
Tab Closed; Didn't Read - ilyakhokhryakov
http://tabcloseddidntread.com
======
GuiA
My bank displays an overlay every time I log in, asking me to install some
dumb antivirus from some dumb company in exchange for $25 (#notabubble).

It was annoying me, so I sent them a message saying I had installed the
antivirus (I hadn't, it's Windows only and I use OSX at work and Linux at
home) and asked for my $25. They appeared a few days later in my bank account.

But the darn popup kept appearing every time. A month or two later, I messaged
them again, saying I had installed the antivirus. A few days later, $25 in my
bank account.

Oh well. If you pay me for your dumb popups, why not. I plan on messaging them
again in a month or so :) (can't make it too obvious)

~~~
darth_aardvark
While I'm all for sticking it to the man, isn't this a legally dangerous thing
to do?

~~~
ye
If they pay for installs, why not?

Nothing stops you from uninstalling it the next day.

~~~
Sami_Lehtinen
Use Sandboxie, it makes stuff like that trivial.

------
brymaster
I keep a bookmarklet around to destroy elements on a webpage for this very
reason. [http://jsfiddle.net/6jbJc/](http://jsfiddle.net/6jbJc/)

Stuff like this, where flash is being replaced by html5+javascript, is what
has me worried about Firefox removing the "disable javascript" checkbox from
prefs (yes I know it can still be turned off in about:config but that's
unacceptable). When we make javascript ubiquitous, these dark UI/UX patterns
are only going to get worse.

Furthermore, why doesn't Firefox allow me more control over the data that's
sent to and from my machine? The functionality that plugins like Disconnect
and Adblock Edge have should be mandatory user preferences. There should never
be a way for things like Flash LSO's and Evercookies to stay persistent in my
web browser cache if I don't want them.

And we're still waiting on third-party cookies to be blocked in Firefox by
default. That's been pushed back so much that I wonder if they faced too much
outrage from advertising companies to make this happen.

~~~
Amadou
Mozilla's argument is that all of that functionality is better left to
plugins. People can make just as compelling arguments for all kinds of
functionality and consequently firefox is moving in the direction of becoming
a kitchen sink.

I think we could use a better middle ground, like a mozilla-endorsed "pack" of
vetted plugins to improve privacy. As it is now, Adblock is the #1 plugin and
NoScript is the #4 so this stuff is definitely important to users.

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/extensions/?sort=us...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/extensions/?sort=users)

~~~
eli
I think Mozilla makes a sound technical argument... but it's stilly to pretend
ad blocking isn't also a political issue on some level.

------
jamiequint
While you may find this annoying, these kinds of screens perform very well
when used appropriately. You may drop off, but most people won't. Until that
stops happening you will keep seeing these, and making a whiny site about it
certainly won't do anything to help.

~~~
gk1
Seconding this unpopular opinion.

A site I was consulting was getting a depressingly low number of email
subscribers, so we tested one of these modal popups that prompted the visitor
to subscribe... It worked wonderfully. To minimize the annoyance we set it to
pop up only once for each visitor (based on cookies).

It wouldn't be so popular if it wasn't effective.

~~~
drcongo
What's the thinking behind putting an email signup form over the top of the
content? That content would be the thing that might make me actually want to
sign up, but to find out, I need to close the email signup form.

Maybe email signups were depressingly low because nobody actually gave a toss
about their marketing emails, and all you did was trick a small percentage of
viewers into signing up for a mailing list they have no interest in because
they thought they had to sign up to close the modal. I completely fail to see
how your client got any value out of this at all.

~~~
PakG1
Any is a very finite word. As much as I don't like the practice, parent's data
doesn't lie, they had more signups. Whether those signups have high customer
lifetime value or even stick around are another matter that requires different
data to understand. Parent has enough data to make the first conclusion, you
don't have enough data to make the second.

~~~
drcongo
But the first conclusion is completely meaningless without the data for the
second. That's my point. It's this worship of numbers while ignoring the
actual people that these numbers represent that has led to these intrusive
practices.

~~~
PakG1
We can go back and forth on this, but I'm just saying that for the same reason
you say it's meaningless (i.e. lack of data), I am saying that you also don't
know. Something is always better than nothing, unless you have actual reason
and data to say otherwise.

------
ars
I don't mind as much when they at least bother to bind the ESC key to close
the overlay.

I hit ESC and it goes away. Not sure why it needed to be there in the first
place (is there anyone on the planet that actually looks at these things?)

~~~
wowaname
That would be worse. I use the Escape key to stop page loads, and if a
keybinding interrupts that expected functionality, I get pissed. Key example:
Gmail. I don't know what it sucks Esc to, but it doesn't direct it to the
browser.

Web developers should really stick to the accesskey event which accepts
alphanumeric bindings, and nothing else. Anything outside of that is likely to
be used by the browser. I mean, there are some obvious exceptions (C-b for
bold in a WYSIWYG editor) but as a rule of thumb it should be avoided.

~~~
crazygringo
I dunno... binding Esc to close lightboxes is pretty web-standard, and I'm
very glad when it closes those annoying lightboxes too. Hunting for the tiny
"x", which is often intentionally hard to find, gets tiring.

In fact, I had no idea Esc stopped page loads. Has that been a standard thing
too? Although I must admit, stopping page loading is not something I hardly
ever find myself doing...

~~~
mikestew
> In fact, I had no idea Esc stopped page loads. Has that been a standard
> thing too?

Has been as long as I can remember. Not that I use it much anymore with fat
pipes (in comparison to a 9600 baud modem) being commonplace.

------
bobbygoodlatte
The mobile equivalents of these are worse.

No, I'm not going to install your app — I just want to see the content hiding
behind this stupid ad. Even if I did install your app, I'd have to re-navigate
to that content within your app.

------
vacri
One of the samples is a paywall - it's _supposed_ to block content unless
you've jumped through the hoop. It's not trying to 'enhance your experience'
or do market research. It doesn't make sense to complain that you can't see
the content in this context.

------
eli
_shrug_

I guess it's just personal preference... I find this practice mildly annoying,
but I'm not likely to join a boycott. For most sites, I'd gladly click through
a prestitial ad than pay even a very small amount of money (if the choice were
offered).

EDIT: And full disclosure: I run ads like this sometimes (though rarely on the
first page load, that's kinda obnoxious). I don't love them because there is
definitely a population of people they piss off and I hate pissing off
anyone... but it seems like a pretty small minority. They covert really really
well. Like, way better than any other web ad type.

~~~
petercooper
I did a poll in a developer community about running some free or cheap online
training sessions. I got about 1000 replies and the majority said they'd
prefer they were free with a sponsor message somewhere in the session compared
to say even just $10-20. It seems if you can make it work for the advertiser,
people still prefer it to paying cold hard cash.

------
JangoSteve
I'm surprised quora isn't included.

~~~
bhaile
[http://blog.quora.com/Making-Sharing-Better](http://blog.quora.com/Making-
Sharing-Better) "Open any Quora URL. If you come across a Quora link anywhere
and you want to read it without being asked to join Quora, you can add the
text "?share=1" to the end of the URL."

Works for me the first time and then no longer have to manually add it in for
subsequent quora links.

~~~
ddebernardy
I'm surprised they document this instead of making it e default. What's the
point?

------
redblacktree
This kind of misbehavior is why my javascript is off by default.

~~~
dredmorbius
Sadly, many of these sites and interstitials are driven by CSS.

~~~
redblacktree
Really? Do you have any examples I can point my browser at? My experience is
that, yes, they're implemented in CSS, but triggered by javascript.

Occasionally, I have to inspect the page and add a "display:none;"
Alternatively, if a site is totally broken without javascript and I don't want
to add an exception for it, I'll open it in another browser.

This method is a bit of a pain, but it's the lesser of two evils (for me).

~~~
dredmorbius
You're probably right that it's both. That said, you can nuke these with CSS.
I've taken to pretty liberally modifying site stylesheets (I've compiled
almost 700 of these), and nuking things like interstitials, "social" toolbars,
"related content", slide-outs, etc., is high up my list. A few of those are
now in my default CSS (the Tumbler teaser most notably). Pretty easy to do
using Stylebot (Chrome).

------
vor_
I especially dislike when there isn't a close button but rather a text link
somewhere on the promo.

------
kephra
I really dislike sites that have broken CSS that is fixed by JS. I either
disable CSS to read them, or I just close them.

------
vitd
For what it's worth, 9 times out of 10, you can hit the "Reader" button in
Safari and it will show you the article without you clicking on anything in
the ad. This way you get the content you wanted, you don't look at the ad, and
it doesn't register that you clicked on anything, even the close box.

~~~
mikestew
It's how I get around the "you exceeded your article reads for the
day/week/month, subscribe to read the article" of the Seattle Times. The
content's hiding right behind that popup. Feedly's "remove clutter" button in
their iOS app works equally well.

------
swang
A popup by any other name is still terrible.

------
chadwickthebold
I love sites that do this. Why anyone would block access to their own content
is beyond me.

~~~
jamiequint
People do it because it performs much much better in many funnel optimization
scenarios.

------
denzil_correa
Nice! I use AdBlock to shun the ads but something like CB2 [0] will still show
up. The most irritating ones for me are AllThingsD [1] and Forbes (I'm
surprised no one has submitted it as yet) which have an intermediate landing
advertisement page before proceeding to the main content.

[0] [http://tabcloseddidntread.com/post/68095629679/now-
shopping-...](http://tabcloseddidntread.com/post/68095629679/now-shopping-
elsewhere-via-nattarbox)

[1] [http://tabcloseddidntread.com/post/68051843383/or-just-
close...](http://tabcloseddidntread.com/post/68051843383/or-just-close-the-
tab)

------
iamthepieman
If it's a site I visit regularly then:

1\. I already subscribed/signed up/know about.

2\. It's a really annoying advertisement which could have been shown in a
sidebar or, really, anywhere else.

If it's a site I don't visit regularly I'm just there for the content -
usually via a link from somewhere else - and I'm extremely likely to close the
tab or at least completely ignore it.

I'm trying to think of an example where this kind of pop over has been helpful
but can't

------
__pThrow
Yeah, all that stuff bugs me too.

I am curious, are there web analytics that let publishers know that a page was
seen them immediately closed?

(Or that say your video was stopped after 3 seconds?)

~~~
untog
_I am curious, are there web analytics that let publishers know that a page
was seen them immediately closed?_

Yes, it's called Google Analytics.

------
SillyRobot
Besides being amazed that website authors still title sites "Welcome to ACME
Widgets", so when I bookmark the site "ACME" gets sorted down to the "W's".
Clearly these sites with modal overlays have not read this article:
[http://www.uie.com/articles/three_hund_million_button/](http://www.uie.com/articles/three_hund_million_button/)

------
xymostech
The Tom's hardware one bugs me the most. For anyone who (thankfully) hasn't
seen it yet, you get it by scrolling to the bottom of one of their question-
and-answer posts, soon after the last answer (and it doesn't make it very
obvious which one is last). If I found an answer in the thread, why on earth
would I want to go check out another question?!

------
doodpants
As long as we're complaining about things that a lot of websites do, can I
mention something annoying about the "Tab Closed; Didn't Read" site itself?

At the bottom of the page, it has a links marked "Previous" and "Next". "Next"
takes you to the previous entries, and "Previous" takes you to the next
entries.

------
jorisw
I've tried to attend LinkedIn of their horrible mobile experience. No change
as of yet. Any link you click in an email of theirs, or any link while on your
phone for that matter, brings you to that stupid app promo and breaks whatever
deeplink you clicked.

------
meredrica
Could somebody write a Chromium plugin for this? Close the tab and report it
directly.

------
ZeWaren
I love browsing those sites with my mobile devices.

------
drcongo
Wasn't expecting to see this on HN this morning. Feel free to suggest
particularly egregious offenders for me to include.

------
Bhel
AdBlock + NoScript + Ghostery. kthxbai.

~~~
Amadou
RequestPolicy is a little bit of all those wrapped up into one plugin that
does whitelisting.

[https://www.requestpolicy.com/](https://www.requestpolicy.com/)

~~~
sp332
As much as I like RequestPolicy, it doesn't do JS blocking if the JS comes
from the same domain as the page you're visiting, or any whitelisted domains.

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evincarofautumn
Right click. Inspect element. Delete. If you’re feeling charitable.

------
fl0m
Tab Closed; Didn't Read

------
dlsx
And this is also why people type in "Ad block" in to Google. It is the
obnoxious few that ruin it for the rest of us. Now 100 people won't view your
quiet embedded ad because some video pop-up. And these are mainstream websites
that shouldn't be using dirty tricks like this.

These websites are losing business. They are listening to a team of marketers
who are looking for quick conversions. What about that long term reader of a
decade who just deleted your bookmark?

