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Comment by dmitrybrant | Hacker News Reader

Off topic, sorry, but: Why do web designers think that they can provide a better scrolling experience than the default system behavior that the user expects in every other interaction?

By the way, hijacking scrolling behavior often breaks other things, such as searching for text in a page. Go ahead, try it, search for a term in that article.

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I hate scrolljacking too, but to answer your question, overriding the default system behavior in general isn't about providing a better experience but rather a more consistent (from the POV of the designer) experience.

The downside of course is that it looks less consistent with other apps and webpages from the user POV.

Yea, it's atrocious on this article – makes it unreadable tbh as scrolling muscle memory is completely messed up.

The sexier the blogpost, the less believable it is for me. Make this page in Times New Roman or Computer Modern typeface, preferably in a PDF format, and I am automatically convinced :-). It just means that they have better things to do than aesthetics!

I was about to say that it's quite smooth for me on Safari - then I searched for something as per your suggestion and the whole page was vertically offset and effectively broken... oh dear.

Edit: The scroll hijacking makes more sense in the context of the home page, which actually uses it to reasonable effect (not endorsing the technique, but the home page is attractive at least).

I think the mistake was leaving it on for heavy content pages like the one linked where it adds very little but breaks other basic behaviour.

It's quite smooth with a trackpad. With a mouse scroll wheel, it's basically non-functional.

I just wanted to add that scrolling works normal on mobile. Including searching. It's only loading a bit too long.

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