Show HN: Scrollorama
johnpolacek.github.com
johnpolacek.github.com
I feel like the popularity of this effect is to some extent a symptom of our society's constant information overload, and the attendant inability to slow down and focus, which then compels sites to compete for our attention with increasingly flashy presentations. Of course, to a much larger extent, it's probably due to cargo-cult website design.
Personally, I always hated the overdone Flash stuff as well. And the scrolly stuff can get out of hand, that's for sure, but sometimes it is really cool. Ben The Bodyguard is a good example.
If anything, I think it could be better used more subtly. For example, a steampunk site that has cogs and gears that rotate when you scroll.
But for a full on website, it makes it incredibly hard to scroll and scan, because nothing's fixed into position. It's telling that on the demo site, the actual content at the bottom has no animated elements.
Not to put it down or anything, of course. I think the worst example I've seen is the SWTOR page (can't find the link anywhere). It feels like it was done just because it's trendy.
For some reason that sentence reminded me of the 80s.
Reasons:
1) I use a mouse with a scroll wheel and the default setting is to scroll three lines at once, and I use the scroll wheel a lot. None of the scrolling effects ever look good for me, and if it's a site which depends on the scroll effect to communicate (a few marketing sites have done this) then I don't get the message.
2) When I use keyboard shortcuts (which I do quite frequently buy I realise most users don't), I just hit page up and page down. I see none of the effects.
To me, this is as bad as hover effects on tablets. I just can't see how it helps to improve user experience or accessibility. Sure, sometimes that isn't the desire but even in the case of those marketing sites I'm fairly sure the marketing men behind it would be appalled to find out some of their target audience was communicated to poorly. Though the worst thing is those same people on other sites then disable some key presses and default keyboard short-cuts to make sure there is no choice but to go through the bad UX to be communicated to.
What worries me when I see these things so high up on HN is that I fear others think this stuff is good.
Is that the case? Is it just me who prefers the idea of the client determining how to render something and not putting such stuff on the websites we create, or to put accessibility to all pretty high up?
By no means is this meant to dissuade using Scrollorama, but for very long pages (like the demo), I tend to flick the trackpad up to scroll through and stop it when I see the content I'd like. However, I find it's hard to follow the sections because they're almost in a constant state of transition. I'd love to see this used on a site with lots of dummy content, since I assume if it's padded with text or photographs, it will flow much better.
This could be really cool on a portfolio site!
EDIT: It can in fact cover parts of the main menu in 9.01 just as in version 8.
http://johnpolacek.github.com/scrolldeck.js
To fix the jerkiness, I could animate the css props but that would probably cause quite a performance hit. If anyone wants to fork it and make improvements, please feel free!
(I'm not sure what the desired behaviour is.)
It's 100% reproducible with my setup: Firefox 9.0.1 on Ubuntu 10.04 (x86_64) and Fglrx 8.920 (Catalyst 11.11, if I remember correctly). Load the page then scroll down a bit: the whole X session blows up.
Anyone else experiencing this?
Everything else works though.
It's all good in Chrome 16.0.912.63 on the above machine though.
edit: also, hm, i seem to be missing any effect (if there is one) on the parent post's link
Overriding the way scroll works feels like a horrible thing to do, especially if it alters the nature of scroll (as those 'infinite scrolling' pages do), but even if it just results in extra animation that is still too much of a surprise. Scrolling should be a surprise-less action, just like clicking a link, IMO.