Why is spacebar broken on some of the websites? | Hacker News Reader

Why is spacebar broken on some of the websites?

7 pointsankit843 comments

Yes, I still use spacebar to scroll, and feel frustrated when on some websites it is broken. Why is that?

* Is it responsive website design in CSS?

(i use FF20)

Because some people don't use the spacebar for themselves, or use a browser that doesn't support spacebar page-down scrolling, and think shortcuts are smart. For them it's OK to experiment and remap a key to some feature, even though only them are aware of it, and most other people won't see it and won't use it, or will get bitten as you are.

Tumblr is a a particular nest of this kind of websites.

That's unfortunate, and funny at the same time. Internet is also a playground, a sand box, a place to learn.

Best you can do is contact them, and teach them a polite UX lesson.

probably:

    if (event.type === 'keypress') {
        event.preventDefault();
        doSomethingElse();   
    }

I don't think the author is talking about the spacebar being disabled entirely, at least that hasn't been my experience. What I've observed is that the space bar fails to act as a complete page-down - it only moves the page by lines.

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