In the example provided the ad link has a decent amount of white space between it and the inbox link
"Decent" for whom? For you, maybe, because your motor skills are sharp. For those whose aren't, maybe not so much.
Are we to ascertain the shakiness level of the user to determine the proper amount of white space? A CSS media query maybe? ...But then, I'm just being rude here, sorry.
Yes, you are. Degraded/impaired motor skills aren't just something older people deal with, they come with a range of illnesses and disabilities too. Snarking about a media query for "shakiness" is sort of like a retail store owner snarking about whether he needs to put a camera on his store door to check if people using the ramp are really in wheelchairs.
There's even an intended barrier between the two in the form of a horizontal rule.. I don't understand how one can predict behaviors of people who do not fully read what they are clicking on.
These comments indicate that you don't really understand the problem we're talking about here. It's not that the user doesn't know the ad link is a different link. It's that she tries to click the link she wants but ends up clicking the ad link accidentally because the close placement of the two links makes it easy for a bump on a trackpad to send a click intended for link A skidding over to link B instead.
Decent for whom is my point. How far down the path do we go before it's a losing proposition? You cannot possibly please everyone and yet people are advocating that we must or be labeled failures.
I admitted I was being rude. The point is that we cannot possibly account for every kind of limitation that people may have. We do the best that we can realizing that we cannot account for everything. The only answer to that question is to remove the ad altogether, which is not a solution.
Ok, good point, the problem being seeing one spot to click on but clicking on another by accident. Now explain to me exactly how one is supposed to predict that and account for it? Accidental bump on a trackpad is not a problem inherent with the design of the site, it's a problem of the hardware and its usage. It's the same problem with the vertical row of links that belong to the app in question, despite the ad placement. Are we suggesting that the menu links on the left should be separated by at least fifty vertical pixels?
So, my original point, what's the optimum distance between two links to avoid accidental clicking due to physical limitations and hardware problems? There is no way to determine that.
The example given of Google using low contrast colors to separate search results from ads is a good example of taking advantage. This Yahoo example is not because the two links in question do have a noticeable separation and do not bear any resemblance to each other. People clicking on spot fully expecting that they are clicking on another is a completely different topic and is not indicative that Yahoo is taking advantage of anyone. How can one claim that Yahoo is somehow taking advantage of people by tricking them into clicking on ads that are "close" to an intended link? What exactly do they benefit from this?
"Decent" for whom? For you, maybe, because your motor skills are sharp. For those whose aren't, maybe not so much.
Are we to ascertain the shakiness level of the user to determine the proper amount of white space? A CSS media query maybe? ...But then, I'm just being rude here, sorry.
Yes, you are. Degraded/impaired motor skills aren't just something older people deal with, they come with a range of illnesses and disabilities too. Snarking about a media query for "shakiness" is sort of like a retail store owner snarking about whether he needs to put a camera on his store door to check if people using the ramp are really in wheelchairs.
There's even an intended barrier between the two in the form of a horizontal rule.. I don't understand how one can predict behaviors of people who do not fully read what they are clicking on.
These comments indicate that you don't really understand the problem we're talking about here. It's not that the user doesn't know the ad link is a different link. It's that she tries to click the link she wants but ends up clicking the ad link accidentally because the close placement of the two links makes it easy for a bump on a trackpad to send a click intended for link A skidding over to link B instead.