Hi, I'm the guy who started darkpatterns.org. It's nice to see it popping up on HN every now and then. We're actually looking for contributors to help edit and update the content. If anyone is interested, drop us a line (contact details on the site). It's intended to be a community project and we'd love to see a lot more faces and names on the about page.
My comments: I'm that guy who uses NoScript/ScriptSafe to disable JS on most sites. Took me several minutes to figure out what combination of hosts I had to enable to play your slideshow.
My suggestion: find a simpler tool to display your slideshow.
Otherwise: a pretty decent collection of horrors.
I'll also note I'm that guy who generally avoids shopping online if at all possible. I'll do a lot of online research, but prefer patronizing local stores if possible, and paying cash. Why? Because:
- You know what you're getting when you buy it.
- When the deal is done the deal is done. No late-hit fees or follow-on solicitations.
- Generally a much easier returns policy, should that be necessary.
Yes, for some items, there's less choice (though you can special order a great deal of stuff), and there are some things I will purchase online (air travel on the rare occasions I feel it utterly necessary to humiliate myself before airport security).
Honestly, usually it's not worth my trouble. I fairly frequently encounter pages which fail to function with _all_ JS enabled (possibly due to XSS usage, I haven't troubleshot them, really not a productive use of my time in general). Given that plain Jane HTML is fine for presenting textual / graphical content this is pretty much an anti-pattern.
But it's perfectly reasonable to let someone know that the website might be broken for those to whom it is most likely to appeal. A more precise suggestion about how to fix it would have been nice, however.
Those who know/have cause to/have manifestation of paranoia that manifests as turn off javascript completely are certainly more likely to see the appeal for the slide show. I only made it about halfway through. Not that it's not an important topic, but not my top priority right now. A syllabus would have been useful so that I may see if I have missed something without having to spend another 10 minutes.
It can be quite useful for someone to make a suggestion that can make the website have larger appeal. It just can be. I count my suggestion for a syllabus as one.
But as a stronger example, aljazeera.com recently started redirecting ips from the US to the subdomain america.aljazeera.com. I couldn't get around it without a proxy. I wrote them an email suggesting they make the old site ("english") an option from the front page (I pointed to CNN.com as an example). They wrote me back saying they changed it and, when I went there, they even had a pop-up that allowed me to have the english site as my default. They had deliberately put in the functionality but didn't realize that some of us wanted their European coverage, not their America coverage.
In this case maybe the site will offer alternative formats. Maybe they hadn't thought of it.
I also have sites that ignore non-javascript enabled browsers- but they are web-apps and are explicit about the need for js. If I had a normal site with a widget that broke for certain people I very well might take such a comment into serious consideration. It is more helpful, as I said earlier, if such criticism also suggests something that might work well. Otherwise it just sounds like bitching.
It is listed as such Previous followed by Next. So when I got to the Disguied Ads page, I clicked the last link on the page expecting it to take me to the next page, instead it took me back to the previous page!
>Behind the scenes, however, they engage in all kinds of “optimizations” that encourage gamblers to spend and play more without stopping or burning out.
I have often wondered about this but never knew this was so universal. The Ryanair example is unforgettable. For someone taking first steps in to UI design, this came at a great time for me.
i don't think so, there's no real malicious intent there. perhaps you should consider why you don't get more signups after a demo instead, i would expect more. maybe it's a good thing to get less signups with the demo button where it was, because signups that don't actually use the service are basically the same as a demo anyway.
