

Chimpanzees can also use touch screens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkNV0rSndJ0

That crazy ape go fast.

Excuse the pun, but HOLY BANANAS! That is amazing! Thank you for that vid and the info. That is so cool! I had no idea the chimp could be trained like that. Amazing! Thank you!

Bonobos, a similar ape species equally related to humans, can actually play video games, drive golf carts, and all kinds of cool stuff.

http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_savage_rumbaugh_on_apes_that_...

Skip to 15:52 if you want to go straight to the one playing Pac-Man.

It would seem they also have far better short-term visual memory than typical humans. Or maybe that's the result of practice. Time to find out...

Oh wow, this is amazing! Looks like it only need a split second to remember the positions of the number in sequence - Unbelievable!

MS didn't carry the Touch Cover through to the SP3, so it's down to just the mechanical keyboard now. Too much of a learning curve maybe? I only ever tried it out in Best Buy, but I couldn't type on them.

There are tactile buttons in development for screens, if you haven't seen it yet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lVpNiRpcSs

Unless they manage to come up with a fine mesh grid that allow them to work with a arbitrary underlying UI, not interested.

Agree. I think the mobile world is facing a very hard problem: how to show meaningful and relatively large amount of content in an elegant way on a 5" screen. Squeezing the content of a 13" laptop screen into a 5" phone screen just screw it up, even if the phone has a larger resolution. On the other hand, if I have to keep scrolling to see just a single sentence, then I'd rather give up.

This is a great point in that design for an older demographic is not actually about 'designing for an older demographic'. It's a call to go back to the principles of understanding intent and purpose. The end result is good design, not just good design for older adults.

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