[ab_goat]

I used to feel this way and would make everything linkable, but then I realized that modals are really good at preventing users from getting lost by adding context instead of swapping context.

For example, a user may want to edit a few items items in a list Rather than forcing the user to a new page to do each edit, you can pop up a modal and edit in place. With new pages, the user loses the context of the original list. The page swapping is very disruptive.

[kypro]

There are normally better approaches to a modal popup.

In this case I'd consider expanding the item on the page when preforming an edit. That way it's clear to the user they're on the same page so won't be tempted to click back and you won't need to worry about confusing keyboard / screen reader users.

Alternatively if you absolutely need to use a modal consider a slide out instead. Slide outs tend to look less like new pages and reduce the likelihood of a user clicking back to "go back" to whatever they were previously looking at. With a slide out the original content is still in view, but now you have some extra options to the side. You still have all the accessibility issues of course, but the UX is slightly better most of the time.

[e1g]

I reached the same conclusion: modals are excellent at helping people quickly dive into multiple items on the list while keeping their main mental context in the listing view. I call it "Hummingbird mode" - zoom in, zoom out, jump around.

For example, you are running a project review meeting and want to quickly jump between tickets on the kanban board. Your main business context is the entire board (you might have filters/sorting), and you keep a mental record of where interesting tickets are placed on the screen. However, during the group discussion, you need to quickly jump into an individual ticket to reassign it or scan through comments for 5 seconds. In this case, using a modal to show ticket details is preferred to redirecting to a separate 'details' page because it does not scramble the user's context and their mental model about what's on the screen. Of course, the UI still should support cmd+click to open a full page dedicated to that ticket, but that's a 10% use-case.

[l5870uoo9y]

I concur. I think this page[1] illustrates it quite well.

[1]: https://gwern.net/index

[EnergyAmy]

That's actually a super weird implementation. I can hover over a link and open a modal preview, and then hover over a link in that modal to open another modal, ad infinitum. I ended up with 20 modals covering the page, and then moved my mouse a little too much and they all disappeared at once.

Also, if you click on something in the modal, you end up getting redirected to a new page anyways, which kind of supports the anti-modal argument.

OTOH, I like Wikipedia's hover previews just fine, so sometimes they're OK.