[HN Gopher] Why Gov.uk's Exit this Page component doesn't use th...
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Why Gov.uk's Exit this Page component doesn't use the Escape key
Author : todsacerdoti
Score : 375 points
Date : 2024-10-09 22:45 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (beeps.website)
(TXT) w3m dump (beeps.website)
| appendix-rock wrote:
| > It's intended to be a safety tool. A way for people in
| unstable, potentially violent, domestic situations to quickly
| leave the page.
|
| An upsetting but nonetheless incredibly interesting abnormal UX
| problem to solve. I appreciate seeing this much thought being put
| into things like this.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Gov Uk UX team I believe is doing some of the finest work in
| the world.
| neilv wrote:
| Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boss_key
| tetris11 wrote:
| They're pretty forthcoming for what I assume to be an government
| agency.
|
| I wonder why the gov.uk team are getting so much publicity(?) In
| the last few years.
|
| As much as I love the aesthetic, I'm developing a fear that
| they'll soon spin off into a startup with some kind of paid
| model, and that government websites will regress.
|
| Irrational fear, I know, but I cant shake off the startup-vibes
| I'm getting when I read such posts about what is essentially a
| public service.
| fallingsquirrel wrote:
| fwiw this isn't an official gov.uk blog post. I mistook it for
| one at first too... I only double checked once I stumbled over
| the "advertising people being bastards" line.
| adw wrote:
| > As much as I love the aesthetic, I'm developing a fear that
| they'll soon spin off into a startup with some kind of paid
| model, and that government websites will regress.
|
| gov.uk got started, in part, because the 2009 financial
| meltdown left a lot of good startup designers and engineers
| with not enough to do (and made civil service jobs more
| attractive for a bit!)
| caseyy wrote:
| Compared to many other countries, UK has a computer science
| culture that's very open about how technology is used in every
| day lives, and it invites public participation in new tech.
| This shows a lot in the government as well as its services like
| BBC and NHS, and the academia.
|
| It's a very broad topic to cover so I'll be terse with
| evidence/examples only. UK government provides a lot of open
| data and APIs for the country [0], [1]. They are free and
| pretty much not throttled. They have a license [2] for a lot of
| this data which is formal but nearly as free as John Carmack's
| legendary hacker-friendly "have fun" license [3]. There is also
| a lot of historical Ordnance Survey data and historical
| legislation data from the National Archives. And of course, you
| can see the openness in how they have built gov.uk, as blog
| articles appear on HN about it quite often.
|
| There is also a lot of government infrastructure provided to
| local governments, such as gov.uk Notify [4] or a freely
| available NHS website CMS (which is why many NHS websites work
| the same). There is a guide [5] mostly intended for government
| services but free for others to use on building accessible,
| secure and quite good-looking websites.
|
| Most other governments I lived under are either technically
| behind UK or they have very advanced tech capabilities in
| certain branches of the government only (such as the armed
| forces) but keep it out of the public eye. Ultimately, I think
| it is the culture of welcoming everyone's participation in
| technology that makes UK gov so forthcoming and open with their
| tech and data. Doing this is seen as kind and civilised, which
| is how governments want to be seen. Of course, there are still
| areas of improvement in how UK gov provides data, as there
| always are in everything.
|
| Finally, I should mention you can find many BBC technology
| outreach programmes from the early days of home computing. They
| are all over YouTube if you search for "BCC home computing".
| There was and continues to be a lot of techno-optimism in the
| country. It is one of the admittedly not many things that
| persist from the pre-austerity times.
|
| [0] https://www.data.gov.uk
|
| [1] https://www.api.gov.uk/index/#index
|
| [2] https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-
| lice...
|
| [3] https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM/blob/master/README.TXT
| (before GPL became popular, id software code was distributed
| with this readme that said "Have fun")
|
| [4] https://www.notifications.service.gov.uk
|
| [5] https://frontend.design-system.service.gov.uk
| alephnerd wrote:
| > This shows a lot in the government as well as its services
| like BBC and NHS, and the academia
|
| Salaries play a significant role.
|
| Unlike a lot of other countries, private sector salaries for
| SWEs suck in much of the UK, and gov.uk (in reality part of
| the Civil Service), GCHQ+MoD, and BBC can pay fairly
| competitively and give a fairly decent pension compared to
| private sector gigs.
|
| That said, I'd disagree with NHS IT - it's almost entirely
| outsourced to regional MSPs who suck (and I say this as a
| former vendor who's helped sell products those guys use in
| NHS environments)
| ascorbic wrote:
| This isn't really an example of UK culture. 15 years ago, UK
| gov sites were as bad as everywhere else. Some of the small
| number of good things that I can credit the Cameron
| government were a few of these changes, including the
| establishment of the Government Digital Service and changing
| "IT" education from learning how to use Word, to actually
| teaching all kids coding, starting in primary school.
| caseyy wrote:
| It is culture. The government doesn't just provide these
| APIs, people use them. End even if you compare Harvard's
| CS50 vs CS courses in the UK, you will see that it's a lot
| more oriented around computing in every day life. The BBC
| home computing shows and their success itself is a bit of a
| unique phenomenon in the UK. Many other countries had these
| shows but they never went mainstream, most only attracted
| viewership of enthusiasts. There is a strong cultural
| element.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| I got to the furry art at the bottom of the page before
| realizing this was a frontend developer's blog and not the
| government agency itself.
| hollerith wrote:
| Ah, so you detected differences from the official British
| governmental furry art. Smart
| scott_w wrote:
| They've done this since the head of the Cabinet Office around
| 2010 set up a team to improve digital government services.
| There's a lot of information published as to their
| methodologies and their teams present technical topics at
| conferences.
|
| It's likely part of their efforts to be more transparent, work
| with other governments and better support departments without
| having to be in 50 places at once. It'll also help with
| recruitment.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > when I read such posts about what is essentially a public
| service.
|
| Doesn't it make a lot of sense to be open about how a public
| service is built and delivered, maybe much more so than any
| for-pay service in fact?
| ascorbic wrote:
| This is all thanks to the GDS, which was formed in 2011
| specifically to bring that kind of startup vibe to government.
| It's even based in Shoreditch, with the startups. A lot of
| alumni from GDS have gone on to consult with other governments,
| many of which have launched similar departments. The US
| equivalent is 18F, which involved collaboration with GDS.
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/government-digit...
|
| https://18f.gsa.gov/
|
| https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2015/01/20/gds-usds/
| rsynnott wrote:
| > As much as I love the aesthetic, I'm developing a fear that
| they'll soon spin off into a startup with some kind of paid
| model
|
| I mean, unless the next PM is Zombie Thatcher, this seems like
| an excessive level of privatisation.
| kortilla wrote:
| I'm curious about this history of this. What page are people on
| that might lead to domestic abuse?
|
| What do they use frequently enough that they would learn about
| this exit functionality rather than just clicking a bookmark bar,
| closing the tab, or just switching the tab?
|
| This seems like such a contrived scenario with a solution that
| only works for gov uk sites. Why not teach users how to switch or
| close tabs with keyboard shortcuts?
| elevatedastalt wrote:
| Many possibilities. Something seeking legal help, or an info
| page about domestic abuse itself, or something around financial
| literacy.
| froggerexpert wrote:
| > This seems like such a contrived scenario with a solution
| that only works for gov uk sites. Why not teach users how to
| switch or close tabs with keyboard shortcuts?
|
| +1. "Close tab" is more robust, well-supported and well-known.
|
| It seems more likely a user will load an inoccuous page as a
| decoy, than learn triple-shift is a quick exit.
|
| Still, interesting read, to hear the reasoning. Would like to
| see empirical evidence/user testing.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| <partner walks in> <they see a tab getting closed> <they
| muscle their way in and restore it> <someone gets a black
| eye>
|
| vs
|
| <partner walks in> <nothing really special about a tab
| loading the weather> <you still live in fear but you're not
| getting physically abused>
| froggerexpert wrote:
| I understand the happy case. When it works, great.
|
| My critiques were on the sad cases:
|
| * Presses <Ctrl><Ctrl><Ctrl>. Wait why isnt this working?
| Too late.
|
| * Presses <Shift><Shift><Shift> on another sensitive site
| that doesn't implement this. Too late.
|
| * Presses <Shift><Shift><Shift> on a poorly supported
| browser, or after the functionality is removed, or after it
| conflicts with OS-level (it might not today, but who knows
| about future OS updates)
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| We should probably bake it into browser standards then.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Absolutely. This would solve the above problems, plus any
| problems involving JavaScript bugs that would render the
| whole thing inactive. Just a shortcut to go to the root
| of the site seems appropriate. Or maybe sites could
| configure themselves for a "safe site" equivalent if
| their whole content is a risk.
| kortilla wrote:
| The timing of those two scenarios is different.
|
| Either the abuser walked in while the person was still on
| the page with the big red button or not. It is not faster
| to press the big red button or shift 3 times than it is to
| close a tab.
| logifail wrote:
| > It is not faster to press the big red button
|
| Indeed.
|
| Surely Ctrl+W (with a 2nd decoy tab already there and at
| BBC Weather) is 10x faster than finding and clicking a
| button on the page you're reading?
|
| EDIT: another issue with the Exit This Page as
| implemented on eg https://www.camden.gov.uk/planning-to-
| leave-an-abuser - if you open it in a private browsing
| session, and click it, it sends you to Google, but of
| course there the first thing you get is the massive
| cookies pop-up. So wouldn't that be a bit of a red flag
| to whoever just walked in? :/
| eviks wrote:
| Partner walks in
|
| They see a page changing
|
| Black eye
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| Or, perhaps even more likely, abuser stealthily enters
| the room and silently observes the victim to try to
| extract more damning information before admonishing (or
| rather, attacking) them.
| scott_w wrote:
| If it's the only tab open, you'll raise suspicion if your
| partner walks in to you staring at the desktop
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| It wouldn't be the desktop, would it? Wouldn't it be an
| 'empty' browser window? Still just as suspicious, of
| course, but I wonder if some/all browsers do something
| special in that case--e.g. default to the home page. They
| certainly _could_ , as could a plugin.
| scott_w wrote:
| Chrome closes the window on the last tab. It's splitting
| hairs, however. As you said, it's still raises suspicion
| which, to a person in a domestic violence situation, is
| not what they want.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I think the point is learning to have two tabs open, one
| incognito, will work everywhere for all resources, whereas
| this bespoke interaction needs to be memorised just for
| this websites.
| scott_w wrote:
| I wouldn't presume to lecture women whose husbands beat
| them on how they should behave...
| froggerexpert wrote:
| I understand this is a sensitive topic, but I don't think
| it's fair to characterize robertlagrant's comment in the
| way you did.
|
| Their comment looks similar to any other comment on
| technical/UX matters, including yours and mine.
| rjknight wrote:
| I would really like to know whether this feature gets any (non-
| accidental) use. It's certainly an important problem to solve,
| and I can see the technical merit in the solution proposed.
| What I'm left wondering is how this solution is most
| effectively communicated to the people who need to know about
| it, such that they're able to make use of it correctly in the
| critical moments when they need to use it. For obvious reasons
| there are probably no good statistics on this, but I wonder
| what the user research was like.
| easton wrote:
| Another example: There's a page in the iOS settings where you
| can remove people from your family group and change your
| password (or do other things you might do if someone was after
| you). It has a "quick exit" button that kicks you back to the
| Home Screen, but also completely kills the Settings app so said
| person wouldn't know you were on that page if they yoinked your
| phone.
|
| https://support.apple.com/guide/personal-safety/how-safety-c...
| zerovox wrote:
| There's some examples (and a pretty sad graph on _when_ users
| are looking at these resources) on the user research summary:
| https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-design-system/discussions/...
| kelnos wrote:
| > _What page are people on that might lead to domestic abuse?_
|
| I assume there's a .gov.uk page somewhere that lists resources
| for people who are in abusive relationships. I imagine if an
| abusive partner walked in to find you reading that, that might
| set them off.
| kortilla wrote:
| Sure, but are they going to spend a bunch of time to learn
| how to use the magic exit button or just press ctrl-w to
| close the tab?
| scott_w wrote:
| If it's the only tab you have open, it'll look very
| suspicious that you're just staring at the desktop...
| youainti wrote:
| I am highly technical (multiple linux machines at home) and
| I don't use ctrl-w. I didn't know it was a thing.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I do, but only because it's a stupid-ass shortcut I keep
| triggering on accident.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I don't really mind triggering ctrl-W by accident because
| ctrl-shift-T will undo the mistake.
|
| An accidental ctrl-Q is much worse, because closed
| incognito windows can't be recovered.
| umanwizard wrote:
| I think all the major browsers can be configured to
| prompt before quitting.
| int_19h wrote:
| I'm mildly surprised because it's been adopted fairly
| universally for multi-document / multi-tab apps. E.g.
| most editors with tabs will also use it to close the
| current document.
| PaulRobinson wrote:
| Imagine your abuser "lets you" use the computer for one
| hour a day. They monitor your browser history. They read
| your texts, your social media DMs, and browse your search
| history. They often watch you browsing, save going to the
| fridge to get a beer or to go to the bathroom. These are
| the moment where you think about trying to find help. It's
| all you think about really: how to get out.
|
| How likely are you to know keyboard shortcuts?
|
| As a UX designer, would you not want to make a big safe UX
| button that you need no prior training or experience of,
| that you can trust to help you get out of a difficult
| situation.
|
| Footsteps. Oh shit. They're coming back. Is it Ctrl-W? Or
| Ctrl-V? Oh fuck, he's nearly in the room. Quick, where's
| the tiny little cross to close the window... oh, wait,
| click that exit page button, or just quickly hit shift a
| bunch of times. "Oh yes, I was just looking at the weather
| for tomorrow. I was thinking about whether to put some
| washing out on the line..."
| eviks wrote:
| This scenario is contrived
|
| > just quickly hit shift a bunch of times
|
| How would you even know about this shortcut you never use
| anywhere, let alone remember it in a time of stress?
| closewith wrote:
| > This scenario is contrived
|
| This is a much more realistic user story than 99% you
| will ever read.
| rsynnott wrote:
| See things like
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ask_for_Angela
|
| In principle, information about this could be propagated,
| if it's reliably available on UK govt sites at this point
| (I'm not sure if it is).
| eviks wrote:
| This discussion is about the current practice where a
| more widely used Ctrl+W is hard to remember, but somehow
| a niche 3xShift isn't, not a potential future info
| campaign
| robertlagrant wrote:
| The main question is: how do you know to hit shift a load
| of times? Is that a standard thing being taught to
| people?
| scott_w wrote:
| If it's the only tab open, switching isn't an option. Women
| living under the threat of violence will be very stressed, so
| won't be well placed to setup their browser ahead of time.
| jdietrich wrote:
| The MVP for this component was on the form to start an
| application for a restraining order. The design team fully
| explain their rationale and research on the project Github.
|
| https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-design-system/discussions/...
| frereubu wrote:
| That information is out there, but people in these kinds of
| circumstances don't always have unrestricted internet time to
| research it. They might just be able to snatch a few minutes
| here and here and therefore not know much about how to use
| browsers etc.
|
| This is particularly the case for an honour-based abuse service
| (forced marriage, honour killings etc) that we work with for
| example.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > What page are people on that might lead to domestic abuse?
|
| The police, the divorce services, health services pages about
| contraception, abortion, sexual assault, LGBT youth services,
| etc etc etc. Think people who are already being abused, mostly.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > This seems like such a contrived scenario
|
| Agreed. I suspect the number of people assisted by this button
| is vanishingly small, and outweighed by the number of people
| who don't get the information they're looking for because they
| accidentally click the button and can't find their way back.
|
| Or the number of people harmed because the "exit this page" UI
| is on some pages only (for example, it isn't here on HN), and
| that is even more confusing for users who aren't tech savvy
| enough to realise its part of the site not the browser and who
| could come to rely on it.
|
| Overall, I think this button is poor UX and shouldn't be used,
| even on pages with sensitive content that it is intended for.
| kayson wrote:
| How are people expected to know about the Shift key
| functionality?
| kypro wrote:
| That's what I wondered. Presumably services implementing it
| will add info about using the button before starting the
| journey, but I'm surprised there's no design system guidance
| about this. Without that information the button is far less
| useful.
| kelnos wrote:
| Yeah, it seems a little obscure. Here's a test page with the
| functionality:
|
| https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/exit-this-pa...
|
| One cool thing is when you first hit the shift key once, the
| "Exit this page" button expands vertically, and shows three
| small circles, one now filled in. So it makes it obvious that
| hitting the shift key did _something_ related to that button.
| So if you hit the shift key for any other reason, you 'll see
| something happen.
|
| But still, I agree it seems a little hard to discover.
| Izkata wrote:
| Out of curiosity I edited the page to put a textarea on it,
| so I could see what happens when you're typing a sentence and
| happen to use Shift 3 times: It breaks the button.
|
| If the cursor is in the textarea, tapping Shift without any
| other keys will add 1 circle, but if that wasn't the 3rd one,
| any additional Shift will remove all the circles and they
| don't come back. You have to click outside the textarea and
| hit Shift 4 times to trigger it (the first one doesn't
| register any circles).
|
| It seems like they tried to prevent accidental triggers (if
| you have 1 or 2 circles and hit anything except Shift they
| all disappear, and if you hold Shift while hitting another
| key you don't get any in the first place), but got something
| slightly wrong.
| petepete wrote:
| The guidance does cover this in some detail and suggests
| using an interruption page that explains the behaviour before
| the risky journey starts.
|
| https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/exit-a-page-
| qu...
| zerovox wrote:
| I understand that they couldn't use the Escape key, and so having
| an alternative makes sense, but I'm not sure as a user how I
| would ever discover the behavior of pressing "shift" three times.
| jdiff wrote:
| Escape might be more intuitive but it's not more discoverable.
| Shift is used often when inputting information, and the
| mentioned visual feedback give this behavior an opportunity to
| be discovered.
|
| Having said that, regardless of the key the guidelines on using
| this pattern say that you should explicitly inform the user of
| the feature before they first encounter it.
|
| https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/exit-a-page-qu...
| petesergeant wrote:
| Here it is in action:
|
| https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/exit-this-pa...
| VoidWhisperer wrote:
| This site is flagged by malwarebytes as being compromised for
| some reason - I'm assuming this is a false positive given that no
| one else has been having issues
| ReverseCold wrote:
| Wait why not have both esc x3 and shift x3 work? Any of these are
| "weird" keypresses right?
| Moogs wrote:
| The concern with Esc is that if you hit more than 3 times the
| user will be stuck on the page. The first 3 presses would
| trigger the redirect, the 4th press would be intercepted by the
| browser and stop the page load.
| vehemenz wrote:
| 1. This kind of browsing is more likely to be done on a phone, in
| private. I find the scenario a bit contrived in 2024.
|
| 2. It seems a bit weird to be concerned about UI patterns if you
| earnestly want this component to do its job.
|
| 3. If it's that important, the Escape key event can be added
| after DOMContentLoaded. Warn content authors to not overuse the
| component, and it would be fine. You can still have the triple-
| Shift key event for those cases that they specifically call out.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| Its entirely plausible that someone in an abusive relationship
| is a number of mitigating circumstances:
|
| - they don't have a smartphone, or it's been taken off them
|
| - they're forced to use a desktop because their abuser doesn't
| want them to do things in private easily
|
| - plausibly mobile has something different entirely, given that
| this appears to be desktop focused.
|
| - They mention escape is intercepted by most browsers to stop
| loading, if someone is interrupted midway and panics and starts
| hitting escape, they could plausibly end up _stuck_ on the page
| they were trying to hide from their abuser.
| thecatspaw wrote:
| to fix the interrupt issue they could initially load a page
| with begnign information, and then load the help text
| afterwards
| frereubu wrote:
| 1. A large number of people who need this service are likely to
| be victims of various forms of coercive control. This is a
| decent, quick summary of what that means in practice (PDF):
| https://www.leeds.gov.uk/docs/One%20minute%20guides/One%20Mi...
|
| 2. I don't understand this comment. Surely this is a perfect
| example of when you want a component to work as well as
| possible, including UI research?
|
| 3. The mAjor point here is that the functionality of the escape
| key is ambiguous. It can do various things in various contexts,
| so you can't rely on people to use it for that, and visitors
| can't rely on it because it might just e.g. minimise a
| maximised window on MacOS, leaving the website on-screen.
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| This is a great idea! How come when I google "gov uk domestic
| violence" none of the govt pages have this button on them?
| andrei-akopian wrote:
| My first search result was thehotline.org, and it does have a
| button that redirects to google.com. (But that's a US site)
|
| > You can quickly leave this website by clicking the "X" in the
| top right or by pressing the Escape key twice.
|
| And it does have some kind of Escape key functionality.
|
| The gov.uk page has some listed hotlines by nation
| (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/domestic-abuse-how-to-get-
| help#g...), but none of them are actually using that exact red
| button:
|
| - https://www.nationaldahelpline.org.uk/ uses green bookmark in
| bottom right and redirects to google.co.uk
|
| - https://dsahelpline.org/ has a green area at the bottom right
| arp242 wrote:
| Ideally this should pre-load the BBC weather page so switching to
| it is (near-)immediate. Currently it can take a while to load.
| Replace all DOM and then replace URL should do it.
|
| There is also the matter of history; if I load the demo page,
| click that button, and press "back" then I'm on the demo page
| again.
|
| And of course it'll be in the browser history.
|
| I have to question how practically useful this is. Ctrl+W or
| middle click on tab isn't that far off. Or open private window
| and close that, which is a smart thing to do anyway.
|
| Never mind that computers and internet access is ubiquitous
| enough these days that "using the family computer" for this sort
| of thing isn't really needed in the first place.
|
| Overall this seems like a IE5-era solution that's pretty outdated
| and useless today. Perhaps even worse than useless because the
| implementation is so-so and protection it offers low.
|
| Overall, I'd say telling people to use private windows and
| teaching then Ctrl+W is probably better.
| Moogs wrote:
| > Ctrl+W or middle click on tab isn't that far off The point of
| shift x3 is that it's consistent across keyboard layouts
| including laptops. I have a laptop where the location of the
| ctrl key is moved inward to make room for the function key. I
| frequently hit Fn instead of Ctrl and don't realize what's
| happening until I look at my keyboard. And that's not when I'm
| in distress. Same goes for middle click. It's not a consistent
| interaction. On some laptops you can left click and right click
| to get a middle click. On my laptop, it's a three finger tap.
|
| > Never mind that computers and internet access is ubiquitous
| enough these days that "using the family computer" for this
| sort of thing isn't really needed in the first place. In a
| normal situation, this is true, but this is UI design for
| people in extraordinary situations. Their abuser may have taken
| their cellphone or other devices and may not have a choice in
| what computer they use or when they have access to it.
|
| Nothing about this prevents private windows or Ctrl+W (assuming
| they have another window open so it doesn't look suspicious
| that they're staring at a blank desktop), it just gives victims
| a quick action they can take to prevent immediate retaliation.
| eviks wrote:
| > I frequently hit Fn instead of Ctrl and don't realize
| what's happening until I look at my keyboard. And that's not
| when I'm in distress. Same goes for middle click. It's not a
| consistent interaction.
|
| Triple Shift that you can only on a single website is worse
| since you're even less likely to be able to use it in
| distress
|
| Besides, as a site you can try to add typo-similar
| combinations for your "hide" action (like alt+w or win+w)
| instead of creating a totally different one
| seszett wrote:
| > _Never mind that computers and internet access is ubiquitous
| enough these days that "using the family computer" for this
| sort of thing isn't really needed in the first place._
|
| I'm just glad you're not in charge of this kind of services
| because although that might seem like an obvious thing to you,
| the reality is that the people needing that information the
| most are the ones who are the least likely to have easy access
| to a personal device with Internet access.
|
| In particular, children and women in dysfunctional, abusive
| relationships are not very often provided with a smartphone and
| a data plan by their abusers.
|
| I agree that the shift shortcut is unlikely to be of much use,
| but it's just one available method in addition to the rest.
| tourist2d wrote:
| > women in dysfunctional, abusive relationships are not very
| often provided with a smartphone and a data plan
|
| This sounds like something which you have no evidence at all
| for claiming.
| seszett wrote:
| I don't have _evidence_ but I do have _experience_ on this.
|
| I'm not sure why you would be the quickly dismissive of
| something that would seem obvious to many.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I mean, it's a 'water is wet' kind of statement. Prisoners
| aren't provided a mobile phone and data plan either.
| jakkos wrote:
| I knew a person who was in abusive relationships where the
| abuser would keep making ridiculous claims that the person
| was cheating on them, and made them give up having their
| own phone as "proof" that they wouldn't cheat.
|
| Of course, the abuser was cheating the whole time.
| guappa wrote:
| They were kept without computers and internet access:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-19711022
|
| So it does happen, contrary to what you claim.
| graemep wrote:
| Abused men have similar problems although we are probably
| less likely to have no internet access restricting and
| monitoring communications is a common part of abuse.
|
| My ex wife did not want me to get a smartphone and, in
| retrospect, it was because it let me keep in closer touch
| with family abroad (which is the main reason I have one at
| all). She also got very upset when I changed the password on
| my desktop some years previously.
| Ntrails wrote:
| > I agree that the shift shortcut is unlikely to be of much
| use, but it's just one available method in addition to the
| rest.
|
| I don't know how the relevant user is informed about the
| option/feature, but assuming they're aware it is a positive
| feature both in terms of thoughtfulness and execution.
|
| Be interested to see the stats on how often it gets called
| yreg wrote:
| > I'm just glad you're not in charge of this kind of services
|
| Why are you attacking the user instead of just focusing on
| the argument?
| port19 wrote:
| Bad internet habit, just asssume that "you" refers to the
| hypothetical person made of nothing but that one expressed
| opinion
| arp242 wrote:
| I think it should be obvious from the full comment that I
| don't think that doing _something_ for this is useless. Most
| of my comment is about how this is not actually sufficient to
| protect people.
|
| And "we need to do something for this" doesn't mean that this
| particular feature/button is a good idea.
|
| Like I said, telling people to use private windows and
| teaching them Ctrl+W seems like a better solution to solve
| the same problem to me. You can have a widget with some basic
| tips, and you can even show the correct instructions based on
| the browser the person is using.
| xunil2ycom wrote:
| I want to thank you for this comment. I had read the entire
| article thinking incorrectly about this. I thought it was for
| people who didn't want to see the material to navigate away,
| and kept thinking "just turn your head, close your eyes, hit
| the back button".
|
| Then I saw your comment and realized I was entirely wrong
| about how I was thinking about this. I get it now.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > I have to question how practically useful this is. Ctrl+W or
| middle click on tab isn't that far off. Or open private window
| and close that, which is a smart thing to do anyway.
|
| Users probably don't want to attract attention by using a
| private window (which they may or may not think about using),
| and most browsers I've seen have a distinct appearance when in
| private mode.
|
| Ctrl+W in normal mode has the issue of leaving a trail: Ctrl-
| Shift-T or similar will bring it back.
| arp242 wrote:
| > Ctrl+W in normal mode has the issue of leaving a trail:
| Ctrl-Shift-T or similar will bring it back.
|
| That also exists with this button: just press "back". Even
| easier.
| bjoli wrote:
| I think you are underestimating how much being in an abusive
| relationship or even just poverty in general (poor people are
| more likely to be abused, so they're double punished) reduces
| your options and opportunities.
|
| This goes for everything. Place where you live. The food that
| is on offer. Work opportunities, and with that the ability to
| plan life. Even living large enough to have a private space,
| like offering your kids an undisturbed place to study or - like
| in the post - somewhere you can safely report abuse.
|
| I have seen it more than once: if someone from a poor family
| grows up and does really well in school and in college and
| breaks with the life they had before that is usually not
| enough. Because when there is time to write a CV the kids from
| the middle class all had parents that made them do other
| things. Charity work. Play the trumpet with a youth orchestra
| that somehow got to play in Carnegie hall. Chemistry camp.
| Dancing with a youth ballet company at the met. The system is
| rigged from the start. True meritocracy was never a thing.
|
| A feature like this takes a developer a short time to
| implement, and if it saves someones life or stops abuse it is
| worth it.
| labster wrote:
| Your description is exactly meritocracy under the original
| definition. The second kid has earned all of the merits, and
| the ones possessing the most documents of merit get ahead.
| bjoli wrote:
| Fair point. But: the way the modern meritocracy is
| motivated is that it is a fair system. It is the whole idea
| of the American dream. Work hard and you can go anywhere.
| Except some people have to work a lot harder and be a lot
| smarter.
| int_19h wrote:
| It would be meritocracy if both kids had equal opportunity
| to earn those merits. If the ability to do so is itself
| gated, it's only meritocratic within the privileged group.
| labster wrote:
| No, equality of opportunity is specifically not needed
| for a meritocracy. It wasn't in the original book[1], it
| didn't happen in the old Chinese examination system, and
| it sure doesn't happen now.
|
| Merits are measurements, and society adapts to make those
| measurements a target.
|
| [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meri
| tocracy
| grujicd wrote:
| Samsung Magician on Windows uses CTRL+W as a global shortcut
| and then it doesn't work in browser anymore. That took a while
| to figure out.
| Toutouxc wrote:
| That's completely idiotic and whoever came up with that
| (apparently it even blocks crouch + walk in some games)
| should be tarred and feathered.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Believe it or not, a lot of users don't understand the control
| key and are afraid to touch it because they think it might
| break their computer. They may not even be able to readily find
| it on their keyboard since they aren't accustomed to using it,
| but do tune out and skim over the things on their computer they
| think they can't understand.
| erinaceousjones wrote:
| > Overall, I'd say telling people to use private windows and
| teaching then Ctrl+W is probably better.
|
| Yes, you should do that _as well_ as understand that, for
| things like this, where you 're providing information for
| vulnerable people across an entire population, your people are
| going to span a huge range of technical literacy and you will
| not be able to reach all of them in time. Give them the big red
| escape button with the special "dial 999" style memorable key
| combo _as well_ as teach them everything else. But triage and
| do the "this solution works for the broadest number of people
| the quickest" thing first - the big red button.
| rafram wrote:
| You can only replace the URL with another URL on the same
| domain. Otherwise a site could make itself look like Google and
| then replace its URL with Google's, and you'd have no way of
| knowing that it isn't Google.
| ata_aman wrote:
| Would be pretty cool if it also changed the page navigation
| history to obscure where the user was before visiting bbc
| weather. If users taking the triple click action are presumed to
| be in distress, you'd want to remove the ability of the other
| party to simply click "back" and see where they were.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| That's exactly what it does do -- check out [this
| demo](https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/exit-
| this-pa...). Presumably, that requires the [JavaScript History
| API](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/API/History_API), but the whole thing requires JS
| anyway, so that's no more of a problem.
| YoumuChan wrote:
| Shift key is widely used in Eastern Asian input methods to switch
| between English and Asian scripts. Pressing Shift while holding
| Alt is the way to cycle through different input methods on
| windows systems. Using shift key is a decent idea for Latin
| script users, but is terrible for Asian script users.
| robin_reala wrote:
| That's a less likely setup for a GOV.UK user though.
| YoumuChan wrote:
| Yet the gov.uk website about domestic abuse has a Chinese
| version (among other languages which I imagine also requires
| different setups): https://www.gov.uk/guidance/domestic-
| abuse-how-to-get-help.z...
|
| I don't think gov.uk would admit that they want to exclude
| those users.
| nottorp wrote:
| Which Latin script? :)
|
| Everyone on the nearby continent has some accented characters
| and possibly both English and their national keyboard
| installed.
|
| Incidentally, this is a major complaint with smartphone OS
| designers that only speak English and don't realize there are
| places where people mix languages daily. That predictive spell
| checker should be configurable to accept more than one language
| at a time...
| tuetuopay wrote:
| And there's no need to be to speak some "obscure" language
| (from the point of view of the US-centric designers) to hit
| this issue. iOS got better at mixed french / english, but it
| still cannot prevent itself from correcting "the" (the
| english the) to "the" (french for tea). Oh well.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I don't understand why this is an either/or. It could be Shift x3
| or Esc x1. Tell the user to Shift x3 times, but if they forget or
| use habit, Esc will still be an option.
| TonyTrapp wrote:
| Someone might be panicking and press ESC twice "just to be
| sure". Your average user won't know that the second press will
| cancel the redirection process, inducing further stress and
| potentially completely closing the opportunity to move away
| from the page before the abuser sees it.
| tgv wrote:
| If you tell people they can use escape, they might press it too
| soon or repeatedly, preventing the very action they require.
| Nobody intuitively uses Esc to go to another page, so it's
| something you really need to be instructed to do. It makes
| sense to me.
| bckygldstn wrote:
| A similar initiative in NZ is Shielded Site [1].
|
| Many large sites (eg The Warehouse [2]) participate by putting an
| icon at the bottom of their website. When clicked, a modal pops
| up with domestic abuse resources.
|
| There's a prominent exit button that closes the modal faster than
| a page navigation or finding the close tab button. Closing the
| popup returns you to a major website rather than a new tab page.
| And most importantly, your history contains no evidence you
| viewed the information.
|
| [1] https://shielded.co.nz
|
| [2] https://www.thewarehouse.co.nz
| echoangle wrote:
| window.onload = function(){}
|
| Shouldn't this be addEventHandler? Otherwise, you can only have
| a single onload callback, right?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It should be addEventHandler if you want to have more than
| one handler, yes.
|
| Otherwise, it's fine.
| frereubu wrote:
| This is a great idea. I can't see the icon on the Warehouse
| site though - can you point me to it? How do people come to
| know about what the icon does?
| teruakohatu wrote:
| I had to hunt around to find it. Bottom right, aligned with
| "Corporate" in the footer links. Next to the Facebook icon.
| ClearAndPresent wrote:
| The icon is the teal/white circle just in line and to the
| right of the social media icons at the bottom of the page. I
| missed it on first glance and would have no idea what it did.
| frereubu wrote:
| Oh. I thought that was a light mode / dark mode button...
| Unlikely on a retail site I guess, but discoverability
| feels pretty bad. It's not like you couldn't just write
| "suffering from domestic abuse?" on there because the
| person doesn't have to click it in situations where that
| would be risky, and could come back later if they spot it
| at the wrong time.
| thecatspaw wrote:
| I think the idea is that you can tell people "hey, if
| you're suffering from abuse, you can check a websites
| footer for this icon to get help"
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| This has probably helped so many people.... In the
| imaginations of other people
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Are there any statistics, or frankly any reason, to
| expect this to have helped anybody?
|
| I'm not trying to be dismissive, but I genuinely can't
| imagine this helping anyone. I am completely open to
| being wrong though.
| crote wrote:
| > There's a prominent exit button that closes the modal faster
| than a page navigation or finding the close tab button.
|
| I spent about 30 seconds figuring out how to close it. The icon
| in the top-right? No, that goes to the start page. Perhaps the
| icon in the top-left? No, that goes to the main menu. Clicking
| outside the modal, like most other websites? Nope, doesn't
| work.
|
| Turns out the close button is the half-circle at the _bottom_
| of the modal, which is exactly the same color as the rest of
| the modal. It 's pretty obvious once you see it, but it took me
| _way_ too long to find. They should 've either placed it in the
| top-right like literally every other close button ever, or made
| it bright red so it's impossible to miss.
| stavros wrote:
| Unfortunately, clicking outside the modal (by far the biggest
| target to hit) doesn't actually close the modal, you need to
| click the (relatively small) close button.
| fennecfoxy wrote:
| As a Kiwi I miss the ware whare!
|
| However I am extremely disappointed to see that the questions
| section of that starts out gender neutral and then basically
| does the usual "if you're a woman being abused by a man..."
|
| There is still no support for male victims of domestic
| violence, whether the abuser is male or female. :/ it's not
| hard to cater to all cases, no wonder men don't bother -
| particularly when it's reported that male victims who resort to
| calling the police are most often the one handcuffed/detained
| when they arrive.
|
| In before someone comments something that we've all heard
| before - it's not a competition, both women & men can be helped
| by the same system, regardless of supposed statistical
| likeliness, etc.
| pushupentry1219 wrote:
| This is very fair. I have a close male friend who was the
| victim of intense domestic violence, physical, emotional and
| financial manipulation by his ex partner.
|
| He talks about how child support staff (like reception for
| example) are, are not favouring of him. They see DV in his
| profile and assume he's the perpetrator instantly. He had to
| explain himself constantly, no doubt reliving trauma when he
| does.
|
| He has been struggling with the courts to gain sole custody
| of his child.
|
| And to top it all off all the posters around these places
| are, like you say, about women reaching out against their
| abusive male partners. Which IS an issue and IS statistically
| more likely. But you make a very good point about these
| systems being able to help both.
| KMag wrote:
| > .. women reaching out against their abusive male
| partners. Which IS an issue and IS statistically more
| likely.
|
| Be careful about your phrasing there. I hope the implied
| subject on both sides of the "and" is different. Women
| being victims is an issue, and women reaching out is
| significantly more likely.
|
| Women reaching out is (obviously) not an issue, but is
| statistically more likely. Alternately, women being victims
| is an issue, but the statistical likelihood of women being
| victims is unknown, and we have good reason to believe
| there is significant reporting bias.
| failingslowly wrote:
| Thank you, this needs to be repeated whenever this situation
| arises.
| Throw38495 wrote:
| UK minister is trying to close All female prisons. They are
| already only 4% of prisoners, but that is it enough. So much
| about accountability.
|
| > men can be helped by the same system
|
| That is just a misinformation! Calling police if abuser is a
| female, and you are a male, is a VERY bad idea.
|
| Without police you only get some bruises. With police you get
| escorted in handcuffs in front entire neighbourhood, get
| fired from job, pay very expensive lawyers, get criminal
| record and possible prison time!
|
| There is no way to fix that, just leave and drop all contact!
| eastbound wrote:
| It doesn't matter, because even if men call for help, they
| won't be helped.
|
| There was a study in UK that if a man calls the police for
| domestic violence, there's 56% chances the police only
| interviews the woman, and 23% chances he's threatened of
| arrest (with, I think, 3% or 10% he's actually led to the
| police station, I don't remember the specifics, but still
| higher than not calling the police).
|
| In France, a sad sentence of the government hotline "Female
| violence info" mentions that 10% calls are from men. For a
| hotline with "female" on it. The report continues that, since
| it's only 10%, it's still generally violence against women.
|
| So yeah. Let's be honest. Men better not end up in need of
| help.
| djtango wrote:
| Should have thought like a vimmer and used caps lock instead
| YPPH wrote:
| Shift is not ideal either. On Microsoft Windows, pressed thrice
| in quick succession will prompt to activate sticky keys, and
| divert focus from the web browser.
| Aaron2222 wrote:
| It's five times, not three.
| ascorbic wrote:
| The post covers that
| airpoint wrote:
| > BBC Weather's homepage is a content-rich page. Users have a
| reason to be looking at it and to be looking for an extended
| period of time.
|
| Most of that rich content is obstructed by them bloody cookie
| warnings, on first visit. That's not a very convincing simulation
| of "I've been looking at this page for the last 5 mins!"
| cwillu wrote:
| Hmm, I don't get a cookie banner on my browser, even in an
| incognito window with uBlock turned off.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| I get one here in the UK, in incognito. It's actually one of
| the nicest cookie banners you'll ever see--just 75px tall at
| the top of the page, and it doesn't float so it disappears
| when you scroll. I recommend at least trying to see it, to
| appreciate its superiority over all the other cookie banners.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I'd rather they just didn't track me.
| JacketPotato wrote:
| They're also used for stuff like storing which locations
| you search for, a pretty important feature. They probably
| also use them for analytics though.
| razakel wrote:
| They don't if you're in the UK.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I'm in the UK and I get the analytics cookies notice.
| colanderman wrote:
| I often leave cookie popovers unclicked. Sometimes they take an
| annoying amount of work to decline cookies, and they can be
| used to cover video ads anyway.
| mrinterweb wrote:
| On a UK keyboard, you use the Brexit key
| trollbridge wrote:
| A while ago we did a site for a nonprofit focused on domestic
| violence.
|
| We preloaded Kohl's (a department store sort of retailer in
| America) and fiddled with the safety exit button to make sure
| Kohl's came up really quickly. If we would have worked on the
| site longer, I would have a done a rotation of a couple of
| different stereotypical shopping websites. (Kohl's was picked by
| the organisations's executive director who, unfortunately, had
| plenty of first hand experience with domestic violence.)
| eviks wrote:
| The explanation doesn't make sense without addressing the
| elephant in the room - why not teach users to use the universal
| "tab close" action via a common shortcut? That one is immediate
| unlike loading another page
| inejge wrote:
| If yours is the only tab, "close tab" will usually close the
| whole window, potentially leaving you with an empty desktop.
| Being caught staring at nothing would be suspicious in the
| situations where "exit page" is supposed to be used. The
| weather page is comparatively innocuous. (Until the word gets
| around...)
| eviks wrote:
| First, you wouldn't be staring at nothing, you'd be reopening
| the browser / opening Solitaire or something
|
| But also a better way would be to ask the user to open a
| second tab (or another app) so that it's not the only
| tab/app.
|
| Still beats remembering a unique shortcut.
| jdiff wrote:
| Time is of the essence when you're hitting an escape
| shortcut. That's why this component blanks the page
| immediately, then loads the decoy, there can be no delay
| even for the browser to tear down the page as it fetches
| the next. If you have enough time to just go and open
| Solitaire, you have no need for an escape button.
|
| If you are with someone who cannot know what you are doing,
| who has appeared suddenly, you are quickly closing what
| you're doing and, yes, you will be looking at a blank page
| without some sort of escape mechanism like this. And if
| it's sudden and unexpected, you might not have been
| anticipating needing to pop open some decoys.
|
| This seems like a complete misunderstanding of the
| situation.
| eviks wrote:
| If time is of the essence, why are you wasting it
| requiring 3 key presses and a site load? It take longer
| to do that vs a single shortcut, and is more visible
| (pages don't load immediately)
|
| > If you have enough time to just go and open Solitaire,
| you have no need for an escape button.
|
| You don't have enough time to complete that, you do that
| not to appear just staring at a blank screen. Activity of
| opening Solitaire is enough in itself.
|
| > who cannot know what you are doing,
|
| which is easier achieved when the browser is closed vs.
| when a browser is opened, since in the latter case it's
| easier to think about checking "previous" browser history
|
| > This seems like a complete misunderstanding of the
| situation.
|
| Indeed, so much so that this overengineered-but-
| underthought solution has none of the supposed benefits
| under the conditions people come up with to defend it
| jdiff wrote:
| At this point I have to assume that this is willful. You
| are continuing to ignore things that have been addressed
| by both myself in my last comment and the article. I
| invite you to read the article more deeply and look into
| the actual research backing these UI patterns if you are
| genuinely struggling to understand.
| _qua wrote:
| Anyone who is smart enough to use this weird triple shift key
| shortcut is intelligent enough to preload a different site in
| another tab and use the close tab shortcut. I would guess
| there is almost complete venn diagram overlap between people
| who can learn this weird shortcut and people who can deal
| with this threat in any other way using normal browser
| functions.
| eviks wrote:
| > staring at nothing would be suspicious in the situations
| where "exit page" is supposed to be used.
|
| This is actually not true. Having a browser opened leads to
| the thought of "let's check the previous page/browser
| history" easier (since the browser is right there to remind
| you) than a situation of "oh, I've just logged in" or the
| activity of doing anything else leads to the thought of
| having to check a browser
| frereubu wrote:
| Many people in abusive situations have very limited opportunity
| to use computers, and may well not have time to learn about
| things like "tab close" actions. This doesn't stop people who
| do know about those shortcuts from using them.
| eviks wrote:
| So how do you imagine they'll learn about Shift-Shift-
| Shift???
| frereubu wrote:
| I query that in another comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41796257
| JacketPotato wrote:
| https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/exit-a-page-
| qu... Government sites that use this component will include
| a page that explains this feature and how to use it, they
| have considered this. This is generally used on
| flows/pages, where the site is walking you through a
| proccess or a guide.
| frereubu wrote:
| Does anybody have any stats for the use of these kinds of
| buttons? A few of our clients - victim services and honour-based
| abuse services - ask us to add these kinds of buttons, but I've
| always wondered they actually get used instead of e.g. people
| just closing the browser window. The issue for us with adding
| tracking is that it would slow the interaction which, even if it
| was only a few milliseconds, isn't something we want to risk. (Or
| worse, if the JS it breaks and the link doesn't work). I guess it
| would have to be some kind of post-hoc survey for victims of
| domestic abuse who've used a site and are now somewhere safe.
|
| Edit - thanks to @jdietrich below there are some stats on this
| link, which shows a correlation between events you'd expect to
| increase the rush of domestic abuse, such as the Covid lockdowns:
| https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-design-system/discussions/... I
| do wonder how they got those stats though.
|
| Edit 2 - I'm so glad this got posted! I've been wondering about
| this for ages and it's really nice to get some evidence for its
| use. Reading through the comments has also solidified my thinking
| around "why don't people just close the browser window" - many
| people who use honour-based abuse services are very computer
| illiterate, don't have time to learn about incognito windows /
| (Ctrl | Command) + W, and can only snatch computer time here and
| there. Abusers can look back at the browser history, but if the
| choice is between being discovered on an honour-based abuse
| website or the chance that the abuser won't look at the history,
| the second is clearly superior.
|
| Edit 3 - I really wonder about the three-press shift keyboard
| shortcut. Real lack of discoverability, and my worry would be
| that the lack of consistency across sites would lead to
| situations where people are on non-gov.uk websites and think that
| keyboard shortcut would work there too. Although I suppose the
| fact that the first shift press activates the button in some way
| does tie it to the presence of the button on screen.
|
| Edit 4 - It doesn't seem to be in use on any relevant gov.uk
| pages. The pilot on the "check for legal aid" pages seems to have
| ended and it's not on the pages about domestic abuse.
| closewith wrote:
| Most probably they're using the sendBeacon method triggered by
| the visibilitychange event. sendBeacon doesn't delay the unload
| and asynchronously makes the network request simultaneously.
|
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/s...
| frereubu wrote:
| Thanks, that's really useful to know - I might try and
| implement something like that on the sites that we run.
| davedx wrote:
| Yeah the fact that there's no concrete demo beyond the basic
| JavaScript snippet/demo makes me wonder how well this actually
| works. I wanted to know how users are informed to press shift
| repeatedly to use the button? It's weird UX.
|
| It does remind me of "boss keys" that old DOS games used to
| have.
| thecatspaw wrote:
| can you expand on what honour based abuse means?
| amiga386 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honor_killing
|
| > An honor killing (American English), honour killing
| (Commonwealth English), or shame killing is a traditional
| form of murder in which a person is killed by or at the
| behest of members of their family or their partner, due to
| culturally sanctioned beliefs that such homicides are
| necessary as retribution for the perceived dishonoring of the
| family by the victim.
|
| > Methods of murdering include stoning, stabbing, beating,
| burning, beheading, hanging, throat slashing, lethal acid
| attacks, shooting, and strangulation. Sometimes, communities
| perform murders in public to warn others in the community of
| the possible consequences of engaging in what is seen as
| illicit behavior
|
| > Often, minor girls and boys are selected by the family to
| act as the murderers, so that the murderer may benefit from
| the most favorable legal outcome. Boys and sometimes women in
| the family are often asked to closely control and monitor the
| behavior of their siblings or other members of the family, to
| ensure that they do not do anything to tarnish the 'honor'
| and 'reputation' of the family
|
| > Sharif Kanaana, professor of anthropology at Birzeit
| University, says that honor killing is: "A complicated issue
| that cuts deep into the history of Islamic society. .. What
| the men of the family, clan, or tribe seek control of in a
| patrilineal society is reproductive power. Women for the
| tribe were considered a factory for making men. Honor killing
| is not a means to control sexual power or behavior. What's
| behind it is the issue of fertility or reproductive power."
|
| > Nighat Taufeeq of the women's resource center Shirkatgah in
| Lahore, Pakistan says: "It is an unholy alliance that works
| against women: the killers take pride in what they have done,
| the tribal leaders condone the act and protect the killers
| and the police connive the cover-up." The lawyer and human
| rights activist Hina Jilani says, "The right to life of women
| in Pakistan is conditional on their obeying social norms and
| traditions."
|
| > Fareena Alam, editor of a Muslim magazine, writes that
| honor killings which arise in Western cultures such as
| Britain are a tactic for immigrant families to cope with the
| alienating consequences of urbanization. Alam argues that
| immigrants remain close to the home culture and their
| relatives because it provides a safety net. She writes that
| 'In villages "back home", a man's sphere of control was
| broader, with a large support system. In our cities full of
| strangers, there is virtually no control over who one's
| family members sit, talk or work with.'
|
| Hopefully that expands on it. A rotten culture of "family
| values" that sees women as nothing more than baby factories
| and keeps them under control at all times, through
| intimidation, persecution, monitoring, and straight up state-
| sanctioned killing and blaming of the victim if they try to
| assert themselves.
| hamdouni wrote:
| This makes me laugh
|
| "As a result of advertising people being bastards, more and more
| of what the web platform can do is ..."
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| It was refreshingly candid - then I remembered we're reading a
| government blog where they can say that kind of thing with
| impunity.
| globular-toast wrote:
| What makes you think it's a government blog? Looks like a
| personal blog to me.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| Sorry, I'm not totally sure why I made that assumption. I
| thought I'd spotted a '.gov' domain, but clearly it's not.
| I guess some of the writing also implies it (e.g. "Last
| year [...], we launched the GOV.UK Design System's Exit
| this Page component") but, of course, this could just be a
| contractor.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I _think_ they're an employee of the gov.uk design
| service?
| switch007 wrote:
| It's a personal blog btw. And there is absolutely no way a UK
| Gov blog would call Google bastards.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| I didn't read it as a dig at Google specifically, but I
| accept your general point is totally correct.
| hbrav wrote:
| The individual has impunity of the department has impunity?
|
| Not sure if you know this, but it might be of interest: in
| the UK speech, within the House of Commons (maybe the Lords
| too? I'm unsure) is specifically protected from defamation
| actions. An MP could stand up and say "Mr Smith murders
| kittens in his spare time" and Mr Smith would have no ability
| to sue. However, this does not apply to MPs outside of
| parliament.
| joelanman wrote:
| More info on our pattern here:
|
| https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/exit-a-page-qu...
| frereubu wrote:
| Thanks. Interesting to note the "interruption page" and "safety
| content page" parts, which I think deals with quite a few
| queries in the comments about how people will know what to do.
|
| Also just a note that the first two GOV.UK links under
| "Research on this pattern" don't include live examples any
| more.
| Daz1 wrote:
| "Content warning: This blog post references domestic abuse and
| violence but doesn't go into specific detail.
|
| I'm not an expert in that topic at all, so I may not use the
| preferred terminology in all instances. Sorry."
|
| What the hell is this?
| BostonFern wrote:
| Read the blog's "about" page.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| For reference:
|
| > I'm an agender (I use it/its pronouns), asexual, alterhuman
| robot. I'm also a shapeshifting critter on the internet.
|
| This person has absorbed the idea that it's a sin to use
| natural language to talk about normal phenomena, and the idea
| that it isn't possible to know what kind of language wouldn't
| be sinful, but not the idea that maybe that isn't a desirable
| state of affairs.
| frereubu wrote:
| I guess this is probably a rhetorical question. But if you've
| been a victim of domestic abuse you may not want to read about
| it when you think you're just reading about a gov.uk web
| component, particularly if the abuse was recent and you're
| still traumatised by it. The author is just trying to be
| sensitive to that.
|
| The language apology-in-advance does feel a bit like overkill
| though. I'd suggest a generous interpretation is that, given
| how things often work these days, they don't want people to get
| caught up in discussions about terminology and just want to
| focus on the tech.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Ever watched TV? "The following programme contains depictions
| of [whatever]"
|
| Some people, particularly people who've suffered domestic
| abuse, may not wish to be blindsided by a discussion of it when
| they think they're reading a technical blog.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| This is perfect. Whenever the idea pops up that
| design/code/system is done because of AI I am mostly confused.
|
| Everything is so bad and requires so much though to even get to
| "decent"! Our current standards are so low, because we can not
| afford higher standards -- but when paying attention to the
| world, anywhere, it does not even take effort to find an instance
| of a (systemic) design problem that could be fixed.
|
| Granted, reconfiguring our system to pay for that is an
| outstanding issue, but I don't think that's because it requires
| much fantasy to find things that could be done and that would be
| appreciated by us and the people around us.
| shultays wrote:
| In virtually all browsers, pressing Escape while a webpage is
| loading stops the loading process.
|
| Whoa, never knew about this or noticed it
| jonathanstrange wrote:
| It's how people read the New York times.
| tanbog45 wrote:
| I make sites for non-profits regularly and have been asked to add
| exit/escape buttons a few times. There more time Ive spent
| thinking about the problem and researching solutions the more I
| think they are a bad idea.
|
| 1. Lots - if not most - traffic is from mobile these days. Most
| people already know the fastest way to exit a page on mobile -
| the home button/action. Adding anything else is just adding
| confusion. 2. Unless you are going to great lengths - ie pre
| loading a page and maybe dropping parts of the dom and dealing
| with evidence in the history - are you actually doing anything
| much to help the user exit your site? How motivated/skilled a
| person are you defending against? 3. If your exit button is just
| a glorified link or redirect what is the point? It will still be
| in the history and if they have slow internet they could end up
| just staring at your site while the redirect loads. 4. For some
| organisations having such buttons is more about "showing" they
| have it than how useful it actually is to the user. 5. I have
| tried to push for a page/link to basic internet safety
| information. Educating visitors would be much better than trying
| to engineer their personal security day. 6. I've struggled to
| find good academic/research work on such features. Seems like it
| would be a good area for a UX researcher but I've not found much
| actual work.
| hengistbury wrote:
| I see these points as reasons why it might not be a good idea,
| but they don't explain why it is a bad idea.
|
| Other methods for leaving the site still work. Even if the
| button isn't the best way to leave the site, if it helps in
| more cases than it hurts then it's a net benefit.
|
| These buttons are essentially panic buttons, and when a person
| is panicking the big red exit button might end up being the
| only exit they can find.
| tanbog45 wrote:
| This is way outside my area of knowledge, but when under
| stress do humans actually use things like panic buttons? Or
| do they fall back on week known patterns of behaviour?
|
| My gut tells me that the big red button might not even get
| noticed.
| int_19h wrote:
| Pressing the home button on mobile in this scenario leaves the
| app open in the background with the page still opened. Worse
| yet, both Android and iOS show thumbnails of apps in the
| switcher, and it's an MRU so the last used app will be the
| first one you see if you bring up the switcher. And bringing up
| the app switcher is very likely to be the first action the
| attacker would do to see what the victim was doing just now.
| DrBazza wrote:
| Ideally Jira would have something similar so that when you create
| a new issue and accidentally click somewhere or press escape, it
| doesn't delete the ticket you've just spent 5 minutes creating.
| imdsm wrote:
| I had a situation where I needed to speak to Police some time
| ago. An sms about the weather was sent, which allowed me to speak
| to someone, and then after the call, it took me to bbc weather.
| It was brilliant and I really commend it.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I found a live example here, on the page where you can check if
| you are eligible for legal aid: https://www.gov.uk/check-legal-
| aid then click "Start now" then "Domestic abuse"
| sambeau wrote:
| This smells to me of a team overthinking something so much that
| they land on something unintuitive. It smells of "over-fitting"
| -- a solution way too specific when something general and
| flexible is needed.
|
| Pressing shift three times is clever... but way _too_ clever.
| Even if you stick a giant popup saying "hit shift three times to
| quickly exit" I'm not sure anyone in a panic will remember--loads
| of people don't even know which key is shift, especially when
| there's three buttons on a keyboard that look the same and only
| two are the same. I've come across people who always use shift-
| lock and did't realise you could use shift for anything. I'd be
| interested to know what UX tests they actually did, and who with.
|
| If I was going down the press a key three times, I would have
| gone with pressing _any_ key three times apart from the number
| keys (plus an info box when you enter the page-- "hit any key 3
| times to quickly exit to the weather"). Most people, I'm sure,
| would mash the spacebar in a panic but if they missed then it
| would still work.
|
| What I would have preferred to test would be 'mashing'/chording
| -- pressing more than one non-modifier key at the same time, so a
| user could just smash a load of keys at the same time in a panic.
|
| Going to the Weather page is a great idea, though.
| crimsoneer wrote:
| Yeah, this was my reaction... I wonder if they collect logs of
| how many people use the triple shift function. I do like GDS'
| focus on research and service design, but this feels slighly
| over-engineered from that space.
| monkpit wrote:
| The logs are just noise without a way to prove the users'
| intention to use the triple-shift feature for its intended
| purpose.
|
| Maybe you could normalize it by listening for triple-shift
| presses on all pages on the site (not just sensitive ones)
| and calling that a baseline of accidental events.
|
| But, how do we know that events in the baseline are truly
| accidental? What if users learned the behavior and tried
| using it on pages where it's not implemented?
|
| There's just no good way to get analytics on this feature
| without interviewing users somehow.
| amelius wrote:
| Our browsers just need a boss-key.
| TZubiri wrote:
| Hard disagree.
|
| First of all. Not using escape key to escape is the standard
| for almost all applications since the 90s. Do you use escape to
| close the browser? A tab? your email client? No. All software
| converged on the idea that a close button was not a good idea,
| we are left with the actual button as a vestige.
|
| Second of all, this software is designed for people in high
| stress situations where one of their main goals is to avoid
| detection, they will not only memorize the escape sequence, but
| they will likely have their finger on the shift key at all
| times.
| duxup wrote:
| I have my doubts about how sure you are that people in high
| stress situations will memorize the escape sequence for one
| website.
|
| I think as devs we often think of our site or application as
| the center of the user's universe, but I don't think users
| memorize the minutia of our applications like we think /
| would hope.
|
| Also, I actually worked with folks in abusive relationships
| at one time, their actions are not as predictable as you
| might hope.
| koala_man wrote:
| > one website
|
| I'm guessing gov.uk is hoping that this will become some
| kind of standard, at least for British resources.
| ceuk wrote:
| > I think as devs we often think of our site or application
| as the center of the user's universe
|
| Jakob's law is a thing but I actually think in the case of
| GDS they are in the fairly rare position of perhaps being
| able to justify the hubris you speak of slightly.
|
| Not only are they directly or indirectly responsible for
| the UI of a frankly staggering number of online services,
| they are also one of the most influential bodies - perhaps
| in the world - when it comes to this sort of thing.
| duxup wrote:
| My only concern about setting a standard (beyond the
| usual process of setting a standard) it's that a standard
| for what exactly? All the other government sites that ...
| you don't need this key sequence on?
|
| For the user I think that still means asking them to
| memorize something odd for a very limited use case that
| you won't think of visiting any other government site.
| TZubiri wrote:
| Ah, I misunderstood the scope of the tool.
|
| I thought this was a tool that users specifically install
| in order to browse any content.
|
| But instead it seems this is simply a feature so that users
| that browse gov.uk websites specifically can exit.
| cj wrote:
| I think the OP's main point is "press shift 3 times" is a
| very uncommon and unintuitive keyboard shortcut. What do you
| disagree with?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > Not using escape key to escape is the standard for almost
| all applications since the 90s.
|
| Really? I always hit "escape" when I get a popover on a
| website, and it often works.
|
| Many TUI interfaces use it for "go back" or "exit" e.g. BIOS
| settings.
| int_19h wrote:
| Using the Escape key to close _dialogs_ is the standard for
| almost all desktop applications since the 90s, though.
| ssalka wrote:
| ^This. Closing an entire application with the possibility
| of losing important state? No, we don't want a button that
| does that (though a button combination is OK because that's
| less likely to be accidentally triggered). Closing an
| ephemeral popup that is distracting from the main page?
| Absolutely, `Esc` that.
| Alupis wrote:
| > Second of all, this software is designed for people in high
| stress situations where one of their main goals is to avoid
| detection
|
| FTFA: `It's intended to be a safety tool. A way for people in
| unstable, potentially violent, domestic situations to quickly
| leave the page.`
|
| This is the craziest part of this entire article to me. The
| UK Government needed to invent a whole design system that
| included an "ejection seat" button in case you're caught
| looking at UK Government websites?
|
| Or does this button exist because one website in particular
| needed this feature?
|
| Over design much?
| aftbit wrote:
| Why not exit the tab with Ctrl-W?
| SilverBirch wrote:
| I think it's useful to think about the same way you think about
| test specificity. Ie, of all the people in the world that hit
| this page, how many of them are going to need this feature and
| use it correctly vs. how many don't need this feature and
| accidentally use it. Using the Escape key is fantastic for "I
| needed this feature and it worked", which is probably 1 in
| 100,000 users of the page. It's terrible for "I accidentally
| used this feature I didn't know about" and that's the other
| 99,999.
|
| All your other suggestions fail for this reason too - you need
| a high level of confidence the person really intended to
| escape. I for example would mash the space bar three times to
| scroll down.
| monkpit wrote:
| Along these lines, in the GitHub discussion they show a graph
| of the number of times the button was pressed, bucketed by
| the platform the user was on, which is all utterly useless
| info.
|
| It should be normalized as a percentage of page views at the
| very least.
|
| They're basically saying "hey we added a big red button and
| people press it sometimes". The button could say "fire lasers
| at my cat" and some amount of people would press it (whether
| intentional or not).
| Suppafly wrote:
| Hitting shift 3 times happens just by holding the button down
| too long while typing caps sometimes too. I constantly have
| sticky keys coming up when inadvertently holding down shift and
| getting distracted while typing.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| I've definitely triggered sticky-keys with my shift before,
| but I can't remember a time it was while typing - potentially
| while shift + arrow to highlight, though.
|
| But it is one of those features that I turn off the second it
| annoys me 1 too many times.
| Suppafly wrote:
| Yeah anytime I'm on a fresh install of Windows, it seems to
| happen pretty quickly and then I turn it off.
| advisedwang wrote:
| There's also a giant red button you can click. That's the main
| route and it's pretty good for a paniced user who needs the
| solution right in front of them.
|
| They keyboard shortcut is just gravy.
| mooktakim wrote:
| How would anyone know that you can use the shift key? Closing the
| tab/page is just more natural as its something you do all the
| time.
| jdiff wrote:
| It's advised in the implementation documentation to add a page
| explaining it. Shift is also used naturally when inputting
| information, with the visual feedback inside the button giving
| an opportunity for discoverability.
| mooktakim wrote:
| It reminds me of the old lastminute.com (I think) button that
| would turn the whole front page into an Excel spreadsheet so when
| the manager walks by, they only see spreadsheets on your screen
| lol
| globalise83 wrote:
| Now that is a real use case!
| ykonstant wrote:
| You can exit the UK Government, but you can never escape.
| duxup wrote:
| I enjoyed reading their thought process. That was a good read.
|
| But I agree the end result feels like an over thought process
| that comes up with something completely counter intuitive that
| someone would seem to need to trigger at a moments notice.
|
| To some extent this seems to be one of those "well they did
| something" solutions that for a lot of work, provides near zero
| value.
| kqr wrote:
| Hypothetically, wouldn't an abuser start to find it suspicious
| when a blank page loads BBC Weather as they enter the room?
| mcculley wrote:
| Being unable to use the escape key is another reason why web apps
| will never be as consistent as desktop apps.
| adamrezich wrote:
| > In virtually all browsers, pressing Escape while a webpage is
| loading stops the loading process.
|
| Wow, you learn something new every day!
|
| Kinda weird that we got "Backspace to go back" out of web
| browsers some time ago yet this still exists, though.
| int_19h wrote:
| Backspace was overloaded whenever text input fields on the page
| were involved, so accidentally pressing that to mean something
| else entirely _and losing data_ as the result was too common to
| not address. Escape OTOH was never used for anything else in
| browsers, as far as I remember.
| thih9 wrote:
| While a weather page sounds good, perhaps something that loads
| fast would be also a good pick? Then again, the html code shows
| the button itself as an anchor tag, so it seems easy to customize
| the target url.
| matteason wrote:
| The component has some JavaScript which blanks out the page
| immediately after the button being pressed, so if it takes a
| while for the browser to load the weather page it shouldn't
| matter as much
|
| https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/exit-this-pa...
| jandrese wrote:
| It seems like the shift key is still problematic, especially if
| it is conflicting with stickykeys. Why not use for example the
| letter 'q'? You could set it up as a mnemonic that you need to
| quit quit quit as fast as possible.
|
| But for the most part I agree that this is silly and unnecessary.
| Ctrl-W is a better solution and this would really only make sense
| if it also scrubbed the site from the browser's history at the
| same time. In fact this solution is worse because the abuser can
| just hit the "back" button when they see BBC Weather loaded.
| layer8 wrote:
| > And Esc is the only keyboard key that doesn't count as user
| interaction for the purposes of transient activation.
|
| It's pretty weird that pressing the Shift key is considered more
| of a user interaction than pressing Escape.
| changing1999 wrote:
| My only criticism of this approach is that it asks highly
| sensitive users to learn a critical keyboard shortcut that will
| not work anywhere else. What will happen if users attempt to
| triple press "shift" on any other surface that doesn't support
| this? Because that's highly likely.
|
| Instead of introducing a new (hidden) shortcut, I would rely on
| clear visual cues and intuitive (meaning, already common)
| interactions. E.g. opening the form in a modal; clicking anywhere
| outside of this modal closes the modal and loads the weather
| page. The clickable background should be clearly identified as a
| special feature, e.g. tiled text "exit page" all over it.
| amiantos wrote:
| It's fun to read so many people who can't see past their own
| nose, who declare the scenario contrived and the solution over-
| engineered, despite having no frame of reference for the need of
| this button and thus having no ability to properly dogfood the
| feature, speaking so confidently from their ignorance. Great HN
| thread.
| construct0 wrote:
| Tried example. No redirect occurred after 3 SHIFT presses, had to
| use both ESC and SHIFT to trigger it somehow. The irony.
| skrebbel wrote:
| In case the author reads this, I tried the test page on a newish
| Windows install and at the third shift-press, a "Do you want to
| enable Sticky Keys?" Windows dialog opened, and the third shift
| keypress didn't make it to the browser so I didn't exit. Instead
| of nervously staring at the weather, I was nervously staring at
| the potentially damning content I was trying to get away from,
| plus a weird Windows 7 themed dialog window that I'd never seen
| before nor really understood.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if this will happen for anyone trying the
| triple-shift on a vanilla Windows install who doesn't actually
| use Sticky Keys, nor explicitly turn it off (ie a majority of
| visitors).
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