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This company produces great, great content. You agree that it's interesting, from what you've read. And yet apparently the most popular comment on their effort

by edanm 11y ago

This company produces great, great content. You agree that it's interesting, from what you've read. And yet apparently the most popular comment on their effort is that you don't want to spare the all-of-2 seconds it takes to click your mouse to close a pop-up? On a site that isn't plastered with ads, btw, and is generally very accessible? I don't mean to take out my frustration on you, and I get where you're coming from, but maybe we as consumers should stop feeling so entitled, maybe that's the pattern that has to end here.

solipsism 11y ago
Ve specifically said ve didn't mind a pay wall. Ve found the the mid-read interruption rude, which I think is totally fair.
- 98qz99191 11y ago
  I had to google this "ve". At first I thought that you were mimicking a German accent, which did not make sense here.
  - GotAnyMegadeth 11y ago
    I'm guessing the result was: Ve, a proposed gender-neutral pronoun [0] I hadn't heard of it either. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VE
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - solipsism 11y ago
    I'm just personally tired of our lack of appropriate gender-neutral pronouns. I guess it got me some downvotes due to misunderstanding.
    - AndrewDucker 11y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
      - solipsism 11y ago
        Doesn't do it for me. It leads to confusion in a couple different contexts. I think we should be open to intelligently refactoring our language, instead of being slaves to organic change.
        burnstek 11y ago
        But "ve" doesn't create confusion?
        solipsism 11y ago
        Only momentary confusion. You will probably never again be confused by "ve", for the rest of your life, based on just this tiny passing exposure to it (assuming, of course, you ever see it again.. which is obviously not certain). The idea of overloading the plural "they" to mean a gender-neutral singular nominative has some inherent problems you can't just learn away, because context is often not sufficient to pinpoint a meaning from the possibilities.
cloudjacker 11y ago
I'm working on a chrome extension to kill exit intents, I'll share it
- nikanj 11y ago
  Killing everything with position:absolute would work pretty good. Would take away annoying top/bottom bars too, and actually let me use my screen real estate for content instead of quick links to social sharing.
  - taejo 11y ago
    The Chrome extension "Fix Fixed" adds a button which removes all fixed-position content. It doesn't solve the lightbox problem (because you still have to click a button) but it's a big help with real estate.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
Retra 11y ago
>This company produces great, great content. What they made is a spammy, irritating popup.
MAGZine 11y ago
Similar to GP, if one of these sites throws something in my face I'd rather just leave the site. Not only is it often (though not always) indicative of other nearby antipatterns, but it's my small way of protesting the lightboxes. Same thing goes for interstitial. I intentionally do not use any ad blockers and when this how you treat me, i'd really rather not.
Vendan 11y ago
Well, the other side is that it seems quite pointless. I'm glad it's a simple popover, and not a full page video ad, and it responds nicely to escape. But all that means is I've closed it half a second after it appeared, without reading, with nothing but a grunt of frustration over "yet another popover crap". Is that really the impression this site wants to make? Something unobtrusive in the sidebar that would let me keep reading, and then look at, I would be more inclined to even read...
pacomerh 11y ago
It really destroys the flow of reading though. These light-boxes should be more passive. I agree with the first commenter. It's super annoying and something nice becomes ugly.
- tombrossman 11y ago
  Check out how DigitalOcean does this, on their tutorials. As you scroll down, a small box appears in the left margin asking you to sign up for the newsletter. It doesn't block any of the content and you can ignore it while you continue reading. That's nearly perfect, and an example of how to do it right. I still find the animation of it appearing distracting and I think it interrupts the 'flow' of reading the article, but it was easy enough to block the element with my ad blocking extension. As an aside, Firefox + Noscript are a thing of beauty. Using them I just don't see most of these annoyances. Yes, it 'breaks' many websites but this usually means a much faster page render without all the annoying stuff.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    The problem is these boxes are designed to manipulate behaviour, not to avoid annoyance. Unfortunately slamming a SIGN UP NOW!!!!! box in the middle of the page gets more people to sign up than a "Please sign up over here" box at the side. The problem may be a lack of systems thinking. If your metrics are sign-ups, then the aggressive pattern wins. If your metrics are committed sign-ups by users who are genuinely interested and aren't simply going to ignore your emails for the rest of eternity, the picture may be more complicated. Too many UX people don't seem to think this one through.

by edanm 11y ago

solipsism 11y ago

Ve specifically said ve didn't mind a pay wall. Ve found the the mid-read interruption rude, which I think is totally fair.

98qz99191 11y ago
I had to google this "ve". At first I thought that you were mimicking a German accent, which did not make sense here.
- GotAnyMegadeth 11y ago
  I'm guessing the result was: Ve, a proposed gender-neutral pronoun [0] I hadn't heard of it either. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VE
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- solipsism 11y ago
  I'm just personally tired of our lack of appropriate gender-neutral pronouns. I guess it got me some downvotes due to misunderstanding.
  - AndrewDucker 11y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
    - solipsism 11y ago
      Doesn't do it for me. It leads to confusion in a couple different contexts. I think we should be open to intelligently refactoring our language, instead of being slaves to organic change.
      - burnstek 11y ago
        But "ve" doesn't create confusion?
        solipsism 11y ago
        Only momentary confusion. You will probably never again be confused by "ve", for the rest of your life, based on just this tiny passing exposure to it (assuming, of course, you ever see it again.. which is obviously not certain). The idea of overloading the plural "they" to mean a gender-neutral singular nominative has some inherent problems you can't just learn away, because context is often not sufficient to pinpoint a meaning from the possibilities.

cloudjacker 11y ago

I'm working on a chrome extension to kill exit intents, I'll share it

nikanj 11y ago
Killing everything with position:absolute would work pretty good. Would take away annoying top/bottom bars too, and actually let me use my screen real estate for content instead of quick links to social sharing.
- taejo 11y ago
  The Chrome extension "Fix Fixed" adds a button which removes all fixed-position content. It doesn't solve the lightbox problem (because you still have to click a button) but it's a big help with real estate.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

Retra 11y ago

>This company produces great, great content. What they made is a spammy, irritating popup.

MAGZine 11y ago

Similar to GP, if one of these sites throws something in my face I'd rather just leave the site. Not only is it often (though not always) indicative of other nearby antipatterns, but it's my small way of protesting the lightboxes. Same thing goes for interstitial. I intentionally do not use any ad blockers and when this how you treat me, i'd really rather not.

Vendan 11y ago

Well, the other side is that it seems quite pointless. I'm glad it's a simple popover, and not a full page video ad, and it responds nicely to escape. But all that means is I've closed it half a second after it appeared, without reading, with nothing but a grunt of frustration over "yet another popover crap". Is that really the impression this site wants to make? Something unobtrusive in the sidebar that would let me keep reading, and then look at, I would be more inclined to even read...

pacomerh 11y ago

It really destroys the flow of reading though. These light-boxes should be more passive. I agree with the first commenter. It's super annoying and something nice becomes ugly.

tombrossman 11y ago
Check out how DigitalOcean does this, on their tutorials. As you scroll down, a small box appears in the left margin asking you to sign up for the newsletter. It doesn't block any of the content and you can ignore it while you continue reading. That's nearly perfect, and an example of how to do it right. I still find the animation of it appearing distracting and I think it interrupts the 'flow' of reading the article, but it was easy enough to block the element with my ad blocking extension. As an aside, Firefox + Noscript are a thing of beauty. Using them I just don't see most of these annoyances. Yes, it 'breaks' many websites but this usually means a much faster page render without all the annoying stuff.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  The problem is these boxes are designed to manipulate behaviour, not to avoid annoyance. Unfortunately slamming a SIGN UP NOW!!!!! box in the middle of the page gets more people to sign up than a "Please sign up over here" box at the side. The problem may be a lack of systems thinking. If your metrics are sign-ups, then the aggressive pattern wins. If your metrics are committed sign-ups by users who are genuinely interested and aren't simply going to ignore your emails for the rest of eternity, the picture may be more complicated. Too many UX people don't seem to think this one through.