That was a guided tour: a dark overlay, a coloured box and a Next button walking you through a page you had not opened before. Close it and it never comes back. Closing counts exactly the same as reading it to the end, and it is recorded on your account rather than in your browser, so it will not reappear on another device either.
Why it started
A tour fires on your first visit to a page that has one, and only when all of this is true:
- You are signed in and have finished onboarding.
- Your window is at least 1024 pixels wide. Tours never run on a phone.
- You have already finished the short navigation tour, which is the first one everybody is given.
- At least 5 minutes have passed since the last tour you were shown, so moving quickly between pages does not stack them up.
The page moving on its own is part of it
Some tours scroll the window before they begin, because the thing they want to point at is not on screen until you have scrolled. The competition page jumps down 400 pixels for that reason. Each step then pulls its own target into the middle of the screen, which is the movement you see between steps.
Where they are
There is a tour on the competition page and the competitions feed, the projects feed and a project page, the journals feed and a journal, the publications feed and a publication, the Inspirations feed, the project editor and your profile's About editor, plus the navigation tour that comes first. Twelve in total, one dismissal each. A handful of single-tip highlights work the same way.
One step of the competition tour is about the referral offer rather than the page. Referral free week is the article behind it.
There is no setting to switch them off
What there is instead: nothing repeats. Each tour appears once, closing it is enough, and none of them can be replayed afterwards.