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Comment by mrandre | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

> 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".

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??

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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. ;)

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

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.

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).

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