21 ms·
Is it just me, or is anyone else seeing what looks like the mouse pointer of everyone else reading the page, like 1,000 little ants on the screen
by davidham 3y ago
Is it just me, or is anyone else seeing what looks like the mouse pointer of everyone else reading the page, like 1,000 little ants on the screen
- lifeinthevoid 3y agoyup, pretty annoying
- toastercat 3y agoAnytime tonsky's site gets posted here, I'm reminded by how awful it is, which is ironic given his UI/UX background. The site's lightmode is a blinding saturated yellow, and if you switch into darkmode, it's an even less readable "cute" flashlight js trick. I don't know why he thought this was a good idea. Thank god for Firefox reader mode.
- ericmcer 3y agoI don't think he added moving cursors all over the page because he thought it was good UI/UX, he knows what he is doing.
- superq 3y agoThis is seemingly self-contradictory. Perhaps you could explain your reasoning further?
- 876978095789789 3y agoHe appears (if his logos are anything to go by) to be a flat UI guy. I doubt any of these people know what they're doing.
- toastercat 3y agoI'm having a hard time reconciling "he knows what he is doing" with him making his site practically unusable without a reader mode, which by the way, not every browser supports (especially on mobile).
- throwaway290 3y agoDon't even think of switching on the dark (night) mode with that attitude! :D I really enjoyed the tongue in cheek design. I think every modern browser either allows you to turn on reader mode (especially on mobile) or just turn off CSS. This particular article works excellently even in w3m.
- toastercat 3y ago> Don't even think of switching on the dark (night) mode with that attitude! :D :D > I really enjoyed the tongue in cheek design. I think every modern browser either allows you to turn on reader mode (especially on mobile) or just turn off CSS. This particular article works excellently even in w3m. Firefox Focus on mobile does not have Reader Mode.
- throwaway290 3y agoFair enough. Tbh at a different time I would probably be as pissed at the author as anyone. Might be mood dependent. I should also add that the night mode won't be as fun on mobile either, just checked and I don't think it works with pointer events for the effect
- slipperlobster 3y agoFine, sure. Cute - turn on reader mode. Now the images that are supposed to be sitting over yellow background are dark gray images over a slightly less dark gray background. The decision to design a serious (read: not-tongue-in-cheek) topic with these "quirky" tricks sucks, JMHO.
- coldpie 3y agoWorks like a normal website with JavaScript disabled. I didn't even know it did fancy junk until reading the comments here. NoScript saves the day again! I don't know how people can browse the web without it.
- aembleton 3y agoBy using reader mode
- gpvos 3y agoIt is some time ago since I last used it, but I found that too many websites that I want to read require Javascript to even show you the main body of text, or a reasonable layout. Is that different now?
- coldpie 3y agoNo. Just whitelist the main domain for sites that are obviously broken. Then try one or two likely subdomains if that's not enough. In the rare cases where it still wants more crap enabled, then it's usually not worth the effort, close tab and move on to something else. As you build up a whitelist over time, it becomes pretty rare that you need to interact with it more than a couple times per day. Yeah, it takes some effort, but it's worth it to nuke cookie banners and sticky headers and videos and all the other crap people do with JS.
- gpvos 3y agoI already have that routine with uBlock Origin. I don't think NoScript offers all of uBO's functionality, and I certainly won't do the same dance for two extensions, but I'll look into uBO's abilities to specifically block JS.
- coldpie 3y agoMakes sense! I use both, uBO just does its thing and I never interact with it. NoScript handles blocking & whitelisting javascript. It's totally possible uBO has a similar feature and I just don't know about it.
- Arech 3y agoI'd say this annoying trick is highly appropriate for the topic!
- spacechild1 3y agoIt is obviously a joke (and a good one, I dare say). The fact that people seem to take it seriously says something about the contemporary state of webdesign :)
- mplewis 3y agoIt would be a better joke if there were an option to turn the joke off. As it is, dark mode doesn't exist and the pointers occlude text.
- spacechild1 3y ago> It would be a better joke if there were an option to turn the joke off. As others have pointed out, reader mode works as expected.
- toastercat 3y ago1. Not every browser has reader mode 2. I don't think it's a very good joke to post long-form content on your blog with the expectation that it's basically unreadable without a reader mode. > The fact that people seem to take it seriously says something about the contemporary state of webdesign :) Mind expanding and what it says exactly about contemporary web design? Whether I take it seriously or not doesn't change the fact that it's still damn hard to read anything.
- spacechild1 3y ago> Mind expanding and what it says exactly about contemporary web design? The same as when political satire is indistinguishable from actual politics. It means that the real things has sort of become a joke itself.
- toastercat 3y agoI can agree that most modern web design is bad. I can also agree that the web design on tonsky's site is bad, but OK, I acknowledge that it is intentionally bad; so bad that it's unreadable. I had myself a chuckle now, and next time I see a link to tonsky's site, I'll click on it, chuckle, and immediately leave.
- LordDragonfang 3y agoIt's deeply ironic that an article about dealing with text properly has images which are part of the article text and yet have no alt-text, rendering parts of the article unreadable in reader mode if the server is slow.
- torgard 3y agoWell, I thought it was fun.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- johnnyanmac 3y ago>it's an even less readable "cute" flashlight js trick. I don't know why he thought this was a good idea. Thank god for Firefox reader mode. not even a proper flashlight. it updates when the mouse moves, so you're SOL if you scroll on desktop.
- pookha 3y agoGood times. If you click on the sun switch the entire UI gets zeroed out and you get to use on:hover mouse shtick to read the UI through a fuzzy radius. Is Yoko Ono designing websites now?
- WD-42 3y agoIt's a joke. It made me laugh.
- toastercat 3y agoIt's a bad joke. It made me close the browser tab.
- Dylan16807 3y ago> It's a bad joke. To each their own. > It made me close the browser tab. If you can't handle refreshing or merely clicking it again, that's you having a problem, not the site having a problem.
- toastercat 3y ago> If you can't handle refreshing or merely clicking it again, that's you having a problem, not the site having a problem. No, it's the site's problem. The contrast between the blinding radioactive yellow background and the font is eye straining and doesn't meet the WCAG standards for accessible text. And the dark mode is unusable. The joke would be funnier if there was a real dark mode or if the light mode was readable.
- Dylan16807 3y agoYou said the joke made you leave. The normal color scheme is not part of the joke, and I'm sorry it hurts your eyes. I won't try to defend the eye hurting. > doesn't meet the WCAG standards for accessible text. Oh, which part of the standards? When I punch #000000 on #FDDB29 into contrast checkers I get good results. The single quote isn't as good but all the rest has those colors.
- neonsunset 3y agoYes, reading the article is impossible with erratic movement on the screen.
- 876978095789789 3y agoYeah, it's extremely obnoxious.
- lbltavares 3y agoIt's fun specially for folks like me who have ADHD. But there should be a button to disable it
- pests 3y agoI know which site you are talking about before even clicking the article :(
- wizofaus 3y agoIt's quite possibly the worst web page presentation I've come across in a long time - aside from the fact it looks like some bug has caused my OS to leave a random trail of mouse pointers all over the screen, some of them even move around, making me doubt my sanity when I'm quite sure I'm holding the mouse still. And the less said about the colours the better. There's no way I was going to put up with that long enough to read all the text on it.
- arendtio 3y agoToo bad the Linux and the Mac pointer look so similar. But when you give them different background colors, it becomes more obvious which platform dominates, like: .pointer.l { background-color: green; }
- ormax3 3y agofirst thing I did before reading the article, using uBO to block JS on the page
- scruss 3y agoas someone with a visual processing disorder, this is like having a page scream at me. Repeatedly. Never do this
- dekken_ 3y agonot just you, this is what my other comment is about (indirectly)
- ilyt 3y agoI see nice crisp black text on white background because apparently server melted down
- hot_gril 3y agoI saw that, except half the images weren't loading, and there was just one mouse pointer.
- hwillis 3y agoturned off javascript as soon as I saw it. Like trying to read with twenty mosquitos in your face.
- sebstefan 3y agohey be nice to my mouse cursor
- neurostimulant 3y agoIf you're using firefox, toggling reader view should do the trick.
- aragonite 3y agoI've been drawing circles for over a minute now and no one has joined me yet, so I conclude those movements are random rather than made by intelligent beings. :)
- KyleBerezin 3y agoThat makes me think of this old gem https://imgur.com/gallery/BgKFcI9 https://imgur.com/gallery/BgKFcI9
- extraduder_ire 3y agoI did the same for a while while I was reading. From another comment, the position only seems to update once a second, so it'll be hard for someone to notice your movements.
- nigma1337 3y agoDistracted me from reading the article, I just started chasing other people around.
- dystroy 3y agoThat's what's missing. When I click on a pointer, its owner should have the article replaced with a "GAME OVER" message.
- zzzeek 3y agoyeah....why on earth would someone want their webpage to do this, especially if they have text they'd presumably want you to read?
- fragmede 3y agoHave you ever read with other people, like in school or a book club, or been somewhere that there were other people around? It's an interesting move by the author; the loneliness epidemic hasn't gone unnoticed. eg https://www.npr.org/2023/05/02/1173418268/loneliness-connection-mental-health-dementia-surgeon-general https://www.npr.org/2023/05/02/1173418268/loneliness-connect...
- WD-42 3y agoIt's cute, and provides a hint of human connection that is otherwise absent on the web "hey, another human is reading this too!" which you probably know but something about seeing the pointer move makes it feel real. Probably not the greatest during a hacker news hug of death, but if I read that article some other time and saw one of the moving pointers, I would think it was really cool.
- wirelesspotat 3y agoYep, the website opens a websocket connection[0] and sends the mouse position every 1 second [0] WS connection is on `wss://tonsky.me/pointers?id=XXXXXX&page=/blog/unicode/&platform=XXX`