I don’t use smart phones a lot, so feel free to disregard my opinion. But to me, swiping to the left means “next”, like turning a page in a book. If you wanted to leave the site, you’d go ‘back’ to where you came from, which means swiping from left to right to me.
On many Android phones swiping from the outside edge of the screen inwards either from the left or right edge, it behaves like you tapped the “back” button. It is extremely useful to get out of for example an article that was opened on Lemmy or simply navigating through menus on your phone.
A swipe either left or right from the middle-ish of the screen is what you would expect to take you from the previous or next article. Not from the edge.
My android doesn’t seem to do that. I just use the back button.
It is called Gestures Navigation and replaces the three button navigation. It is an available option in the settings if your Android version supports it. Some people don’t like it, personally I prefer it except for that one time some asshole website tries to take advantage of it.
I think they’re much more likely ignorant to this than malicious.
Is the little descriptive icon there the whole time? Is it there only when you try to use the gesture? It might be malicious if there was no warning at all and it just does it… but to me it seems like they’re just trying to apply intuitive design practices in their mobile site design.
Not everything is an attack, even if one feels attacked.
Never heard of dark patterns? There’s a history of websites doing shitty things like this on purpose
I have, I think ignorance of a niche android setting is far more likely.
A website that big is probably malicious, as I feel like iPhone has the same gesture (don’t quote me on that)
No, it doesn’t work that way on iOS in my experience. Swipe from the side of the screen is application-specific.
Swipe from left is always “go back to where you were previously” or “go back to the main menu of this application.” Swipe from right does nothing unless the application defines it.
The Independent’s feature might override an iOS browser’s “Forward” feature, if you already used the “Back” feature.
edit: I answered to the wrong comment
Also sucked for a bit due to the “drawer” style Google pushed before lmao, swipe from left to right “oops opened the drawer menu”
Idk why we had to get rid of swipe up from the bottom where the 3 icons used to always be. Now if you want to get at all the open stuff I have to execute a corner.
That first day was a real bitch and a half.
What version are you using? It is still working for me on Android 15
(what would be a good alternative to Imgur for gif/video hosting? Even though I always use the direct link)
That’s pretty much the standard.
- On iPhones and iPads, swipe from the left to go back. In a book on such a device, swipe from the right to go forward.
- On eReaders, particularly Kindles, tap on the right side to go forward; tap on the left side to go back.
- On Android with gestures enabled, swipe from the left side to go back. Or… swipe from the right side to go back. Counter intuitive but apparently at least one person uses that.
Assuming OP has standard gestures enabled, they could still swipe from the left side.
Right-handed android user. I shan’t be reaching across my screen with my right thumb to use my gestures “correctly”.
It is almost like this is why we had originally decided to put navigation buttons at the very bottom of the screen where they are easily accessible both by left- and right-handed users.
And then larger and larger “handheld” devices made that physically awkward as people tend to hold their phone near the middle to balance the weight and oh look my thumb doesn’t reach the top or bottom anymore!
Is this a tiny hands problem I’m too normal to have?
No.
Gestures are also easily accessible by both left and right handed users, when one side hasn’t been replaced with a different function.
- Android user that uses either hand (depending on how hard I’m yoinking of course)
I didn’t say it wasn’t convenient. I said it was counter intuitive.
I shouldn’t have to adjust my grip on my phone to change the way I swipe to exit the website because that website decided to replace a commonly used functionality to make it different for their website alone. I kid you not I almost didn’t see that button because my thumb was naturally placed in front of it.
There is already a way to make a gesture that navigates “previous” or “next” by swiping left or right. It is by swiping from the center of the screen outwards and it is how that website should have made that gesture work if they didn’t want to interfere with Android navigation gesture users.
Buttons over gestures for life!
Nah. We can expect better behavior from the app.
Gestures are muscle memory and faster.
They’re learned muscle memory.
Buddy, come on.
Oh, sorry, I’ll leave you to your specious argument.
Lol. How do you not see the hilarity of what you wrote?
I’m tempted to explain it but man, c’mon.
Buttons will always be better than gestures, if not for this very situation.
Something similar happens with apps that put ad banners on the bottom of the screen and make the app full screen. You try to swipe up to see the navigation bar and most of the time end up tapping the ad.
It’s a shitty and deceptive pattern and for some reason Android still sends your gestures to the app when using the system UI.
That seems to indicate the proper swiping to go to the next article (right to left). Swiping left to right would close the article is the expected behavior for me.
What I hate is sites like AP News where if you swipe left to right to leave the site you instead go back a page and land on their carousel and have to hit back again. Fuck dark patterns.
The swiping motion that you are describing starts from the center of the screen outwards. I have no problems with that as you have said, it is standard behaviour across most platforms and doesn’t conflict with other gestures.
The problem is that the site is using a swiping from the edge of the screen inwards instead. In most gestures-enabled Android devices this is a powerful gesture that has the same functionality as using the “back” button and its utility and functionality extends well beyond web browsers. It is incompetent design at best to try to make that gesture do something else on your website.
More importantly, I was visiting this page from a Lemmy link and the only way to get out and back to Lemmy when you have gesture enabled (short of force quitting the app entirely and reopening it) is to use that gesture. That website tries to hijack that feature to make you see more ads on their site.
I’m not trying to be dismissive of an obviously shitty practice but do people not understand how a back button works?
The swipe in is a system input for back action. It works on every app and between apps, and it works anywhere on the right side of the screen, instead of having to reach wherever your app back button is, if it’s not collapsed and has to be scrolled in to view as well.
If you look at the screenshot, it doesn’t even have a back button. Only a close button. Whether they navigated or not is not clear, but likely won’t change the header controls in this view.
Is this some kind of iOS thing? Screenehot looks like Android… My phone does not have a universal swipe action for backing out of apps (swiping left to right or right to left are app dependent on what they do), and you can also make the bottom control buttons never hide themselves.
Do you have android 10+? Than you should find something like “gesture control” in your options. This replaces the buttons at the bottom (back, home, apps) with gestures
- swipe from the left or right edge towards center -> back
- swipe from the bottom edge towards center
-> home - swipe from the bottom edge towards center and hold -> show open apps
- on homescreen, swipe upwards anywhere besides the bottom edge -> app drawer
that sounds horrifying
Nah, it works great besides when some shitty news site hijacks the controls
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It’s a personal preference. Ever since I tried gesture I never went back to buttons. I don’t even need to adjust my hand position to get out of a page and it’s never been a problem until that site has put a different function exactly where my thumb was going to swipe.
Also, such a function you are suggesting would use a different gesture. You would have to swipe from the center-ish of the screen outwards instead of the other way around.
Apple’s gestures though, I can’t stand.
