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Do not combine footers and infinite scrolling

willfennel.com

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Re: Do not combine footers and infinite scrolling

#41

Post by eternityforest »

A simpler version of the rule would be:

"Do not infinite scrolling".

Seriously, infinite scrolling is disgusting. The only good use I can think of is for realtime feeds.

Infinite scrolling has no repeatable reference points. It has a similar effect to a wall-o-text.

It seems to go in the same category as gestural computing, an way to make computers feel "Skillful" to use, and "Organic", while throwing away efficiency, reliability, and any sense of consistency and precision.

It's annoying both in terms of aesthetics and usability, to pretty much everyone, except maybe people who really hate tech.

Re: Do not combine footers and infinite scrolling

#42

Post by [deleted] »

eternityforest wrote: post #41

A simpler version of the rule would be: "Do not infinite scrolling". Seriously, infinite scrolling is disgusting. The only good use I can think of is for realtime feeds. Infinite scrolling has no repeatable reference points. It has a similar effect to a wall-o-text. It seems to go in the same category as gestural computing, an way to make computers feel "Skillful" to use, and "Organic", while throwing away efficiency…

[deleted]

Re: Do not combine footers and infinite scrolling

#43

Post by vgel »

ptk wrote: post #16
lobo_tuerto wrote: post #5

Don't remember a specific instance, but I've seen this used in a couple of sites. Kind of mind numbing. Try to read the text or click on a link in the footer, and if you're lucky the request will be slow enough.

Not exactly the same, but theverge.com has recently decided to shove about 50 Outbrain ads, across 3-4 loads, in between the end of the article and the comment section. It makes me livid every time, yet still I go back :(.

I'm fairly convinced sites do this because someone there is sick of having to moderate their comment section, but doesn't have the buy-in to get rid of it entirely. So instead they stick a bunch of ads above it, hide it behind a button, etc. in hopes of annoying people into not commenting.

Re: Do not combine footers and infinite scrolling

#44

Post by ushakov »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #27
longrod wrote: post #15

I wish this was made impossible by browsers. It's like making a user chase their tail; they won't ever catch it. They just keep going in circles until they explode with frustration. You can't even cancel the requests to load more data. I have come across a couple of these (I think blogs & news sites do this) and it is so annoying.

It’s possible I’m lacking imagination after ~20 years of web dev experience, but I can’t think of a way to systematically prevent this. I can hardly even think of a heuristic to detect it which wouldn’t be either overly broad or overly specific. A spec which privileged more of a page’s “chrome” as part of the browser UX would probably make that more realistic, at the expense of being a very high value attack surface.…

overflow: hidden

Re: Do not combine footers and infinite scrolling

#45

Post by wtallis »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #27
longrod wrote: post #15

I wish this was made impossible by browsers. It's like making a user chase their tail; they won't ever catch it. They just keep going in circles until they explode with frustration. You can't even cancel the requests to load more data. I have come across a couple of these (I think blogs & news sites do this) and it is so annoying.

It’s possible I’m lacking imagination after ~20 years of web dev experience, but I can’t think of a way to systematically prevent this. I can hardly even think of a heuristic to detect it which wouldn’t be either overly broad or overly specific. A spec which privileged more of a page’s “chrome” as part of the browser UX would probably make that more realistic, at the expense of being a very high value attack surface.…

Aside from a handful of web applications (like Google Maps), I struggle to think of a good reason for sites to be able to observe or hijack scrolling behavior. That capability is abused far more often that it actually leads to improved usability, and I don't think the web in general would suffer from sites being denied that power by default.

Re: Do not combine footers and infinite scrolling

#46

Post by ushakov »

mattnewton wrote: post #34
dspillett wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this a number of times, though I can't remember a recent example. One site attempted to do it more intelligently, and the footer floated via z-index and pinned to the bottom of the window such that it was always visible despite the infinite scroll. Though they got it a little wrong and didn't account for the footer height in scroll calculations so if the content wasn't infinite so you could get to the end o…

It’s not a hard problem to notice or fix, probably just comes from people not using their site a lot. All you need to do is insert your content in a fib before a final “filler” div that has the same height as the floating footer. If your floating footer doesn’t have a fixed height (and there is some really good reason for that) a further hack is to measure it and then set the height of the filler div in js.

or just display the scrollable content in a container with overflow: scroll

you can then make the container fill the height/width with flexbox

Re: Do not combine footers and infinite scrolling

#47

Post by ushakov »

wtallis wrote: post #45
eyelidlessness wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s possible I’m lacking imagination after ~20 years of web dev experience, but I can’t think of a way to systematically prevent this. I can hardly even think of a heuristic to detect it which wouldn’t be either overly broad or overly specific. A spec which privileged more of a page’s “chrome” as part of the browser UX would probably make that more realistic, at the expense of being a very high value attack surface.…

Aside from a handful of web applications (like Google Maps), I struggle to think of a good reason for sites to be able to observe or hijack scrolling behavior. That capability is abused far more often that it actually leads to improved usability, and I don't think the web in general would suffer from sites being denied that power by default.

observing is great for marketing pages

overriding scrolling behaviour or virtual scrolling is a complete no-go

eg. this one: https://www.fortnitelookbook.com/en

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