Kriston’s on to something here. People don’t want websites to make their browsers work in radically different ways than they normally do. Or at least they don’t want them to when everything else seems to be normal. This NYTimes behavior is almost as irritating as the snap.com preview windows that now pop up by default on every wordpress.com blog.
I imagine that the folks at the Times will come to their senses. But to me the most remarkable part of all of this isn’t the stupidity of the “feature” — it’s how many people seem to share my affliction. I thought I was the only one who constantly highlighted and rehighlighted text while reading things on the web. But no! It seems that Kriston, Spencer and Ogged all suffer the same compulsion. And who knows how many more suffer in silence? Man. It just feels good to talk about it.
Actually, though, I’m not sure whether I can still count myself among their ranks. I don’t remember performing the highlighting tic recently. But I honestly couldn’t say whether that’s because I’ve gotten out of the habit or because it’s now so automatic for me that I don’t notice myself doing it.
My personal pet peeve in the “People don’t want websites to make their browsers work in radically different ways than they normally do.” is Wikipedia. Alt-F, Alt-C should close my browser, not jump the cursor to the search box and then to the main page tab.
I compulsively click, but the NY Times website isn’t doing the weird thing for me! Wah! I want to complain too! Maybe it’s Safari?
Huh. You’re right Karen, Safari seems to be immune.
Becks: I had no idea wikipedia did that. But you could still alt-F4 out of it. Besides, it’s one less keystrokes. Think of the thousands of man-hours you’ll save.
I do end up Alt-F4ing out of Wikipedia because that’s the only option but I try not to Alt-F4 windows as a habit because that can kill the wrong program if the focus changes. Like, if right as I go to Alt-F4 a browser window, my IM client pops in front and then that gets killed instead and I’m left wondering who was trying to IM me and now thinks I’m ignoring them.
Why is Becks always ignoring me?