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> There's a UX problem on mobile. I have to click on something to make the GIF appear. What do I click? A link. Expected behavior of a link is to link me elsewh

> There's a UX problem on mobile. I have to click on something to make the GIF appear. What do I click? A link. Expected behavior of a link is to link me elsewhere, not to show a pop-up GIF, so I'm immediately confused when that happens. The underlines being dotted, it's closer to an <abbr> element (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/abbr https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/ab...), which does not act as a link.

ichydkrsrnae 5y ago
I'm staring at this conclusion with the most bemused expression on my face. I'm thinking of the lines painted on the highway, wondering what tragedies would result if yellow line, white line, dotted line, and solid line were similarly ambiguous.
- k1t 5y ago
  Sometimes liberties are taken here, such as California originally separating carpool lanes with yellow lines (when they should have been white). Presumably they felt that even though yellow was incorrect, it sent a clearer "do not cross" message to drivers. They were later ordered to change them to white.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - matt-attack 5y ago
    I noticed that change recently and assumed it was motivated by Tesla. There are certain things we all take for granted when driving. A huge one that we probably don’t give much conscious thought to us this: How do we know if the lane to the left is ok to go in, or if it actually is for carrying oncoming traffic? You’d like to think that one way though not the only way, is to look for a double yellow line. As in, double yellows always separate opposing traffic so never cross them. In CA though, double yellow was also chosen to separate the carpool lane as OP mentioned. So there was actually a really mundane case where driving to the left of a double yellow was actually fine. Seems very confusing to an autonomous car that’s operating at the mental-level of an 18mo old.
    - tobyjsullivan 5y ago
      You are giving way too much credit to autonomous vehicles in this theory. Line colours are standard throughout all of North America (that I’ve seen so far). Yellow means what it means. This carpool line experiment would have been confusing to any driver seeing it for the first time. Imagine a tourist on that highway for the first time, at 3am, when there’s no traffic. Can they use that lane? Can they pull a sneaky u-turn and start driving the opposite direction? What if I’m driving down the highway, effectively on mental autopilot, and suddenly become aware that I’m on the “wrong” side of the yellow line? How would I be likely to react? The opportunities for misunderstanding by normal humans seem plenty.
    - mikestew 5y ago
      I noticed that change recently and assumed it was motivated by Tesla. My '11 Nissan Leaf couldn't even have LED taillights because the Feds said "no". Tesla isn't going to march into some DOT office and demand that the color of the lines be changed to accommodate them (I mean, they could, but the laughter would drown out the conversation). CA changed it because not only was yellow against federal guidelines, but also because I personally believe it was a stupid choice to begin with (for reasons others have already listed).
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      Yellow lines separating oncoming traffic is not universal though? I believe in the UK that the center lines are white?
      - tannhaeuser 5y ago
        Living in Germany and having only driven in Mexico (City) as far as the Americas go, I admit to not understand what yellow lines signify to US drivers, like at all ;) At my place, they're used for temporarily "overriding" regular white lines eg at construction sites, and only for that purpose.
  - lsaferite 5y ago
    My funny anecdote around that: The road in front of my house has a dual center yellow line, but the reflective additive they used in the paint shows up white. At night all of the lines are white. VERY confusing.
    - ichydkrsrnae 5y ago
      That sounds like something you should report to an authority. It could even be a whistleblower issue if the contractor shorted the city with substandard glowy stuff and it's causing serious safety issues.
  - toast0 5y ago
    Were there mandatory prescriptive federal guidelines on HOV lane line colors when California introduced carpool lanes, or did they only come after California had been using yellow lines? Personally, I do find yellow lines are a stronger border, but then I grew up in a culture of yellow carpool lines. I feel like white lines are almost always ok to drive over, and yellow lines usually aren't (although yellow dotted lines are a sometimes drive over (if safe, to pass on a two lane undivided highway), and yellow solid + dotted is also ok to drive over (if safe, to get into a shared median lane for an unprotected left turn)
    - ubercore 5y ago
      I think it's because yellow is supposed to indicate traffic moving in the opposite direction. That's why it's a stronger signal (in theory), but not "correct" for an HOV lane moving in the same direction.
      - jrockway 5y ago
        California should have closed the lane once a year for one minute to run a single vehicle down the carpool lane in the wrong direction. Then they could justify that the lane marking was the right color (since in theory, the lane can be reverse-flow at any time, and hey sometimes they even do it).
    - nybble41 5y ago
      > I feel like white lines are almost always ok to drive over… Single and double solid lines parallel to the flow of traffic, of any color, almost always mean "do not cross". A single dashed line, or a double line where one or both halves is dashed, can be crossed under at least some circumstances. The rules for crossing these vary depending on context, e.g. one-sided passing and center turn lanes use similar markings but with the solid and dashed lines flipped. (You pass from the dashed side but enter the turn lane from the solid side.) White lines separate traffic going the same direction. Yellow lines separate traffic in opposite directions. This is independent of whether the lines can be crossed.
  - jimmygrapes 5y ago
    I've driven through places where the lanes change directions or get closed based on traffic flow, most often near sports/entertainment arenas, and they tend to have one or two lanes with dashed white lines which are always open and the rest of the 3+ lanes are dashed yellow. I've always wondered if this is an exception to a rule, or if there even is a definite DOT rule (or if localities can override DOT regulations, such as in the case of rainbow crosswalks). I do recall in my driver's education classes 20+ years ago that a dashed yellow is "allowed to enter and exit but not for travel" but again that may have been a local rule.
- oauea 5y ago
  Works pretty well. https://www.anwb.nl/verkeer/veiligheid/strepen-op-de-weg https://www.anwb.nl/verkeer/veiligheid/strepen-op-de-weg
antoniuschan99 5y ago
another option would be using this ⓘ User will click/tap and the modal of the gif will show
- stronglikedan 5y ago
  This is really the only correct solution in the context of modern UX.
  - ichydkrsrnae 5y ago
    It's a feature comparison page, so that's the fundamental design issue. The GIFs add pop, but the intent is to clarify. How does showing this info. on onHover or onClick in any UX achieve that result? It doesn't. As designed, it's an ad. It is. Look at it. If I'm comparing a product with a full page of features, I'm going to be scrolling up and down. The one thing I absolutely won't do is hover over 16 onHover information panels while trying to compare and contrast an extensive set of features, costs, and licenses. I'm just going to get aggravated that the information I need to make a decision keeps disappearing from view when I click or hover elsewhere. Also, that's the kind of page you print and underline and circle things on, and give to your boss as a reason for purchase. If half the information is invisible when the page is printed, what use is it?
    - metafunctor 5y ago
      Yep, you said it, the pricing page is, in fact, an advertisement of the product. It's not like you can easily compare the prices between two different products in the same segment. It's an ad. Embrace it. Leaving out the GIFs doesn't make it less of an ad. It just makes it… a worse ad? Also, does your boss not have a computer?
      - ichydkrsrnae 5y ago
        He does. He just likes the printer more. He also surfs the web on a Texas Instruments TI-85 graphing calculator, so go figure. I'm not referring to the page as an ad, but fair enough. I see him applying a pop-up advertisement using the wrong UX element to a grid of information that doesn't benefit from it. Wrong is the wrong word, as apparently a dotted link is and isn't a link. Indicates multiuse? That's clear as mud.

ichydkrsrnae 5y ago

I'm staring at this conclusion with the most bemused expression on my face. I'm thinking of the lines painted on the highway, wondering what tragedies would result if yellow line, white line, dotted line, and solid line were similarly ambiguous.

k1t 5y ago
Sometimes liberties are taken here, such as California originally separating carpool lanes with yellow lines (when they should have been white). Presumably they felt that even though yellow was incorrect, it sent a clearer "do not cross" message to drivers. They were later ordered to change them to white.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- matt-attack 5y ago
  I noticed that change recently and assumed it was motivated by Tesla. There are certain things we all take for granted when driving. A huge one that we probably don’t give much conscious thought to us this: How do we know if the lane to the left is ok to go in, or if it actually is for carrying oncoming traffic? You’d like to think that one way though not the only way, is to look for a double yellow line. As in, double yellows always separate opposing traffic so never cross them. In CA though, double yellow was also chosen to separate the carpool lane as OP mentioned. So there was actually a really mundane case where driving to the left of a double yellow was actually fine. Seems very confusing to an autonomous car that’s operating at the mental-level of an 18mo old.
  - tobyjsullivan 5y ago
    You are giving way too much credit to autonomous vehicles in this theory. Line colours are standard throughout all of North America (that I’ve seen so far). Yellow means what it means. This carpool line experiment would have been confusing to any driver seeing it for the first time. Imagine a tourist on that highway for the first time, at 3am, when there’s no traffic. Can they use that lane? Can they pull a sneaky u-turn and start driving the opposite direction? What if I’m driving down the highway, effectively on mental autopilot, and suddenly become aware that I’m on the “wrong” side of the yellow line? How would I be likely to react? The opportunities for misunderstanding by normal humans seem plenty.
  - mikestew 5y ago
    I noticed that change recently and assumed it was motivated by Tesla. My '11 Nissan Leaf couldn't even have LED taillights because the Feds said "no". Tesla isn't going to march into some DOT office and demand that the color of the lines be changed to accommodate them (I mean, they could, but the laughter would drown out the conversation). CA changed it because not only was yellow against federal guidelines, but also because I personally believe it was a stupid choice to begin with (for reasons others have already listed).
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Yellow lines separating oncoming traffic is not universal though? I believe in the UK that the center lines are white?
    - tannhaeuser 5y ago
      Living in Germany and having only driven in Mexico (City) as far as the Americas go, I admit to not understand what yellow lines signify to US drivers, like at all ;) At my place, they're used for temporarily "overriding" regular white lines eg at construction sites, and only for that purpose.
- lsaferite 5y ago
  My funny anecdote around that: The road in front of my house has a dual center yellow line, but the reflective additive they used in the paint shows up white. At night all of the lines are white. VERY confusing.
  - ichydkrsrnae 5y ago
    That sounds like something you should report to an authority. It could even be a whistleblower issue if the contractor shorted the city with substandard glowy stuff and it's causing serious safety issues.
- toast0 5y ago
  Were there mandatory prescriptive federal guidelines on HOV lane line colors when California introduced carpool lanes, or did they only come after California had been using yellow lines? Personally, I do find yellow lines are a stronger border, but then I grew up in a culture of yellow carpool lines. I feel like white lines are almost always ok to drive over, and yellow lines usually aren't (although yellow dotted lines are a sometimes drive over (if safe, to pass on a two lane undivided highway), and yellow solid + dotted is also ok to drive over (if safe, to get into a shared median lane for an unprotected left turn)
  - ubercore 5y ago
    I think it's because yellow is supposed to indicate traffic moving in the opposite direction. That's why it's a stronger signal (in theory), but not "correct" for an HOV lane moving in the same direction.
    - jrockway 5y ago
      California should have closed the lane once a year for one minute to run a single vehicle down the carpool lane in the wrong direction. Then they could justify that the lane marking was the right color (since in theory, the lane can be reverse-flow at any time, and hey sometimes they even do it).
  - nybble41 5y ago
    > I feel like white lines are almost always ok to drive over… Single and double solid lines parallel to the flow of traffic, of any color, almost always mean "do not cross". A single dashed line, or a double line where one or both halves is dashed, can be crossed under at least some circumstances. The rules for crossing these vary depending on context, e.g. one-sided passing and center turn lanes use similar markings but with the solid and dashed lines flipped. (You pass from the dashed side but enter the turn lane from the solid side.) White lines separate traffic going the same direction. Yellow lines separate traffic in opposite directions. This is independent of whether the lines can be crossed.
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  I've driven through places where the lanes change directions or get closed based on traffic flow, most often near sports/entertainment arenas, and they tend to have one or two lanes with dashed white lines which are always open and the rest of the 3+ lanes are dashed yellow. I've always wondered if this is an exception to a rule, or if there even is a definite DOT rule (or if localities can override DOT regulations, such as in the case of rainbow crosswalks). I do recall in my driver's education classes 20+ years ago that a dashed yellow is "allowed to enter and exit but not for travel" but again that may have been a local rule.
oauea 5y ago
Works pretty well. https://www.anwb.nl/verkeer/veiligheid/strepen-op-de-weg https://www.anwb.nl/verkeer/veiligheid/strepen-op-de-weg

antoniuschan99 5y ago

another option would be using this ⓘ User will click/tap and the modal of the gif will show

stronglikedan 5y ago
This is really the only correct solution in the context of modern UX.
- ichydkrsrnae 5y ago
  It's a feature comparison page, so that's the fundamental design issue. The GIFs add pop, but the intent is to clarify. How does showing this info. on onHover or onClick in any UX achieve that result? It doesn't. As designed, it's an ad. It is. Look at it. If I'm comparing a product with a full page of features, I'm going to be scrolling up and down. The one thing I absolutely won't do is hover over 16 onHover information panels while trying to compare and contrast an extensive set of features, costs, and licenses. I'm just going to get aggravated that the information I need to make a decision keeps disappearing from view when I click or hover elsewhere. Also, that's the kind of page you print and underline and circle things on, and give to your boss as a reason for purchase. If half the information is invisible when the page is printed, what use is it?
  - metafunctor 5y ago
    Yep, you said it, the pricing page is, in fact, an advertisement of the product. It's not like you can easily compare the prices between two different products in the same segment. It's an ad. Embrace it. Leaving out the GIFs doesn't make it less of an ad. It just makes it… a worse ad? Also, does your boss not have a computer?
    - ichydkrsrnae 5y ago
      He does. He just likes the printer more. He also surfs the web on a Texas Instruments TI-85 graphing calculator, so go figure. I'm not referring to the page as an ad, but fair enough. I see him applying a pop-up advertisement using the wrong UX element to a grid of information that doesn't benefit from it. Wrong is the wrong word, as apparently a dotted link is and isn't a link. Indicates multiuse? That's clear as mud.