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Death to Scroll Fade

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Re: Death to Scroll Fade

#211

Post by pwdisswordfishy »

hapless wrote: post #108
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 -_-

s/discourage/avoid encouraging/ but yes.

Re: Death to Scroll Fade

#212

Post by pwdisswordfishy »

SilasX wrote: post #139
hapless wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This. It's fundamentally a social problem. The moment that reader mode becomes the default, they'll start gradually extending it with "useful" additions until it's just as bloated and painful again, and then we'll have some rebrand of the concept of reader mode, and the cycle starts anew. "Why can't we have a functional version of the site for the blind, and the normal one for everyone else?" 'We have that! It's call…

Presumably, if reader mode is to never allow any website-programmable interactivity ever (as I would expect), it would be much harder to do, though.

Re: Death to Scroll Fade

#213

Post by jjj123 »

Illniyar wrote: post #124
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…

This is literally the best ux pattern you can have. It is intuitive - user immediately discovers it when performing the obvious action, it increases the user experience (more text to read) without any real downside. It is the first thing I suggest to anyone when I see someone didn't implement it. I've never heard a complaint about it until now.

I’m curious if after reading the dozen or so replies you’ve changed your opinion here, at least a little?

For the record, I am also a user who scrolls up often while reading, so I find the header thing more frustrating than useful.

Re: Death to Scroll Fade

#215

Post by codenighter »

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…

[dead]

Re: Death to Scroll Fade

#216

Post by delbronski »

pianom4n wrote: post #191
delbronski wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do they really suck to use so badly? Like for real? The examples that have been listed in the comments (Apple and Claude sites) look totally fine to me. People here are talking about them like they are the worse websites ever.

Apple pages are _completely_ unusable because of this. If I go to product page I am unable to navigate it to extract information about the product. I give up and leave. https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/ Try to skim this page to get a sense of how much information is on the page. You can't. 90% of the scroll time is stuck in useless animations. Every time you scroll down you have to wait for the page to render. We've…

I get your preferences, and I am tempted to agree with you because there is a lot to hate about Apple.

But… this website is an ad. It’s not a product spec sheet. It’s not meant for you. It’s meant for people who don’t know a lot about computers or the web, and it’s meant to make them feel something about the product. Its goal is not to present data clearly. And as much as we may hate it, it does a brilliant job at what it’s trying to do. I think dismissing that because you are too deep into the “right way to make websites cult” is so shortsighted.

Re: Death to Scroll Fade

#217

Post by delbronski »

wtallis wrote: post #189
delbronski wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do they really suck to use so badly? Like for real? The examples that have been listed in the comments (Apple and Claude sites) look totally fine to me. People here are talking about them like they are the worse websites ever.

Are you actually trying to use any of those sites to get something done, or are you just looking at them and evaluating them as a piece of modern art? Because if you're actually trying to figure out which laptop to buy, Apple's web site has a lot of crap that gets in the way.

I agree with you. Personally I hate it. I was trying to figure out the specs of this laptop because my sister asked me if she should buy it. I had to do a lot of clicking.

But this site got my sister excited about buying the laptop. The stupid animations worked. And I am sure if this was presented to her as a simple html page with a white background and some text it just would not have had the same effect.

Like it or not, most websites are just ads. Interactive billboards. They are not there to present data to you in the best way possible.

Re: Death to Scroll Fade

#218

Post by bouke »

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…

This! And to make matters worse is the header is removed from the document flow, causing the content to jump up when scrolling down. And if you then scroll up to try to read the content that jumped out of the viewport, the stupid header is injected back into the flow causing the content to jump down again. Sigh.

Re: Death to Scroll Fade

#219

Post by WickyNilliams »

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…

Mea culpa: this is kinda my doing. I released a library headroom.js (https://wicky.nillia.ms/headroom.js/) for this purpose in 2013 or something, announced here on HN, and it got very popular. It got ported to every framework imaginable. And tons of websites either used it or imitated it.

I think it can be done well, but most do not do it well. Partially my fault because the defaults in headroom were not how I would recommend it. It had a tolerance option, which meant you had to scroll up so far/fast to trigger the reveal. But in my eternal foolishness I set this to zero by default. Adding a little tolerance makes it much less jittery and more intentionally triggered. And thus much less annoying. See the header on the site, it doesn't appear/disappear with every 1px movement

Re: Death to Scroll Fade

#220

Post by RugnirViking »

Illniyar wrote: post #146
HerbManic wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The user discovers it because it is practically forced on them. It is awful UI.

When a user wants to return to the navigation bar at the top he scrolls up. The navigation bar then immediately gets nearer. The user discovery happens because the act he performs provides the exact intent you need to give him the shortcut. Also for clarity this is only relevant for content based sites and not apps. It is vanishingly rare for users to scroll up when reading content unless they want to reach the top

no. Scroll already does that. The header can stay where it is. The most intuitive thing you can do is have the content scroll in the direction the user asked for, when they asked for it.

If they want to go up to the top, they can already scroll. To the top.

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