[dlang.org] getting the redesign wrapped up

[Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 11 January 2016 at 13:18:26 UTC, wobbles wrote:
> What was Adams gripe with :hover? I can't see a problem with 
> it, as long as clicking still works as it does now (for mobile).

I click on my URL bar and punch in "interesting-site.com". It 
loads and I move my mouse down to a link or text field that I 
actually want on the page and click...

But as the mouse went down from the address bar to the site, I 
happened to pass over a hover menu. My click is now intercepted 
and I'm sent to some entirely different page. Really annoying. 
(My bank's website had a login right below a hover menu, they 
have fixed it recently, but for the longest time, I'd want to log 
in but accidentally be sent to the bank officers list instead!)


Or, I'm trying to copy something from a hover element and the 
page size suddenly changes with it being there... which now puts 
my mouse pointer outside the hover, which causes it to disappear, 
which changes the page size again, and now I'm just lost. (A lot 
of web sites assume the page will be pixel-identical on all 
screens, but I disable web fonts, so your menus are often not 
exactly the same size on my screen...)

Similarly, something near the edge of a hover can be really hard 
to click with shaky hands, or sometimes errant margins on hovers 
(you'd think debugging would catch this, but I see it on live 
sites too, including big ones like Facebook) mean mousing over 
the gap to get to a link causes the link to disappear! Really 
frustrating.

I'd imagine it is even worse if you have poor dexterity in 
general, so there's the accessibility aspect too.


There's also no such thing as hover on devices without a mouse, 
which used to be just fossils like me using our lynx browser, but 
now includes a large number of people on the touch screens 
(though I question how many of them are actually doing 
programming so I don't think we should optimize specifically for 
them, but sometimes new users will check out a language mentioned 
to them on such a device so we don't want to leave them 
completely out either.)

Of course, a click fallback handles those people.


But even when - especially when - I have a device that supports 
hover, I dislike it.


I think the drop down list is completely worthless on dlang.org 
anyway. Things moving around are harder to locate than a static 
thing, your spacial memory leads you to the wrong place then. I'd 
rather have a single click bring you to an info page with the 
other links.