[jevgeni]

I am one of those people whose user experience will drastically improve if modal windows are accepted for what they are - an anti-pattern at best and a dark pattern most of the time. I as a user make the decisions if I want a separate window or not, not the application developer.

As a principle, I don't read any website that has a modal window, especially a modal "subscribe to our newsletter".

[ebiester]

Wrong use case. Think more like a web application where a modal comes up for more details and to edit details instead of going to a separate page and URL.

[layer8]

You are describing the cases I hate, because you then can't (easily) open those views in a separate window while keeping the current view for reference.

It's similarly annoying as paging controls that don't support "open in new window" and/or don't work with the browser history.

[jen20]

It’s the same use case. The browser is an agent of the user, not of the website developer.

[jevgeni]

It's not the wrong use case. I need you guys developing apps to listen:

- I *want* more details on a separate, linkable URL.

- I *want* it to open in either the same window, or a separate window if I ctrl+click it.

"Subscribe to newsletter" use case is just the worst use case.

[ebiester]

Us "developing apps" aren't the ones designing modals - there are teams doing that instead and we implement what they suggest. It turns out that when they ask users of the software I build, at least, that this isn't a common complaint.

The problem that designers are often trying to solve is that there is not enough information that there is a good way to put it on its own page - it's too small for its own page but too large for the table that we'd rather just add another column to.

We have an export button so you can get all the details in excel or LibreOffice or your tool of choice, though. And in a better world, we'd be writing proper desktop apps instead of web applications so that we aren't making stupid compromises like this, but here we are.

[smeagull]

You mean like a web application where the modal edit window blocks the information on the original page that I would want to refer to, so I have to close the window, copy it in to a text editor, and bring back the modal window?

Sounds wonderful.