4 ms·

I think progress bars are a logical consequence of the user-hostile shrinking of the scrollbar. Unusable, narrow things which are often hidden by default, and r

by elric 2y ago

I think progress bars are a logical consequence of the user-hostile shrinking of the scrollbar. Unusable, narrow things which are often hidden by default, and rarely have a visible elevator (or thumb) anymore. Of course, scrollbars are often entirely useless in pages which insist on loading content piecemeal -- another user hostile pattern.

gessha 2y ago
To add to this, pages sometimes have comments or footers or other bells and whistles after the content that I’m interested in and it makes me think the post is longer than it is. This leads me to either leave the post for later or straight up close it because it’s too long.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > To add to this, pages sometimes have comments or footers or other bells and whistles after the content that I’m interested in Or, especially in news sites, Taboola and other bottom feeder trash.
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    uBlock Origin's element blocker is ideal for removing those. You can define global rules for anything from Taboola, Outbrain, RevContent, etc., and never see them again. "Sharedaddy" is another element to nuke (social link litter crap).
  - account42 2y ago
    In those cases closing the page is the best solution anyway.
pc86 2y ago
Whether or not either of these is user-hostile is up to interpretation and preference, but you're stating it as if it is objective fact. You see user-hostile shrinking of the scrollbar, someone else sees more room for content and hiding something that isn't necessary until you need it. You see loading content piecemeal as hostile, someone else sees blocking that 1kb of text from being displayed while you do more network-intensive work as hostile.
- layer8 2y ago
  Regarding scrollbars, it’s user-hostile if the user can’t control it according to their preference.
  - pc86 2y ago
    What can't you do on a scrollbar today that you could 10/20/30 years ago?
    - layer8 2y ago
      The problem is either (a) the scrollbar is hidden and the software doesn't allow to make it visible always or (b) the web page assumes there is no visible scrollbar (or, (c), only a "see-through" overlay scrollbar) even if there is one. For additional aspects and details I refer you to these threads: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=scrollbar&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
    - apitman 2y ago
      See it
WorldMaker 2y ago
Most of these progress bars are as thin as the native scrollbars have gotten (or thinner). If these are solely a consequence to the shrinking of the scrollbar, you'd imagine that they'd actually be bigger. I think that's a large contributing factor, but either most implementations are are as deficient [0] as what they are trying to augment or there are other things at play here. (Branding since websites haven't been able to consistently style browser scrollbars since the IE/early Firefox era; as the other comment points out, trying to counterbalance how long pages have gotten with "after-content" such as ads and comments and recommended articles and "infinite scroll" to more articles.) [0] Or arguably worse deficient: Most of them seem to have no real accessibility themselves and are opaque to things like screen readers. Even if modern scroll bars are hidden by default and woefully tiny visually by default, they still have decades of accessibility baked in and accessible options (if you can find them).
dredmorbius 2y ago
Obvious solution is obvious: restore the fucking scrollbar. I suspect a strong driver of scrollbar deprecation is the overwhelming dominance of small-screen touch-based mobile devices. An active scrollbar, that is, one which not only shows page scroll depth, but controls it via touch, is one more UI element to generate annoying behaviours given the already perilous state of touch-based UIs. (The inability to correctly distinguish tap vs. drag or scroll actions is one that's driven me to distraction for well over a decade.) Unfortunately, what's at least arguable on mobile becomes the trendy fashion on desktop, which is just fucking stupid.
- scott_w 2y ago
  To be fair, the designer of the website can’t restore scrollbars…
  - p_l 2y ago
    ... not exactly. It's possible to essentially reimplement the logic of how scrollbars look, where they are, and when they appear, in just CSS on modern browsers. Ended up having to do part of that once because it was easier at the time than to figure out just why a mismatched browser scrollbar would show up due to complex layouting issue (in embedded world, so we didn't actually have to worry about end user preference there, otherwise I wouldn't dare use such a hack)
    - scott_w 2y ago
      Yes, that’s true but I suspect that what you’re doing is also what people are complaining about ;-)
      - p_l 2y ago
        There's a reason why I included "I wouldn't dare" if it was a normal website :D Especially since in our case I essentially deleted the scrollbar.
      - dredmorbius 2y ago

by elric 2y ago

gessha 2y ago

To add to this, pages sometimes have comments or footers or other bells and whistles after the content that I’m interested in and it makes me think the post is longer than it is. This leads me to either leave the post for later or straight up close it because it’s too long.

mschuster91 2y ago
> To add to this, pages sometimes have comments or footers or other bells and whistles after the content that I’m interested in Or, especially in news sites, Taboola and other bottom feeder trash.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  uBlock Origin's element blocker is ideal for removing those. You can define global rules for anything from Taboola, Outbrain, RevContent, etc., and never see them again. "Sharedaddy" is another element to nuke (social link litter crap).
- account42 2y ago
  In those cases closing the page is the best solution anyway.

pc86 2y ago

Whether or not either of these is user-hostile is up to interpretation and preference, but you're stating it as if it is objective fact. You see user-hostile shrinking of the scrollbar, someone else sees more room for content and hiding something that isn't necessary until you need it. You see loading content piecemeal as hostile, someone else sees blocking that 1kb of text from being displayed while you do more network-intensive work as hostile.

layer8 2y ago
Regarding scrollbars, it’s user-hostile if the user can’t control it according to their preference.
- pc86 2y ago
  What can't you do on a scrollbar today that you could 10/20/30 years ago?
  - layer8 2y ago
    The problem is either (a) the scrollbar is hidden and the software doesn't allow to make it visible always or (b) the web page assumes there is no visible scrollbar (or, (c), only a "see-through" overlay scrollbar) even if there is one. For additional aspects and details I refer you to these threads: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=scrollbar&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
  - apitman 2y ago
    See it

WorldMaker 2y ago

Most of these progress bars are as thin as the native scrollbars have gotten (or thinner). If these are solely a consequence to the shrinking of the scrollbar, you'd imagine that they'd actually be bigger. I think that's a large contributing factor, but either most implementations are are as deficient [0] as what they are trying to augment or there are other things at play here. (Branding since websites haven't been able to consistently style browser scrollbars since the IE/early Firefox era; as the other comment points out, trying to counterbalance how long pages have gotten with "after-content" such as ads and comments and recommended articles and "infinite scroll" to more articles.) [0] Or arguably worse deficient: Most of them seem to have no real accessibility themselves and are opaque to things like screen readers. Even if modern scroll bars are hidden by default and woefully tiny visually by default, they still have decades of accessibility baked in and accessible options (if you can find them).

dredmorbius 2y ago

Obvious solution is obvious: restore the fucking scrollbar. I suspect a strong driver of scrollbar deprecation is the overwhelming dominance of small-screen touch-based mobile devices. An active scrollbar, that is, one which not only shows page scroll depth, but controls it via touch, is one more UI element to generate annoying behaviours given the already perilous state of touch-based UIs. (The inability to correctly distinguish tap vs. drag or scroll actions is one that's driven me to distraction for well over a decade.) Unfortunately, what's at least arguable on mobile becomes the trendy fashion on desktop, which is just fucking stupid.

scott_w 2y ago
To be fair, the designer of the website can’t restore scrollbars…
- p_l 2y ago
  ... not exactly. It's possible to essentially reimplement the logic of how scrollbars look, where they are, and when they appear, in just CSS on modern browsers. Ended up having to do part of that once because it was easier at the time than to figure out just why a mismatched browser scrollbar would show up due to complex layouting issue (in embedded world, so we didn't actually have to worry about end user preference there, otherwise I wouldn't dare use such a hack)
  - scott_w 2y ago
    Yes, that’s true but I suspect that what you’re doing is also what people are complaining about ;-)
    - p_l 2y ago
      There's a reason why I included "I wouldn't dare" if it was a normal website :D Especially since in our case I essentially deleted the scrollbar.
    - dredmorbius 2y ago