Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window
1–10 of 57 posts
Re: Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window
#2From the comments:
This problem has been around forever, but there is a new problem that makes scrolling even worse than before. Sites which have headers or footers that have a fixed position with respect to the browser viewport completely break scrolling because when you scroll, neither the red nor the green line are visible. The green line is under the navigation junk at the top of the page.
Re: Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window
#3I've had a similar gripe with scrolling, although I encountered with text editors instead of browsers. Having used Sublime Text for a while (which does what the article suggests and shows you as much white space as is needed to keep the display consistent), it is really jarring using many of the other editors which refuse to do this, especially as I often tend to write new code at the bottom of the page.
Being forced to consistently look at the bottom of my screen instead of the top or the middle is pretty annoying, maybe a change in browsers could trigger a change in text editors as well!
Re: Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window
#4I definitely agree with this: I am annoyed by this behavior fairly consistently. I've used some programs which do this correctly--most notably Emacs--and find it to be a much more natural way of scrolling.
However, I was under the impression that I am one of the few people that uses the space bar to scroll, so browsers would not give changes like this a high priority.
How many other people scroll this way? Do you also find the current behavior annoying, or would you find his preferred change less convenient?
Re: Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window
#5I definitely agree with this: I am annoyed by this behavior fairly consistently. I've used some programs which do this correctly--most notably Emacs--and find it to be a much more natural way of scrolling. However, I was under the impression that I am one of the few people that uses the space bar to scroll, so browsers would not give changes like this a high priority. How many other people scroll this way? Do you als…
I never have this problem because I scroll continuously with the touchpad. Before I had access to a touchpad, I scrolled continuously with the mouse wheel.
Re: Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window
#6I've had a similar gripe with scrolling, although I encountered with text editors instead of browsers. Having used Sublime Text for a while (which does what the article suggests and shows you as much white space as is needed to keep the display consistent), it is really jarring using many of the other editors which refuse to do this, especially as I often tend to write new code at the bottom of the page. Being forced…
Emacs does this, and so does Vim (I think). The main difference, I suspect, is that people who use Emacs and the like don't use their scroll-bars nearly as often as using a keyboard to get around; people using some of the other text editors, on the other hand, probably navigate with the mouse more. I think the behavior proposed here is oriented towards the former more than the latter, which would also explain the different behavior in text editors.
Re: Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window
#7Couldn't you dynamically add padding to a footer element based on the view port size, resulting in sufficient "whitespace" under your content for the browser to render as you continue to scroll?
Re: Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window
#8Couldn't you dynamically add padding to a footer element based on the view port size, resulting in sufficient "whitespace" under your content for the browser to render as you continue to scroll?
Sure, but then it makes the scroll bar position inaccurate. The whitespace needs to go beyond the end of the scroll bar.
Re: Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window
#9TIL I can scroll with a space bar.
Re: Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window
#10From the comments: This problem has been around forever, but there is a new problem that makes scrolling even worse than before. Sites which have headers or footers that have a fixed position with respect to the browser viewport completely break scrolling because when you scroll, neither the red nor the green line are visible. The green line is under the navigation junk at the top of the page.
I find that in general, any fixed-position elements in a page are distracting. The Web news article has long been styled after actual news articles. So when the page stops acting anything like a real paper page (more than just animated ads, I'm talking about big pictures and nav bars that follow you all over the page), I have a lot of trouble reading. The NY Post is particularly bad.