I’ll repeat what was already said. You shouldn’t hijack the back button. That is hostile to the user and will not generate sales for you. I think the idea is great and is something I can use, but I’ll pass.
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—things like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
If it's breaking the experience for users, they should know. It's not a minor annoyance, or minimal UX bug, as many others have stated, it turns them off from wanting to use the product.
Those are guidelines, not rules. Perhaps it is time for HackerNews to put on its big boy pants after 14 years, and introduce a solid ToS, privacy policy, rules et al. Watch how people stop using it.
For the record, that UX is poor in 2022. If something isn't accessibility friendly, by all means, people should be called on it so that they know it is a problem. It isn't like we're saying "it's shit," we're giving constructive criticism.
It doesn't hijack anything, there's just a language redirect on the home page. It's not that uncommon, is it? It's not like it's messing around with the history API.
On all back browsers I know, you can just skip the redirect by holding the browser's back button and picking an item from your browsing history if you find this too problematic.
In my case, the back button didn't go back past the root page of the site. It trapped me where I did not want to be. I didn't know about holding the back button down, and I appreciate the tip, but I don't want to need to know it.
The back button not functioning made me:
- feel frustration and distrust
- associate those feelings with the product and its creator
- never want to use the product, despite being interested in it
Clearly, I'm not the only one who felt these kinds of things. It seems to have completely overshadowed the product.
My takeaway is this:
Do not ever alter fundamental UI behaviours of the browser.
If the way they treat a new customer is to arrest control of my browsing experience and prevent me from leaving their site, I have zero trust in them. And trust is everything.
I have never seen a ‘language redirect’ do this. Maybe it is not uncommon to have a language redirect but it doesn’t do this, in this way, very often on the sites I have visited. Unless forced ad sites, I have never seen this. And indeed it makes me doubt the quality of the offered product if this is what they want first impression to be.
you got to click something like any link. opening the site doesn't allow it by itself to hijack the back as browsers do not allow that without user gesture.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html