Tab Closed; Didn't Read

http://tabcloseddidntread.com

by ilyakhokhryakov • 13 years ago

224 85 13 years ago

tabcloseddidntread.com

vor_• 13 years ago

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

chadwickthebold• 13 years ago

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

jamiequint2• 13 years ago

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

ars• 13 years ago

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?)

untog2• 13 years ago

is there anyone on the planet that actually looks at these things?

Yes. I mean, I don't have the data, but sites like Upworthy (who are featured) make 25 different headlines for every post, then test the hell out of them to see which one performs best. I'd be amazed if they didn't bother to also test the performance of popups like that.

wizzard• 13 years ago

Upworthy is the worst. "Murder is bad! # Agree # Disagree" And where do they post the results of all these hard-hitting surveys they do?

wowaname• 13 years ago

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• 13 years ago

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...

Houshalter• 13 years ago

There is a lot of use in websites having shortcut keys though. For example using space to pause videos or the arrow keys to rewind. Not everything is optimal for the mouse.

wodenokoto• 13 years ago

esc stops page loading, not javascript execution. Gmail is essentially a javascript application.

ZeWaren• 13 years ago

I love browsing those sites with my mobile devices.

GuiA2• 13 years ago

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)

_j5l3• 13 years ago

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

Aloha• 13 years ago

Posting about it on HN might be :-P

ye• 13 years ago

If they pay for installs, why not?

Nothing stops you from uninstalling it the next day.

buremba• 13 years ago

don't worry, most probably they will take it back from you with its interest.

GuiA2• 13 years ago

I've never used a credit card in my life :)

krapp• 13 years ago

If they were smart they wouldn't be paying their customers to install their spyware, they'd penalize them for accessing their site without installing it. For their own "security".

That's probably illegal though. I hope.

mikestew3• 13 years ago

For that $50 they could have just given you one of those little RSA key fobs (or equivalent). Assuming their goal is increased security, that is.

OTOH, if it's just "offers from our partners" spam, I'd ditch them immediately. That's the kind of crap I expect from free file sharing sites or something, not the entity that holds my money.

denzil_correa• 13 years ago

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-...

[1] http://tabcloseddidntread.com/post/68051843383/or-just-close...

swang• 13 years ago

A popup by any other name is still terrible.

__pThrow• 13 years ago

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?)

untog2• 13 years ago

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.

gk14• 13 years ago

If you're using Google Analytics you can look at bounce rates and time-on-site. You can also track video actions (start, stop, pause, etc) with event tracking.

iamthepieman• 13 years ago

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

vitd• 13 years ago

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.

mikestew3• 13 years ago

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.

xymostech• 13 years ago

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?!

jamiequint2• 13 years ago

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.

gk14• 13 years ago

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.

Amadou3• 13 years ago

You probably just left it out, but what was the effect on traffic to the website and as follow-on, sales? I'm thinking the goal was not to have more email subscribers, the goal was probably to sell more stuff via the website.

deathanatos2• 13 years ago

based on cookies.

Which, if I'm not an intimate viewer of your site, means every time.

jlees• 13 years ago

The most frustrating thing with these popups is when they come up after clicking through from the site's email newsletter. Some sites I visit do it on every single page load, which is a really good way to make an engaged subscriber unsubscribe.

drcongo4• 13 years ago

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.

freshhawk• 13 years ago

You are completely right except that making a whiny site about it will help. It's arguable how much, but ridicule is an effective agent of social change. The more popular this and similar jokes get the fewer consumers will see because they won't work as well.

How many "punch the whatever" flash banner ads do you see lately.

petercooper2• 13 years ago

I don't use any of these techniques but I occasionally encounter something similar with my e-mail newsletters. I have over 160,000 subscribers so they're not entirely unpopular but I'll sometimes hear from someone saying "No-one uses e-mail anymore. I can't trust you won't spam me or sell my address! Why don't you offer RSS?"-wacka-wacka. My response is usually that it's not for everyone and have a nice day ;-)

JangoSteve• 13 years ago

I'm surprised quora isn't included.

brymaster2• 13 years ago

Yeah when I saw this I was immediately reminded of these threads:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6300856

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6658995

dredmorbius3• 13 years ago

Quora and Quartz are two of my least-liked websites. Quora because it obscures content, Quartz because its layout is just so utterly execrable that it gets in the way of reading the content.

Another trick for me is to have Readability's "Read Now" bookmarklet on by bookmarks toolbar, which renders unreadable pages readable ... most of the time.

But as with OP, I find this trend hugely annoying and very regrettable.

camus2• 13 years ago

Is that strategy working for them ? I dont think so, so why are they doing that ? user would naturally register if they have questions to ask, so why do that? i cant understand this UX (or lack of...). I did not register on quora for that reason Unless your content is behind a paywall ,dont do that , that's stupid.

drcongo4• 13 years ago

I'm adding them this morning. This all got a little viral before I'd finished adding the content I'd collected.

bhaile• 13 years ago

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.

ddebernardy2• 13 years ago

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

MildlySerious• 13 years ago

Man, adding a close button sure is a hard thing to do these days. Come on Quora, it's bad for your business, and we all know it.

redblacktree2• 13 years ago

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

downer96• 13 years ago

The only time I enjoy the presence of JavaScript is during particle simulations.

...well, maybe fractal demos too.

dredmorbius3• 13 years ago

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

redblacktree2• 13 years ago

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).

kephra• 13 years ago

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.

brymaster2• 13 years ago

I keep a bookmarklet around to destroy elements on a webpage for this very reason. 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.

Amadou3• 13 years ago

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...

eli2• 13 years ago

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.

bausson• 13 years ago

Seeing that 90% of Firefox money come from google, that's not much of a surprise.

shawabawa3• 13 years ago

removing the "disable javascript" checkbox from prefs (yes I know it can still be turned off in about:config but that's unacceptable)

Why is that unacceptable? How many pages actually work without javascript?

Like it or not, javascript is an essential part of a web browser. To disable it you should have to know what you're doing.

userulluipeste• 13 years ago

A lot of that javascript is just to link bloat to the contents of interest. Javascript is consuming my processing power, and don't ask me to just get a ever bigger/larger battery or more processing power so I could afford to waste on that bloat.

vdm• 13 years ago

In Chrome, you can also use Shift-Cmd-C <hover select> <backspace>. Perfect for killing the stupid floating bar at the top of the viewport.

Bhel• 13 years ago

AdBlock + NoScript + Ghostery. kthxbai.

Amadou3• 13 years ago

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

https://www.requestpolicy.com/

sp332• 13 years ago

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.

ddebernardy2• 13 years ago

Hold...

AdBlock features "Acceptable Ads", by means of which advertisers are blackmailed to pay AdBlock so that their ads still go through.

Ghostery belongs to an advertisement business. And sure enough, they disable tracking for third parties while proceeding to track you on their end. Priceless.

lmm• 13 years ago

AdBlock features "Acceptable Ads", by means of which advertisers are blackmailed to pay AdBlock so that their ads still go through.

Why should I care? By installing AdBlock I've already declared that I don't care about the "moral" side of ad revenue. If browsing the web without AdBlock is annoying, and browsing with AdBlock is non-annoying, I'm going to browse with AdBlock. If this paid exemption mechanism let enough ads through to make the web annoying again then I'd feel the need to do something about it, but so far it hasn't.

eli2• 13 years ago

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.

petercooper2• 13 years ago

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.

vacri• 13 years ago

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.

bobbygoodlatte• 13 years ago

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.

dlsx• 13 years ago

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?

evincarofautumn• 13 years ago

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

drcongo4• 13 years ago

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

jorisw• 13 years ago

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.

fl0m• 13 years ago

Tab Closed; Didn't Read

meredrica• 13 years ago

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

doodpants• 13 years ago

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.

SillyRobot• 13 years ago

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/

Tab Closed; Didn't Read

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