I just wound up in some additional super-confusing behavior. My best recollection is that “Angry Atoms” showed up in the feed display, I clicked it, it opened in the overlay view, and then when I tried to navigate from there using its own link to “How An Algorithm Feels From Inside”, seemingly nothing happened, except that I got a weird hunch and clicked the close-overlay left-arrow button, revealing that the front page had been replaced with the second post? And now there was no way to get back to the first one, and the browser Back button did… initially nothing, and then… maybe something? I wasn’t writing it all down while it happened and now I can’t easily reproduce it because the recommendation contents have naturally changed unpredictably.
I seem to be gradually picking up lingering emotional-experiential scrapes around the “yo I heard you liked navigation so I put navigation in your navigation so you can navigate while you navigate” school of site design.
To be clear, that last part isn’t just from here. Occasionally getting a Substack link that insists on surrounding the post with the rest of the feed/home interface and being unable to find how to get the same post without that has frustrated me before, and I think Reddit’s version of something similar has frustrated me, and maybe one or two other sites doing similar things… in general it seems like it’s a really easy source of “75% of it works, have fun whacking your metaphorical limbs on the edges”. Which is sort of still indirectly relevant as an influence on responses to the pattern even though some of it is not in your control. 🙂
I am curious what alternatives you’re looking at now!
Thanks for the extra context. I mean, if we can get our design right then maybe we can inspire the rest ;)
There’s a new experimental feature of React, <Activity>, that’d let us allow for navigation to a different page and then returning to the feed without losing your place. I haven’t tried to make it work yet but it’s high on the to-do list.
I just wound up in some additional super-confusing behavior. My best recollection is that “Angry Atoms” showed up in the feed display, I clicked it, it opened in the overlay view, and then when I tried to navigate from there using its own link to “How An Algorithm Feels From Inside”, seemingly nothing happened, except that I got a weird hunch and clicked the close-overlay left-arrow button, revealing that the front page had been replaced with the second post? And now there was no way to get back to the first one, and the browser Back button did… initially nothing, and then… maybe something? I wasn’t writing it all down while it happened and now I can’t easily reproduce it because the recommendation contents have naturally changed unpredictably.
I seem to be gradually picking up lingering emotional-experiential scrapes around the “yo I heard you liked navigation so I put navigation in your navigation so you can navigate while you navigate” school of site design.
Oh no, that sounds no good at all. You might be relieved to I have on my to do to to explore overlay alternative design.
To be clear, that last part isn’t just from here. Occasionally getting a Substack link that insists on surrounding the post with the rest of the feed/home interface and being unable to find how to get the same post without that has frustrated me before, and I think Reddit’s version of something similar has frustrated me, and maybe one or two other sites doing similar things… in general it seems like it’s a really easy source of “75% of it works, have fun whacking your metaphorical limbs on the edges”. Which is sort of still indirectly relevant as an influence on responses to the pattern even though some of it is not in your control. 🙂
I am curious what alternatives you’re looking at now!
Thanks for the extra context. I mean, if we can get our design right then maybe we can inspire the rest ;)
There’s a new experimental feature of React, <Activity>, that’d let us allow for navigation to a different page and then returning to the feed without losing your place. I haven’t tried to make it work yet but it’s high on the to-do list.