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Comment by schrototo | Hacker News Reader

This is horrible. Why can't I scroll? Why do I have to use the sidebar to go through the sections? Why do I have to click the tiny arrow thing at the bottom to get to the next page?

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Hi! Andre Behrens, creator of the app here.

You can't scroll because I happen to think scrolling for reading is broken. Scrolling is a mechanism for micro-managing the position of content at a pixel level. As a creative producer, when I'm producing creative, I like this a lot. When I'm reading, I find it borderline exhausting; Scroll, re find position, think about when it's time to scroll again, do so, re find position. Did I scroll to far? So Skimmer uses pages whenever it can. You just activate "next", and there's more to read. "Next." "Next." "Next."

This wouldn't work at all for editing a photo. But if you haven't tried it for reading longform content, you really ought to try it.

Of course, if you really do like the classic web scrolling approach, you can just use nytimes.com, and neither I, nor anyone else at the Times would complain.

I scroll with ease through large wads of text using a simple gesture on the touchpad. I find it much more important that a long piece of text is broken up by scannable subheaders, than that it designed to avoid scrolling.

> You can't scroll because I happen to think scrolling for reading is broken.

You can't be serious. This is one of the foremost expectations in the user experience, fortified by almost two decades of websites that have done it this way.

Scrolling is cool, and I advocate it all the time, but not for longform content.

I wouldn't call news stories "long form content".

Hi Andre. I actually really like the skimmer - been using it for some time with Chrome. After reading your take on scrolling - I have to agree my brain prefers not to deal with the finding and readjusting part of having to scroll through long content. It is just easier to hit one forward and one backward key to find everything on the page.

Scrolling is vastly preferred by most because the scroll wheel is right under your fingers at all times.

Most people have never used the scroll wheel. They move their mouse to the down arrow on scroll bar and click.

I wonder how true this is, with the scroll wheel having been around for the last ten years or so.

Nevertheless, if these folks do exist, they're in for a sore surprise if they upgrade to Lion.

Well considering that Macs are still a small percentage of PCs and that Macs don't have scroll wheels I don't think most people will notice.

Mac(Book)s (and Macs with the magic apple mouse) have two finger scroll which is the same thing, but isn't supported (but should be, please!) on say the headline box in the Skimmer "Spread" layout.

They are almost the same thing. They perform the same function but because they are physical invisible they are even less likely to be used by an average computer user.

I have some anecdotal evidence on the contrary. My wife is a very casual computer user, but uses two-finger scroll all the time. My sister-in-law is very similar - not a computer person, but has an Apple laptop and uses two-finger scroll. Also, Apple mice support scrolling[1], and almost any third-party mouse you buy will have a scroll button as well. Scrolling with a mouse or trackpad seems like an integral part of user interaction.

[1] http://store.apple.com/us/product/MB829LL/A?fnode=MTY1NDA1Mg...

And every Mac user I know is well aware that for the web, <space> scrolls a page forward, <shift-space> a page back. So still no good argument for on-page controls.

Counterpoint: I didn't find out about shift-space until just now.

Counter-counterpoint: I didn't know you until just now :)

Wooah! Citation please??

Just wanted to let you know that I don't think you're crazy, and I really like the design of your app. Most people are so used to scrolling that to see it unused probably upsets them. And the scroll wheel is easy to use with your finger, but not so much with your eyes to re-adjust. Perhaps you could take advantage of the scroll wheel and when a user scrolls with it, you could flip to the next page or section?

It's a possibility.

It's more than that. It's a usability upgrade, EASY to implement. The same for the "Page up" and "Page down" keys.

How hard is it to bind those keys to the "next page" event that is fired by the little arrow? (haven't checked the code, but I assume something like that going on).

You really should A/B test it against engagement of new users (page views, time on site, etc).

I can't tell you specifics, other than that Skimmer has longer sessions per visit than the rest of the site, and more page views per user.

That might be true, but it does not negate what he is saying. I really like Skimmer,especially compared to the regular site, however I do miss scrolling with my wheel. The point is to A/B test within Skimmer.

I'm eager to check this out, but I cannot load it; it hangs on my iPhone 3GS and causes Safari to exit.

I prefer this approach, too. However I would still like to be able to use the scroll wheel to navigate pages when not on a mobile device. Scrolling up/down to move the pages left/right would be ridiculous, though. It would have to be set up to let pages flow up/down. Another problem on a desktop browser (and another reason to have pages flow up/down) is that the forward/back buttons don't behave as expected.

Bookmarking a page is also broken.

Bookmarking a page should work. If it isn't, that's a bug. You can bookmark sections and articles quite Well. It's a little hairy if the article gets a little old, but a solution is in the works.

There are some usability concerns with your implementation.

1) A 24x20 arrow is a tiny target compared to using a scroll wheel anywhere on the page. Scroll bars are also an infinitely wide target when the window is maximized. Fitts' Law and all that.

2) Scrolling requires a lower cognitive load on the user because they don't have to make a decision about turning a page and having everything they're looking at vanish. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/scrolling-attention.html

3) This one is just a bug. I had to reload Skimmer because the first time it came up the pages would not turn. The animation would play, then it would jump back to the first page. Not all the little article squares were loaded, so that may have had something to do with it. Opera 11.50 on Vista with 80% zoom.

4) Not scrolling, but navigation-related. The site doesn't play nicely with my back button. I had to click the close button in the upper left corner of the screen instead of clicking the back button. Confusing.

With your #1, for many people the time to target is instantaneous with a scroll wheel or trackpad. They just scroll without having to search for a target. The time to target is essentially zero, so any sort of control on the page will inevitably be slower.

I've never thought about this before but it actually makes a lot of sense. I can think of countless times that I've highlighted a piece of text while reading an article in a browser just to use as a bookmark while scrolling around.

Thanks for all the responses on this thread. I've found it incredibly interesting.

There has been some excellent feedback on this topic already. I just want to point out a distinction that has been glossed over - OSX laptop users have a very different scrolling experience than Windows users (laptops or desktop). The two finger scroll method is very pleasant, and highly accurate. I don't ever have to re-find content while scrolling, because of how tactile and accurate the feedback is.

As interfaces get better, I believe the vertical scroll method will be preferred, because it allows the user to quickly skim, jump ahead, or reference previous content, within the same context.

To be fair, I had forgotten how different scrolling is with a traditional mouse. This design trade off (arrow keys and next buttons) is probably excellent for windows and traditional mouse users.

There's a button on every keyboard to do exactly and exclusively that: Page Down. And it even works with the standard scrollbars.

Yet people still prefer to scroll. Think about that.

Hey Andre,

I love the implementation of the app and think the UI is very well thought out. I'm sure you already know this, but people love to criticize to feel important. Skimming the concerned replies, almost all are pedantic usability tradeoffs I'm sure you considered. So just wanted to say good job, dude.

> Scrolling is a mechanism for micro-managing the position of content at a pixel level

No. You can make scrolling mapping any operations you want. E.g. next article.

It seems like the "back" button isn't working. At least not in my Chrome in Ubuntu.

Looks like a backbonejs "router" could help with the issue. ;)

Up/down arrow keys to scroll sections (vertical), left/right to scroll section pages (horizontal). I think it is brilliant.

Nice! But it would be nice if they could please make it work with the swipe left/right on the macbook pro... that would be brilliant.

I haven't looked into this, but it's definitely a possibility, provided the events are sane.

I think it is handled the same as the horizontal scroll on normal mice. Here is a relevant stack overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2842041/jquery-horizontal...

Cool. Consider it considered. :)

Hurray!!

Try these shortcuts

Arrow keys - As it is :)

Spacebar - Scroll down

J - Go down the sections

K - Go up the sections

F - Hide sidebar

R - Refresh

T - Top News

Btw this is what the chrome webstore App is, why is everyone shocked!?? http://www.nytimes.com/chrome/

Unrelated: I think every web application should use keyboard shortcuts. This is possibly my favorite gmail feature. I can pretty much do whatever I want (save Logout and Attach File) using my keyboard.

Counter point: I configured my browser (Opera) to heavily use single-letter shortcuts, such as Q/E to navigate to next/prev tabs, W/S to scroll up and down, T to open new tabs, etc. This and mouse gestures were a great improvement in my browsing experience.

Things get horribly broken with pages that have their own shortcuts too. For example, when I'm quickly pressing E (next tab) to see all my tabs and happen to find an open Gmail tab, it'll archive the message displayed, no questions asked.

Thankfully Gmail allows the user to disable such shortcuts, and there's always the "undo" button, but I'm not willing to hunt this option in every single website I visit.

I have the NYT page open right next to this one, and I get stuck whenever I come across it because none of my shortcuts work there.

I think individual websites shouldn't be able to dictate what I can or cannot do with my browser. It should be a browser option to ignore such shortcuts, but while that doesn't happen, be mindful of users like me.

I disagree, I think it is the browser's job to get out of the way as much as possible. That the browser provides you shortcuts shows that it thinks of itself as being more important than the websites it renders (Opera knows Web APIs and chose to implement a feature that butts heads with one because it's rarely used).

The browser is more important than the websites it renders, up to where preferences are concerned. Would you like websites to override your pop-up blocking preferences?

No, but that's a security preference, I don't want the browser overriding well-known Javascript APIs. Here's another example: Firefox for Android uses a swipe to the left to get to your tabs and a swipe to your right to get to favorites/navigation controls. This means that any site that uses swipe gestures for UI are broken. Google+ doesn't work on Firefox for Android for this reason. To me this is browser fail, not website fail.

Boppreh said he or she configured Opera to use those keys, are you suggesting that a browser ignore user configuration to better "get out of their way?".

If so, I strongly disagree with you. But I would agree that a browser's default configuration should be as unobtrusive as possible --but when configured it should meekly obey and not let websites act against your expressed will.

No, I'm suggesting that Opera shouldn't offer options that overwrite web APIs.

vim keybindings, love it!

I hated it until I figured out you can use arrow keys. Now I love it.

Same here. From horrible to fantastic. Really liked it.

Agreed. More: Back/Forward doesn't work; When you're in the first page of the first article of a section, the 'back' arrow sits there but doesn't do anything (if you've been browsing backwards, you might not know you're in the first article).

And why is it slow as hell? It reminds me of the days when all sites where converted to Flash.

Agreed. I love the layout and the UX, but it's just not fast enough.

I don't know, maybe with a touchscreen you can move it without the buttons.

From the layout selection, choose the one called "Stack".

isn't this a year old? is there something new to the skimmer?

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