[HN Gopher] Death to Scroll Fade
___________________________________________________________________
Death to Scroll Fade
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 327 points
Date : 2026-03-18 15:23 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dbushell.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (dbushell.com)
| hyperhello wrote:
| It's kind of like when someone wants you to read something, so
| they hold the thing to read for you and read it out loud, while
| moving their finger at the words they're currently reading. I
| know how to read!!!
| sgbeal wrote:
| The poster seems to be implying that this effect is prevalent
| across the web, yet i'm seeing it for the very first time on that
| post. (And, indeed, it's annoying. My eyes can't read when
| there's animation going on nearby.)
|
| The goldfish animation along the bottom is epic and i will have
| to mine that bit for reuse somewhere :).
| ramon156 wrote:
| I was redesigning a website of mine and Claude suggested to add
| this as an animation. My theory is that, if claude is confident
| in a suggestion, a lot of other people have done the same.
|
| Maybe it's too subtle to notice.
|
| Edit: on odeva.nl
| chrismorgan wrote:
| The scroll _fade_ on that site is comparatively inoffensive (
| _comparatively_ ), because you messed with scrolling itself,
| which is one of the worst things you can do, taking over and
| ruining inertia. You're literally going out of your way to
| make things _worse_. The ONLY time scrolljacking of _any_
| kind is acceptable is for things like maps where there is no
| "normal".
| eru wrote:
| Or for a game, where it's part of the interface.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Got an example of what you mean? Because if you mean the
| only thing I can think of, I very strongly disagree.
| wtallis wrote:
| Hijacking native scroll behavior to badly reimplement
| anything remotely like scrolling is wrong even in a
| gaming context. But if you're implementing Half Life 2 in
| a browser, where the user no longer has a normal _cursor_
| , then hijacking scrolling to implement the weapon
| switcher is fine.
| Xerox9213 wrote:
| https://history-of-animation.webflow.io/
| DrewADesign wrote:
| I've seen the mostly in personal website templates used by
| people that would have had _very_ sparkly MySpace profiles had
| they been creating for the web back then.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > The poster seems to be implying that this effect is prevalent
| across the web
|
| Because it is.
|
| For sites with dynamic content (social media, news, etc.), it
| doesn't happen.
|
| But commercial sites trying to convince you to use their
| product, they're incredibly common. It's not always a fade in
| exactly like this site does it. Sometimes it's content sliding
| in from the side.
|
| It's incredibly pervasive on SaaS marketing pages.
| sgbeal wrote:
| > It's incredibly pervasive on SaaS marketing pages.
|
| That would explain my ignorance of it - such sites are in the
| bottom negligible percentage of sites which i might
| accidentally visit but never purposely do.
| jonas21 wrote:
| You probably haven't noticed it before because when it's done
| well, it's a subtle and pleasant effect that can be used to
| draw your attention to particular elements on the page.
|
| This site is intentionally doing it very poorly to make a
| point. Really, the takeaway should be don't do things poorly.
| But that's kind of obvious.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > when it's done well, it's a subtle and pleasant effect
|
| I've seen it quite a lot, but apparently I've never seen it
| done well. It's a very annoying effect that chases me away
| from the site using it.
| knorker wrote:
| > when it's done well
|
| It's always awful. This site is exagerated in degree, but in
| kind it's merely on the scale of awful.
|
| Computers should not waste my time. Even if eyes are 10ms
| faster than the awful fade, if a million people see it,
| that's almost three hours of human life down the drain.
|
| And when scrolling fast, or far, it's not uncommon to have it
| waste a second of human time. A million of those is 38 human
| working days, just flushed down the toilet, because someone
| wanted "pleasant".
|
| It's fantastically disrespectful of other people's time.
|
| The web is already slow. No need to deliberately spend effort
| to make it even slower.
| stefanfisk wrote:
| Agree 100%!
|
| I'm a fast scroller and skimmer. Info scroll down and the
| text is not there I'll just assume that the site is shot
| and close it. Ain't nobody got 200ms to wait for a god damn
| fade in when there's an infinite amount of sites out there
| to discover.
| arcfour wrote:
| I don't have a strong opinion either way on the effect, but
| I do have to say that I always find it amusing how
| fatalistic HN can sometimes be over the most minor cosmetic
| inconveniences, couching them as "wasting (large amounts
| of) humanity's time" and "disrespecting people" as if we're
| talking about something far more serious than little
| animations on a webpage.
|
| I mean, you might not like it, and that's fair and
| understandable, but is it really _that_ big of a deal?
| Surely not.
| knorker wrote:
| 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?
|
| Standing in line at the DMV is also all "counting flowers
| on the wall, that don't bother me at all"? But even at
| the DMV it's (hopefully) not done maliciously.
|
| > cosmetic inconveniences
|
| Sometimes things suck. That's not remotely as frustrating
| as knowing that someone went out of their way to make
| your life worse.
|
| > is it really that big of a deal? Surely not.
|
| If we capped all laptop CPUs to 600MHz, would it really
| be that big of a deal? Maybe they did it because of the
| acoustic preference of not needing to spin the fans as
| much, and therefore _you_ are not allowed faster CPUs?
| arcfour wrote:
| 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.
| wtallis wrote:
| No, they went out of their way to design something they
| thought would impress in a demo to their management.
| MoonWalk wrote:
| "It's fantastically disrespectful of other people's time."
|
| And this is what people have become way, WAY too tolerant
| of. The deliberate theft of customers' time. While this is
| obviously a very minor example, there are lots and lots of
| others that aren't.
| slopinthebag wrote:
| > million of those is 38 human working days, just flushed
| down the toilet, because someone wanted "pleasant".
|
| This is the wrong conclusion. The amount of work that can
| be accomplished summing one second from 38 million people
| is approximately zero - much different from stealing 1 day
| from 38 people or 1 hour from 912.
| marssaxman wrote:
| Not doing it at all would be better still. It's really
| annoying.
| troupo wrote:
| Fade in in scroll will always be slower than the reading
| speed of a significant percentage of population.
|
| This becomes worse for people who just skim content, re-read
| the text, or want to quickly scroll to a specific place in
| text
| jonas21 wrote:
| It can speed up the loading of the above-the-fold content
| because the images on the rest of the page can be loaded as
| the user scrolls closer to them.
| knorker wrote:
| So you agree that for text, it should NEVER be used. And
| you are _only_ arguing for lazy loading of images?
| talim wrote:
| You can do this with just the 'loading' attribute on img
| elements and let the browser handle it without the
| gratuitous animations: <img
| loading="lazy" src="image.jpg" alt="..." />
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Yes, if you make things only slightly worse it's better than
| if you make them a lot worse. But neither is quite as good as
| not deliberately making things worse.
| wgjordan wrote:
| Anthropic uses it across all their websites, here's a typical
| example where the effect is obvious as you scroll down:
| https://claude.com/solutions/agents
|
| I could be wrong, but my simple guess is that it's become
| widespread in LLM-generated websites partly because of
| Anthropic's own style guides getting adopted through Claude-
| bundled skills and such.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Are the little hand animation graphics meant to flicker like
| they're an epilepsy test? That was so awful I didn't have
| brain power left to notice the fade scroll.
| psychoslave wrote:
| You are absolutely right!
| ayhanfuat wrote:
| It is partly to blame, yes. This is from Claude's official
| frontend skill:
|
| "Motion: Use animations for effects and micro-interactions.
| Prioritize CSS-only solutions for HTML. Use Motion library
| for React when available. Focus on high-impact moments: one
| well-orchestrated page load with staggered reveals
| (animation-delay) creates more delight than scattered micro-
| interactions. Use scroll-triggering and hover states that
| surprise."
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Who thinks like this? The last thing I want on a website is
| surprise. I want to do what I came there to do, the same
| way it worked last time, and then get on with my day.
| MoonWalk wrote:
| On a Web site or anywhere else. Apple, Microsoft, "flat
| design," and peek-a-boo UI all insult the user and waste
| his time by turning an important tool into an Advent
| calendar.
| hedora wrote:
| s/micro intentions/micro aggressions/
| iamtedd wrote:
| Replying to the wrong person and trying to replace a
| phrase that wasn't used. Bravo, you take the cake for low
| effort post.
| fainpul wrote:
| > creates more delight
|
| ARE YOU NOT DELIGHTED?
| apsurd wrote:
| https://webflow.com/ is what i blame for the fade-in on
| scroll module.
|
| 15 years ago it did look very polished, boutique,
| professional. Now that it's a module everyone can do,
| everyone literally does it for every module.
|
| Also there's tailwind that likely has a module for all the
| modules in webflow.
| mavamaarten wrote:
| On top of that, that page took 10 seconds to load. On a Gbit
| network connection, lol
| peab wrote:
| the effect in this example fine though, and not obnoxious
| like OPs? I don't get it
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| That's a bit different since those are separate chunks of
| content rather than running prose (and they're mainly
| meaningless marketing fluff anyway). I don't find it all that
| annoying compared to the original article.
| wtallis wrote:
| It's still incredibly insulting to waste the user's time
| trying to force them to read the page sequentially instead
| of being able to immediately scroll to the chunk of content
| they are actually trying to find. Especially if it is not
| the user's first visit to the page.
| hedora wrote:
| Studies show that viewer comprehension is strictly worse
| for presentations that use "build" animations vs ones
| that do not.
|
| I assume the study results would be the same if they were
| repeated using fade scrolls.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| It's not as bad because it's a much faster fade in, but I
| still find it incredibly obnoxious.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Parts also seem to ignore prefers-reduced-motion.
| dreko wrote:
| This is a great example of LLM feedback loops. Anthropic's
| site uses scroll fade, Claude's training data includes
| Anthropic's site, Claude recommends scroll fade to users,
| those sites become future training data. The web converges on
| one aesthetic and nobody remembers choosing it.
| h4ch1 wrote:
| I used to inject a prefers-reduced-motion: true to most
| websites a few years back when this trend really picked up;
| and generally have all animations turned off at the OS level
| and at least on mac that injects reduced motion preference to
| the browser.
|
| So for example on claude's website I get no animations,
| pretty good QoL improvement. Now webdevs HONORING prefers-
| reduced motion, that can vary.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| It definitely isn't prevalent, and usually is for "feature"
| pieces (like an expose on the Washington Post back when they
| were a real newspaper), along with product pages.
|
| Apple uses it for their various pages, and it is legitimately
| annoying-
|
| https://www.apple.com/iphone/
|
| Tesla is a fan as well-
|
| https://www.tesla.com/models
|
| Occasionally sites use lazy loaded images, and do a "fade in"
| effect when they're actually loaded. Nothing wrong with that
| particular use.
| flexagoon wrote:
| > https://www.tesla.com/models
|
| Love how that page takes almost 10 seconds to load for the
| first time on a 200Mbps connection
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Are you sure you don't have prefers-reduced-motion enabled? I
| just found out I already have it enabled when I went to look
| for how to enable it...
| ge96 wrote:
| > The goldfish
|
| It goes where you click in the water area
| nicman23 wrote:
| do not the scroll
|
| i will umatrix you
| yards wrote:
| I raise you one. Death to the parallax scroll. In fact, death to
| all scroll animations.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Scrolling should just move a fixed size view up and down a
| fixed sized page. Why on earth must everyone complicate it so
| much?
| marssaxman wrote:
| I don't understand why browsers ever let designers fuck up
| the scrolling mechanism in the first place. Why is that even
| possible?
| ryandrake wrote:
| Browsers have handed _way too much_ control to web
| developers. "The web as a software SDK" was a terrible
| idea.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| The web should be a method of delivering documents
| exclusively, and be limited to the kinds of things you
| can do with other computerized documents (the basics, but
| also Audio, Video, Animations, hyperlinking, etc.)
| wtallis wrote:
| I'd be okay with locking these heavily-abused features
| behind a "web app mode" that the user has to enable on a
| per-site basis. It should include a restriction forcing
| all content to come from the same origin, so that the
| browser in that mode won't make it easy for web apps to
| include third-party tracking or advertising.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| My biggest annoyance: letting scripts control the
| history. I can imagine that someone thought "oh it'll be
| nice, you can use it for pages of an app". But the
| reality is that _people are not nice_ and it gets used
| maliciously all the damn time. It should not be allowed.
| pier25 wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| I'm not against animations in UI design but these should be
| used purposefully to direct the user's attention on something
| or for minimal aesthetic effect. When everything is moving it's
| just like adding a ton of ketchup to everything.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| Death to scroll event override in general. Messes up my vimium
| smooth scrolling.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > 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.
| apples_oranges wrote:
| what a good idea to have this automatically come up when the
| page opens, and perhaps give user a few seconds to press escape
| to get rid of it, if needed
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Why just a few seconds? In reader mode you can press escape
| any time to close it.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| On MacOS and iOS you can set reader mode as default. You should
| set reader mode as default.
| MoonWalk wrote:
| "should have to enable "Clown Mode" or something."
|
| Bwahahaha, +1! This reminds me of calling Windows XP's default
| motif "Fisher-Price" mode. Which, sadly, looks professional and
| efficient compared to Windows (and, increasingly, the Mac)
| today.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| I actually think modern windows looks nice. It isn't nearly
| as good as the classic 9x look, but fluent obviously is a
| response to the visual shitshow that was 10
| bigyabai wrote:
| Big Sur made me take back every Fischer Price comment I ever
| made about Windows XP. I didn't think it was possible to make
| a more childish UI than Aqua, but here we are.
| HerbManic wrote:
| I like that Apple was trying somwthing that has a little more
| texture and soul to it, but Liquid glass needs a lot of work
| to be made more subtle and usable. 10 out of 10 idea, 3 out
| of 10 execution.
| hapless wrote:
| the reason "reader mode" isn't the default is to discourage
| website authors from intentionally breaking reader mode
|
| -_-
| SilasX wrote:
| 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 called HTML!"
|
| Edit: Earlier version of this point:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20224961
| wtallis wrote:
| I want a reader mode that renders the page as if it were in an
| extremely tall window (ie. 10+ screens tall), then gives me a
| scrollable view of that static image of the rendered page. My
| browser should lie to the page on my behalf, and make it behave
| as if everything were already on-screen.
| sp1rit wrote:
| Materialistic[0] effectively does this (minus the screenshot
| part), not intentional I think (I belive it makes the webview
| as tall as the requested page and then uses the OS native
| scroll widget to add a scrollbar for it). The problem I
| regularly encounter with this is sites that have a vertically
| centered popup (cookie banner, newsletter, etc.), with a
| backdrop that obscures the whole page. You first have to
| scroll down quite a bit (half the size of the article) to be
| able to click the popup away.
|
| [0]:https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic
| sublinear wrote:
| There 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 here are coming from web
| devs or the target users.
| kbelder wrote:
| If you sped this up, and minimized it to the point it was
| unnoticeable, it would not hurt the browsing experience.
|
| But that raises the question...
| wtallis wrote:
| 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 window. Adding animations _on top_ of all of that
| doesn 't help anything, and just distracts from and delays
| presentation of the content the user was already trying to
| reveal.
| sublinear wrote:
| 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.
| wtallis wrote:
| > 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.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Really, almost any animation or hijacking on scrolling should be
| abolished. It's one of the most disgusting things to encounter on
| a webpage.
|
| I don't want your product to spin while I scroll down. I don't
| want animations or boxes to start appearing or disappearing. I
| don't want helpful tooltips, popups, or "I hope you enjoyed this"
| notifications to appear as I scroll.
|
| What I want when I scroll is for the page to move, either up or
| down, in a completely consistent manner. I want to be able to
| reasonably predict what I'll see as I go up or down.
|
| Apple loves this shit. Fortunately they aren't AS BAD as they
| once were, but you'll still encounter it on their product pages.
|
| https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/
| jevndev wrote:
| My least favorite by far is the "multi section" webpage design.
| Where the page is split into multiple whole-screen sections and
| scrolling the mouse wheel alternates between either moving
| between sections or playing the animations of that section. Yes
| please make my scroll wheel only sometimes actually scroll the
| page and other times rotate a graphic for way too long thanks
| alprado50 wrote:
| Agree. I understand why people like those animations and
| sometimes even i want to implement these in my website with
| GSAP, but then i remember that these animations make my content
| harder to read.
| MoonWalk wrote:
| Another major pisser is sites that deliberately disable zooming
| on their mobile incarnations. WTF, WHY? My favorite was when
| Google imperiously declared that it would "punish" "non-mobile-
| friendly" sites in their search results... but then disabled
| zooming on its own pages.
| levmiseri wrote:
| I'm guilty of this as well. https://kraa.io/about has some fade-
| in animation for the intro text - driven by wanting the initial
| impression to be focused/minimal and 'unravel' as you go. I take
| it that most HN folks would vastly prefer to NOT have this?
| sublinear wrote:
| I think it looks fine except it's missing a more obvious hint
| that there's more to see when I scroll. The one that's there is
| just textual and very delayed.
| medbar wrote:
| Not sure if I second this or not. I did want to scroll, but I
| don't know how much of that was influenced from the context
| or the extreme minimalism making me want to look for more -
| I'm interested in how I would have reacted to the site not
| knowing it had scroll fade. I could see an argument with the
| "Don't Make Me Think" principle.
| wincy wrote:
| I'll say as someone who suffers from severe motion sickness and
| the OP site makes me feel deeply uncomfortable, that your site
| does the fade in fast enough that it doesn't give me any
| discomfort. Seems fine to me. Maybe I should consider being a
| consultant for vestibular motion sickness accessibility, haha.
| I'd get paid to answer "on a scale of 1-10, how pukey does this
| app make you feel?"
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Gotta love the attention to detail at the end, that is illegible
| when selected too.
|
| It's not realistic, though. Illegible sites never get that detail
| right.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They usually inhibit selection to protect their sacred text.
| wincy wrote:
| Hah, the point has certainly been made. Absolute Barf-o-Rama.
|
| I suffer from pretty severe motion sickness, which hasn't really
| improved as an adult, and this page immediately made me feel like
| I'm going to throw up. Had to switch to reader mode after the
| first image. I was always the kid who couldn't read in the car,
| and was always groggy on long road trips because of Dramamine
| (side note, Meclizine has significantly improved my life, as it
| has largely the same effect without drowsiness). As an adult I'm
| fine as long as I'm in the front seat, public transit is terrible
| for me. Elevators are tiny torture chambers, especially when
| stopping on multiple floors. And it's cumulative, the sensation
| becomes worse the more I'm exposed to it over the course of a day
| (I have a mental "theme park budget" in my head of how many rides
| I can comfortably do!). VR can't have any motion that isn't
| firmly anchored to a sense of place (space ship/driving sims are
| okay though!)
|
| I'm glad awareness is being raised about this, but I'm curious
| what websites are using this now? Is it just personal blogs and
| the like right now? I definitely would have noticed this cropping
| up on websites I frequent.
| snozolli wrote:
| _I suffer from pretty severe motion sickness_
|
| I don't, and yet I am also feeling nauseated after reading that
| page! What a truly awful experience.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _As an adult I'm fine as long as I'm in the front seat,
| public transit is terrible for me._
|
| Me too! The worst part about this is anytime there's more than
| two adults in the vehicle, the "front seat" has all sorts of
| social expectations and courtesies. I once mentioned that I get
| motion sick when not in the front seat, and I could tell that
| nobody believed me and thought it was an uncool way to try and
| guilt people into letting me monopolize the favored chair.
| After that I don't bother, but do try to avoid shared cars
| because in those I'll be quietly sitting in a torture chamber
| while others around me don't understand.
|
| Also, good God those drivers whould constantly gas-brake-gas-
| gas-brake-gas-brake-brake-gas. I get it when all the sudden
| traffic rapidly and unexpectedly slows down, but so many people
| seem to always be pressing at least one pedal, never coasting.
| It's torture
| rickydroll wrote:
| Oh good, I'm not the only one. Right now, I have an ocular
| migraine from a few minutes on that website, and I'm trying not
| to revisit my lunch.
| xnx wrote:
| It's amazing how web graphic designers don't realize 99% of all
| added motion/animation is just as annoying and unnecessary as
| <blink> and <marquee>.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Oh they know, but it's requested because clients want a _fancy_
| website, and just having fucking text on the fucking screen
| explaining what you fucking sell is boooooring.
|
| And also completely functional and accessible but where's the
| fun in that?
| thenthenthen wrote:
| Yep. And then complain how it's not loading/stuttering. I
| guess we need a new website...
| realityfactchex wrote:
| I thought this was going to be about iOS and how now (as of iOS
| 26) there is a "fade out" at the top of every web page (around
| the notch/top-edge area).
|
| When scrolling/reading a web page, it literally changes that
| section of the text so that it fades to gray.
|
| So, "everything scroll fades".
|
| I couldn't find a way to turn it off. Quite irritating, IMHO.
|
| EDITED TO ADD ELABORATION: The issue with iOS "scroll fade" text
| color in Safari near the top notch is that this makes that top-
| edge-text "dynamic" (changing) and thus "draws attention" to it
| visually, thus competing for eyeball attention when I am probably
| actually reading somewhere further down on the page. Also, I
| would still like to be able to glance up to the topmost visible
| text if wanted, without having to adjust to its _different and
| less visible colors_. Apple designers should know all this.
| Further, I 'd say the page text color should probably by default
| respect what the web page designer configured it as, and not have
| the OS change that text color (unless the user gets fancy and
| requests an override with dark mode or whatever settings).
|
| This article's critique seems valid, too (more generically about
| "scroll fade" in interfaces, e.g. web pages, which seems to
| mostly be about items _appearing_ gradually via motion).
| Personally, I see less of that these days, compared to making
| every page in an OS fade out where unnecessary.
| jerlam wrote:
| 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.
| nottorp wrote:
| It's that bad?
|
| How about they give us back small iPhones with 4" screens
| then and whoever wants the fade can imagine it outside the
| physical phone?
| jerlam wrote:
| On my iPhone 13 Mini, the space dedicated to showing
| browser content is around 4.25" diagonal with the Safari
| fade, so we're not that far off.
| nottorp wrote:
| I've managed to avoid being tricked into upgrading to 26
| so far, and every week I find a new reason not to.
| hedora wrote:
| 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.
| MoonWalk wrote:
| Even better iOS example of not just "scroll fade" but
| regressive and incompetent UI design: the moving of Music's
| playback controls from the empty area at the top of the window
| into the content-browser area... where the controls are
| "transparent" and overlap the text and thumbnail images there.
| And all that stuff in the content-browser pane? Yep, it scroll-
| fades.
| charcircuit wrote:
| This website has a slow and laggy implementation which unfairly
| shows off the effect.
| msarnoff wrote:
| Originally read the URL as "D-Bus Hell dot com" and was like...
| yup.
| confounder wrote:
| Amen. So cathartic to see someone publish the post I've been
| wanting to write for a while, and with a much better title.
|
| Also: I've noticed a new abuse recently of sites implementing
| scroll momentum _on desktop_ -- has anyone else seen this? I
| couldn 't believe it, but there it was.
| wtallis wrote:
| Sites overriding scroll behavior to implement their own smooth
| scroll behavior with the wrong speed has been a thing for many
| years. It's a bit harder to notice if you're using a
| traditional mouse wheel, but is really easy to notice on a
| decent laptop touchpad.
|
| It's a inexcusable usability disaster.
| netrap wrote:
| Death to Scroll Bar size change!!!
| rc_mob wrote:
| I wish this blog stopped the scroll fading after it made ita
| point. would have really hammered it home.
| burningChrome wrote:
| I've always been under the impression it was lazy loading the
| page to increase page loading times for content above the fold?
| At least this was why I started using it about 8 years ago.
|
| Its like anything though. I think people just thought it was a
| cool effect and so it wasn't about page speed any more, it was
| just about something people used to add some panache to their
| sites.
|
| Kind of like people who've been abusing modals for the last
| decade or so. lol
| MichaelDickens wrote:
| I'm not a web dev but if the goal is to improve load times, I'd
| think it would make more sense to load the full article text up
| front, and lazy load heavier data like images and video? I've
| seen a lot of websites that do it that way.
| cwillu wrote:
| But then a fast reader might be able to read faster than the
| ads could load!
| hedora wrote:
| In reader mode on iOS 26, there is some scroll jank, presumably
| due to hidden scroll fade.
|
| (Take this as another excuse not to hijack scrolling behavior,
| not an actual request you improve your implementation of tacky-
| mode.)
| sodapopcan wrote:
| I'm someone who loves over-the-top, creative-for-the-sake-of-
| creative web design, even for something primarily text-based like
| a blog post, I 100% sympathize with and want to accommodate those
| who don't.
|
| I think `prefers-tacky` is a brilliant idea! It means excess
| decorative images could avoid even being downloaded if the user
| so chooses.
| bingemaker wrote:
| I worked for a client who was all about scrolljacking. Then he
| discovered parallax effect, and there was no looking back. He
| fired me, and got another team who didn't have any opinions.
|
| Now the page stutters on every device other than iPhone 16+ with
| 5G. :shrug:
| xenadu02 wrote:
| Scrolling is broken by everyone everywhere.
|
| Scrolling to the bottom then forcing me to click "show more"?
| Lazy. A truly horrible experience. I don't know how anyone could
| think that is a good idea. The worst offenders are the ones
| showing me products. You might as well not have pages of products
| at all. Just tell me these 12 are the only ones you have because
| I've already lost interest. Not that most web stores are any good
| - most have no useful ability to search _or_ browse so finding
| anything is like digging through a junk drawer. It all screams
| "we hate selling product, please go away".
|
| Next worst? Everything Google makes and all the fools who copied
| them: scroll down, scrolling _hard stops_ , then a few seconds
| later the next segment of content loads. The scrollbar position
| is naught but lies. WHY??? Are you proud of that? Because you
| shouldn't be. You should be ashamed. Demand-load the content
| behind the scenes so scrolling is continuous and smooth. If the
| user scrolls fast then skip pages and/or cancel prior requests.
| The scrolling is the priority, lazy-load the content as needed...
| but for f*k sake don't do what Google does.
|
| The top worst: hijacking scrolling for any form of animation or
| to change direction. Absolutely horrid and I leave any webpage
| that does this out of spite. This just screams "I'M A DESIGNER,
| LOOK AT MEEEEE!!!!!". It is code equivalent of being "too
| clever", but for UX. If you don't want people to buy your product
| or signup for your service but instead be impressed by your
| ability to vomit out D-E-S-I-G-N then by all means proceed.
| Everyone is guilty of this, even those who should know better.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| I'll add having a floating header that covers the top portion
| of the page, and only appears when you scroll _up_. I like to
| read text in the top third of the page, then scroll down so the
| lines I 'm reading are still in the top third of the page. With
| the height of my monitor that's the most comfortable position,
| this should usually be the case if following common ergonomic
| guidelines. If I scroll up, very often such a header will
| appear & cover the text I was trying to scroll up to read, so I
| have to scroll farther. Then it's visible, so I scroll down to
| move it back up to the top portion of the page as the header
| goes away. Lather, rinse, repeat, install a uBlock origin
| filter to get rid of floating headers.
| shevy-java wrote:
| This is the modern day blinking HTML tag.
|
| I also hate infinite scrolling.
|
| I much prefer to have websites simple at all times. I understand
| that stylish means it must look good and elegant, but this often
| ends up annoying me to no ends. Without ublock origin I would go
| nuts. I use it more to get rid of HTML I don't want to see. All
| pop-ups and slide-ins for instance. These things should never
| ever happen. Any notification should happen differently, or not
| at all. Often it is "please donate to us" - I understand their
| use case, but how is this relevant to my use case?
| liendolucas wrote:
| I can only add another aberration that it just started to happen
| on my browsers without even updating or doing anything at all: I
| get the master volume raised, I mean not the YouTube volume, but
| the volume that is reported in my OS.
|
| I truly don't know how this is possible or how should I turn it
| off completely. There are some settings in Firefox but the ones I
| have tried do not work.
|
| This is one of the worst things I have seen in many years, along
| with all the other aberrations that are already spread on the
| net.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| 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. >:(
|
| EDIT: Whoops, flipped the directions. Complaint still stands
| though.
| adventured wrote:
| Screen real-estate for legitimate content is often at a premium
| and then they go and steal some of that land with sticky
| headers and or footers. I occasionally run across mobile sites
| that use both at the same time, while throwing in ads here and
| there, it's an atrocious experience.
| tylervigen wrote:
| Yes but then I think they should leave the header at the top
| of the page. If I need it I'll scroll all the way back up!
| Don't make it randomly re-appear and cover the text I wanted
| to see because I decided to re-read that last paragraph.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Especially since mobile browsers typically have a shortcut
| for scroll-all-the-way-to-the-top
| adito wrote:
| Oh. This. Tho I solved that with userstyles.
| Griffinsauce wrote:
| Joke's on you, we implement all animations in JS
| cowpig wrote:
| Interesting, I find sticky headers to be the bane of my
| existence, and the ones that disappear but reappear on scroll
| up are a lesser evil
| vmg12 wrote:
| Also if anything it should disappear when scrolling down and
| appear when scrolling up.
| hbn wrote:
| That's how they work. It's what the GP said.
| lebuin wrote:
| God yes. For some reason, I automatically scroll in such a way
| that I always keep what I'm reading at the very top of the
| screen. Which means that every time I want to reread a sentence
| I first have to scroll past the header.
| Illniyar wrote:
| 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.
| nativeit wrote:
| I consider it context-dependent. If a site is intended for
| users to jump around to different pages often, then sticky
| headers make sense. If it's designed for long-form articles
| or scrolling through feeds, then non-sticky headers make
| sense. When I have implemented them on my own sites, I try to
| keep them minimal and unobtrusive. But I also have never
| heard this complaint specifically, until now.
| zbrozek wrote:
| I absolutely hate it. If you haven't heard a complaint about
| it, you haven't tried hard enough to get feedback.
|
| There is no context which makes it OK.
| underlipton wrote:
| You could just have a "hide bar" button. Dunno how you get it
| back, maybe put your design smarts there.
|
| Stop making things "intuitive" and expose explicit options to
| users.
| HerbManic wrote:
| The user discovers it because it is practically forced on
| them. It is awful UI.
| Illniyar wrote:
| 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
| oe wrote:
| That's not why user scrolls up, or at least not the only
| reason. For example, reading this discussion I constantly
| scroll up and down to center the text on screen.
|
| If the header only appears after scrolling up for a bit
| then it's not so bad, but most implementations show the
| header after scrolling 1px up. That's infuriating.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| >It is vanishingly rare for users to scroll up when
| reading content unless they want to reach the top
|
| This assumption is the problem. No, it is not rare for
| users to scroll up while reading. People are not perfect
| machines that read everything in one pass and understand
| it fully.
|
| They may go back to re-read, or look at an earlier image
| or figure in the text, or otherwise. Sometimes people
| zone out for a minute and find they 'read' with their
| eyes but didn't actually take in the content. That
| requires going back.
|
| For me, scrolling up to re-read is a basic use case of a
| web page. If it can't do that properly, it has failed.
| SetTheorist wrote:
| 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".
| zimzam wrote:
| This is only true if you assume users always scroll down
| while reading and the only reason they scroll up is to find
| the header... but many of us scroll up and down while reading
| and find the re-appearance of the header to interfere with
| our goal of reading the content. So there is a clear downside
| for us "up and down" readers.
|
| I don't know what portion of users we are though, I'm glad to
| see I'm not the only one!
| carlosjobim wrote:
| It's awful for the user. There is no reason why scrolling up
| should perform any other action then scrolling up the
| content. Zero benefit for anybody involved.
| orthoxerox wrote:
| It might be useful if you wait until the user has scrolled
| more than 20% of the viewport and not pop it out immediately.
| toss1 wrote:
| >>without any real downside
|
| Wow, impressive blindness!
|
| Seriously, have you ever used one? Because most people do not
| read monotonically downwards. We often scroll back to see
| something in a previous sentence referred to in the spot we
| are reading. So we want to go back one or two lines. Bot
| _NOOOOooo_ , the header pops up, covers 1/4 of the screen, so
| now we have to scroll that much more, pushing off the screen
| the other text we hoped to keep on the screen, and it might
| even go through a few adjustments. So, now, what was a non-
| event less distracting than turning the page in a book or
| magazine has now become a fully distracting scroll-fest.
|
| Is that clear enough for you?
|
| >>This is literally the best ux pattern you can have.
|
| NOT EVEN CLOSE. The best User Experience pattern is to give
| the reader what they asked for _AND NOTHING MORE_. Nothing
| more for you, nothing more for your advertisers, and nothing
| more for them. We click to read the content, LET US READ the
| content, ALL the content, and NOTHING BUT the content. We 'll
| even understand if some proper _STATIC_ adverts are placed in
| the content, and we might even click thru if you 've shown us
| something relevant and interesting
|
| But as soon as you start putting motion and other distraction
| in the adverts, my priority becomes NOT reading the advert,
| but figuring out how to get it out of my face. And if by some
| chance I remember it, it is filed among "companies to avoid".
|
| Why does it seem everyone who deals with advertising, from
| the execs down to the programmers, so stupidly thinks only of
| the first-order effects -- "Grab Their Attention!" -- and not
| the second-order effects, where being so offensive --
| surprise! -- offends people...
| gibspaulding wrote:
| This only really works easily on desktop and requires a click,
| but is very satisfying to use:
|
| https://alisdair.mcdiarmid.org/kill-sticky-headers/
| m463 wrote:
| same thing intersects with ios safari when it hides top and
| bottom tool bars, hate that too.
|
| and with the website doing the same thing, it's a mess.
| kreyenborgi wrote:
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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.
| toss1 wrote:
| Even on mobile, where I most frequently encounter it, it
| really stinks. I don't know where you found any personality
| who actually likes it, outside of your own head.
|
| If you really _must_ show me the content of the header
| because in your judgement I can _NOT_ be left alone to read
| the article I opened instead of your critical header info,
| show me first and once, and let me access it again off the
| hamburger menu if it 's that damn important.
|
| If you know so much about how people actually use the web,
| you would also know that they almost NEVER actually see or
| read what is in those damn drop-down or pop-up
| headers/footers.
|
| Dead serious, you could monitor me, and 10sec after I dealt
| with one of those headers, offer me a million dollars to
| tell you what was in it, and if I didn't you'd shoot me,
| you'd shoot me 999 times out of 1000. I may be a bit better
| self-trained for ad-blindness than many, but I know I'm
| nowhere near unique.
|
| Whoever is selling them to the advertisers is defrauding
| them.
|
| >>next time i build a site, i'll be sure to get your
| opinions first.
|
| Seriously, with that attitude, it is obvious you think you
| are so much better than every reader that you do not need
| to check their opinion. And it is even more obvious the
| opinion that needs to be held in check is yours.
| gopher_space wrote:
| This kind of malaise is why everything feels mobile-only
| now.
| kreyenborgi wrote:
| > 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.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| ZeroHedge is one of the worst offenders for this.
| jeff_tyrrill wrote:
| I feel like the scroll fade fad is misunderstanding layered on
| bugs, turtles all the way down.
|
| Once upon a time, developers implemented lazy loading of images,
| to save bandwidth. However, some developers implemented it
| poorly, waiting until the moment an image is scrolled on-screen
| to even start loading it, leading to a visible blip as you
| scroll.
|
| (The better way would be to load an additional pageful of images
| beyond the current scroll view, which would provide enough time
| to load before scrolling into view at least most of the time.
| However, this doesn't _maximally_ save bandwidth and some
| developers don 't make good tradeoffs between diminishing returns
| on saving bandwidth vs. visibly degraded UX.)
|
| Then, designers saw the blip-into-view effect, thought it was an
| intentional visual effect (rather than an artifact of poorly
| implemented lazy loading), but thought, oh, I'll fix it so it
| looks nice, with fading.
|
| And here we are with a dumb visual fad originating from a bug
| without realizing it was a bug.
| tylervigen wrote:
| ...is that really the story? It feels like these are two
| related, but different things.
| jeff_tyrrill wrote:
| I haven't dug into the history to see if this is really how
| it happened. I'd actually feel better if it _wasn 't_ true
| but it's the thought that occurred to me when I noticed the
| scroll fade effect becoming popular.
| saghm wrote:
| I'm not sure it's feasible to prove or disprove how this
| design trend started. I wouldn't be shocked if it was true,
| but I also wouldn't be shocked if it wasn't. I'd be more
| surprised if we ever found out for sure one way or another
| than about what the truth is.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| What sucks with scroll fade is when it fades slower than one can
| read or scroll.
|
| Fading the entire content very fast, so fast that it's barely
| perceptible is actually better on the eyes.
|
| Blinking hurts. Fast changing contrast hurts. The fade is a
| natural effect I use everywhere almost. My eyes never complained,
| rather are grateful for the small effort it takes to get right
| wtallis wrote:
| The motion of the scrolling already ensures that the new
| content is revealed gradually. There's no need for a fade-in
| animation on top of that. It's just punishing the user for
| scrolling too fast.
| Animats wrote:
| This terrible idea is a parody of a good idea from game design -
| LOD cross-fade. When a distant object changes from a low level of
| detail representation to a higher one, or vice versa, the change
| is best done as a cross fade. The old one fades out to
| transparent, the new one fades in from transparent.
|
| This is done to hide the change, not as a creative effect. The
| human visual system is very sensitive to fast changes. But below
| half a second, smooth changes are not too noticeable. With this
| trick, plus a slight amount of distance haze, you can get away
| with quite low detail distant models. That's part of how GTA V
| does those long vistas efficiently.
|
| Here's a long drive around the GTA V world.[1] Watch how
| background objects change. Many distant background objects start
| out with very low detail. Watch power line towers, for example,
| which are very low detail until about 100m range. The cross-fade
| to a better model takes about a half second. Active players don't
| notice.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws_yYxUaWRE
| wtallis wrote:
| It works for games because the fade-in of distant objects
| happens long before the object in question becomes the focus of
| the user's attention. It cannot work well for scrolling a web
| page because getting to the new content is the entire reason
| the user is scrolling the page, so they're going to be looking
| right at it (and trying to read it) during the fade.
| MDCore wrote:
| I couldn't do the mandatory onboarding training at a job once
| because the course web app had heavy scroll fade, and I got
| nauseous after a few minutes. I tried every few hours for weeks.
| Eventually I said I couldn't do it. They had to print it out to
| pdf for me, and gave me a pass on the courses that were dependent
| on animation to work.
| thorncorona wrote:
| My favorite part of the iPhone 17 pro / ios26 combo is that it
| lags on any and everything that remotely touches the GPU like
| this website.
| thenthenthen wrote:
| No stutter on iPhone 12 18.5
| thorncorona wrote:
| Next phone will be an android at this rate if Apple can't
| solve this garbage
| slopinthebag wrote:
| As always with this stuff, it's only bad when you notice it. When
| it's done right you just think "That was a nicely designed page".
| delbronski wrote:
| Why 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!
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| 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.
| delbronski wrote:
| 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.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| 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)
| delbronski wrote:
| 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?
| Boulos00191 wrote:
| good read. thanks for sharing
| jjcm wrote:
| There's a very simple fix I typically do when it comes to
| animations: animationCount = 0
| animateElement(el) { el.animate({duration:
| BASE_DURATION / animationCount}) animationCount++
| }
|
| (formula exagerated for simplicity)
|
| Essentially, for any animation that gets repeated, it should
| decrease in duration over time. This makes things impactful when
| they're first being displayed, but they very quickly approach an
| extremely minimal state, making things feel snappy.
| rgbjoy wrote:
| This is why I chose a fade-in reveal https://www.rgbjoy.com/
| Illniyar wrote:
| Looking at the main site, seems like it's branded as a "no AI
| frontend consultant".
|
| First time I'm seeing a "no AI" used to differentiate a work for
| hire.
|
| Can't say this wasn't obviously coming. Boutique hand-coded
| consultancies/software-houses are probably going to spring up a
| lot.
| quchen wrote:
| I used to use WikiTok [1] on my phone at times, but now they've
| introduced >>words appear word by word<< on the mobile version.
| Baffles me, why one would hide and gradually reveal any sort of
| content. It's nauseating!
|
| [1]: https://www.wikitok.io/
| LocalH wrote:
| The HTML of that last paragraph sent me lmao
| darkteflon wrote:
| Oh yeah. Fucking hate this. Apple does it with their product
| pages. You have to swipe like crazy and it's impossible to move
| past their pictures / animations to get to the next text block
| until they've decided that you've seen enough. Another one of
| those "this can't have actually been used by anyone at Apple"
| things they seem to do so well recently.
| Shuyusyz60 wrote:
| good read. thanks for sharing
| bartread wrote:
| I mean, fine, I don't love scrollfade either, and I realise this
| site is trying to prove a point but, FFS, most of the problems
| can be solved by forcing the scroll fade to complete in 100 -
| 300ms as opposed to some glacially slow multi-second pace.
|
| Like I say, I don't love it, but when we create sites we all have
| control over animation durations and there's enough UX guidance
| around response times to easily avoid it completely sucking.
|
| So the real problems isn't scrollfade, it's that - in the face of
| overwhelming data - it's both mandated and implemented poorly by
| people with no taste.
|
| If you're going to implement any animation of any kind at least
| do us all the bare minimum courtesy and take 5 minutes to do some
| research into what works and what doesn't first.
| realaliarain74 wrote:
| counterpoint: this assumes everyone has the same constraints. not
| always true
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