It's the cancer of Google image search. I don't get how Google's search ranking doesn't massively penalize that behaviour.
I'd rather stomach an advertisement than the "plz register" BS.
In the case of pinterest (and quora), for example, the whole page you are looking for is there, it just gets obscured by an obnoxious overlay that makes it impossible for you to see/interact with it all from a browser unless you register.
I'm sure what the googlebot gets at the html/css/js level is the same thing the user gets. The difference being the bot doesn't care about the semi-transparent blocking overlay because the bot is just parsing text/images/links individually and not trying to interact with the page the way a human does.
Here's the link: https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/
I agree that browser makers should fix this. It should probably behave like the location API and be remembered by domain or something.
So the other day I met the guy who makes all that crap on-line
I told him you can have my cash
But first you know I've got to ask
What made you want to live this kind of life?
He said there ain't no rest for the wicked, money don't grow on trees
I got bills to pay, I got mouths to feed; ain't nothing in this world for free
I know I can't slow down
I can't hold back though you know I wish I could
Oh no there ain't no rest for the wicked
Until we close the shop for good...[edit] dang, can something be done about this? Flagging for format? Maybe a little drastic, but try reading HN in elinks, you'll see that a long line breaks the whole page. How about line wrap? Desktop users would be unaffected, and it would be a better compromise for mobile.
Cage the elephant- ain't no rest for the wicked
In case anyone is wondering
You're face to face
With the man who sold the world
There are these developers who just made an awesome webapp or something. It's really great but there is a problem. Noone knows about it. But they have a solution for that problem. They buy some "promotion". It's articles in newsletters or outright spam directed at their target audience. I cannot tell you exactly who their target audience is but I can tell you who it is not. It's not you, me or most readers on hackernews. It's less tech savyy people with more decision power. Old people. Their site is made for old people. And they don't care about you and me or any other passer-by who won't pay a dime. They care about conversion rates and that is what they monitor all day long.
It's a bit like in those scam-emails. They are so obvious that anybody with half a brain will click delete. But those who do reply, oh boy, they are so ready to be milked off by that nigerian prince.
Buying recognition is nothing new in tech.
"Our startup spent its entire marketing budget on PR: at a time when we were assembling our own computers to save money, we were paying a PR firm $16,000 a month. And they were worth it."
Read this article, "The Submarine" ~ http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
Case in point, circumventing ad blockers. Audience explicitly doesn't want the ad experience, but Facebook wants to make more $. Facebook just announced a record quarter on desktop advertising fueled by successfully circumventing ad blockers.
"While Facebook appears to have had the last word for now, this, friends, is a long game. That being said, a few other ad blockers have apparently found workarounds to Facebook’s latest circumvention."
I asked him, what if the client wanted a pink unicorn gif in the corner, should we just do that as well? Without telling the client that it doesn't fit the site? He said yes...
The website probably won't cry over your bounce if it means they'll collect an email optin from someone else.
Auto play video is bad for reasons beyond a pop in modal and reasons beyond annoying video ads.
my wife has quit going to several sites altogether, and in other cases can not buy on a website, because of pop-up stuff.
So... if they're measuring for "email signups" then - w00t! - sweet! - numbers are so high! What about actual sales? Or repeat sales? Lifetime value of a customer?
Ask him to ask the client if that's the behaviour the client would find annoying if every other site also did that.
Not everybody gets to choose their job.
And you can see that these sites get posted to HN, so at least someone is reading it. Personally though I prefer more pleasant sites.
I block Google Analytics (and many other things), and was surprised that none of my colleagues do the same.
So you are OK with making Google track your users but you don't want to be tracked yourself?
I'd like to use something we host, then we probably wouldn't need to have the EU cookie warning.
But it's all hypothetical, since my ublock takes care of it. Of course, that also means that I am no longer much exerting any selection pressure on the market in that regard.
Whether you succeed or not is immaterial: the ad got clicked on, and hey, even if 99.9% of those clicks are accidental ones that will never convert, they still look like "organic" clicks and the ad revenue still gets booked. Expensive consultants like this person ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12944902 ) will chalk it up in the "users engaged" column. Everybody gets what they came for... except you and me.
I was also surprised at how difficult it is to get a modern browser to consistently disable the feature.
Sucks, though. I like having access to high-quality content, and I believe journalists deserve to get paid for their work. Unfortunately, the Internet at large has long since decided that just paying people for their product over the table is not what the norm should be.
Alternatively, if a site does non-aggressive advertising like Dslreports.com, that is quite tolerable. More niche sites are now doing delayed access paywalls too.
The disadvantage will be that sites which require scripts will break on first-access.
The advantages are better overall privacy + security, and that simple static ads won't be blocked and hence those authors will be compensated.
(Edited to better match parent's concerns)
That's the only way to shut them down for good -- make it hurt to abuse your visitors.
If you're lucky it loads fast and the x to close is somewhere visible. You're rarely lucky though.
Still, my number 1 is loading the extra content and making elements jump around. A lot of times I: 1) see a link that interests me; 2) hover my finger over a link, ready to tap; 3) wait 1-2 secs, to be sure it's done loading; 4) Ok, it's ready; 5) tap the liContent jumps and I click somewhere else.
Both Facebook's and Twitter's search act like this. It displays recent search for enough time for you to move your finger/mouse to click it, then loads general results, like trending and suggestions. Waiting for the AJAX response to come back before displaying anything should be the norm.
E.G Chrome on windows 10 hooked up to a 4K Acer monitor via HDMI
You can harden FF also and remove a few other annoyances like the default PDF reader, etc:
My computer is a little older, and this one is a dealbreaker. Sometimes a page is so heavy that it brings my whole computer to its knees. If I can tell a page is starting to load more than a reasonable amount of elements, I punch out as soon as possible.
1) Autoplaying videos, especially ads.
2) Pop-ups / overlays.
3) Loading lots of extra elements causing text to jump around.
Especially true if I'm just browsing around and click on something that looks interesting, the above will take that thing from "this might be worth 30 seconds" to "not worth it".
Why kill that little dopamine boost someone just got from clicking on a link to your site? If you're wondering why your bounce rate is so high... though maybe these dark patterns bring in enough ad revenue that it's worth it. I don't see how 3 helps that, though, just lazy coding. Or maybe other people are more tolerant and it doesn't really affect the bounce rate.