Modal Dialog Hell

I’ve written about why modal dialogs are almost always a bad idea before. Unfortunately I am not Emperor of the Internet (yet…) so annoying modals persist.

Offender: Network World

The Crime: Popping a modal for a “how can we make our site better?” survey.

Here’s a suggestion: don’t cover what I’m trying to read with a modal dialog. I can’t imagine that they’d get very good data from that survey. Only someone whose time is worth nothing would do a survey like that. It’s much better to make improvements by passively analyzing traffic data and use patterns.

Let’s be real though. You know this survey is about collecting marketing demographic data and not “improving the website.”

Verdict: Evil and Stupid

Offender: Xerox

The Crime: Popping a modal demanding to know what country I’m coming from.

They’re already guessing I’m from a U.S. IP address. Why not just set the country to their “best IP guess” and let users change it if necessary? If users try to download or purchase something that requires country confirmation, then ask for it explicitly.

Verdict: Hamfisted, but not Evil.

Offender: Michael Port, well known marketing person (I’ve heard)

The Crime: Worse than a modal, it’s a pop-over ad that obscures every visit to the homepage.

Something like this could possibly be justified if shown just once and if the offer was really compelling. Out of morbid curiosity I clicked it and got — not a super awesome special offer from Michael Port, but a cheesy greeting card affiliate program.

Look, if you’ve got something really great and you want people to use it, make it the main thing on your homepage, within the flow of the design. Don’t bash users over the head with an ad dialog that forces them to find the “close modal” button before they can see anything else.

Verdict: Inept and also evil because it uses modals as a new form of popup ad.