Don’t kill the modal

A much-maligned, but still useful, bit of interface magic

The age of enmodalment

Back when computers were coal-powered, showing additional, contextual information to users meant shuffling them off to a new page, interrupting their flow. We were sad. Users were sad.

In time, the modal window was introduced, and those of us who built websites considered it our savior: the modal permitted the presentation of relevant, contextual content or transactions in the same screen. We were happy. Users were happy.

And then things went wrong. So wrong.

We began to abuse our savior: we stuffed entire pages of content or multi-step forms into that poor little floating box. If people were kind enough to visit our site, we smacked them in the face with an ad modal before they could do anything else: Sign up for our newsletter! We ignored accessibility. We didn’t make our modals mobile-friendly. Etc.

All this misuse and abuse of the humble modal has left many—especially developers—calling for its demise.