Browsing through the comments section of a blog post on an unfamiliar site, I clicked on something that looked like a sort of "read more" or "read the responses to this comment" link.
Well, maybe that was what I clicked on. Or I might have hit the obscure hieroglyph next to it, which may or may not have been the same link.
Whichever, the result was clearly not what I had anticipated. Did I mis-click, hit the little picture, and mark the comment as favored, as disfavored, or as an entry in my bookmarks.com account?
Guys! If a clickable element has any sort of side effects (i.e., anything other than pointing the browser to a new location or exposing/hiding existing content for reading), and the nature of the side effects is not glaringly obvious to a reader who isn't familiar with your site and all the sites whose clickables you're incorporating...
... And especially if you're presenting some dense cluster of hieroglyphs...
Always, always, always have a confirmation step! Make it clear what the click is meant to do, and have "Yes, I really want to do that" and "Oops! Sorry, my cat stepped on the mouse button" options.
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