But if you make a really big button (or a button that appears out of nowhere on mouseover on PCs) that people frequently hit by accident, your "engagement" metric will improve, showing that the feature is valuable!

It's funny because it's (probably) true.

...AARGH! No, scratch that. It's actually infuriating. :)

The worst offender of this right now is email programs. You go to click an entry in your email list and then suddenly you've archived it with a little icon that wasn't previously there.

> out of touch

This is ironic. The vast majority of users don't know about most of these functions. They just use their mouse. Even for basic things like:

- navigating & selecting text (words, lines etc.)

- switching between windows

- opening search (like spotlight, if they use it at all...)

- opening & closing windows/tabs, saving files etc.

The list goes on. UI design is not about teaching you how to use a computer. And you certainly cannot expect users to already know.

That said. I think fixed position "back to top" buttons are terrible as well and I would put fixed position header-menus in the same category. They just add clutter and worsen the UX, even for those who almost exclusively use the mouse (as you can simply drag the scroll-bar).

True. Whenever I sit and watch people use the computer (just watch when they are giving a presentation/screen sharing), I often cringe.

Many don't use the scroll on their mouse/trackpad - they literally look for the scrollbar, click and drag to scroll.

Many are blissfully unaware that the keys Page Up and Page Down move the page up and down or that Home and End move the whole page to the beginning and the end.

BUT, they do know about the Back button on the browser so they end up resubmitting forms/double posting, etc. lol

Sure but should all these be part of browsers UX not the website itself?

Maybe we should be pushing browsers to have better UX on-boarding and teaching people that home button will scroll you up to the top of the page etc.

Does Android not have some native scroll-to-top gesture/button? On iOS you just tap the status bar and it's uncommon for it not to work where you'd expect it to.

No, I feel like a caveman saying this, but if you want to go to the top of the page, you have to flick your finger down really fast, or reload the page.

I like Android's scrollable scroll bar (I don't know precise name) that supports scroll to anywhere but nowadays very few app uses it.

As far as I am aware it does not. That sounds like a useful shortcut.

I think its actually a result of people using only (or at least, most of the time) the mouse to browse the internet. If you just click from one link to another, pressing "home" is actually quite a far reach. There are people around that still think you have to drag the scrollbar. Sure, "home" is way faster, but a (well implemented) choice helps some and does not hurt.

A floating back to top button just means they don't want you to waste time reading the content. You should click around and view some more ads instead.

I mean, that's the only possible conclusion I can come up with, since they give the button such prominence. It's the same with newsletter popups. You shove that in my face, obscuring all other content, it means your site is dedicated to harvesting email addresses, and you want to spam me senseless.

Or maybe it shows how out of touch the old design was (the fact that it had been there for half a century and even folks on HN had never seen it...).