I made a add-on for myself to shun sites that behave in ways I don't like. It removes links to their sites from every page. It effectively removes them from the internet. I think that's a way scarier scenario for a website owner than just getting their ads blocked. If the list were community driven and widely used, I think site owners would start changing their behavior. I know most people just want the content and don't care if they block a few ads but I'm sure, like me, there a good chunk of people that are fine with respecting the site owners wishes and just never going to the site (by never seeing their site mentioned ever again) since I'm not going to "pay" in any form.

I did publish the Firefox add-on (desktop only) just so I could avoid having to use web-ext or temporarily install it every time I run FF. It's a complete hassle to set up and configure at the moment. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ssure/?src=se...

Edit: Source is here https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/files/browse/601156... in case you want to try and not worry about it doing something shady.

I use Safari and I almost always click/tap the reader view icon as soon as the page loads. This:

1) Shows the text even if a modal has already tried to obscure it.

2) Ensures a legible font and contrast.

3) Undoes stupid scroll jacking. Yay, the text scrolls smoothly again.

4) Fixes the scroll bar so that it provides an accurate indication of how far through the page I've read, since the non-text crap I don't care about isn't part of the view now.

5) Allows me to copy text w/o worrying about anything else getting inserted to the clipboard.

6) Doesn't disclose to the site how far I've scrolled, which is none of their business.

And probably other good things I'm forgetting. Tapping the reader view icon as soon as the page loads has become habitual.

I obviously run an ad blocker as well.

This is in both iOS and macOS. Reader view FTW. It's the next best thing to disabling Javascript entirely.

Chrome and Firefox should include an as good reader view built in.

This is what happens when you mindlessly optimise for metrics like user signups - not surprisingly, you get more signups when you block the content with an obnoxious modal but after a few years, you wonder where all your users went. How much value do you really get from a user who was forced to sign up with a gun to their head?

IMO it doesn't worth the time to discuss appropriate and inappropriate uses of JavaScript. It's way simpler to disable it entirely. I use two browsers: Firefox with "YesScript" extension which keeps the black list of sites where JS is disabled: see a popup? laggy scrolling? sticky headers? Bam! hit the button and you won't see it again.

For work, where web applications like Google suite matter, I use Chrome.

Some time ago browser developers realized that letting Javascript open new windows was a bad idea and every browser now has a setting (on by default) to block pop-ups. IMO now it's time to introduce a few other anti-abuse settings. My candidates are:

  - code execution on "scroll" events
  - CSS animations (web devs, your transitions are NEVER smooth, even of MBP)
  - position:fixed (auto-replace to position:static)

    javascript:for (let e of document.querySelectorAll('*')) if (/fixed|sticky/.test(getComputedStyle(e).position)) e.style.position = 'static';

No, I don't want to chat with someone either.

So please stop beeping at me and popping up a chat modal.

Yes it's annoying but they work:

"sticking a big ole pop-up in their face can be one of the most effective ways to jolt their attention & grab their email for a return visit." Peep Laja. https://conversionxl.com/popup-defense/?hvid=2EcGFw

I think Google is fighting this by giving a lower rank to pages that do this[1].

[1]: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users-easi...

These are also bad for accessibility reasons — they generally have a light gray "x" on a white background, which you have to hunt for if you want to dismiss the modal. For normally-sighted individuals, this is a hassle. For people with low vision or motor impairments (e.g. Parkinson's or other tremors), this creates a much bigger problem.

This battle will never be won by those who oppose the pop-ups. The reason? They work.

If you put one on your site the metrics show a definite upturn in conversion, be it sales or sign-ups or whatever you're pushing. Then you take it down for awhile maybe, then you put it back up with something different and you get the upturn again.

I personally despise them with every bone in my body, but I don't see them ever going away.

I'm not too annoyed by modals but I'm sick and tired of websites whose content shifts around due to inline ads loading.

It's very frustrating when you're trying to read something and the page keeps changing its layout for 10 seconds, especially on a mobile device where you can accidentally click on a link or ad pretty easily. Makes me wonder if they do this on purpose...

Instead of asking "Do you want to participate ..." ask one relevant question that actually has some value for you. And put one field for entering free information. If I'm in the mood, I could actually help you to develop your business/web site by providing some highly insightful information.

Can't see any value in these questionnaires, since the population who answers to them must be highly biased. If you spend many hours per day on web, there's probably a dedicated section in your brains scanning for clickable [X], "No thank you", "Close" entities on the view and giving direct commands to your mouse hand.

Placing the newsletter signup form at the bottom of the articles on my site is my preferred method. Only engaged readers get there, and those are the people I want subscribing. Adding double opt-in also weeds out mistaken subscribers.

Publishers should approach everything from the point of view of a person on the street: if it wouldn’t be acceptable in real life, WHY is it acceptable online!?

The equivalent of a pop-up newsletter modal is somebody on the street PULLING you aside, standing directly in front of you and preventing you from going any further until you answer their question. All without bothering to observe what you were doing beforehand. Your choice then is to step back the way you came to avoid the creepy sidewalk-blocking people. Ridiculous, creepy and unacceptable in real life but essentially exactly how web sites treat their visitors.

Yes, I want to subscribe to your newsletter!

Automatically with a browser plugin, with an address that will even accept your mails. Unfortunately no human will read them in the end, but I'm sure your metrics will be great. I might even accept a cookie so you know I'm already subscribed to your great newsletter.

Now if everybody were to do that...

I usually subscribe postmaster@(domain) to the newsletter as RFC822 requires the account to be active ;)

My default action with these popovers is to Cmd+Opt+C to trigger DevTools Select Element feature, click on the modal background div and just delete it from DOM. Most of the times quicker than hunting for the small X button somewhere.

I'm not sure the headline succinctly conveys the prime message of the article, which is that modals have replaced pop-ups as a nuisance.

In general, I agree. My reaction to most modals is to simply close the tab. Often it's halfway through an article. I can't be bothered to finish it if I'm being interrupted rudely.

I started just closing the tab if a site thinks I want to signup before reading the content. If sites are do desperate for the quick fix, I do not expect them to have good content below that modal dialog.

Why can't we just agree to do away with popup windows/overlays altogether? Then this kind of thing would be harder, and hacking a workaround would be more obviously bad practice.

Software interfaces are becoming common even in car consoles and heavy equipment. Bad UI is moving from annoying to life threatening.

'9' != 'yes'

Is a life threatening inequality if the '9' on a phone keypad, and the 'yes' is the confirmation of a popup. Are you calling 911 or agreeing to upgrade the os? Dramatically different intents yet indistinguishable if they should occur at the same time.

Popops are perhaps one of the best known examples of user hostile GUI patterns. Popups induce 'mode errors' and violate user security and safety by redirecting input at random and potentially critical moments of user interactions. We've known for a very long time, perhaps since the 90s that the correct way to notify a user must not assume user awareness and must not steal focus. Notifications should be added to a list that can be reviewed buy the user at any time. Never steel focus, never obscure users activity, never assume you have the users full attention or or mental capacity to make choices. The time for such considerations must be chosen by the user.

Good thing we replaced those annoying Flash banners with javascript </irony>

Old guys like me saw this coming from miles away, it's just history repeating itself.

To give you all a heads-up: in the future browsers will ask you "This site wants to open a new javascript dialog. Show/block"

From the perspective of crowdfunding

1. The crowdfunding sites themselves maintain HUGE newsletter lists and use very advanced analytics to determine what to place in those newsletters.

2. For campaigners, the size and activity of your email list is a huge factor in determining your campaign success. Just like this web tool https://www.thunderclap.it/about sending a direct email blast to a good list can mean the difference of a successful hard launch and campaign, or a lackluster or failed campaign. The email lists of the sites themselves which feature several campaigns, are hugely influential on campaign success, and in my experience has at least once lead to the production of 4x our total raise goal in a single platform newsletter feature of our campaign.

Sometimes people do want to be notified. Newsletters are something of a different issue, but the case above seems like a newsletter to me. Especially because we used our first campaign backers + second campaign + interest landing pages and social media gathering email campaigns to continually send emails about new campaigns and products.

Essentially therefore I'm arguing, the ability to gather a quality, targeted email list and generate a recurring newsletter without a 10%+ attrition rate [1] is both difficult and valuable.

[1] CANSPAM compliance requires unsubscribe link, my personal interpretation is 1-click unsubscribe should be the rule, no loading email setting pages behind login walls. Good design is honest. Crowdfunding requiring physical good production in quantity is very difficult for the uninitiated. And then it remains difficult, time consumer over time, and requires constant attention. This is essentially scaling issues but in the physical world. So many of the failed to deliver crowdfunded projects are not so much dishonest as naive, but also consider Jobs' thoughts on the subject

> great artists ship

though Dieter Rams (most famous living Industrial Designer) says

> designers are not fine artists who we are often confused for

In Firefox, right click on popups and bring up "Inspect Element". Then find the top level element of the popup in the inspector, and Delete Node. The modal disappears. This even bypasses some paywalls. Some sites won't then scroll, though.

An add-on to dismiss modals should be possible. Most people do ad-removal add-ons by looking for explicit HTML text, but there are more general approaches. Look for a big box that has a high Z index. That's the modal. Then proceed up the tree until you rejoin with the main document text. Delete the subtree with the modal. Then force scrolling behavior to return to the default.

> This is because there is no single implementation of modal windows. Many are custom-built.

Actually, 90% are from the same few plugins. Unfortunately, those plugs are designed with dark patterns to prevent Element Hiding Helper or Element picker from removing anything from that domain.

Some use use randomized IDs each page creation. The worst offenders remove the page scrollbar during the modal so even if you can hide the modal, you can no longer any pages on that site.

Just hit the back button when this happens.

A website covering its content with trash is a good indicator that the content wasn't worth spending your time on in the first place.

NoScript unless they earn the privilege of executing code. I wish whatever spec would have covered the concern had stated script execution MUST prompt the user.

..but the thing is, they do work. They don't wonder where their users went because their numbers don't actually go down. Even e-mail spam has a 1% ~ 2% return rate. That's why we still have spam.

Sure you and I never click on those boxes, or disable javascript on offending pages, but the majority of web users do not. Many people do stick in an e-mail address, even if it's a bulk mail/spam address. Still, some people put in an address they actually check. That tiny amount of people, generate revenue.

I mean really ... the problem is people. It's okay though, one day we'll go extinct .. or we'll colonise beyond our solar system .. or someone already did that 2nd part and we're just in a simulation of said creatures.

Sleep well.

And to top it off click a misguided 'cute' attempt at making you change your mind with a further obnoxious button titled 'No I am not interested in <improving my life/earning more money/caring for my family>'. No doubt further inspired by this sort of optimization study.

this, people are too worried about the size of their list as opposed to actual engagement. If they don't open your emails they're just costing you money with your ESP.

If you have good content people will search hard for a way to get on your email list if necessary, i've done it before.

Gun to the head?

Some companies don't want "users" they want paying customers. The article does not do a good job at all at explaining the context of their frustration other than "Ugh I don't like being treated like this, therefore other people don't, therefore it's bad".

I'd say the article is downright bad. It assumes there is only one use for a modal: abuse.

Yes, cannot vote up twice

I'm in the newsletter business (and don't use these modals out of principle) and the folks I chat to about it confirm the same - they work really well.

But, I counter, so does spamming or making 10000s of automated phone calls.. and we've agreed those things are damaging and unethical - I agree with Dave, it's about time we as an industry considered full screen modals to be dirty and unwelcome.

Yeah but you build an audience of idiots. I've only ever read one newsletter at a time. How many high functioning adults are going to signup to learn about marketing or sales tactics from some random blog or software company.

Personally, as soon as I see a popup like that, I'm gone forever.

The blatant manipulation offends me so much that I have made a policy of closing such pages on sight. I will not close your popup, I will not interact with your popup, your site is dead to me.

At first, sure, but essentially you're training people to ignore you regardless of what you do. As advertisers are finding out, eventually someone will create a tool that allows people to ignore you online the way they would anywhere else in life.

The clear trend is just tuning out what you don't want to do deal with, from rantings about religion and politics, to someone trying to sell you shit.

For some definition of "work".

> Why is it acceptable online?

I agree with you, it's not acceptable (and that is an excellent analogy). Aren't content consumers also to blame here as well though? Viewers put up with it anyway. I'm surprised by top google search results that bring up click-bait junk that requires waiting for a page-full of ads to load and then requires that you click through 10 more pages before you even get to all the information you needed. I think this is an indication that the majority of people are willing to put up with it because otherwise those sites would have a high bounce-back rates and wouldn't have ranked so high.

Edit: I actually read the article and the author makes this point better than I could:

> The only solution is to unite in changing our behavior. We need to give website operators an ultimatum: Remove the modals, or we leave. And we need to make good on that promise. By closing the browser tab, we can let the bounce rate demand what we as users cannot.

You mean like a bouncer checking IDs at the bar? If I don't want to give my ID to a stranger, then I just don't visit that bar, or find one with more lax security..

I don't think the street analogy is accurate; it's more like having someone at the door of every store you go into asking for your phone number as you walk in.

> Just like this web tool https://www.thunderclap.it/about

This is not a "web tool", this is a spam tool.

> Sometimes people do want to be notified.

No they don't.

> Essentially therefore I'm arguing, the ability to gather a quality, targeted email list and generate a recurring newsletter without a 10%+ attrition rate [1] is both difficult and valuable.

The web is a beautiful dream. It's being destroyed by people that talk about "attrition rates" and "targeted whatever".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jemqAtxKyAo

The author isn't opposed to newsletters at all, they're opposed to newsletter popups.