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Elevator.js – A “back to top” button that behaves like a real elevator

tholman.com

101–110 of 336 posts

Re: Elevator.js – A “back to top” button that behaves like a real elevator

#101
post #32

"back to top" is just such an epitome of how out of touch some modern design is. We had buttons on our keyboards that did this for half a century now. As for phones it should be up to the web-browser to implement it, nobody wants to use your idea of how scrolling should work. My machine already knows how I want to browse my content, don't pretend you know better.

I think its actually a result of people using only (or at least, most of the time) the mouse to browse the internet. If you just click from one link to another, pressing "home" is actually quite a far reach. There are people around that still think you have to drag the scrollbar. Sure, "home" is way faster, but a (well implemented) choice helps some and does not hurt.

Re: Elevator.js – A “back to top” button that behaves like a real elevator

#102
post #68

The "back to top" functionality is so useful in web pages. I wish they would make a dedicated button on keyboards that just takes you to the top of the page. Better yet, it can work in other apps too! It could, for example, take you to the beginning of a line when you're writing text. Edit: Wow, I thought I was going the extra mile to make the joke obvious by saying the key should also take you to the beginning of a…

Cant tell if this is sarcasm or not, but "Home" key does this...

Or shift+space if you want to take steps until the top (maybe you just want to navigate up faster, and not to the top)

Re: Elevator.js – A “back to top” button that behaves like a real elevator

#105
post #68

The "back to top" functionality is so useful in web pages. I wish they would make a dedicated button on keyboards that just takes you to the top of the page. Better yet, it can work in other apps too! It could, for example, take you to the beginning of a line when you're writing text. Edit: Wow, I thought I was going the extra mile to make the joke obvious by saying the key should also take you to the beginning of a…

I was quite amazed when I found out that not all developer colleagues of mine knew the "Home" button.

My laptop doesn't have this button (you have to use a weird combination of keys). The days of everyone using a full keyboard are long gone...

Re: Elevator.js – A “back to top” button that behaves like a real elevator

#106
post #68

The "back to top" functionality is so useful in web pages. I wish they would make a dedicated button on keyboards that just takes you to the top of the page. Better yet, it can work in other apps too! It could, for example, take you to the beginning of a line when you're writing text. Edit: Wow, I thought I was going the extra mile to make the joke obvious by saying the key should also take you to the beginning of a…

I was quite amazed when I found out that not all developer colleagues of mine knew the "Home" button.

I just found out that Home button ( without Ctrl ) works in browsers. I knew the Ctrl + Home combination ( which also works in other programs ).

Re: Elevator.js – A “back to top” button that behaves like a real elevator

#107
Back to the top buttons are a symptom of the system-within-a-system feature of Web. The Web page isn't a document: it's a system, a virtual machine. Just like running another OS in VirtualBox implies bad interoperability and a lot of duplicated effort with the host OS, so too does running web pages. In a quest to be everything, Web became a bogged down, developer-time devouring beast. It can do almost anything, but you don't want to do anything on it.

Re: Elevator.js – A “back to top” button that behaves like a real elevator

#108
post #9

This is pretty funny, but God do I hate back to the top buttons. I'm reading a story on a page with a back to the top button. I get distracted in real life and change the grip on my phone. I look back at my phone to continue reading and I'm at the top of the page. Now I have to find where I was again. I've probably lost more time from accidentally hitting the back to the top button than the button has saved me time.…

I really hate them on iOS, because the system comes with back-to-top functionality so all these buttons are doing are looking ugly and covering part of the page. And don’t even get me started on when AMP breaks scrolling…

This is interesting, I've often found the buttons to be useful at times on mobile, so was wondering where all the hate came from, and turns out it was because iOS already has the feature built-in (I use Android, which doesn't really have an equivalent afaik).

Though to play devil's advocate, I'm willing to bet 80%+ of iOS users have no idea the feature even exists, so removing it just because it's available as a system feature doesn't sound like a particularly compelling argument to me.

I think having some kind of sticky navigation instead of scroll to top makes for a much more compelling UX though, since it accomplishes the same goal without the downsides of hitting it by accident causing an irreversible loss of context.

Re: Elevator.js – A “back to top” button that behaves like a real elevator

#109
post #79
post #68

The "back to top" functionality is so useful in web pages. I wish they would make a dedicated button on keyboards that just takes you to the top of the page. Better yet, it can work in other apps too! It could, for example, take you to the beginning of a line when you're writing text. Edit: Wow, I thought I was going the extra mile to make the joke obvious by saying the key should also take you to the beginning of a…

Hacker News attracts a lot of smart readers, so I'm kind of surprised that your comment actually 'fooled' people. It was very obvious sarcasm.

Plenty of Mac users out there without a “Home” button.

Re: Elevator.js – A “back to top” button that behaves like a real elevator

#110
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was quite amazed when I found out that not all developer colleagues of mine knew the "Home" button.

My laptop doesn't have this button (you have to use a weird combination of keys). The days of everyone using a full keyboard are long gone...

what laptop?
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