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I want the world to scroll this way

magicscroll.net

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Re: I want the world to scroll this way

#121

Post by kafkaesque »

kafkaesque wrote: post #63

I was born with pretty severe strabismus and underwent a few major eye surgeries throughout my life. One of the side effects of being born with this condition is missing lines when reading a book. Growing up with computers, I always found it a little difficult to follow long lines of text or the next line as I scroll. I'm a lot older now and hardly have these problems, if ever at all. I've pretty much perfected guess…

Okay, so I played with this for a few more minutes and this is my feedback:

I think this would be great for children with reading issues. It would be great as a 'feature' that can be turned on or off on an operating system (on the desktop, tablet, or smartphone). It feels almost like 'training wheels', and as such, I think it'd be great.

However, I do now realise that the line underlining the text can be distracting for someone who no longer has trouble following from one line to the next. Also, it is too easy for children to use this as a crutch, and may actually hinder muscle improvement if used for too long.

Also, like I said, I don't really have reading issues anymore, but I can see how this could've helped me when I was a kid. I definitely would be interested in reading the results of this tested on kids. As another person said below, my primary schoolteacher also suggested we use a paper to block out the bottom text when reading line by line, and this did help, but I think I was very self-conscious to actually do it all the time.

You're on to something!

Edit: Added clarification.

Re: I want the world to scroll this way

#124

Post by munificent »

This seems to result in a large number of cases where the visual experience is pointless. The line separating the previous and next page is tiny and easy to miss, and I don't see the use in two torn half-pages on screen.

I agree that smooth scrolling long text is hard to read and trips up line scanning, but this UX seems be like playing an cruel game where I have to drag just enough to scroll a whole page. Any more or less and I get a torn page that's even harder to read than normal scrolling.

I have an alternate solution to this problem: just hit space or page down when you're reading a long web page. It scrolls a whole page, with just enough animation to help you track where you are.

Re: I want the world to scroll this way

#125

Post by scott_s »

Compared with print, you're less likely to finish the article, you'll read it slower, you'll skip over sentences and your comprehension will go down.

Not for me. I am far more likely to finish a news article on the web - with a physical newspaper, I read the beginning of many front page stories, but don't always flip to the rest of it. The rest of the claims are quite dubious.

It's a neat technology, one which I may like for books. But not for articles. I prefer having it all "there."

Re: I want the world to scroll this way

#126

Post by agrona »

mwill wrote: post #56

I dislike pagination, honestly, and find the scrolling effect a little too jarring. However the scrolling effect DID actually remind me of my own natural behaviour. I tend to either randomly selecting and unselecting the paragraph I'm focusing on, or highlighting the first paragraph and holding the mouse button down, to incrementally select the text on a page as I read it/scroll. At first glance I could maybe see mys…

I too am a dedicated highlight-reader, precisely because it's so easy to lose my place when scrolling. I found myself reading somewhat slower (perhaps due to trying to understand what was going on and how it worked), but I wasn't clicking the mouse maniacally, either.

Re: I want the world to scroll this way

#127

Post by scott_s »

wtracy wrote: post #70
artursapek wrote: post #16

Do you have evidence to support your claim that the true problem is moving words? I'm really not convinced. I feel especially with OS X's inertial scrolling that I can naturally keep track of where I am in an article while scrolling, it has never bothered me. This just feels like fancy pagination. I tried partially scrolling ahead as I was reading and it disoriented me further, because the upcoming text was showing u…

Have you ever tried reading a web page over a person's shoulder while they occasionally scroll up and down? It's really jarring (though turning on Firefox's "smooth scrolling" helps.) I'm not sure that I like the results of this experiment, but I completely understand the motivation behind it.

I'm not sure that's relevant, though, because someone else is controlling the scrolling according to what they are reading. That it interferes with your reading is unsurprising, and I don't think says much about the reading experience when you are in control.

Re: I want the world to scroll this way

#128

Post by gambiting »

robmcm wrote: post #73
saint-loup wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You'll get used to it" can quickly becomes a lazy excuse for many bad experimentations in interaction design, but in this case I really think this is the right answer. At first, I found it disturbing as hell, and the implementation could be better (for instance, with a margin between the two pages, in addition to the black line), but this is really an interesting and promising answer to the pagination/scroll debate.

Like, you'll get used to inverted scroll in Mountain Lion? Innovation takes getting used to, evolution doesn't.

Loved that feature, it feels so much more natural. It was only a problem when I had to use a windows computer for like 5 minutes and everything was inverted again.

Re: I want the world to scroll this way

#129

Post by mikec3k »

robmcm wrote: post #73
saint-loup wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You'll get used to it" can quickly becomes a lazy excuse for many bad experimentations in interaction design, but in this case I really think this is the right answer. At first, I found it disturbing as hell, and the implementation could be better (for instance, with a margin between the two pages, in addition to the black line), but this is really an interesting and promising answer to the pagination/scroll debate.

Like, you'll get used to inverted scroll in Mountain Lion? Innovation takes getting used to, evolution doesn't.

I took the plunge and tried inverted scroll. At first it seemed weird, but after a day or so it felt like the most natural thing ever (and I've been using Macs since 1984). Now I find it difficult to go back to 'wrong way' scrolling.

Re: I want the world to scroll this way

#130

Post by Tarrosion »

kafkaesque wrote: post #63

I was born with pretty severe strabismus and underwent a few major eye surgeries throughout my life. One of the side effects of being born with this condition is missing lines when reading a book. Growing up with computers, I always found it a little difficult to follow long lines of text or the next line as I scroll. I'm a lot older now and hardly have these problems, if ever at all. I've pretty much perfected guess…

I also have strabismus and have undergone some surgery, but I don't find that this helps much. Specifically, my eyes keep jumping below the line which separates the new text from the old. I'd like to see a version where as soon as you start scrolling, the previous page is replaced by background and the new page appears line by line.
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