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The Scroll Up Bar

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Re: The Scroll Up Bar

#91

Post by hiphopyo »

keeperofdakeys wrote: post #89
nostromo wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so much easier to fuck up mobile than it is to do it right. And if you're not doing it exactly right, don't do it at all. Here's what the EC2 console looks like on mobile: http://i.imgur.com/MfbCdhU.png It appears that Amazon is doing this on purpose... Yes... user-scalable=no

There was/is an iOS bug where changing orientation after zooming would cut-off some of the page, most websites simply disable all zooming to "fix" it. http://blog.pgrady.com/post/29511322784/fixing-the-ios-orien...

Why would anybody want to enable zoom in the first place? Properly designed mobile web apps should already have decent sized text and graphics. In addition to the iOS orientation bug you mention, there's also that annoying click delay.

A lot of people at StackExchange seem to recommend zooming though:

http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/19464/should-mobile-op...

Re: The Scroll Up Bar

#92

Post by ohleg »

rl3 wrote: post #83

Firefox Browser for Android's default settings requires you to scroll up somewhat rapidly on the page you're currently reading to reveal the browser's auto-hidden URL bar and menu. I tend to loathe this functionality because it means slightly losing my place every time I want to multitask when reading something. I suppose it wouldn't be so bad as part of a website when viewed from a desktop environment, because you c…

You can disable this behavior by unchecking the checkbox in Settings -> Display -> Scroll title bar.

Re: The Scroll Up Bar

#93

Post by hiphopyo »

mercer wrote: post #56
masterleep wrote: post #42

Fixed bars are annoying and should rarely be used. But what's even worse is when the mobile version helpfully removes the content or feature that you'd like to see. Please just have one site, make it efficient, and be done with it.

I'm so happy that google is not officially recommending this. More than once that's been the one argument that worked with clients.

I really hope they'll bring up this issue at this year's IO.

Re: The Scroll Up Bar

#94

Post by hiphopyo »

WickyNilliams wrote: post #76

Someone has already mentioned my JS lib to handle this below, but as the author I feel compelled to mention it myself with some additional explanation. I built headroom.js [0] to handle exactly this. It simply adds classes at scroll up or down so you can be as fancy as you want (or not!) with the show hide effect. You can set a custom offset (eg. Don't invoke the hide/show mechanism until 100px down the page), you ca…

Keep it up!! Honestly you deserve more stars..

Re: The Scroll Up Bar

#95

Post by CmdrKrool »

pimlottc wrote: post #61
RobotCaleb wrote: post #21

They're a problem on non-mobile, as well. If the bar is over content, but the scrollbar isn't adjusted for it, pressing space or pagedown doesn't move down one page worth of visible content. I don't get why breaking pagedown is acceptable. It's my preferred way to read long text.

Thank you! It is a huge peeve of mine as well. There needs to be a good post somewhere to publicize this issue. Something you can point to when you find a broken site that lays out the solution so it can be fixed. But I'm not sure exactly what the mechanism is that causes this; I thought it was simple a case of forgetting to add top padding to the page body, but that doesn't always seem to be the case. Last time I sa…

Adding top padding would push the beginning of the content down nice and clear of the fixed header, but that's not enough to avoid the page down problem because for paging purposes it's normally the height of the box from border to border that is used - which seems right and consistent with (vertical) scrollbars normally being drawn from border to border. And top padding's only at the top of the first page of content anyway, not every page.

Anyway Firefox did make some effort to work around this common web design error (that being what I'd call it) which is probably why it behaves differently to Chrome: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=780345 but I still find it hit and miss between from one page to the next. As you mention there are many scenarios - what if the fixed header only goes across say half the width of the page? What if it's less than 100% opacity? What if it varies in height? The browser makers have to resort to "heuristics" and now we're off into the land of deep unpredictability.

While writing this I've also just noticed that - fixed header or no - pressing space / page down doesn't go exactly the same distance (in Firefox) as paging down by clicking on the scroll bar. Which is also a bit disconcerting.

Re: The Scroll Up Bar

#96

Post by rl3 »

ohleg wrote: post #92
rl3 wrote: post #83

Firefox Browser for Android's default settings requires you to scroll up somewhat rapidly on the page you're currently reading to reveal the browser's auto-hidden URL bar and menu. I tend to loathe this functionality because it means slightly losing my place every time I want to multitask when reading something. I suppose it wouldn't be so bad as part of a website when viewed from a desktop environment, because you c…

You can disable this behavior by unchecking the checkbox in Settings -> Display -> Scroll title bar.

Good point, thanks!

Re: The Scroll Up Bar

#97

Post by judk »

hiphopyo wrote: post #91
keeperofdakeys wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was/is an iOS bug where changing orientation after zooming would cut-off some of the page, most websites simply disable all zooming to "fix" it. http://blog.pgrady.com/post/29511322784/fixing-the-ios-orien...

Why would anybody want to enable zoom in the first place? Properly designed mobile web apps should already have decent sized text and graphics. In addition to the iOS orientation bug you mention, there's also that annoying click delay. A lot of people at StackExchange seem to recommend zooming though: http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/19464/should-mobile-op...

Because on a small screen the size vs data density tradeoff has a sweet spot that varies from one pair of eyeballs to the next.

Re: The Scroll Up Bar

#98

Post by judk »

barrkel wrote: post #39
Aardwolf wrote: post #23

Am I the only one who prefers to read websites in "desktop" mode? I always feel totally alienated by the mobile page, there is information left out, annoying badly-implemented JS scrollers, etc... The "desktop" site looks always more nice and familiar, and you can zoom and scroll around as you wish to read everything.

No, you're not alone. I almost always choose desktop mode where available, primarily because mobile sites disable zoom and choose settings for margins and font sizes that make their text almost unreadably large - frequently only two or three words per line, with masses of whitespace all around. Reading such articles feels claustrophobic, because you're stuck in this long tunnel of text, with little visual indicator o…

This is one reason In am delighted the Galaxy Nexus was abandoned by KitKat. I still have the one more mobile Browser that is capable of rendering text properly.

Re: The Scroll Up Bar

#99

Post by beloch »

Dear website developers,

I'm sorry your feelings were hurt when I declined to install your wonderful app that offers access to your website. Perhaps I just wasn't open to the awesome possibilities your app was offering me, but I already have a web browser that works just fine and couldn't be arsed to install more stuff. It's not you, it's me. I'm a bad, bad person. I get it. Now, about your "Scroll Up Bar"... It is indeed a very fine looking user interface, but my web browser already has one. I just can't seem to stop doing things that hurt your feelings, but could you please give me the option to turn that thing off?

If you're really having trouble justifying your job, perhaps I can help you out with a small suggestion. You may have noticed a trend towards wider aspect ratio screens over the last few years. Screens have gotten so bloody wide that practically nobody wants to read a column of text that is fully as wide as their screen! People were designing websites with UI elements on the sides even back when screens were slender 1.33:1 twigs instead of the McDonald's super-sized behemoths we have on our desks today. Perhaps you should take your bar, rotate it 90 degrees, and stick it on the side where there's space for it!

Sincerely,

An ungrateful, lazy, bad person who just can't be pleased.

Re: The Scroll Up Bar

#100

Post by judk »

tambourmajor wrote: post #48
SoftwareMaven wrote: post #22

What's worse is some sites that do this can't seem to differentiate between iPads and iPhones and seem to use percentages everywhere in their CSS. As a result, you get a huge header (which feels larger in landscape orientation).

Another big annoyance is when the mobile mode is solely based on the user agent string and there is no way to deactivate it other than changing the user agent (for example Google Search). It’s almost as if no Google employee has a tablet device. I would be genuinely interested in seeing behind the curtains of decisions like this one.

Google believes tablets are mobile. Heck, with the new maps, Google thinks desktops are mobile!
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