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I think the article makes some great points regarding SEO and accessibility benefits that should be followed. My sole gripe is against the title’s use of “anti-

by mikeg8 7y ago

I think the article makes some great points regarding SEO and accessibility benefits that should be followed. My sole gripe is against the title’s use of “anti-pattern” which 1) they fail to define 2) I associate with dark patterns (this is not that) and 3) use of back-ground image is definitely a pattern, sometimes a very useful one. What does he mean by anti-pattern in relation to background image? New Title: Why <picture> is superior to background-image:

Thorrez 7y ago
Anti-patterns have nothing to do with dark patterns. Anti-patterns harm the developer accidentally, dark patterns harm the user intentionally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern
- nefitty 7y ago
  I counter with the dark pattern Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern It's more about deception and persuasion than harm, like the modals that say "Sign-up for our 20-part email series on gold investment... [X] No thanks, I want to stay poor and uninformed"
  - Thorrez 7y ago
    Generally tricking the user into doing something would be considered harmful. Although it is an interesting question whether it's still considered a dark pattern if you trick the user into doing something that helps the user. For example in some videogames if you play for hours they'll give a popup telling you to take a break. What if that popup had the options "Sure" and "No, I don't care about my health". Or if you design a UI so that it's really annoying to order unhealthy food, but easy to order healthy food.
    - alanbernstein 7y ago
      If you're feeling clever, you might call that an anti-dark pattern, a la "anti-hero", or really, anti-villain.
    - setr 7y ago
      I’d still consider it a dark pattern, as you’re still operating hostile to the user; you’re trying to get done what the user explicitly does not wish. And absent nanny-state reasoning (which is really hard to justify in the hands of a no-name dev..), you really are operating user-hostile, even if your intent was not; no better than microsoft forcefully updating your OS for your security, eventually regardless of what you were doing (see guy in middle of 8 hr render process)
- rhizome 7y ago
  Which is more serious, "anti-pattern" or "code smell?"
  - OscarTheGrinch 7y ago
    I love the code smell of spaghetti code in the morning...
  - quickthrower2 7y ago
    To me code smell is a clue that some code might be badly written. But it's not proof - and there could be good justification for the smell. An example would be a 500 line method. Antipattern is more serious IMO because of the work "pattern", i.e. "something repeated". It is a repeated occurrence of doing something badly (in someones opinion!) across the code base. An example that comes to mind is making references to packages that you don't want structurally in your dependency graph, just to use a utility function.
dang 7y ago
Ok, we've taken anti-pattern out of the title in the hope of this conversation getting on to something non-titley.

by mikeg8 7y ago

Thorrez 7y ago

Anti-patterns have nothing to do with dark patterns. Anti-patterns harm the developer accidentally, dark patterns harm the user intentionally. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern

nefitty 7y ago
I counter with the dark pattern Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern It's more about deception and persuasion than harm, like the modals that say "Sign-up for our 20-part email series on gold investment... [X] No thanks, I want to stay poor and uninformed"
- Thorrez 7y ago
  Generally tricking the user into doing something would be considered harmful. Although it is an interesting question whether it's still considered a dark pattern if you trick the user into doing something that helps the user. For example in some videogames if you play for hours they'll give a popup telling you to take a break. What if that popup had the options "Sure" and "No, I don't care about my health". Or if you design a UI so that it's really annoying to order unhealthy food, but easy to order healthy food.
  - alanbernstein 7y ago
    If you're feeling clever, you might call that an anti-dark pattern, a la "anti-hero", or really, anti-villain.
  - setr 7y ago
    I’d still consider it a dark pattern, as you’re still operating hostile to the user; you’re trying to get done what the user explicitly does not wish. And absent nanny-state reasoning (which is really hard to justify in the hands of a no-name dev..), you really are operating user-hostile, even if your intent was not; no better than microsoft forcefully updating your OS for your security, eventually regardless of what you were doing (see guy in middle of 8 hr render process)
rhizome 7y ago
Which is more serious, "anti-pattern" or "code smell?"
- OscarTheGrinch 7y ago
  I love the code smell of spaghetti code in the morning...
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  To me code smell is a clue that some code might be badly written. But it's not proof - and there could be good justification for the smell. An example would be a 500 line method. Antipattern is more serious IMO because of the work "pattern", i.e. "something repeated". It is a repeated occurrence of doing something badly (in someones opinion!) across the code base. An example that comes to mind is making references to packages that you don't want structurally in your dependency graph, just to use a utility function.

dang 7y ago

Ok, we've taken anti-pattern out of the title in the hope of this conversation getting on to something non-titley.