websites that pop up a modal as soon as you move your mouse off their page

[brianmanahan]

this abomination seems to be the popular thing to do on websites in 2016

now even mainstream sites pop up a "HEY MISTER WHY YOU LEAVING?" modal dialog when i switch to another tab

don't they know that some people multitask between tabs? are they that stupid?

i have to see if i can find a plugin that prevents these stupid things from popping up on my internets.

 

[Red Squirrel]

YES this PISSES me off, or even the ones that just pop it randomly or as soon as you land on the page. It's TERRIBLE design and super annoying.

I really wish adblock would be able to detect and block those but I imagine it would be harder to code for that. I usually immediately leave those sites because they piss me off so much.

Web design in general has turned into trash though, too much overuse of javascript and interactive bullcrap. Just give me a page that looks decent with text and pictures and nothing that tries to do weird stuff.

Another trend I've noticed is headers that stay with the rest of the page, essentially cutting your viewing area.

 

[Ken g6]

Wow, I hadn't seen that. I just tried it, and it's both really annoying and really simple with http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/event_onmouseleave.asp

NoScript blocks it, of course, but may block other things too.

 

[Charmonium]

Try element hiding helper addon for adblock. You can usually block the pop up boxes but if they gray out the background, i.e., the page you were viewing, I can't remember if it still gets grayed out and you then can't get out or if you can just reload and see the page again.

 

[BUTCH1]

Wow, I hadn't seen that. I just tried it, and it's both really annoying and really simple with http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/event_onmouseleave.asp

NoScript blocks it, of course, but may block other things too.

Yea, I don't use NoScript very often, there is not a lot you can do with it running unless you want to set up permissions on a page by page method, too much time IMO.

 

[lxskllr]

Yea, I don't use NoScript very often, there is not a lot you can do with it running unless you want to set up permissions on a page by page method, too much time IMO.

You can work on a blacklist method, and build it slowly over time. Block the known crap as you feel like doing it. Anything's better than nothing.

Personally, I don't find it much bother. It's usually the trashier sites that are overloaded with scripts, so it provides a good sanity check. "Do you really want to see this bullshit?". Usually, the answer is "no"

 

[Red Squirrel]

Issue with blacklist is these sites typically arn't daily visit websites, they're typically sites you land on while doing a google search for something, and will probably not land on it again later. So there's no sense in trying to make a blacklist. Actually would be nice if search engines would rank those trashy sites much lower.

Somebody needs to make something like noscript but that works in such a way that it blocks scripts based on what they do, and there would be some rules you can set. For example any script that grays out the page, it just works out what triggered it, and blocks that whole function from running. The program would need to be rather sophisticated though, basically it would "render" the site in memory then look for anything that is off (like something blocking your view), then work out what part of the script made it happen.

 

[Jaskalas]

modal dialog

Congratulations, you're the first person to use that term. I had to google it.
I'd just call it a popup, or popup window.

 

[Newbian]

For some reason I was thinking op was talking about those VirtuaGirl type woman popping up and I guess I need to stop visiting so many porn sites.

 

[brianmanahan]

Congratulations, you're the first person to use that term. I had to google it.
I'd just call it a popup, or popup window.

it's different than a popup, at least how i've always heard it

popup = element is opened in a new browser window

modal dialog (or modal window) = element is opened in the center of the current window on top of the existing content, and the content in the background is darkened and disabled until the modal is closed

 

[Ruptga]

I only ever see these on news sites, and I only ever see the popup as I'm moving to close the tab, so i just keep going and close it anyway. They are transparent attention whoring though, and would be annoying if I saw them more than rarely.

 

[JEDI]

this abomination seems to be the popular thing to do on websites in 2016

now even mainstream sites pop up a "HEY MISTER WHY YOU LEAVING?" modal dialog when i switch to another tab

don't they know that some people multitask between tabs? are they that stupid?

i have to see if i can find a plugin that prevents these stupid things from popping up on my internets.

clicked on thread just to find out what a modal is.
it's a pop-up?

and I have yet to encounter this from any site when I just switch tabs.
I've encountered 'you sure you wanna leave' pop-up when I try to close the tab but that's mainly from sketchy sites

 

[lxskllr]

It's not a popup. It's a dialog box that won't let you do anything til you acknowledge it.

"Do you really want to leave?"

"No fucker. I just sit at the computer and randomly flail my arms. Who knows what buttons I end up pressing. Thanks for asking" :^S

 

[sandorski]

Please fill out our Customer Satisfaction Survey before leaving [/takes 20 seconds to figure out how to close the damn thing] :thumbsdown:

I have used Allrecipes for many years, the last year or so they added Ads and a Subscription service. Not just Ads though, but video Ads with Audio that have no Pause/Stop controls. It gets better though, there are usually 4 of these on a page, 1 plays after another, except sometimes 2 play at the same time...

 

[DrPizza]

What would be a cool website to make, but would draw the ire of many of these larger sites, is "clean dot com" Where you could go to clean, and surf a site via their site - they mirror the other sites and remove the intrusive crap.

If it became popular, you'd think the larger sites would get a clue. But, alas, marketing majors are idiots who partied their way through college. "Hey, look, I saw another website that does this, so we should do it too."

 

[BUTCH1]

What would be a cool website to make, but would draw the ire of many of these larger sites, is "clean dot com" Where you could go to clean, and surf a site via their site - they mirror the other sites and remove the intrusive crap.

If it became popular, you'd think the larger sites would get a clue. But, alas, marketing majors are idiots who partied their way through college. "Hey, look, I saw another website that does this, so we should do it too."

I cant remember the last time I went to a site that DIDN'T want my email addy "so you won't miss out!", ugh.

 

[JEDI]

It's not a popup. It's a dialog box that won't let you do anything til you acknowledge it.

oh.. yeah, ive encountered those when ENTERING a site.
"please enter your email addr"

the background greys out and you cant do anything till that dialog box closes.

but I've yet to find one that does that when you just switch tabs.
op, what freaking sketchy sites are you surfing? links?

 

[pmv]

Web design in general has turned into trash though, too much overuse of javascript and interactive bullcrap. Just give me a page that looks decent with text and pictures and nothing that tries to do weird stuff.
.

Yeah, why is so much web-design, even on very high-status sites, so awful? And every time some new feature appears web-designers immediately use it to make sites worse and harder to use?

Infinite-scrolling, for example - I swear there was one site that introduced that _with important links at the bottom of the page_. That you now couldn't reach (or not without scrolling for hours as the list wasn't quite infinite, but was like 50 pages turned into one).

And the stupid 'slide in' things that overlap the menu you actually want to use (ebay.uk has this) so you have to wait for them to go away again before you can do anything.

And at the same time, long-standing usability problems with sites never get fixed (e.g. if you order by price, Amazon will list 5000 completely identical items from the same seller, at the lowest price, that you have to scroll through to get to the things you are actually looking for, and you can't order the list by price until you choose a department, even if the items are spread over several departments)

I guess there's some sort of pressure for web-designers to always incorporate new features as soon as they become possible, without 'wasting' time doing any actual usability testing first?

 

[Leros]

As someone who works on websites that optimize people through a conversion funnel, I think these are brilliant. When you move your cursor towards the upper left of the screen (where the back button is) and they show a pop up with special deal - it's genius. You're already leaving, so they have nothing to lose my giving you a suboptimal experience, but they can throw up a last ditch effort to get you to convert.

 

[Charmonium]

Please fill out our Customer Satisfaction Survey before leaving [/takes 20 seconds to figure out how to close the damn thing] :thumbsdown:

I have used Allrecipes for many years, the last year or so they added Ads and a Subscription service. Not just Ads though, but video Ads with Audio that have no Pause/Stop controls. It gets better though, there are usually 4 of these on a page, 1 plays after another, except sometimes 2 play at the same time...

As I said earlier, you guys need to check out the element hiding helper for adblock. You can select the elements in a page you want to remove, point click and they're gone forever.

The only thing you have to watch out for are containers. Sometimes elements are in nested containers so once you select an element, keep zooming out until it selects more than you want deleted then zoom back in by one step.

That probably didn't make much sense but it will once you've used the tool a couple of times.

https://adblockplus.org/elemhidehelper

 

[DrPizza]

As someone who works on websites that optimize people through a conversion funnel, I think these are brilliant. When you move your cursor towards the upper left of the screen (where the back button is) and they show a pop up with special deal - it's genius. You're already leaving, so they have nothing to lose my giving you a suboptimal experience, but they can throw up a last ditch effort to get you to convert.

Nothing to lose except possibly someone returning to their page. Annoy me and I won't be back.

 

[Leros]

Nothing to lose except possibly someone returning to their page. Annoy me and I won't be back.

Lots of sites test these things and have empirical data that tell them if its a net positive or a net loss. If you see it on a legitimate, higher traffic site, you can probably bet its been tested and increased metrics.

 

[brianmanahan]

Lots of sites test these things and have empirical data that tell them if its a net positive or a net loss. If you see it on a legitimate, higher traffic site, you can probably bet its been tested and increased metrics.

you know who also increased metrics?

hitler