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Comment by Drdrdrq | Hacker News Reader

My pet peeve: when I try to click a button and just before I touch the screen it changes, so I hit completely another button (on Androod - but it is the same everywhere). So instead of cancelling a call I place another one, to a different person. No I didn't intend to call my mother in law!

The solution is so simple it hurts: if a clickable area has been shown less than X ms before the touch / click, ignore the event. Nobody can type this quick except for Superman, and he can change this via some setting, if you think he will be annoyed.

I am not sure why I haven't seen this solution anywhere yet. Do others not encounter this problem?

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I encounter this problem all the time, incidentally also with calls.

Often I'll doing something at the same moment as someone else calls me, I end up hanging up the incoming call by mistake. A delay in "screen change" would be great!

Glad I'm not alone!

Not delay in screen change - system can't predict when user is going to press the button. But it is highly unlikely that the change of screen occured, I have noticed it, found the correct button and pressed it - all in 50 ms... The system should just disregard the touch, because it was obviously meant for previous screen.

> The system should just disregard the touch

That's exactly what I meant, should have been a bit clearer!

Can you give a more concrete example? I'm on Android, and I've never experienced that.

Your suggestion would only work for very undeterministic parts of the UI, though.

Good UIs are predictable, and sophisticated users "know" where to click and don't need to read buttons, so they're very fast. Enforcing some delay will make the system seem "laggy".

So now you have to make a distinction between "predictable parts of the UI" and "unpredictable parts of the UI" and everything's not all that simple anymore.

A better solution is to not to pop up random things at random times in random places.

I place a call and a callee is busy. I want to click "end call" button, but just a bit before that app figures out it can stop the call, so it switches back to main screen. The touch on the same spot now means something entirely else - so a new call is placed and I try to stop it in a fit of panic.

It happened at least 3 times in last two months.

Update: I am not suggesting adding a delay, that wouldn't help with anything.

Frankly the only place i have seen that on any platform is with web browsers. In particular sites that reformat to make room for ads after the main content has fully loaded.

A similar problem happens on iOS CarPlay.

If you're getting navigation directions in Maps, and then go back to the home screen (say, to play music), there's a temporary notification dropdown that appears from Maps with your next turn info. The problem is that the dropdown covers the top row of app icons, so if through muscle memory you (as I do) hit home and then hit Music, you hit the notification instead of Music and end right back in Maps. It's infuriating.

This problem makes me question if anyone from Apple's CarPlay team has actually used their own product in a real setting.

I hate a different version of this: keyboard focus stealing on OS X by windows that pop up in front of something you were typing into.

The worst one is at login when I'm typing the password for my encrypted second drive and other apps that are starting up pop up in front, including ones that rely on that drive to be unlocked. If ever a dialog needed to be more modal, it's that one.

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