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Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window

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Re: Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window

#21

Safari in iOS handles this nicely. You can scroll below the bottom of the page and the default grey background _behind_ the page becomes visible. Desktop browsers could also do this.

Safari on Mac OS X does this as well (though only when touch-scrolling, not when keyboard scrolling).

Re: Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window

#22

I agree it would be great in theory... but in practice there's a HUGE problem that the author doesn't seem to have considered: many webpages have footers. I'm talking about normally-positioned footers, not fixed-position ones. You're not supposed to scroll beyond a footer. It would look terrible. And you don't want to put extra space between the content and the footer either, or have that space vary. (How would you e…

> You're not supposed to scroll beyond a footer. It would look terrible.

Like this? http://i.imgur.com/kFZSo.png

Re: Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window

#23

I'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…

> 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)

Really? Was there some sort of option you turned on?

I'm a happy ST2 user (bought my license a couple weeks ago), but that's been one issue I've had lately. I can't seem to scroll past the bottom of the page. For now I've just been typing with my cursor at the bottom of the screen, but I'd love to move it to the middle. (as in vim's zz).

Re: Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window

#24
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm just getting old but I find any fixed elements on a scrolling page distracting. My brain expects the whole page to move when scrolling yet my eyes are drawn to this bit that is stuck in place. Also these fixed elements tend to be horizontal bars across the top or bottom of the page, reducing my reading area. That also sucks, especially since all laptop manufacturers decided we all should have super-widescre…

I bet you hated framesets on the web when they were around.

Weren't frames pretty universally hated?

Re: Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window

#25
post #11

This is also a problem with intra-page links to named anchors - usually browsers scroll the page so that the anchor is at the top of the window, but this does not happen if the anchor is near the bottom of the page. Very confusing.

That point was made in the article.

Re: Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window

#26

Safari in iOS handles this nicely. You can scroll below the bottom of the page and the default grey background _behind_ the page becomes visible. Desktop browsers could also do this.

Then it snaps back though, right? Rendering it a bit useless.

Re: Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window

#27
post #5
post #4

I 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.

I think it may be a mac thing, since I've never seen a mac with a scroll wheel (although I'm sure they exist).

Re: Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window

#28
post #11

This is also a problem with intra-page links to named anchors - usually browsers scroll the page so that the anchor is at the top of the window, but this does not happen if the anchor is near the bottom of the page. Very confusing.

Mentioned in the article.

Re: Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window

#29
post #27
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it may be a mac thing, since I've never seen a mac with a scroll wheel (although I'm sure they exist).

Mac mice don't need scroll wheels because you can do the scroll motion on their surface and they'll do the right thing. But I rarely use mice these days.

Re: Scrolling: it’s really OK to have some white space at the bottom of the window

#30
I always find it amazing how often we (Techies) think that problems we have are real problems. Is there some data, analytics from a well traveled site, that can tell us what percentage of users tend to use spacebar to scroll a web page... or use page up / down? My gut tells me it won't be a big number. If I'm right than this is only a problem for power users, who make up a small percentage of potential users / customers. Could effort be better spent, then, on something else that effects more customers?
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