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Comment by NickBusey | Hacker News Reader

I agree with the complaint, and this is a widespread UI flaw that extends far beyond Apple, however I think his proposed solution isn't the best.

My generalized solution that would work in any interface layout is to add new interface elements as disabled, and leave them disabled for maybe 1 full second. This would eliminate 90% of false clicks on fast moving popups.

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A full second is too much, but I agree - if you're moving the UI around (delayed-loading autocomplete dropdowns are the absolute worst at this. Utter fury about those) then the UI should be disabled until the user has had a moment.

Allowing imprecision on the time axis is called hysteresis[1], and it's been in common use on the Mac for decades. I'm a bit surprised they don't do it here already.

[1]: http://www.mackido.com/Interface/hysteresis.html

This seems like a better solution than what the author proposed. Another thought could be that the pop-ups would only be disabled for the spatial parts of the pop-up which have an interactive element located directly below.

I was imagining somethjng like this as well, but unfamiliarity with iOS made me wonder if possible.

Personally I think the issue is slightly overstated (or I'm just not popular enough and get fewer notifications) but my use pattern usually would naturally lead me to ignore such notifications by turning them off completely. Only messages get a pop-up for me on Android (or banner in iOS) and for large group chats they only get buzzes or noises.

Maybe iOS and Android can have a priority group you can set for instant delivery and then hold non priority notifications until a period of inaction from the user, adding an small delay.

But really, the occurrence rate seems pretty low to me from my workflow. And I live on my phone at work.

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