5 ms·

My gripe is the disappearing header that reappears at the slightest twitch of reverse scrolling. The behavior needs to work more like drag down to refresh: only

My gripe is the disappearing header that reappears at the slightest twitch of reverse scrolling. The behavior needs to work more like drag down to refresh: only reappear with a deliberate and significant scroll "up" (a drag down with the finger) or just stay at the very top where it belongs (it only takes one tap on mobile to get back there). With most of them if you need to backtrack and read a few lines up, you have to scroll well past the point or the exact text you want to read gets covered by the header.

sillysaurus3 9y ago
Or the behavior should, y'know, go away entirely. It's the bane of everyone who uses the top edge of the viewport to help them read.
- weaksauce 9y ago
  I agree... I always move the current line to the top of the page for some reason. that's actually why I don't like most ebook readers because they are paginated.
  - ed312 9y ago
    I suspect the pagination is more about saving battery (only need to re-render once per page) vs a smooth scrolling experience.
    - weaksauce 9y ago
      I don't own a kindle or any e-ink reader though and all the Ebook apps are paginated on my iPad and Mac.
      - thefalcon 9y ago
        iBooks, at least, offers a scrolling option (same menu where you select font size)
        weaksauce 9y ago
        interesting... most of my ebooks that I have opened in iBooks on the iPad are pdfs which don't have that option so I assumed they didn't have the scrolling option but I was able to do it with an actual ebook. It would sure be nice to have continuous scrolling on pdfs as well. edit: iBooks on mac os doesn't have a continuous option.
        skiman10 9y ago
        Documents by Readdle is a fantastic PDF reader for your iPad. It does have a continuous scroll option as well as pagination.
ryandrake 9y ago
Or just don't re-appear, and leave scrolling alone. If I want to view a header, I'll scroll to the top of the page.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago
  Are you on iPhone? It's easy to scroll up on iOS (tap the top bar), but hard on Android. That might be one reason why sticky headers are popular.
  - threesixandnine 9y ago
    No, sticky headers are popular because site owners hope for people to browse the site some more.
    - untog 9y ago
      And people do use them. My theory is that analytics is to blame for all of this. You can track how many people clicked the button in your share header. You can't reliably track how many people left because of it (there could be a million reasons for leaving the page). So your analytics shows an uptick in engagement by X%, and no clearly discernable downtick. So the header stays. All it would need is an A/B test or two, but easier said than done...
      - pastelsky 9y ago
        a.k.a survivorship bias
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Until you are on, say, YouTube, where the home key is hijacked into restarting the video...
zenojevski 9y ago
The native iOS behaviour is to only do that when flicking (ie. scrolling and letting go). Didn't see anybody copying that yet. However, it makes a huge difference in usability.

sillysaurus3 9y ago

Or the behavior should, y'know, go away entirely. It's the bane of everyone who uses the top edge of the viewport to help them read.

weaksauce 9y ago
I agree... I always move the current line to the top of the page for some reason. that's actually why I don't like most ebook readers because they are paginated.
- ed312 9y ago
  I suspect the pagination is more about saving battery (only need to re-render once per page) vs a smooth scrolling experience.
  - weaksauce 9y ago
    I don't own a kindle or any e-ink reader though and all the Ebook apps are paginated on my iPad and Mac.
    - thefalcon 9y ago
      iBooks, at least, offers a scrolling option (same menu where you select font size)
      - weaksauce 9y ago
        interesting... most of my ebooks that I have opened in iBooks on the iPad are pdfs which don't have that option so I assumed they didn't have the scrolling option but I was able to do it with an actual ebook. It would sure be nice to have continuous scrolling on pdfs as well. edit: iBooks on mac os doesn't have a continuous option.
        skiman10 9y ago
        Documents by Readdle is a fantastic PDF reader for your iPad. It does have a continuous scroll option as well as pagination.

ryandrake 9y ago

Or just don't re-appear, and leave scrolling alone. If I want to view a header, I'll scroll to the top of the page.

erikpukinskis 9y ago
Are you on iPhone? It's easy to scroll up on iOS (tap the top bar), but hard on Android. That might be one reason why sticky headers are popular.
- threesixandnine 9y ago
  No, sticky headers are popular because site owners hope for people to browse the site some more.
  - untog 9y ago
    And people do use them. My theory is that analytics is to blame for all of this. You can track how many people clicked the button in your share header. You can't reliably track how many people left because of it (there could be a million reasons for leaving the page). So your analytics shows an uptick in engagement by X%, and no clearly discernable downtick. So the header stays. All it would need is an A/B test or two, but easier said than done...
    - pastelsky 9y ago
      a.k.a survivorship bias
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
digi_owl 9y ago
Until you are on, say, YouTube, where the home key is hijacked into restarting the video...

zenojevski 9y ago

The native iOS behaviour is to only do that when flicking (ie. scrolling and letting go). Didn't see anybody copying that yet. However, it makes a huge difference in usability.