The only interesting idea I can write out is that the author says that knowing the length/size of an article/book is intrinsically good. I do wonder if that is necessarily true.
Maybe one can argue that knowing the length of a written word has resulted in less people engaging?
It's not supposed to explore anything, be amusing, or whatever.
It's just a rant about a certain specific UI trend.
>The only interesting idea I can write out is that the author says that knowing the length/size of an article/book is intrinsically good
That's not "the only interesting idea", in the sense that there were supposed to be more but are missing, or they are there but are not interesting.
It is literally the one and only idea the author wanted to convey with this post. They didn't set out to explore some vast expanse of UI design ideas. Just to write a rant about the lack of scrollbars/indication of position.
>I do wonder if that is necessarily true.
Yes it is.
>Maybe one can argue that knowing the length of a written word has resulted in less people engaging?
That's a problem for the content creator, not for the users...
Maybe, but valuing "engagement" over pleasing customers is a big part of what's wrong with a lot of software today.
Boy, doesn't that just have the distinctive ring of an uncomfortable truth... at least for some of these cases.
I offer in counterpoint that engagement-focused sites have probably already determined that their content is "less engaging" if it's long enough for a scrollbar to appear at all. If it wasn't for the literal need to stuff 100%+ of the screen with ads, there'd probably be a lot of modern engagement-focused websites doing everything they can to fit on a single screen without scrolling at all.
The scrollbar should be sacred. Otherwise everything will wind up with sliding-window advertisements.
Providers who want to maximize "engagement" do not care.
This is known as "spam".