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Blogging as stating the obvious: A reflection on Gruber's critique of intrusive website popups

Jim Nielsen

3h ago· 2 min readenOpinion

technology design

Summary

A brief blog post reflecting on John Gruber's critique of intrusive website popups (newsletter subscriptions, cookie consent banners), with meta commentary on how blogging can simply be about stating obvious truths that need saying. The author highlights Gruber's effective takedown of user-hostile web design patterns.

Source

Hacker NewsBlogging as stating the obvious: A reflection on Gruber's critique of intrusive website popupsblog.jim-nielsen.com

Key quotes

· 2 pulled

If you visit a website you should ... see the website. See its content. Be able to read the article whose page you are attempting to visit.

Showing a 'subscribe to our newsletter' or 'accept our fucking cookies' dickover to someone trying to read an article on the web makes no more sense than sending out an email newsletter t

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Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.

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