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This is a really paternalistic attitude. The local presbyterian church down my street can't afford a full-time web developer to update their website every time

by gw 9y ago

This is a really paternalistic attitude. The local presbyterian church down my street can't afford a full-time web developer to update their website every time Google decides to break it. The idea that sacrificing actual functionality in exchange for smoother scrolling makes the web "better" is a claim that makes sense only in a terrifically isolated bubble.

jhasse 9y ago
If your local church added a scroll listener for their small website, they deserve it.
- nolemurs 9y ago
  To be fair, most likely someone's teenage son added a scroll listener when he built the small church's website before going off to college. In the category of "poor decisions made by teenagers" this is pretty tame.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    what for?
    - nolemurs 9y ago
      My best guess? Because he thought it would be cool. I'm not saying the decision makes sense. It obviously doesn't. But small organizations like a local church just don't have the expertise or resources to make good decisions about this sort of thing. Saying they deserve what they get is pretty unhelpful - it is completely unrealistic for them to hire someone who knows what he's doing. They can't fix that problem. So what you're basically saying is "parochial institutions without expertise or money deserve to be screwed over." Personally I'd like to live in a better world than that. Of course, I also agree with the decision that Chrome made, so... there's that. But the fact that groups like the church got screwed over is unfortunate.
      - jhasse 9y ago
        There's a huge difference between "getting screwed over" and "your cool scrolling effects having glitches".
nolemurs 9y ago
> The idea that sacrificing actual functionality in exchange for smoother scrolling makes the web "better" is a claim that makes sense only in a terrifically isolated bubble. It's a simple question of cost benefit analysis. Some users are harmed by slow scrolling, others will be harmed by the update. There's not some obvious reason to prefer one group to the other absent an assessment of how many users are impacted and how bad the impact is. In this case, the impact of slow scrolling affects almost everyone, and it's pretty bad. For a long time, I basically wouldn't bother to use my web browser on the phone. The impact of breaking some scrolling behavior affects the users of a small number of poorly maintained sites, and in most cases, not in a way that actually breaks anything. To me, the "terrifically isolated bubble" approach is to focus only on the part of the user experience you care about rather than balancing the pros and cons to all users.
Klathmon 9y ago
Yes but not all breaking changes are equal. The church down your street was extremely unlikely to even be impacted by this change let alone have functionality broken by it. This only affected websites which were using blocking scrolling event listeners. Scrolljacking, some mapping websites where you were able to tap and pan around, and some sticky headers, and only on mobile devices using chrome. And of those features impacted, most weren't even "broken", they were simply delayed until after the user lets their finger off the screen. A "sticky" header will still work with this change, it will just "snap" into place after scrolling. Scrolljacking content will act in a similar manner. I'm completely against breaking the web wherever possible, but in this case I really believe it to be worth it. Smooth scrolling makes sites usable, janky jumpy websites on mobile are so infuriating, and on lower spec devices can be completely unusable. This makes them usable again, it wasn't just "breaking the web" it was "fixing the web" for many people. In my mind I see this like I see popup blockers or even adblockers built into the browser. Yes, they break functionality, but they do so for the user, and if the website needs to get around this change, they can easily do so without the user having to do anything (unlike popup and adblockers in most cases).
- gw 9y ago
  > The church down your street was extremely unlikely to even be impacted by this change Why do you say that? Let's say, for example, that they use Discourse [1] to provide a web forum for churchgoers on their website. Oops! Mobile scrolling is completely broken for them [2] until they manage to update Discourse to the latest version. Is this the flu shot you were talking about? [1] https://www.discourse.org/ https://www.discourse.org/ [2] https://meta.discourse.org/t/mobile-view-scroll-bar-slider-broken-on-android-chrome-56-and-above/57943 https://meta.discourse.org/t/mobile-view-scroll-bar-slider-b...
  - Klathmon 9y ago
    No, mobile scrolling wasn't "broken" for them, scrolling via their "timeline" feature was broken. And while they would need to update, if they were using the hosted discourse plan it would have been fixed for them, and if they were using the self-hosted plan, they are running that on a linux server which needs updates and maintenance periodically anyway or a broken timeline will be the least of their problems. Luckily Discourse will email you when there is an update with a link to the admin page that lets you one-click upgrde the Discourse install on your server from the web UI. So yes, this is exactly the flu shot I'm talking about. A product was broken in a fairly minor way with this update, and a fix was developed within 24 hours which consisted of 2 lines of CSS (both the same, but in 2 different spots). And now the product and the web as a whole (on chrome) are less laggy and janky on mobile devices.

by gw 9y ago

jhasse 9y ago

If your local church added a scroll listener for their small website, they deserve it.

nolemurs 9y ago
To be fair, most likely someone's teenage son added a scroll listener when he built the small church's website before going off to college. In the category of "poor decisions made by teenagers" this is pretty tame.
- jhasse 9y ago
  what for?
  - nolemurs 9y ago
    My best guess? Because he thought it would be cool. I'm not saying the decision makes sense. It obviously doesn't. But small organizations like a local church just don't have the expertise or resources to make good decisions about this sort of thing. Saying they deserve what they get is pretty unhelpful - it is completely unrealistic for them to hire someone who knows what he's doing. They can't fix that problem. So what you're basically saying is "parochial institutions without expertise or money deserve to be screwed over." Personally I'd like to live in a better world than that. Of course, I also agree with the decision that Chrome made, so... there's that. But the fact that groups like the church got screwed over is unfortunate.
    - jhasse 9y ago
      There's a huge difference between "getting screwed over" and "your cool scrolling effects having glitches".

nolemurs 9y ago

> The idea that sacrificing actual functionality in exchange for smoother scrolling makes the web "better" is a claim that makes sense only in a terrifically isolated bubble. It's a simple question of cost benefit analysis. Some users are harmed by slow scrolling, others will be harmed by the update. There's not some obvious reason to prefer one group to the other absent an assessment of how many users are impacted and how bad the impact is. In this case, the impact of slow scrolling affects almost everyone, and it's pretty bad. For a long time, I basically wouldn't bother to use my web browser on the phone. The impact of breaking some scrolling behavior affects the users of a small number of poorly maintained sites, and in most cases, not in a way that actually breaks anything. To me, the "terrifically isolated bubble" approach is to focus only on the part of the user experience you care about rather than balancing the pros and cons to all users.

Klathmon 9y ago

Yes but not all breaking changes are equal. The church down your street was extremely unlikely to even be impacted by this change let alone have functionality broken by it. This only affected websites which were using blocking scrolling event listeners. Scrolljacking, some mapping websites where you were able to tap and pan around, and some sticky headers, and only on mobile devices using chrome. And of those features impacted, most weren't even "broken", they were simply delayed until after the user lets their finger off the screen. A "sticky" header will still work with this change, it will just "snap" into place after scrolling. Scrolljacking content will act in a similar manner. I'm completely against breaking the web wherever possible, but in this case I really believe it to be worth it. Smooth scrolling makes sites usable, janky jumpy websites on mobile are so infuriating, and on lower spec devices can be completely unusable. This makes them usable again, it wasn't just "breaking the web" it was "fixing the web" for many people. In my mind I see this like I see popup blockers or even adblockers built into the browser. Yes, they break functionality, but they do so for the user, and if the website needs to get around this change, they can easily do so without the user having to do anything (unlike popup and adblockers in most cases).

gw 9y ago
> The church down your street was extremely unlikely to even be impacted by this change Why do you say that? Let's say, for example, that they use Discourse [1] to provide a web forum for churchgoers on their website. Oops! Mobile scrolling is completely broken for them [2] until they manage to update Discourse to the latest version. Is this the flu shot you were talking about? [1] https://www.discourse.org/ https://www.discourse.org/ [2] https://meta.discourse.org/t/mobile-view-scroll-bar-slider-broken-on-android-chrome-56-and-above/57943 https://meta.discourse.org/t/mobile-view-scroll-bar-slider-b...
- Klathmon 9y ago
  No, mobile scrolling wasn't "broken" for them, scrolling via their "timeline" feature was broken. And while they would need to update, if they were using the hosted discourse plan it would have been fixed for them, and if they were using the self-hosted plan, they are running that on a linux server which needs updates and maintenance periodically anyway or a broken timeline will be the least of their problems. Luckily Discourse will email you when there is an update with a link to the admin page that lets you one-click upgrde the Discourse install on your server from the web UI. So yes, this is exactly the flu shot I'm talking about. A product was broken in a fairly minor way with this update, and a fix was developed within 24 hours which consisted of 2 lines of CSS (both the same, but in 2 different spots). And now the product and the web as a whole (on chrome) are less laggy and janky on mobile devices.