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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

#31

Post by TillE »

zbowling wrote: post #18
naner wrote: 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.

Frames were at least consistent. With CSS and Javascript, you can make things behave in whatever broken way you want.

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

#32

Post by msbarnett »

ars wrote: post #27
scott_s wrote: 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).

Most people use third-party mice with their Mac; almost all third party mice have scroll wheels.

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

#33

Post by ChrisLTD »

tseabrooks wrote: post #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 / custom…

I suspect you're right about the number of users troubled by this behavior. However, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be fixed. If browsers are going to have this feature it might as well work properly.

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

#34

Post by zbowling »

_delirium wrote: post #24
zbowling wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Weren't frames pretty universally hated?

Not directly on their own usability. It was more that they broke the web, since bookmarks, shared URLs, and search engines couldn't navigate them correctly to get the user back to the content that was supposed to display correctly.

The static positioned content we get with CSS and JS hacks I've seen to replicate it a start but not always correct on it's own.

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

#35

Post by cjfont »

tseabrooks wrote: post #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 / custom…

I'm guessing it might also effect users with disabilities who rely more heavily on the keyboard for nav.

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

#36

Post by RobAtticus »

tseabrooks wrote: post #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 / custom…

I agree. I've found that since I discovered the two-finger scrolling on my MBP (and to a lesser extend, the scroll wheel) that I'm usually continuously scrolling while my eyes remain relatively fixed rather than using spacebar or page down.

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

#37

Post by jaylevitt »

losvedir wrote: post #23
webspiderus wrote: post #3

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 bot…

Add "scroll_past_end": true to both your File settings and your User settings.

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

#38

Post by Rusky »

tseabrooks wrote: post #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 / custom…

It's not just people who use space to scroll. I use a mouse wheel, but I'm still affected by the second problem of URL fragments at the bottom of the page.

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

#39

Post by Timothee »

tseabrooks wrote: post #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 / custom…

Space-bar-scrolling is one thing but "links with anchors at the bottom of the page" is a problem (that I've encountered often enough) regardless.

(edit: I'm actually having that problem just right now in the Xcode documentation… which is pretty much a browser)

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

#40

Post by icebraining »

jarek wrote: post #17
hammock wrote: post #2

From 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.

Incidentally, I notice that almost none of the sites worth reading have such features.

Now that frameworks like Bootstrap have it too, that might not hold true for long, unfortunately.
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