Don't reinvent the scrollbar
bbrks.me
bbrks.me
> One alternative is to ignore iOS and OS X users. But that’s not very nice. There are many scrolling libraries available that you can use, such as NiceScroll.
> Or you can just make your own indicator like the one seen at the very start of the article. Just don’t use a horizontal indicator for vertical progression :)
No! Do not do this. Just stop. Stop reinventing and reimplementing the scrollbar.
Going out of your way as a content author to correct for the user interface quirks of the reader's preferred reading environment seems extraordinary and unnecessary.
Presumably a non-trivial number of iOS and OS X users actually like the fact that scrollbars are hidden from view while reading and it may have been a factor (a small one, admittedly) in their decision process.
I agree with the OP in large measure.
I would actually say that it's outright user hostile to do this sort of garbage.
Thankfully there's still a setting to always show scrollbars. For now.
I'm nevertheless of the point of view that the content author should not fuss with these specific particulars, leaving them instead to the discretion of the designers of the reading environment itself. The consumer of the content can then weigh the design of those elements when selecting a preferred reading environment.
In principle I agree with you. In this case apple's decision causes actual problems with content. Putting stuff in a scrollable iframe, or overflow scroll pane now involves carefully instructing people on how to scroll it. Or you force your own custom scrollbars. Or just not have scrollable panes-- you could argue that is a good thing, but sometimes they are unavoidable. Like, for instance, here on HN if someone happens to post an extremely long code segment.
on an ipad use two fingers to scroll it.
Do you get my point? Is the above a problem for HN or for Apple or for the User to puzzle out?
On my PC, I of course do see a scrollbar. In fact, I probably would not at first even realize that I need to instruct viewers on other platforms to interact with the content in any unusual manner. But once aware of it, given the capability to design my content differently to avoid the situation described, I would go with that. Failing that option, I would probably just put instructions in as you've done here.
I would fairly steadfastly refuse to implement my own scrollbar functionality because I'd likely fail to implement that in a manner all users on all devices would understand intuitively.
For the majority of scenarios, the browsers' default behavior will match the users' expectations and they will be able to consume the content I've created in the fashion with which they are accustomed.
As an aside, this conversation reminds me that legacy versions of IE (and maybe current versions; I've not checked) allowed one to affect the appearance of the browser's scrollbar through CSS.
In Firefox, there's a big scroll bar. This scroll bar consumes more visual space than the content it scrolls. That's an absurdity.
Scrollbars are a legacy UI element, a throwback to an era before scrolling mice and trackpads. You nicely illustrated a problem, but your proposed solution makes no sense on modern computers with dedicated scrolling gestures.
I think there's disagreement about that here, which in a manner of speaking, is behind the mixed opinions expressed in this thread.
I for one do not seek a browser without a scrollbar even though my mouse has a scroll-wheel. Making very large adjustments to my scroll position using the wheel is annoying: either I spin the wheel repetitively or I click the wheel and enter a scroll mode where the pointer's distance from a start point adjusts a velocity of scroll that continues until I click again. Both are much more fussy than just picking the scrollbar tack up and dragging it to the point I want to reach.
I don't even like that in IE 10 (Metro) the scrollbar disappears on my Surface Pro with its touch screen. Luckily for me, IE 10 (desktop) retains the scrollbar.
With a scroll wheel, both fine and gross movements are more difficult. The scroll wheel has a fixed set of positions, and is optimized for scrolling a line or two at a time. I also have never liked the modal "scroll mode" that you describe.
With a magic mouse or scrolling trackpad, you get a much larger surface area available for scrolling, and there are more gradations. Inertia scrolling also makes it easy to scroll to the bottom or top of documents quickly: you can quickly "flick" to get to the bottom or top, which feels pretty natural.
As a result, I find I interact with the scroll bar a lot less on my MacBook Air than I do on my scroll-wheel equipped desktop. I'm not sure what the situation is like on Windows though.
Us poor Windows users have to hike few miles, find the cursor, lift and carry it on the back for a mile to get it to where we want it to, and then place it there. After all that, the page moves an inch.
Apple certainly took it upon themselves to cause the problem. What's your proposed solution?
Maybe the solution is a prompt for a decision the first time OSX starts up, at the same time as the user is creating their account?
EDIT: Scrollbars are inside viewport, meaning they're effectively part of my document, and I'd like to have a say how they look like, the same as form elements.
I agree because I assume the scrollbar would retain its functionality. By styling it, I don't lose, for example, individual adjustment buttons at each extreme, drag to scroll, and paging by clicking the empty space on a Windows PC.
On the other hand, if I style it, I'd probably want to do so in a context-sensitive manner, applying a specific look for mouse-enabled contexts and another for touch-enabled contexts. And then I end up have to make the same decisions Apple and Microsoft have had to. :)
Thankfully you can make scroll bars persistent in System Preferences.
It's just simply a bad decision. There shouldn't be a preference, it should just be on by default, end of story. It only makes sense on iPads.
The fact that it's auto-hide by default means that most mac owners will just simply have their machines set to auto-hide the scrollbar, and very likely have no idea that a setting exists- Then blame it all on the content owners for making a bad/hard to use site. (especially if they decide they want a scrollable pane with OS specific scrollbars on it)
To expand a little bit, even something as seemingly arbitrary, like driving on the right or left side of the road, is not a matter of preference. If you pick the wrong one in a certain country, you can equally get yourself killed as with your other more obviously wrong "preferences". There is value in having everything work in a standard way.
You missed my point. Just invoking the word "preference" is a weak argument. You need something more like an actual argument. With evidence and logic.
All recent (less than 3 years) Apple devices are sold either as touch devices or with touch enabled peripherals. Gestural interaction is the default paradigm of interaction on iOS/OS X (this is also true of Android devices). These users are largely used to this behavior, which can be changed if there is a desire to do so. This behavior does not affect users of other systems that don't support gestural interaction. There is no need therefore to cater specifically for Apple (or other) users as they, through daily interaction with their device, will intuit what to do. It puzzles me why the scrollbar still exists as an interaction device elsewhere. I really had to think about where and how they appear because I am so used to them simply not being there.
Perhaps you are looking at them in the wrong way. Where once the scrollbar was used for scrolling, it is now used to indicate the position the reader has reached on a page.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6247596
though, if you are on a mac, I can understand if you missed that whole post.
Watch a child use touch-based interface. It's enlightening. They intuit the required interaction with consummate ease. Having observed how individuals still use scroll bars by tapping on the arrows and not realising that it's quicker to grab the bar, to me illustrates that using and relying on scroll bars is as much a learned behaviour, and a less intuitive one at that.
I think a more important question is, what kind of design are you using that people can not instinctually figure out that they need to scroll? If your site needs to be scrolled horizontally (and its not painfully obvious that that's the case) it's a bad design. And if your user can not figure out that they need to scroll vertically, the are an idiot, or it's a truly bad design. In the former case, stop catering to the stupidest 5% of the population. Just like with people who use IE 7 in 2013, you'll never be able to properly serve them. And if its because of your design, redesign the damn site rather then pushing your preference onto the user.
If anything that is not obviously harmful can be reduced to mere "preference" then what is the point of hiring designers? just deliver raw html code and a textfield for users to write in their own css, right?
Of course, I admit this is reducing the argument to absurdity, but so is calling my position "fascism".
In truth, as product designers we make all kinds of decisions on behalf of our users. We use a system of judgement to rank the "goodness" and the "badness" of those decisions based on whether they make our user's lives easier or harder. (or make us more or less money, depending on your ethos)
In what way does hiding the scrollbar improve anyone's lives? In the cases where it demonstrably makes user's lives harder, explain why that doesn't matter?
1. this, and other "preferences" are not arbitrary or meaningless. They have real consequences (even if the only real consequence is minor annoyance)
2. the presentation of too many choices is in fact, a real and well documented anti-pattern in UI-design. Too many choices is cognitive overload. Programmers like choices. programmers like power. but ordinary mortals don't care what colour their window title bars are, as long as the colour doesn't get in the way of their job.
3. Given the above, it is the UI designer's responsibility to be very opinionated about what the defaults of a system should be, and what should be configurable as a choice. (the fewer choices the better, generally, from a design perspective.)
4. as a corollary to that, I am aware that "some people" are uncomfortable about Apple's lack of configuration options. Those people are not designers, and should not ever be put in the position of designing a UI. Or you end up with a monstrosity like the desktop linux ecosystem. It's essentially an argument from ignorance of the research.
That's a belief. I don't see any argument here. Why is it a mistake?
Perhaps modern users, not tied to a legacy of scrollbars, could not care less about them? Perhaps 95% of users (with the exception of hackers) not even use them or notice them when they are there?
>Those people are not designers, and should not ever be put in the position of designing a UI.
Whereas you are? And we should take your opinion on scrollbars over Apple designer's one, because?
Pros:
Looks tidier sometimes
Causes frustration and confusion.
> Whereas you are?
yes
> And we should take your opinion on scrollbars over Apple designer's one, because?
because I am right and Apple is wrong.
On top of that, the reaction to my position is so weird. Oh Zen, if you had your way we would be FORCED by your tyrannical fascist ways to look at ugly scrollbars ALL the time instead of just some of the time. :(
A, ok then. Case closed.
Nearly every time I see someone talking about "design" in the realm of user interfaces, or about making software "beautiful", they're invariably attempting to use concepts applicable to media intended for the presentation of information to a viewer in the context of an interface intended to facilitate dynamic interaction between a functional tool and the user, and it always seems to make the software more limited, less productive, and more frustrating to use.
A user interface is about exposing software functionality and enabling users to maximize their efficient use of their tools. Optimizing a UI to look good in a screenshot means not optimizing the UI to provide efficient access to the functionality of the application, and not optimizing the flexibility of the application for users to adapt it to their own priorities and work styles.
This trend of attempting to exercise top-down control over user experience needs to end, and software developers need to start paying attention to what users are actually trying to do with the products they build, instead of deferring to inappropriately-applied theoretical models offered by visual designers.
If you have found a "Designer" who is overly concerned with how it looks and not so much how it works, the conclusion to reach is that you have found a bad designer, not that all "designers" are concerned only with aesthetics.
People who call themselves "designers" in this context, and at the present moment, generally are prioritizing screenshot aesthetics over functional utility, and we're getting worse software because of it.
Except, that in the case of the designers, since the person giving the interview also does not know what design actually entails, they get hired.
The situation has led to actual designers inventing a new title to give themselves "UX", which I predict will also quickly get watered down to mean basically nothing.
It's kind of really sad. and frustrating.
Another problem is a real designer, calling themselves a designer, gets hired by an organisation that has the wrong idea about what a designer does, and so gets pigeonholed out of any important decision making processes, and only is allowed to be involved at the very end of the process.
A very good designer can get around this, but they often don't have much power in the organisation to do anything about this pigeonholing.
On the other hand, the presence of this option causes confusion and frustration, and, one could argue, significant economic harm as a result of the confusion and frustration.
Why is your preference (which you have not, and possibly cannot explain) more important than the confusion and frustration of everyone else?
Instead of arguing about your clear authoritarian tendencies, here is my main reasons why I think hiding scroll bars is a good idea:
1. Information Overload: You should only show user information when they need it. Users need to know how much of the document is remaining, or where they are currently located, when they are scrolling. If they need the data, they are but a touch away from it.
2. Scroll Bars create anxiety in users who are actually reading your website. If you are under slight time pressure, as most of us are at all times, you will concentrate on your own progress through the page, rather then engaging with the content.
3. Shifting: Even on operating systems where it is the convention to always show the scroll bar, the scroll bar still disappears when there is no scrollable content. Many, websites are centered, and they have a tendency to shift the center of the website by the width of the website when the scrollbar appears and disappears. I find that behavior annoying.
4. Shifting in text boxes: when the scroll bar appears, once you typed enough text to fill the box, the text has to reflow, in order to accommodate the new scroll bar. I find this very annoying and distracting.
Finally, you keep referring to these mythical, internally confused people who keep reading only the tops of all the news articles and constantly wonder why the rest is cut off. Can you show me the following:
1. Any site that looks confusing on a mac without scroll bars. Something I can show to people and gauge their reaction.
2. Any study, article, or survey done on the subject that states that it's a severe problem. Not personal anecdotes, but actual evidence of some kind.
it's just, that you were supposed to scroll to actually read it. There was no way you could have known, since you're on a mac.
I would like to add that your use of the word "fascist" and "authoritarian" is a grave disrespect to those who are survivors of authoritarian regimes. If I were you I would think much more carefully before throwing such words around over scrollbar preferences
After that happens a couple of times, they eventually find their way to the System Preferences.
Originally, the scroll bar itself was the interface. You scrolled by clicking the little arrows, or by grabbing the scroll thumb and dragging. But when scroll wheels were introduced, the scroll bar became less necessary. And with the advent of trackpad magic/mouse scrolling, which support both horizontal and vertical scrolling, the scroll-bar-as-interface becomes ridiculous.
(Note that the default OS X behavior is not "hide scroll bars," but "hide scroll bars if your mouse or trackpad supports scrolling.")
That said, while there's no longer much need to interact with scroll bars, there's still a need to indicate that scrolling is possible, and possibly your position in the document. But surely we can convey that in fewer than the ten thousand pixels that a scroll bar consumes?
and when the designer makes it smaller in height, it sucks ten times more.
I am typing this on a iMac 2006 and even if the mouse has a wheel I still grab the bar because it's more precise (it allows to put the text where I want) than scrolling (which just increments height offset by a proportional fixed value).
This isn't true; scroll wheels are more convenient than using the scroll bar for progressing through a document sequentially, but there's no facility for absolute positioning using a scroll wheel. You can't move to a specific point on the page with the wheel, and can only move in one direction or the other at a speed limited by how fast you can physically spin the wheel on the mouse.
Probably the best alternative to a scrollbar for absolute positioning that I've ever seen is the "document map" feature of some text editors, which provides a vertical thumbnail of the entire document in a column that works similarly to the way a mini-map in a game works: you see the layout of the document, zoomed out, and can click on exactly where you want to go.
I read a lot on my mac, and I love the lack of scrollbar. It's one less 'element' on my reading experience (similar to almost all ebook readers not having chrome, like scrollbars and page numbers, or hiding chrome unless specifically requested). And because of how integral and 'decent' using the touchpad is (two finger scroll), I automatically scroll briefly to show the scrollbar in those few instances where I care about what position on the page I'm at.
Of course, that's just one example, but I know many others who feel similarly. 'Apple knows best' doesn't just mean marketing and pretty, it often means decent choices that are good for a large percentage of people, and yes, you have to accept that.
I find apple does do a lot of stuff that doesn't work for me. Even the lack scroll bars I rather hate when I use Finder (and don't get me started on that!). I use an android phone for that very reason.
I don't always like the choices that apple makes for me, and I might reach a point where I opt out completely. I'm just saying that in this case I think apple made a risky but decent choice, that wasn't just about 'pretty' or 'marketing'.
Here is what scroll bar does for me:
1. It gives me instant feedback about the size of the document (the shorter the scrollbar the bigger the document).
2. It shows me rough position in the document.
3. Provides reading context (I'm 35% into the document and I'm reading on subject X) which aids memorizing the material.
I'm a mathematician and numbers are my thing. Some people use number memorizing technique where they walk through a familiar place and assign numbers to landmarks. And to recall numbers they walk the route again in their head and "read" the numbers off the landmarks. This is the technique those freaks that can recite thousands and thousand of decimals of Pi use.
In effect the scroll bar does the same for me. It's my landmark and I assign topics to its position which allows me to remember better. If I want to quickly re-read something weeks later I can open the document and within seconds get there just by scroll bar position. And one could say search would work here too, but often times it does not because I don't remember exactly the string I want to find in the document (and some documents are not searchable).
Once I upgraded to Mountain Lion from Snow Leopard, I found the default scroll bar setting extremely bothersome and my read content retention much much lower until I put the scroll bars back.
So another anecdotal reason why dynamically showing/hiding UI elements is usually a bad idea.
"I've read this much of the article and I'm only 1/20th of the way down?" [user stops reading, unaware that there's 450 comments and the article is actually pretty short]
But, as we all know, comments are usually total garbage. The problem is not that they get included in the scroll bar, but that they get included with the article. We need to fix, or remove comments, not scroll bars.
I see it whenever I switch tabs, and I see it whenever I start to scroll. I always have an idea of how long the page is and I don't need a constant reminder of it. It's not like it's a precision instrument anyway - who can precisely gauge the length of an article based on scroll bar length and current window size? Rain Man?
I can switch back to the always-on behavior if I want to, but I haven't wanted to.
Reimplementing the scrollbar for users who have not taken the option to show the scrollbar is deliberately going against their stated preference.
While in general I agree with your post, I think saying it goes "against their stated preferences" is a bit strong considering that (from what I've read here) not showing the scrollbar is the default. In my experience many people never change the defaults.
Interesting, on what devices? We are using NiceScroll for a widget right now and it's very smooth, even on my Nexus 4.
At the end of the day, customers and others browsing your site are unlikely to understand why there's no visual indication on their mac, and why you didn't put one on your site.Sooo.. if you're forced to put a visual indicator, at the very least least, make it vertical for page scrolling.
(and also, thanks for nothing, Apple UI)
First off, I wouldn't call that "Easy" code, or an "Easy" solution if that it is untested? More like a hypotheses. Secondly, I don't think that is a good alternative solution at all. That seems like a very messy way to handle the indication by changing the size of the scrollbar based on user triggered events.
While there are some decent points in this article (such as not splitting up your content into pages for ads), I think it still doesn't do a good job of defending why the top vertical bar for progress indication is bad. Nor does it give a good alternative.
And, as clone1018 pointed out in another comment, I don't think the indication feature was meant to be this ground-breaking UX feature or anything. I think it's more of some eye-candy for his blog.
I would be much more interested in a counter argument article on using the top horizontal bar for loading purposes (like YouTube does), since that is becoming more of a common UX feature.
It's not exactly untested, there are lots of sites that wait to load in comments via AJAX until the user has scrolled down to the comment section. Many simply hide comments until the user clicks "show comments". Both are valid alternate solutions to the initial counterpoint ("what about the comments section!!!").
The OP is not talking about the progress bar as an indicator of page loading, like the other discussions on HN recently. Instead, he was mentioning someone's suggestion that it be used like a scroll bar to mimic the progress of scrolling down the page.
On Genera, when you moused over the vertical scroll bar, a thin horizontal line appears across the screen at whatever x height your mouse was is. You could then click to tell the OS that you wanted to wanted to reflow the page using that x height as a reference point. If you pointed your mouse at the horizontal scroll bar, a vertical line appeared, and you could scroll left to right. This is sort of like pressing Control-l on Emacs. Instead scrolling and getting the desired result by trial and error, you could tell the OS exactly what you wanted to do. It was very useful for scrolling within pictures.
You can see a video of this here [1] at 46:50.
Obviously, this is pretty much how the size of the bar is calculated already, but few designs actually translate it very well. That's what really struck me about the iOS and OS X Lion scroll bars over the others he showed. They really do a much better job at actually conveying this to the user, or at least, they did for me. Ubuntu's terminal scrollbar is also similar in this regard. It would be awesome to see default designs start to focus on this in the future.
It's likely things can be improved further, but IMO this is a better starting point than what we had before.
But then I realized that book and magazine publishers have been "reinventing the page number" since before there was a web.
Of course information designer will be reinventing the elements of the UI. The process of design is making form and content a unified whole.
* horizontal progress for vertical content is bad
* infinite scroll is better than pages/tabs/whatever
Just saying "poor natural mapping" doesn't mean horizontal progress is wrong and just saying "why would you" doesn't make pages wrong.
I'd like to see data to support those assumptions. On infinite scroll I'd bet horizontal progress has minuscule negative impact on usability vs vertical progress. On paged I bet it performs just as well.
And regarding pages vs infinite scroll, I bet pages actually perform much better. Infinite scroll is elegant for us, the developers, but for users it presents a dramatic increase in cognitive load to constantly be orienting yourself in this infinite space with hints of often unrelated content above and below. With lots of content, infinite scroll actually encourages people to scroll which is usually the last thing you actually should do. If the primary means of navigation is via a navigation menu (aka the content needs to be organized, not an article), then why the hell would you dump all the output into one giant bucket of content?
I can also offer some reasoning: when the scroll bar is vertical, it moves in the same direction as the direction of your scrolling movement on the mouse. This makes it easier to mentally connect your fingers’ scrolling movement to the scrolling on the screen, which makes the device use easier and more intuitive. In the case of iOS and OS X 10.7 and later, your finger movement is in the same direction as the content rather than the scroll bar, but it’s still something on the screen moving with your fingers. But a horizontal scroll bar moving when you push your fingers vertically is too abstract a concept for your mind to intuitively grasp, so it’s harder to use.
An article shouldn’t be split across multiple pages on the web!
We have an infinitely long canvas to write on, along with an elegant
way of moving through it. Why would you need to split it up?"
Some experiments may go wrong, and it is ok that you point that out, but telling them not to reinvent anything is another thing.
If anyone has a suggestion, shoot. I went so far as looking for a hotkey for toggling scrollbar display (which I still think would be a good idea), but couldn't find anything. For the record, I'm using Synergy to control mouse/keyboard from a Ubuntu box with a MBP slave machine.
Horizontal scrolling with the mouse wheel is done by moving the mouse wheel with the shift key down.
Note that just touching the trackpad with two fingers, as if you're about to scroll, also brings up both scrollbars.
Very frustrating.
Regarding using such a bar as an indicator of page-scroll progress, I'm indifferent. It's not intrusive, so if I don't care for it, it doesn't bother me. For those who do care for it, I think the horizontal positioning is easier to gauge page-scroll progress because looking up is easier than looking all the way over to the right of my viewport (I never look over there because I use a scroll-wheel or touchpad to do the scrolling ;)
Or why not put one at each heading of the page.
Implementing this accurately on a web page with js is a bit tricky since most browsers display progress bars differently. The biggest problem is if it has tiny arrows at both ends or only on one side. You will get a few pixels off if you try to match the native scroll bar. Another option is to put a second scroll bar next to the native one that is annotated, I've found this to be the most reliable option.
An API from the browser to get help from the native scroll bar, or to enhance the native scroll bar would be great.
I love how OS X/iOS scroll bar disappear. You know from the content you are reading where you are on the page. It's very, very rare (probably never) that I am lost on a page and I have to scroll slightly up/down to know where I am.
Also, isn't the scroll bar really useful when you need to scroll up and down the page quickly by an arbitrary amount?
I expected someone asking about scrolling an arbitrary amount. After all these years of reading internet articles and pdf manuals on Mac/iOS, I've rarely ever encountered a case where clicking the position on the scroll bar beats the speed of flickering the trackpad (and that's even excluding the precision). In fact, there's rarely an internet page where I can't get to the end within one flick.
http://www.theverge.com <- this is one flick
(While we're at it, yes, you can still drag OS X's scroll bar if you really want to. I've used it for pdf manuals).
It's not a problem that needs solving. OSX/iOS users are very used to this and it is second nature.
Scrollbar within a scrollbar!
<div style="height: 100%; overflow-y: auto">
Content
</div>
<div id="comments">...</div>Re-imagine content. Eliminate scrolling. Keep content represented on the screen. Elegent, progressively granular navigation on the screen.
I love when a scrollbar handle thins to represent the proportion of content on the screen and shits the usability bed.
You have only so many words left to say or type. Use less. Live/Say more. Condense information to fit the medium. Lose you paradigm.
Writers are paid by the word and we pay by the byte. Writers shit the net. Don't waste my life with words. Get to the point. We're dying here.
In the case of an image, the ways of seeing different parts of the image I can think of are zooming in and out, scrolling with scroll bars, or paginating the image. I think allowing both zooming and scrolling is the best interface in that case. So scrolling is sometimes necessary, and should not be abolished.
Kill the CPM model and your wish will come true. Unfortunately, advertisers often first ask "Well how many pageviews does your <site/app/whatever> have?" Most advertising metrics are still stuck 10 years behind where we are and where we're going.
I do it that way and I have seen many people who do it the same. However I agree, that pages are bullshit in a web context.
There are some very good use cases for pagination. Granted, you shouldn't be using it on an article but if you're browsing 500+ records its a lot easier to paginate them than it is to have the user come back later and have to scroll to where they were before.
Needless to say the project was years behind. I'm glad I never got too close to it.
[Note: never said anything about custom scrollbars; just that websites with scrolling divs tend to look better on OSX]
If you hate that my scrollbar is hidden when not in use, well, tough luck. I like it this way.
If you force yet another custom, badly-implemented, weirdly-behaving, not-entirely-thought-through scrollbar on me, I will hate you and never visit your website again.
Pretty sure Gmail uses custom scrollbars and I wouldn't be surprised if it's the most commonly used e-mail in the world.
I think Facebook also uses a custom scrollbar on their activity feed.
Same with Rdio's web app and Spotify's web app (unless it looks different on PC?)
It does. It's pretty obnoxious, but they're at least well-implemented, unlike most custom scrollbars.
> I think Facebook also uses a custom scrollbar on their activity feed.
It doesn't (or at least it doesn't in Safari; maybe it does in other browsers?)
If you decide that you want to show multiple ads, just intersperse them throughout the content. Break it up and insert them in between some of the paragraphs
Unity is even worse, with its overlay scrollbars.
> Maybe there are better ways of monetising than forcing
>multiple pages of ads down your users throats? :)
Plus there's really no reason split them up. It's not a book, there's no limit on page length.
It looks like there is not a "main blog" page to go to.
Shudder.