I hate tooltips, because they constantly pop up when I didn’t mean to get them to appear. When I am browsing something or working with Visual Studio, I am also moving mouse pointer around ready to click some link or inserting text cursor somewhere. It is highly frustrating to get many times tooltips that are even not necessary. Obviously I am supposed to stop moving the pointer or first navigating the pointer into some safe spot on the screen that does not open up small, big, nor huge tooltips, instant menus, nor commercials.
Links to additional material are handy. But when I am reading some text, I wouldn’t want to wait for the point of the text until I
move mouse pointer over the link
click the link
wait the page to reload
orientate for reading the new page.
And then to move the pointer over back-button
click the back-button
wait the main post page to reload
orientate for reading the main post again.
It would be much nicer to get the main ideas of the referenced posts repeated in short in the main post and have the additional links as references than to get only “I told you”.
I never use ‘click here’ because I figure it’s less effort for a sighted person to find the actual link than for a blind person to figure out what the ‘click here’ is for.
Tom’s Hardware. This means you! I hate it when they do that. I know I should switch to another site, but reading it from RSS is just too darned convenient.
Usable or not, I really detest the ‘Click here to bla bla’ links. Why? Because a hyperlink should be clicked on. There is no other action for a hyperlink other than to be clicked on. It superfluous information.
You don’t see ‘push here to play’, ‘push here to eject’ on your dvd player. It’s a button, you know you need to push on the button to make it happen.
You don’t see ‘push here to ring the doorbell’. The doorbell button needs pushing.
A hyperlink may be a virtual thing, but the principle is the same; it is a button requiring an action to get a reaction.
A hyperlink needs clicking, don’t tell a user to click, he/she should already know. If not; your links are not styled right.
If we really wanna tell the user exactly what to do;
grab your mouse and move it so the mouse pointer - the arrowie thingie - hovers - that means occupies a space on top - over this piece of text and push the primary button on the mouse to Download the PDF
For all other ppl Download the PDF should suffice.
