I’ve been observing this for the past year. Sometimes (not always) I click a link or button on a page, I get visual feedback that I’ve clicked (button flashing a different colour, for instance), but the click has no effect. After a few seconds, I click again, and this time it works.
This happens in Firefox on Linux at home, or in Chrome on Windows at the office, or on my iPad.
I’ve been using a mouse since 1987, and programming for mice since 1991. I know that most clicks only “count” as a click at the moment you lift your finger. Have I suddenly started moving my mouse off the link or button before I lift it? It wouldn’t explain the iPad, though, I think.
Yes, and it normally means that it is taking a while for the connection to be made. There can be numerous reasons for this. Some of them are “out there” and cannot be controlled by you.
On the other hand, the overall power of your machine is something you can control. Is yours old and relatively weak? For example, my personal monster at home is very fast at everything, but the 5-year old desktop I have here at work that was fairly weak even when new suffers from that problem. Do you keep a lot of tabs open at once? Closing the extras may help to some extent. Also, clearing your browsing data can help free up your system also.
One possibility is that you are clicking down within the button but letting up outside of the button’s bounding box. Both actions need to be within the button itself for it to be registered. Since you mentioned it’s happening on many devices and you’re getting older, one possibility is that your fine motor control isn’t what it used to be. Perhaps the action of clicking down causes your hand to move a bit and the cursor isn’t on the button on the up action. You can demonstrate this yourself by deliberately moving the mouse while clicking on a button or link. If this is what is going on, you may want to try to be a little more deliberate when clicking on things to make sure there is no movement.
Registered to do the thing the button is intended to do (like go to another page), but it may still change the visual state of the button from not-pressed to pressed. I notice this too sometimes where I’m right at the edge of a button, and I can press it all I want, and it’ll animate going up and down, change color, etc., but won’t do anything unless I move my cursor to be closer to the center. I assume this is some sort of sloppy coding whereby the animation target area is (usually) larger than the link target area. Basically two separate operators stacked on top of one another that are not precisely aligned.
I find I have to be more careful these days to make sure my cursor is not still moving while I’m clicking. I wasn’t sure why that would be a problem, and I wasn’t sure why it seems to be getting worse (with age, I presumed, like everything else). Your explanation helps me understand this better, thanks.
I don’t know about browsers, but it happens to me all the damn time in the New York Times puzzle app on my phone. I have to “click” on a puzzle two or three times to get it to open. It’s definitely giving visual feedback that I clicked, but nothing happens.
I’d think that this could be easier to get right than wrong. There is one bounding box for mouse down events, so might as well use the same one for mouse up events. It would actually be more effort to make a different one that is slightly wrong. The animation might not line up exactly with the bounding box, but it is unlikely that the mouse down event (which triggers the animation) and the mouse up event (which triggers the button press) don’t both activate on the same set of points.
Besides, likely the button code is provided by the OS/browser, where such bugs are unlikely to persist.
I’d think “sloppy UI code” would be a more likely explanation here since the crossword puzzle component isn’t a standard component provided by the OS/browser.
Being able to opt out of a click by moving the mouse is actually an intended UI design thing.
I would argue the fix for this would be some sort of deadzone. If you don’t move the mouse more than X amount, it still counts as a click. It could be a basic accessibility feature for those who have the shakes.