[dead]
Death to Scroll Fade
181–190 of 232 posts
Re: Death to Scroll Fade
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh god yes I absolutely hate those. Who on earth thought that was a good idea. There is a special circle in hell where designers of such sites have to actually use the sites they design.
someone designing for mobile first and wanted to maximize screen space. we don't have to be obtuse about it. it was an idea that just didn't go over as well as hoped. clearly, some people like it. it's not your cup of tea, great. now, we all know your feelings. next time i build a site, i'll be sure to get your opinions first.
> maximize screen space
But it's not maximizing it, that's the whole problem. It keeps coming back and blocking the line I'm reading. If they actually wanted to maximize screen space, it is trivial to just leave the top bar at the top of the page and not make it reappear when I scroll slightly back, no js/css needed.
Re: Death to Scroll Fade
#183Earlier 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
On what basis do you make the claim that "It is vanishingly rare for users to scroll up when reading content unless they want to reach the top"?
If I were to judge from the comments here (and my own behaviours) it is quite common for users to scroll up when reading content for other reasons that wanting to "reach the top".
Re: Death to Scroll Fade
#184Something 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…
ZeroHedge is one of the worst offenders for this.
Re: Death to Scroll Fade
#185There are no bad animations, only bad designs. If you design the animation to be way over the top like this, and then design the page to use it on every line then of course it looks like shit. This is like arguing against any amount of sugar in food and then shoveling it into someone's mouth to try to prove your point. It's disingenuous and you aren't proving anything. I don't even think the top agreeing comments her…
Animations need to to serve a purpose. Fading in is justifiable when you're adding new content on top of existing content, and need to draw attention to the fact that something changed in that part of the screen. None of that applies in the case of fade-in during scrolling. The user is already scrolling, everything on screen is moving, and new content is already expected to be coming in to view at the bottom of the w…
Scroll-fade does serve a purpose when used correctly, and others have posted real world examples of this already. It's so subtle that without them hardly anyone even knew what this blog post was ranting about.
It's just a way to draw attention to text without solely relying on typeface modifiers.
The real designs bring attention to what users are scrolling past as it flies by on the screen. That temporary urgency is why it's an animation. This is something that weight, height, underline, etc. cannot do as clearly. It's usually on the h-tags only, not every single line. That communicates the page structure too. It's clever and attractive when done right. It's not a new idea, and nobody was complaining about it until now.
Re: Death to Scroll Fade
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, like the other commenter I would just close the page instead of enduring it. But yes, in fact if this page succeeds then it's wasting human life on things as productive as spam phone calls. People have solved the latter by simply not answering for unknown numbers. Not sure what you mean by "fatalistic". To the point where I'm not sure that's the word you mean. It's fatalistic as in fate. Maybe you mean morbid…
They didn't go out of their way to make your life worse. They went out of their way to design something they thought you would like, but you didn't like it.
No, they went out of their way to design something they thought would impress in a demo to their management.
Re: Death to Scroll Fade
#187Why do web animations get so much hate with the HN crowd? I think a website is similar to a painting. Some will make you dizzy by just looking at them, and others will be a minimalist dream. Don’t hate me HN, but I say keep messing with the scroll bar, keep making annoying blinking banners, have your way with scroll fade. Don’t listen to these web dev veterans, they are just like snobby movie critics!
Because it's just as tasteless as the beginner who discovered the font dropdown and chose Papyrus. Yeah we're all marvelling at your web coding prowess -- has the actual content shown up on screen yet? Reminds me of me the https://motherfuckingwebsite.com . > Shit's legible and gets your fucking point across (if you had one instead of just 5mb pics of hipsters drinking coffee)
Ah yes, taste. That thing that is definitely NOT subjective, and NOT influenced by cultural norms and personal preferences rather than universal standards.
Yes you are right, guess you guys do have better “web taste”.
Why would anyone prefer pics of hipster drinking coffee over plain text?
Re: Death to Scroll Fade
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Animations need to to serve a purpose. Fading in is justifiable when you're adding new content on top of existing content, and need to draw attention to the fact that something changed in that part of the screen. None of that applies in the case of fade-in during scrolling. The user is already scrolling, everything on screen is moving, and new content is already expected to be coming in to view at the bottom of the w…
Scroll-fade does serve a purpose when used correctly, and others have posted real world examples of this already. It's so subtle that without them hardly anyone even knew what this blog post was ranting about. It's just a way to draw attention to text without solely relying on typeface modifiers. The real designs bring attention to what users are scrolling past as it flies by on the screen. That temporary urgency is…
> It's just a way to draw attention to text without solely relying on typeface modifiers.
Adding animations to bring attention to the thing that the user's attention is already focused on is not useful.
> The real designs bring attention to what users are scrolling past as it flies by on the screen. That temporary urgency is why it's an animation.
Did you mean to say "the good designs"? Because there are most certainly many real designs in the wild that badly abuse scroll fading to delay the appearance of all content below the fold.
> It's usually on the h-tags only, not every single line. That communicates the page structure too.
Making only the headings fade on is definitely something I see less often than the more blunt approach of having everything (or almost everything) fade in. And the message it sends to the user is that the text of the headings is not worth reading, otherwise the designer would let those words show up first.
> It's clever and attractive when done right. It's not a new idea, and nobody was complaining about it until now.
It's mildly annoying at best, and has been widely hated and criticized for as long as people have been doing it badly.
Re: Death to Scroll Fade
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
They get hate because they are almost always annoying and distract from the actual content. Nobody cares how creative your web page design is if it sucks to use so badly that a plain text page would be better.
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.
Re: Death to Scroll Fade
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
I turned on "Reduce Transparency", and instead of a fade, it turns the top and bottom sections of the screen into blank white space. My "edge to edge screen" iPhone now resembles the last generation of iPhones with home button from 2017.
On iOS 26 (up to date as of this comment), the Orion web browser from Kagi does not have this problem. It also supports firefox and chrome extensions, so you can use things like UBlock Origin and Privacy Badger.
Neat observation; I am an Orion user, too, for certain things.
But doesn't the latest Orion on iOS 26-latest just turn the top section a solid color (e.g., web page background-color), simply not showing any text up there around the notch/top-edge? As the parent said about the accessibility option, "...resembles the last generation of iPhones with home button from 2017" (albeit, at least not solid black/white only)?
Previously on iPhones, IIRC, we got text scrolling up above and around the notch/icons, to really make maximum use of the screen (except where truly unavoidable), IIRC.
AFAICT, Orion and the accessibility setting do stop the fading-distraction, but do not restore the use of that screen space for text/content.