

Designers: Don't cover what I'm looking at - paulferrett
http://paulferrett.com/2014/please-stop-covering-what-im-looking-at/

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tzs
This problem also can show up for people who scroll with a mouse wheel or
trackpad gesture, and so do not have to have the cursor over a scroll bar to
scroll. My cursor is usually near where I last clicked on the page, and it is
annoying when I then scroll and things start popping in and out of existance
as they scroll under the cursor.

I find it annoying to have to go find a safe spot to park after I click on
something so I can scroll without triggering things.

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jmgrosen
As a dissenting opinion, I like this pattern. I generally don't move my mouse
over something unless I want to interact specifically with it.

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cardiffspaceman
I like a sense of feedback but some feedback designs are worse than no
feedback. Some smart designer right now is writing "Hover feedback considered
harmful."

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userbinator
This trend might've come from existing desktop UIs with clickable elements
that didn't show any obvious signs of being clickable - I believe XP's visual
style was the first to have subtly changing buttons on mouseover, and that
spread over to web design. Then maybe someone thought it wasn't _obvious_
enough, so they made mouseover changes even more obvious and attention-
getting, to the point of being distracting.

I find that a lot of web designs considered "modern" now are certainly
excellent at being attention-getting and flashy, but have much lower
information content and usability -- it's the equivalent of someone screaming
in your face, and more loudly than before. It might be a reflection of lowered
attention spans in general, or a contributor to it; I don't know.

I would hope that the cursor changing from an arrow to a pointer hand is
obvious enough that something is clickable...

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arghbleargh
For me the pointer hand is a little too subtle. I prefer to have the border
highlighted on mouseover, which gives a strong visual indication without
obscuring the content.

I have to agree though that modern designs, while slick, are often no more
usable than designs from the 2000s. For example, take the point about vague
icons near the end of the article. Even though you can often guess roughly
what those icons do, that moment of uncertainty when you click them to see
what happens creates a jarring user experience that could have been avoided
with a few words of text.

A major contributing factor to this trend in design is obviously the emphasis
on mobile devices (e.g. sometimes you have to use those small icons due to
limited screen sizes). It annoys me that a lot of this mobile-driven design
gets copied over to the desktop even when the same constraints no longer
apply. Unfortunately, this is not completely without reason. To me, words like
"refresh" are less ambiguous than circular arrows, but maybe to someone who
grew up using only tablets and iphones, the circular arrow is more familiar.

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slavik81
Downvoting a well-asked stackoverflow question out of dislike for the design
of the website the asker was building seems unduly harsh, especially as the
author hasn't actually even seen the website.

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stcredzero
This goes double for fancy dialogs that float over my content! (Especially the
ones that follow me as I scroll!)

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mkesper
Many sites are unusable without adblocking due to this.

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dyarosla
Totally agree. It's been bothering me for a while too- I never fully realized
it was because I would generally guide my mouse towards it as I'm looking at
it.

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dddrh
A company I really like has this problem. [1] When I think of getting a new
film pack, I find myself doing a "mouse dance" where I look at the photos and
then they disappear followed by moving the mouse over another photo.

[1] [http://vsco.co/film](http://vsco.co/film)

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peterbraden
Here's the thing, big affordances are good UI, so making the entire image a
click target is a good idea. _Especially_ because of mobile. On mobile, nobody
is dragging a cursor anywhere. The mobile market is more important for
designers than the small demographic that uses a mouse wrong.

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TheLoneWolfling
Alternatively: don't display information only on mouseover. My mouse is not
tied to my eyes.

