I cannot stress enough how infuriating it is when a page loads content under my mouse cursor at such a delay that I can manage to point at a link and click on it _before_ the new content is loaded so that I click/tap an unexpected link.

This happens _all_ the time on the Twitter app search bar.

This is infuriating on all UIs, but I haven't seen one that would implement a very obvious solution: if the area around click has changed in 100ms before the event, disregard the click. Either a webpage or a browser could do that.

I'm sure I'm not the first one to think of it, so there must be some reason why it isn't done - does anyone know why?

> Either a webpage or a browser could do that.

The browser should do it. Websites often do this intentionally in order to trick users into clicking ads. The only way to stop these abuses is for the browser itself to stop enabling them.

Unfortunately Google would make the Gmail team very grumpy if they did this - Gmail's by far the worst offender in my experience. Every single time I open my email I have to remind myself to wait for a moment before clicking on my newest emails, because most of the time there's going to be a couple ad "emails" popping in and shuffling everything else down a few seconds after all the real emails have loaded.

Google's grumpiness is an excellent measure for how much we need a feature. The grumpier, the better. Other browsers should do it. Firefox, Safari, Brave, everyone else.

Maybe something that Firefox and Safari could implement then? :)

Great idea, although from an engineering POV I think this is really hard. Most websites are super JS-heavy and hence, from a browser's POV, change constantly. Quite a ton of difference between pixels on the screen changing and the underlying DOM changing.

FWIW, I've seen that suggestion a few times over the past 2--5 years or so.

You're likely not the first, but it's an excellent suggestion.

Yes, because it sux, in general. Maybe as an option.

If something changes within ~300ms before your click, the only way you'd be intentionally clicking whatever's there now is if you're amped up playing some online game

Now be my guest and define "something changes" please. You will see what I mean.

Gaming is exactly one of the problems and all those sites that lie on spectrum between news to gaming and utilize some aspect of dynamic presentation.

This is my normal android experience. Use the share function, it displays a list of apps or chat conversations which actually are relevant, tap the app.... annnnnnnd the list refreshes with a new list and congrats, it buffered the tap before the menu refreshes and opens whatever app is now under your finger which is of course the wrong app. So when I use share I have to wait a few seconds to ensure the menu is refreshed and then pick an app. This behavior is throughout most of the ecosystem where input is valid and buffered before things are rendered to screen. Such a well engineered UX.

Android STILL does this? Wow.

bad enough when it’s accidental, more infuriating when it’s done with a profit motive

theverge.com presents a “show comments” button that shifts out of the way to reveal the worthless taboola links, I honestly don’t know how it isn’t considered click fraud

Lazy loading is the absolute bane of usability in web UIs. The fact that this is the default/most common behavior in modern web frameworks seems simply idiotic to me.

>This happens _all_ the time on the Twitter app search bar.

Hit the nail on the head there my friend. Super annoying.

I wonder why their search is so slow though. Any ideas?

This is particularly hilarious and ironic when considering they are really punishing for cumulative layout shift in their Lighthouse tool - to prevent exactly what you are describing from happening! Seems like Google hasn't used lighthouse on their own site!

Because google doesn't need to worry about such things. For most people DDG would be a much better experience - if only they knew?

I'm using DDG for almost a year, and I'd say that DDG is slightly better because I have a bit more control. It's important when you're multilingual (common in Europe) to be able to de-localize results chose language etc.

But it isn't MUCH better. DDG is just slightly better than Google, that has become infuriating.

I use it regularly but it is getting to be unreliable for technical searches. I often have to resort to using google when trying to track down information about programming problems.

Agreed but when I say 'most people' I'm thinking of more mundane and everyday queries which DDG handles well enough.

> this box shows up and I accidentally click on that (because it shows up with a little delay and an animation)

And somewhere a team of designers and PMs got their bonus for increasing the engagement OKR. Clearly users love the animation and added delay because look at the metrics skyrocket!