

Try right clicking GitHub's logo  - vincentchan
http://github.com/
Not sure if this is something new but I really think this feature is very thoughtful. Great UX. I hope every site will do the same thing.
======
idan
Saw this on Flask (<http://flask.pocoo.org/>) a while back. I don't remember
where Armin got inspiration from, but I remember he showed me another site
that did this before his.

Sidestepping the UX discussion here, there's an important moral here for
startups:

 _Have a logo page with print-suitable copies of your logo._ Actually, do one
better and have the following logos:

1\. Vector, raster (large), raster (small) in color

2\. Vector, raster (large), raster (small) in monochrome

Anytime somebody wants to write about you, anytime you're sponsoring a
conference, anytime you need stuff printed—that page will serve you well and
let your t-shirt suppliers/conference organizers/curious journalists the thing
they need without having to bug you. Until you get really big, misuse of your
logo is unlikely. Just make it easy for people to get, like everything else
about your company.

At Skills (<http://skillsapp.com>) we have a direct link in every page's
footer and another on our about page.

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jawns
Here's how I would improve this:

The lightbox that opens up asks, "Looking for the GitHub logo?"

But it doesn't let you answer no. It just presumes that your answer is yes,
and supplies you with what it thinks you actually want (or, more cynically,
what it wants you to want).

I would suggest adding a "No thanks -- just let me right-click" link at the
bottom. That link would close the lightbox and prevent it from reopening for
the rest of the session, which would be in contrast to its current behavior,
where the lightbox pops up no matter how many times you right-click.

~~~
javery
You must be a program manager - you have taken a simple and easy solution and
added a ton of complexity for a problem 1% or less of people will encounter.

~~~
colonel_panic
Am I really in a <1% minority of people who right click site logos to open the
main page in a new tab and start a separate browsing path?

~~~
tedunangst
You and me both. Apparently I'm expected to go out and buy a new laptop with a
middle mouse button so I can open new tabs properly.

~~~
LukeShu
If you left and right click at the same time, it will middle click.

~~~
tedunangst
Except when it doesn't. My thoughts on that are in another comment.

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OzzyB
I know that overriding expected functionality like this is considered a "no-
no", but let's not loose sight of the fact that this "UX trick" was used on a
logo, on the masthead, on the site's header.

What do you really _want_ if you right-click on a logo like this? If you did
indeed want to right-click & save-as to get the image, this feature takes that
a step further and actually offers you a selection of high-res images to
choose from -- it's adding not subtracting.

Its not like this trick is used unabated and disables functionality
completely, like those "don't steal my image bro!" javascripts...

IMO this could even be expanded further, i.e. Link to company's about/contact
pages, mission statement etc.

The logo acts as a gateway to the company -- I like it.

~~~
johtso
This has actually got in the way of expected functionality for me. I've often
right clicked on the logo to try and open the github homepage in a new tab.

~~~
plaes
ctrl+click (or mouse middle click)

[Edit]: Accidentally replied to the wrong comment :(

~~~
mmahemoff
This is "correct", but for users who don't know it, it's still going to be an
issue (admittedly less so on a tech-savvy site like GitHub).

I think they could improve this by including a little text message "Open
Github in a new window".

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bradleyjg
This is a bad idea. It was a bad idea when paranoid sites did it to try and
stop people from stealing their images and it is still a bad idea when trying
to be helpful. There is a wide variety of behavior accessed through right
click beyond save as.

~~~
run4yourlives
...which moving your mouse away from the logo still allows you to access.

Personally, I think it's a great little addition to a website.

~~~
danso
Yeah. I guess the one thing it could conceivably block is the ability to tell
where that specific logo file is being served from...but the niche group of
users who need to know that most likely would use inspector-tools to find it.

I was shocked when my roommate told me that in 8 years of owning a Mac (and
using a PC from time to time), she had been completely unaware that there was
such a thing as a "right-click"

I recently taught some media people how to use the web-inspector...and had to
explain what a "right click" was to even show how to get to the inspector's
context menu.

~~~
bradleyjg
I use right click, slight move the right, left click to go back. A lot quicker
than mousing all the way up to the back button, and the four and five button
mice never seemed to have caught on.

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RKearney
Why was it necessary to bundle the _MACOSX and .DS_Store files with the zip
download? I rarely see zip files with thumbs.db or desktop.ini files in them.

~~~
zobzu
its terrible when Windows (ouh ouh EVIL MS) does stuff like that it's normal
when Mac OSX does it.

Lets push this further. It's ok when github hijacks your right click (makes
the logo download more annoying while pretending to make things nicer). It's
terrible if MS/Mozilla/Whoever isn't hype right now does it.

As simple as that. Sadly.

~~~
envex
Taking it a bit too seriously?

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helipad
I've seen this done a few times before.

Akismet is one example: [http://littlebigdetails.com/post/6493183632/akismet-
when-you...](http://littlebigdetails.com/post/6493183632/akismet-when-you-
right-click-the-logo-it-shows)

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thristian
A long time ago, when I first installed Firefox, I went Preferences → Content
→ Enable JavaScript → Advanced and unticked all the "Allow scripts to:"
options, including "Disable or replace context menus".

I still get the cute dialog-box when I right-click, but I _also_ get my proper
right-click menu for the link in question.

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sathishmanohar
No, I'm not looking for Github Logo. I'm looking to open dashboard in a new
tab. ok thanks.

~~~
imperialWicket
Ctrl + Left Click (or Command + Left Click) works in just about every browser.

~~~
theon144
Or middle click.

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hornbaker
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that delightful bit of UX was Kyle
Neath's idea and execution.

~~~
Ralith
Violating the user's expectations to this degree is not delightful UX.

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famousactress
I find it kind of disarming to overload not-typically-overloaded events like
this though. I wonder if it'd be possible to let the right-click menu appear
as normal, but background a div that pops up and give you the option of
downloading the nicer logo files?

~~~
cannuk
That should be possible if you do not cancel the event bubble when the overlay
is shown. I did not have time to inspect their code, but I assume they are
canceling the event.

~~~
unfletch
You're thinking of preventing the default action, not stopping propagation.
(Event.preventDefault() vs. Event.stopPropagation() in modern browsers.) But
you're right, if they handled the right-click and did not explicitly prevent
the default action it would do both.

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jjcm
Please let this become the norm. This is fantastic.

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falcolas
Note - requires you to load javascript from akamai.net. Didn't notice a thing
different until I enabled that through noscript.

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guelo
The actual logo that is being displayed looks like it is suffering from being
shrunk down too much from a bigger image.

~~~
bonzoesc
It is. In a presentation at Superconf, one of the Github designers (whose name
escapes me) said that they serve some images at high resolution and resize in
the HTML tags for the benefit of iPhones 4 and other high-dpi devices.

~~~
tlrobinson
Can't this be handled with multiple stylesheets?

~~~
bkbleikamp
We do it so that when people zoom in on the site (using `⌘ + +` on a Mac) the
image doesn't become pixelated and ugly.

We do it with most other images, too.

~~~
Genmutant
Well this way it's pixelated and ugly by default. I don't think that's better.

~~~
bkbleikamp
What browser/OS are you in? It looks pretty reasonable in Chrome on OSX; we
spent a decent amount of time trying to get it as close as we could. Some
browsers do weird math on resizing.

~~~
Genmutant
Win7, FF11 (current). You're right, it looks better in Chrome.

------
gravitronic
I ran into this the other day when I was attempting to right-click & "open as
new tab" and got _so confused_.

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Foy
I couldn't help but notice the actual logo wasn't one of the download options.
Although inspecting the element tells us that the original logo is at
[https://a248.e.akamai.net/assets.github.com/images/modules/h...](https://a248.e.akamai.net/assets.github.com/images/modules/header/logov7@4x-hover.png)

I'm not entirely sure what Github was trying to accomplish with this, other
than being a neat trick.

EDIT:
[https://a248.e.akamai.net/assets.github.com/images/modules/h...](https://a248.e.akamai.net/assets.github.com/images/modules/header/logov7@4x.png)
for the non-hover logo. ;)

~~~
bkbleikamp
That's not the actual logo. It's a variation that is only used in the header.

The official logo includes the Social Coding tagline.

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callmeed
I think this is awesome.

I'm in an industry where our customers (pro photographers) are at _paranoia
level: tin-foil-hat_ with regards to people stealing their images. Regardless
of how much I try to educate people, many will always want right-click
disabled.

I think this is a great compromise. If you could offer them a low-res or
watermarked version, that would be something people would pay for.

------
baby
$(".site-logo").on("contextmenu",function(){ return $.facebox({div:"#logo-
popup"},"logo-popup clearfix"),!1})

TIL about ContextMenu[1] and Facebox[2] in Jquery

[1] <http://archive.plugins.jquery.com/project/jqueryContextMenu> [2]
<http://defunkt.io/facebox/>

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human_error
Maybe I just want to right-click and open the homepage in new tab. With this
feature, I can't do this.

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JoshTriplett
In Firefox, open Preferences -> Content, hit the "Advanced" button next to
"Enable Javascript", and uncheck "disable or replace context menus". With that
unchecked, you get the right-click menu as usual, in addition to whatever the
site wants to offer.

------
michaelmartin
I think this is a cool way to do it. It's a very nice effect and ensures
people are using good quality versions of their logo.

Akismet (The anti-spam tool) does something similar with theirs:
<http://akismet.com/>

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suyash
// Listen to Right Click events on your logo image
$('img').bind('contextmenu', function(e){ // Your code/interaction goes here
});

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insraq
I thought Akismet was the first to adopt such design: <http://akismet.com/>

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atesti
How can I disable that a webpage can hijack right click in Chrome like it's
possible in Firefox?

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bricestacey
Wasn't the logo not even a link a couple of days ago? All this whining is
ridiculous.

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ak217
Behold, the Octodex:

<http://octodex.github.com/>

~~~
OzzyB
That's awesome, they should definitely have a link to this page on their pop-
up :)

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jumpinoverboard
This is pretty neat. A nice way to share the logo with the world.

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tonetheman
hahaha i cant see anything... what happens exactly?

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rhizome
POLA violation.

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invalidka
just click shift+/ and be done with it.

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zacwitte
smart

