Comments on: Mobile Firefox and Designing Without Modal Overlays

By: Ryan

Ryan — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:45:04 +0000

Sorry to give an antagonistic view of this article, but I personally feel that modal overlays are the best option out there, especially for photos, videos and external content. Generally the person is intending to only view the content inside the overlay, and nothing else, at that particular time. When I see trays and slides I get really annoyed because I have to move my mouse across the screen to close them, but with most modal overlays I just have to click somewhere outside the window to have it go away, which often requires less moving.

By: asdfasdf

asdfasdf — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:19:58 +0000

afdadfasdfdsfsdaf

By: noé

noé — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:02:51 +0000

I disagree a little.

If the content is all about vidéo or speech (it’s a phone), it would not be “beautifull” if the vidéo go out the screen when you want to bookmark or go the the next track.

So the button should go over, and next the slide.

About the bar with the search formular : when i’m reading the first thing I need is the context of the text (number of previous reader, number of comments, and vote, authors, date). Not search.

Where are the breadcrumb ? and navigation ?

By: Braydon Fuller

Braydon Fuller — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 03:48:46 +0000

The tray seems like the best alternative for more time consuming interactions. A quasimode key for shorter quick actions.

By: Adam

Adam — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:24:27 +0000

Totally disagree Jan a modal dialogue for password still offers and requires both options so I have to think about my next action the only difference is I have to decide right now.

In terms of firefox if you don’t care about the tray surely the virtually universally recognised cross is understood to remove it?

By: Jan

Jan — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 09:15:54 +0000

I like modal overlays - or think that often there are no better ways at least. With this Firefox “Do you want to save this password” tray I’m every time confused what will happen if I don’t care about the tray. Will it save the password? Or not? How long will the tray stay?
Non-modal solutions provoke to think about my next action (having both ways available) - and this slows down the worklow.

By: Havvy

Havvy — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 02:50:27 +0000

Your slide looks similar to the All-in-one-Sidebar extension, if you want another example of a slide.

By: Marco Gomes

Marco Gomes — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 13:15:17 +0000

I build a product called boo-box, that is a modal overlay that displays contextual offers:
http://boo-box.com/site/en/box

One of the new versions of the product, still in beta, is a tray:
http://marcogomes.com/blog/2008/webriga-brasil-o-grande-dragao-branco-aplicado-a-web/ (click on ‘Python’ on the first paragraph)

Is good to know that my product is following the evolution of the web interfaces, this new version will be released to the public soon :)

By: choonkeat

choonkeat — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:24:05 +0000

I have a non-modal alternative to thickbox (basically push surrounding content rather than covering them) @ http://blog.choonkeat.com/weblog/2008/05/lightbox-thickb.html

I seriously think there’s no place for modal interaction in this medium (web). Information can always be presented in familiar ways on a webpage without sacrificing interaction options.

By: Zephyr

Zephyr — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:07:39 +0000

Excellent post. The modality of a lightbox message has been bugging me as well. But I’m surprised that you didn’t discuss the old-fashioned popup window as a possible alternative. It’s not ideal, but if implemented well (popup blocker safe) doesn’t it at least allow interacting with the page that spawned it?