Pause auto-dismiss on hover or focus
Aliases: hover pause · focus pause · linger to read
What it is
Once a notice has been allowed to auto-dismiss, the timer should still stop while the person is reading it or pointing at it. Pause on hover or focus yields “the system thinks it may go” to “the recipient is still on this surface.” Pointer on the notice, keyboard focus inside it, a screen reader speaking it—all count as reception not yet finished. Pause does not turn the notice into a manual close; after leave, the timer continues from the pause or runs a fresh full round. This leaf is the interrupt of an auto-dismiss already in progress, not whether auto-dismiss was the right policy.
Why it happens
A timer assumes reading starts at average speed the instant the notice appears. Real reading is often later: people finish the current keystroke, then move gaze, then the pointer follows. If the timer does not honor that late attention, the notice vanishes as gaze lands on the copy—a deletion of an object currently being looked at, more annoying than never having seen it. Hover is the cheapest explicit “I am looking here”; focus is the keyboard and assistive counterpart. Pause turns delivery from open-loop into a short closed loop: the system observes receiving activity and extends the object’s life. An unpaused timer races reading and reading always loses, because appearance time is chosen by the system and reading time by the person.
Where it stops holding
Touch has no hover. Contact with the notice should pause the same way, with the timer resuming on release; if contact is treated as a click-to-dismiss, there is no way to pause in order to read. A pause that never resumes has quietly changed the policy to manual; continue after the pointer leaves. When the notice covers content beneath, people may rest the pointer on it only to reach what is behind—if the notice does not let clicks through, pause at least buys time to move or close it, rather than having it vanish mid-click and send the tap to whatever was underneath. With a queue of notices, pause should apply only to the one showing and pointed at, not freeze the whole queue.
Applying it
- While an auto-dismiss notice has pointer inside, focus, or assistive speech in progress, pause the timer; on leave, continue or run a fresh round.
- On touch, pause on press and continue on lift, and make sure press is not dismiss.
- During pause keep the notice fully readable and its buttons hittable; do not fade it into a “about to go” state that makes people think they are too late.
- Verify by letting the notice appear and parking the pointer on it to finish the sentence. If it vanishes halfway, pause never attached to the timer.