• Hanzito (unregistered)

    "Legitimate interest" is the weaselest of cookie-banner weasel words. It's a dark pattern itself. Assuming that going out of your way to make toggles even less clear than they already were, is a dark pattern is quite fair.

  • Darren (unregistered)

    In the UK, I'd think that the cookie one would fall foul of the law. While the toggle does move to indicate on or off, the law says that it has to be clear to the user what they're agreeing to - and choosing two similar colours is the opposite of that.

    The other insidious on that seems to be appearing more and more in the UK - especially on news sites - is the 'pay for a subscription or let us put cookies and track you' as the only options to be able to read the content. That, at least to me, seems like it absolutely breaks the law. However, nobody (yet), has decided to test it in court and the ICO (the UK's data protection organisation) seem unwilling to pick up on it.

  • (nodebb)

    is the 'pay for a subscription or let us put cookies and track you' as the only options to be able to read the content

    It might not be against the letter of UK law, but it's definitely against the spirit of the equivalent EU law (and probably the UK law as well), being a very close relative of "agree to be tracked or don't use our site", which most definitely is against the EU stuff. You're allowed to say "Oh, you're from the EU, never darken our door ever again", but not "be tracked or don't use the site".

  • Joe (unregistered)

    That last one reminds me of issues I've had using DVD/BluRay menus in the past. They generally fall into 2 categories:

    1. There are only 2 options, and the color of the text of the selected item is different than the other item, so I don't know which is highlighted (neither choice has white or black text). For example, one is red and one is green, and when I move up or down, they switch.
    2. Menu items are in white text, selected item is cyan. Unless I look REALLY closely, cyan appears as white to me. (yes I have a bit of color blindness)

    All this to day, those designing menus like this, please don't just change the color of the selected menu item. Make it bold/bigger, or make the background of the text different, or put a box around it, doesn't matter what, just don't use a difference in text color, alone, to indicate a selection. Whenever I run into the cyan one, I have to ask my family to tell me which item is selected on the screen LOL. I first learned this when I was a senior in high school, in an independent learning programming class, and my classmate referred to "the highlighted line" and I was like "what highlighted line?" The IDE had a black background, white text, and the highlighted line of code was cyan. My only indication of what line I was on was the blinking cursor - I had no idea the text of the entire line was a different color.

  • (nodebb)

    Also, AFAIK the rule is now that opting out must not be more difficult than opting in. I’m not quite sure that those particular cookie thingies follows the spirit of that particular rule either. One click for “yes, track me, please” and about a hundred and fifty seven to say “no, I think that none of you has a legitimate interest in what I do online”.

  • Robin (unregistered)

    The clearly deliberate dark UX used on most of these cookie popups, although seemingly not this one, is to highlight "accept all" in an inviting bright green, while the confirm button is a much darker shade.

    After having laboriously scrolled through and toggled everything off (due to lack of a"reject all" which is pretty dark in itself), it's far too easy to click without thought and invalidate all the clicking. I no longer even bother staying on the page now unless I'm actually genuinely interested in reading the content, or there's a 1-click "reject all" (which thankfully does seem to be becoming more common).

  • (nodebb)

    Mr. Guy explains: "They chose a "toggle is active" color closely resembling the "toggle is inactive" color on this commonly used component for following cookie laws. Now that's a dark pattern if I ever saw one." Perhaps this is an accessibility fail, but the distinction between light and dark grey is clearly visible to my comparatively unimpaired colour vision. Which way does Hanlon's Razor cut here?

    Even though I'm colorblind, I clearly see the difference between the light and dark gray.

  • (nodebb)

    obligatory - www.facebook.com/reel/533698295940077/?mibextid=rS40aB7S9Ucbxw6v

  • erffrfez (unregistered)

    Internet Explorer.... can someone tell me where I should get that from?

  • (nodebb) in reply to erffrfez

    https://internet-explorer-9.softonic.com

    You’re welcome.

  • erffrfez (unregistered) in reply to Gurth

    oh thanks. Now the required windows version?

  • (nodebb) in reply to erffrfez

    If you've got Windows (apart from really ancient versions), IE comes with it. It's not being finally discontinued until 2029 apparently. You now have to get through it through Edge, and it shows the Edge "skin", but if you select "IE mode" you get the actual IE 11 engine.

  • (nodebb) in reply to erffrfez

    Don’t ask me, I just looked for a download of the minimum required IE version. But it seems that IE 9 requires Vista SP2. I’m sure you can still find that somewhere if you search a little. Next question, I suppose, is where to get a keygen for it as well.

  • (nodebb)

    It's unclear to me if Firefox 136.0 is later than Firefox undefined

    Well I'm running this in the Javascript console of Safari (18.6) but I imagine the result would be the same as Firefox

    > 136 > undefined
    < false
    

    So, I think the answer is no. Firefox 136.0 is not later than Firefox undefined

  • (nodebb) in reply to Joe

    just don't use a difference in text color, alone, to indicate a selection

    Absolutely. Every developer who creates a user interface, whether web or otherwise, should be familiar with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). It's an excellent set of guidelines for making content accessible to as many people as possible, and has been included into law in several jurisdictions. The relevant item here is 1.4.1Use of Color (https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG22/#use-of-color), which is a level "A", i.e. essential, guideline.

  • saliou (unregistered) in reply to Hanzito
    <script>

Leave a comment on “Superfluous U's”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

« Return to Article