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Ask HN: Why are article progress bars so popular?
More and more articles online seem to have some sort of reading progress bar at the top or bottom of the viewport, slowly filling as I scroll.
Does anyone know where this idea originated or why it’s so popular?
- 6451937099 4y ago[dead]
- moneywoes 4y agoTiktok induced short attention spans
- christophilus 4y agoI don’t know, but it is annoying. There’s a thing called a scrollbar. Every device has it, and if you’re really curious about how far you are down a document, you can just look at the scrollbar.
- MBCook 4y agoThis is why I keep noticing it. I find it very distracting. It doesn’t provide any info the scrollbar doesn’t. So I don’t get why it’s popular.
- vinyl7 4y agoA lot of sites these days have infinite scrolling, so scrollbar doesn't work as it expands to show ads and other content from the site
- 6451937099 4y ago[dead]
- compressedgas 4y agoThey show the length of the article which the scroll bar would have if it weren't invisible.
- yuppie_scum 4y agoYou probably feel like you’re demonstrating that you have this neat gadget on your page. I agree it’s super distracting. Let me focus on the words.