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The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

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Re: The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

#271

Curious as to where the line between “addictive feature” and "good UX" is. Is deliberate pagination actual impedance to use or merely an annoyance that's been weeded out with modern UX design? When does a feature that simply makes your product easier to use cross into a territory that it's illegal? What about media previews, in a platform like reddit if you can preview or expand media directly from the main list is t…

Infinite scroll is bad UX design and always has been. It makes it impossible to click on any links in the footer of the page or even really reading what's in the footer. I remember when it was initially introduced, everyone I spoke to about it hated it.

>It makes it impossible to click on any links in the footer of the page or even really reading what's in the footer.

But you can see the links! Maybe if your reflexes were just a little faster, if the mouse didn't lag!!!

Re: The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

#272
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Infinite scroll is bad UX design and always has been. It makes it impossible to click on any links in the footer of the page or even really reading what's in the footer. I remember when it was initially introduced, everyone I spoke to about it hated it.

Yeah I hate infinite scroll. I have no idea what actual common sentiment is because you’d have to do broad polling to find that out. I always wonder if UI designers fall into the “everyone i talked loved it” where everyone consists of “other designers and developers who have a stake in making this a common feature” or “user surveys that are heavily loaded to arrive at the conclusion I want “ Could be I’m just an old…

I am pretty sure of that. Mostly because they always do the same impractical thing at the same time. And they discover it is bad few years later, also all at exactly the same time.

Re: The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

#273
post #81

We can all agree that the internet was great and now it is less great, but the second someone articulates a very, very simple rule, the "well ackchyually" crew comes out of the woodwork. Infinite scroll is very obviously unnecessary. It is very obviously intended to keep people on an app longer than they would otherwise use it. You can lazy load into a finite scroll. Just make people click something every once in a w…

Not only it's unnecessary, it also bad GUI. In apps with infinite scrolling your position doesn't get its own state, so if you eg. go view a post & return to Instagram timeline it opens at the beginning. If you use media more thoughtfully as opposed to mindless scrolling, it just doesn't work. With pagination you could say return to IG after a week, go through 5 pages of whoever you're following, check out a post, go…

Stateless infinite scroll is just lazy/incomplete implementation though - there’s no reason you can’t keep your place via permalink. Just pop the state into history using the uuid of each card as it shows in the viewport, then when the user returns using that url, drop them in at that point in the feed with some reasonable before/after preloaded.

Re: The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

#274

Curious as to where the line between “addictive feature” and "good UX" is. Is deliberate pagination actual impedance to use or merely an annoyance that's been weeded out with modern UX design? When does a feature that simply makes your product easier to use cross into a territory that it's illegal? What about media previews, in a platform like reddit if you can preview or expand media directly from the main list is t…

> Curious as to where the line between “addictive feature” and "good UX" is. Is deliberate pagination actual impedance to use or merely an annoyance that's been weeded out with modern UX design? When does a feature that simply makes your product easier to use cross into a territory that it's illegal?

These feeds couple two features together: infinite scroll and automatic refresh. Without "pages" there is no technical way to refer to (and link) to a specific view, it's always generated. The best you have is a link to a particular item. Automatic refresh adds FOMO that you will not see the post again if you stop engagement right now.

Coupled together there is nothing about "product easier to use" and all about addictiion-inducing dark patterns.

Some apps do not tack on the auto refresh, meaning you can close the app at any time, reopen it and keep scrolling from the point you left, eliminating the addictive fomo.

Re: The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

#275

Curious as to where the line between “addictive feature” and "good UX" is. Is deliberate pagination actual impedance to use or merely an annoyance that's been weeded out with modern UX design? When does a feature that simply makes your product easier to use cross into a territory that it's illegal? What about media previews, in a platform like reddit if you can preview or expand media directly from the main list is t…

> Curious as to where the line between “addictive feature” and "good UX" is. Is deliberate pagination actual impedance to use or merely an annoyance that's been weeded out with modern UX design? When does a feature that simply makes your product easier to use cross into a territory that it's illegal? These feeds couple two features together: infinite scroll and automatic refresh. Without "pages" there is no technical…

> When does a feature that simply makes your product easier to use cross into a territory that it's illegal?

Good question! Maybe when that which makes the application/product easier has more negative side effects than positive or useful intended effects?

There must be ample examples/collections on the net about convenience and/or ease of use doing ugly stuff to body and brain short-, mid-, long-term.

Re: The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

#277

Curious as to where the line between “addictive feature” and "good UX" is. Is deliberate pagination actual impedance to use or merely an annoyance that's been weeded out with modern UX design? When does a feature that simply makes your product easier to use cross into a territory that it's illegal? What about media previews, in a platform like reddit if you can preview or expand media directly from the main list is t…

infinite scroll/algorithms don't need to be completely gone - just no longer the default setting

Re: The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

#278
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the contrary, pagination makes it impossible to keep your place in the list if it changes between page loads. Well, that's obviously false. There are two styles of pagination: https://yourblog.zox/archives?page=4 https://yourblog.zox/archives?before=2019-06-03&count=10 That second style will never change (unless you insert entries into the past). The first style will change. But it hardly makes it impossible to…

The second style makes it impossible to sort by anything other than time.

and places other than reddit dont need it

Re: The infinite scroll may become endangered if controversial Calif. law passes

#279

Curious as to where the line between “addictive feature” and "good UX" is. Is deliberate pagination actual impedance to use or merely an annoyance that's been weeded out with modern UX design? When does a feature that simply makes your product easier to use cross into a territory that it's illegal? What about media previews, in a platform like reddit if you can preview or expand media directly from the main list is t…

coke cola used to have cocaine in it, it doesn't anymore, people in taste tests prefer the taste of Pepsi... Coke is still the leader in sales.

Infinite scroll doesn't have a positive UX. If it takes an infinite amount of time to use your product, your product is shit.

Unless your product is content, in which case endless scroll encourages thoughtless consumption behavior. That's not a good thing.

We as engineers shouldn't be building stuff that degrades the experience of existence (which is already shit enough), just because you can make money doing so doesn't mean it's not antisocial behavior, and because you can make money by being a really shitty human, it does require some external force to curtail that negative sum behavior.

I agree it's difficult to categorize, the solution is rapid iteration, not allowing the asshattery until the entirety of society figures out it's bad for your brain. Someone should probably fix the political system in the US so we can have rapid iteration on problems again.

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