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Death to Scroll Fade

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Re: Death to Scroll Fade

#101

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

jonas21 wrote: post #13
sgbeal wrote: post #3

The poster seems to be implying that this effect is prevalent across the web, yet i'm seeing it for the very first time on that post. (And, indeed, it's annoying. My eyes can't read when there's animation going on nearby.) The goldfish animation along the bottom is epic and i will have to mine that bit for reuse somewhere :).

You probably haven't noticed it before because when it's done well, it's a subtle and pleasant effect that can be used to draw your attention to particular elements on the page. This site is intentionally doing it very poorly to make a point. Really, the takeaway should be don't do things poorly. But that's kind of obvious.

Yes, if you make things only slightly worse it's better than if you make them a lot worse. But neither is quite as good as not deliberately making things worse.

Re: Death to Scroll Fade

#102

Post by adito »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #96

Something else scroll-related I personally hate: Sticky 'headers' that disappear when you scroll down, and appear when you scroll up. I hate them so much. It hurts my brain to see the stupid thing appear and disappear constantly if I scroll around a page. The worst part is you can't even zap them out of the way with something like uBlock, because then there's no header even when you're at the top of the page. >:( EDI…

Oh. This. Tho I solved that with userstyles.

Re: Death to Scroll Fade

#103

Post by tylervigen »

jeff_tyrrill wrote: post #99

I feel like the scroll fade fad is misunderstanding layered on bugs, turtles all the way down. Once upon a time, developers implemented lazy loading of images, to save bandwidth. However, some developers implemented it poorly, waiting until the moment an image is scrolled on-screen to even start loading it, leading to a visible blip as you scroll. (The better way would be to load an additional pageful of images beyon…

...is that really the story? It feels like these are two related, but different things.

Re: Death to Scroll Fade

#104

Post by hirako2000 »

What sucks with scroll fade is when it fades slower than one can read or scroll.

Fading the entire content very fast, so fast that it's barely perceptible is actually better on the eyes.

Blinking hurts. Fast changing contrast hurts. The fade is a natural effect I use everywhere almost. My eyes never complained, rather are grateful for the small effort it takes to get right

Re: Death to Scroll Fade

#105

Post by fainpul »

ayhanfuat wrote: post #23
wgjordan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anthropic uses it across all their websites, here's a typical example where the effect is obvious as you scroll down: https://claude.com/solutions/agents I could be wrong, but my simple guess is that it's become widespread in LLM-generated websites partly because of Anthropic's own style guides getting adopted through Claude-bundled skills and such.

It is partly to blame, yes. This is from Claude’s official frontend skill: “Motion: Use animations for effects and micro-interactions. Prioritize CSS-only solutions for HTML. Use Motion library for React when available. Focus on high-impact moments: one well-orchestrated page load with staggered reveals (animation-delay) creates more delight than scattered micro-interactions. Use scroll-triggering and hover states th…

> creates more delight

ARE YOU NOT DELIGHTED?

Re: Death to Scroll Fade

#106

Post by SAI_Peregrinus »

xenadu02 wrote: post #89

Scrolling is broken by everyone everywhere. Scrolling to the bottom then forcing me to click "show more"? Lazy. A truly horrible experience. I don't know how anyone could think that is a good idea. The worst offenders are the ones showing me products. You might as well not have pages of products at all. Just tell me these 12 are the only ones you have because I've already lost interest. Not that most web stores are a…

I'll add having a floating header that covers the top portion of the page, and only appears when you scroll up. I like to read text in the top third of the page, then scroll down so the lines I'm reading are still in the top third of the page. With the height of my monitor that's the most comfortable position, this should usually be the case if following common ergonomic guidelines. If I scroll up, very often such a header will appear & cover the text I was trying to scroll up to read, so I have to scroll farther. Then it's visible, so I scroll down to move it back up to the top portion of the page as the header goes away. Lather, rinse, repeat, install a uBlock origin filter to get rid of floating headers.

Re: Death to Scroll Fade

#107

Post by Animats »

This terrible idea is a parody of a good idea from game design - LOD cross-fade. When a distant object changes from a low level of detail representation to a higher one, or vice versa, the change is best done as a cross fade. The old one fades out to transparent, the new one fades in from transparent.

This is done to hide the change, not as a creative effect. The human visual system is very sensitive to fast changes. But below half a second, smooth changes are not too noticeable. With this trick, plus a slight amount of distance haze, you can get away with quite low detail distant models. That's part of how GTA V does those long vistas efficiently.

Here's a long drive around the GTA V world.[1] Watch how background objects change. Many distant background objects start out with very low detail. Watch power line towers, for example, which are very low detail until about 100m range. The cross-fade to a better model takes about a half second. Active players don't notice.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws_yYxUaWRE

Re: Death to Scroll Fade

#108

Post by hapless »

ryandrake wrote: post #11

> This post purposefully ignores the reduced motion preference to give everyone the same truly terrible experience. I am sorry. Please use your browser’s reader mode. "Reader Mode" shouldn't even be a special mode. It should just be the default browsing experience, and users who want all this styling crap should have to enable "Clown Mode" or something.

the reason "reader mode" isn't the default is to discourage website authors from intentionally breaking reader mode

-_-

Re: Death to Scroll Fade

#109

Post by jeff_tyrrill »

tylervigen wrote: post #103
jeff_tyrrill wrote: post #99

I feel like the scroll fade fad is misunderstanding layered on bugs, turtles all the way down. Once upon a time, developers implemented lazy loading of images, to save bandwidth. However, some developers implemented it poorly, waiting until the moment an image is scrolled on-screen to even start loading it, leading to a visible blip as you scroll. (The better way would be to load an additional pageful of images beyon…

...is that really the story? It feels like these are two related, but different things.

I haven't dug into the history to see if this is really how it happened. I'd actually feel better if it wasn't true but it's the thought that occurred to me when I noticed the scroll fade effect becoming popular.

Re: Death to Scroll Fade

#110

Post by nottorp »

jerlam wrote: post #82
nottorp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's that bad? How about they give us back small iPhones with 4" screens then and whoever wants the fade can imagine it outside the physical phone?

On my iPhone 13 Mini, the space dedicated to showing browser content is around 4.25" diagonal with the Safari fade, so we're not that far off.

I've managed to avoid being tricked into upgrading to 26 so far, and every week I find a new reason not to.
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