Ask HN: Objective oriented people: do you *look* at the whole screen?

2 points by pedro2 3 years ago | 5 comments

I was reading a piece elsewhere on the website about downloading Movie Maker and I thought: nowadays, if you have your brain in 'scanning' mode you can't do anything. Windows 'screams' at me "BREAKING NEWS" on the toolbar for some unimportant news. Ads everywhere. UI inconsistencies everywhere. You can't have your critical part of your brain on if you want to do anything. You have to develop some kind of partial-UI-blindness. I know this is a fact for ads and website styles which resemble ads [someone on a wiki had this problem]. I suspect that's also the reason behind Material Design: make every button confusable with an ad.

Again, to the point now: do you ignore everything on the screen which doesn't matter? Are you aware of doing it? Will it ever end?

Note: before replying read this: defaults matter.

anenefan 3 years ago |

Tunnel vision looking for texty stuff and any relevant pics. (Note: sometimes an outstanding ad pic might distract me for a few seconds ;) ) For the BS that's often deliberately obfuscated and not pure talent, I use link extractor for a list to see if there's a working button or whatever other thing they've borked. Often I'll use book mode ... and for the sneaky sites that claim to have a book mode version, but instead like to punch up something else, I haven't quite got around scripting anything to automatically drop the site's address in the disallow pile, I enjoy creative commentary too much even if it's for myself.

I will ignore the site, if it has camouflaged their content with the ads, only if it's really important might I search for the original text that landed me there ... more often than not, no it's not there - BS search result and BS site.

thanatos519 3 years ago |

Nothing on my screen doesn't matter.

082349872349872 3 years ago | |

This property may be an often overlooked advantage of the TUI?

navjack27 3 years ago |

Looking and acting are different. I'm always looking and seeing everything in my field of view. I read without actively reading. I don't ignore anything. I don't ACT upon everything.

forgotmypw17 3 years ago |

In the short term, I ignore what I'm not looking for.

In the long term, I stop using, avoid, and ignore misbehaving software.