7 ms·

Why do people hate endless scrolling so much?

paulryanrogers 4y ago
Impossible to jump pages, know how much there is, often breaks native scrolling in awkward ways without recourse.
luispauloml 4y ago
Someone posted this on HN last month and I think it summarizes very well what people dislike the most about infinite scrolling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32789617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32789617
whartung 4y ago
Because it’s like swimming across a large lake finding yourself exhausted in the middle with little alternative to swimming back. Now on my phone it’s relatively easy to jump to the top of the page. It’s also almost done impossible to jump to the bottom. On a desktop I can at least mash the END key or play silly reindeer games with the scrollbar thumb. On mobile it’s very hard to Leap or Surge or Jump. If I’m madly fanning the page with my thumb or, worse, my fingers because I’m tired with my thumb, I pretty much just give up at that point. I also like having non-endless scrolling because I can use the scroll bar as a gauge of how much is left of the article. Being constantly fed is just a bad experience.
ratww 4y ago
Well, first, it's not reliable. If the network goes down and it doesn't have some form of recovery, you gotta start from scratch. Second, it's not bookmarkable (except for the odd case), so you can't send specific pages to anyone, you often can't start navigating in it one day and continue on other, or in another device. Third, you lose navigation and exploration features, like navigating to the first page and seeing the oldest stuff, or going into the middle. But the biggest reason people hate as a matter principle is because it is in 99% of cases done without any UX research and without any care from developers, and that's in the best case. The worst case is to cause doomscrolling, which is nefarious in its own. It is disrespectful to users. If you don't want people seeing old content just fucking delete it.
quickthrower2 4y ago
Terrible user experience. If it infinitely scrolls I can be sure some gesture on the phone will lose my spot and it will take ages to find where I was. Also they rarely play nice with the back button. There is usually a better way to present data. For reading, do you prefer books or ancient scrolls?
- gcanyon 4y ago
  Apollo (reddit client on iOS) solves this by having the same gesture undo itself -- tap at the top to scroll to the top of the reddit post, tap again to return to where you were. I'm not saying your complaint is invalid, just that there are ways of mitigating the issue. And that said, I can't imagine how reddit threads would work if paginated.
  - NoraCodes 4y ago
    > I can't imagine how reddit threads would work if paginated. Presumably similarly to HackerNews threads, which are paginated.
    - quickthrower2 4y ago
      Yes. Pagination can be bad if the URL indexes by 1-10, 11-20 etc. But I think HN paginates using the post ID, so that the links are permanent (?) which is a better way to do it. Basically the novel idea here is to treat the browser like a REST client. This also means you need a predictable, deterministic algorithm, like "ORDER BY DATE DESC", but Reddit does have order by popularity, so that will not be idempotent. But now being super picky as order by popularity is pretty useful. Although I think date should be the default. And order by [what cambridge analytica-likes know about me] should be off.
    - whartung 4y ago
      HN also lets you elide branches with a click, so you're not trapped in a section you're not interested in. It's so nice opening a 400 response thread, getting 10 messages into the top comment, and clicking the hide button and watching 200 messages vanish.
protomikron 4y ago
It often breaks the builtin Browser-Search.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  Which is often followed by attempts to replace browser native Find in Page with a custom implementation that doesn't work as well.
skilled 4y ago
And you love it, so much? It's probably the stupidest thing ever invented as far as UX goes.
- diab0lic 4y ago
  It is possible the gp post just feels neutral about it. There are a whole range of emotions between love and hate.
  - snek_case 4y ago
    I do feel neutral/indifferent about it. I was just wondering why I see so much negative sentiment towards it.
    - bee_rider 4y ago
      I feel vaguely-neutral/negative toward it. It plays somewhat annoyingly with things like bookmarking (mitigated slightly by the fact that infinite scrolls are usually generated content anyway so bookmarking them is probably meaningless) and are trying to tempt the user into endless scrolling (but I guess it is our responsibility to resist the temptation there).
chillfox 4y ago
It makes it impossible to get to the footer.
- andrei_says_ 4y ago
  And impossible to link to anything behind the scroll interaction.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Impossible to jump pages, know how much there is, often breaks native scrolling in awkward ways without recourse.

Someone posted this on HN last month and I think it summarizes very well what people dislike the most about infinite scrolling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32789617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32789617

whartung 4y ago

Because it’s like swimming across a large lake finding yourself exhausted in the middle with little alternative to swimming back. Now on my phone it’s relatively easy to jump to the top of the page. It’s also almost done impossible to jump to the bottom. On a desktop I can at least mash the END key or play silly reindeer games with the scrollbar thumb. On mobile it’s very hard to Leap or Surge or Jump. If I’m madly fanning the page with my thumb or, worse, my fingers because I’m tired with my thumb, I pretty much just give up at that point. I also like having non-endless scrolling because I can use the scroll bar as a gauge of how much is left of the article. Being constantly fed is just a bad experience.

ratww 4y ago

Well, first, it's not reliable. If the network goes down and it doesn't have some form of recovery, you gotta start from scratch. Second, it's not bookmarkable (except for the odd case), so you can't send specific pages to anyone, you often can't start navigating in it one day and continue on other, or in another device. Third, you lose navigation and exploration features, like navigating to the first page and seeing the oldest stuff, or going into the middle. But the biggest reason people hate as a matter principle is because it is in 99% of cases done without any UX research and without any care from developers, and that's in the best case. The worst case is to cause doomscrolling, which is nefarious in its own. It is disrespectful to users. If you don't want people seeing old content just fucking delete it.

quickthrower2 4y ago

Terrible user experience. If it infinitely scrolls I can be sure some gesture on the phone will lose my spot and it will take ages to find where I was. Also they rarely play nice with the back button. There is usually a better way to present data. For reading, do you prefer books or ancient scrolls?

gcanyon 4y ago
Apollo (reddit client on iOS) solves this by having the same gesture undo itself -- tap at the top to scroll to the top of the reddit post, tap again to return to where you were. I'm not saying your complaint is invalid, just that there are ways of mitigating the issue. And that said, I can't imagine how reddit threads would work if paginated.
- NoraCodes 4y ago
  > I can't imagine how reddit threads would work if paginated. Presumably similarly to HackerNews threads, which are paginated.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Yes. Pagination can be bad if the URL indexes by 1-10, 11-20 etc. But I think HN paginates using the post ID, so that the links are permanent (?) which is a better way to do it. Basically the novel idea here is to treat the browser like a REST client. This also means you need a predictable, deterministic algorithm, like "ORDER BY DATE DESC", but Reddit does have order by popularity, so that will not be idempotent. But now being super picky as order by popularity is pretty useful. Although I think date should be the default. And order by [what cambridge analytica-likes know about me] should be off.
  - whartung 4y ago
    HN also lets you elide branches with a click, so you're not trapped in a section you're not interested in. It's so nice opening a 400 response thread, getting 10 messages into the top comment, and clicking the hide button and watching 200 messages vanish.

protomikron 4y ago

It often breaks the builtin Browser-Search.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
Which is often followed by attempts to replace browser native Find in Page with a custom implementation that doesn't work as well.

skilled 4y ago

And you love it, so much? It's probably the stupidest thing ever invented as far as UX goes.

diab0lic 4y ago
It is possible the gp post just feels neutral about it. There are a whole range of emotions between love and hate.
- snek_case 4y ago
  I do feel neutral/indifferent about it. I was just wondering why I see so much negative sentiment towards it.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    I feel vaguely-neutral/negative toward it. It plays somewhat annoyingly with things like bookmarking (mitigated slightly by the fact that infinite scrolls are usually generated content anyway so bookmarking them is probably meaningless) and are trying to tempt the user into endless scrolling (but I guess it is our responsibility to resist the temptation there).

chillfox 4y ago

It makes it impossible to get to the footer.

andrei_says_ 4y ago
And impossible to link to anything behind the scroll interaction.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]