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Really great design. This is the unicorn of fancy websites because for once, it actually makes sense to override browser's standard scrolling behavior. The 30-

by pavlov 1y ago

Really great design. This is the unicorn of fancy websites because for once, it actually makes sense to override browser's standard scrolling behavior. The 30-minute timeline on the right provides an obvious context for what you're navigating with the scroll actions, and you wouldn't be able to do that with a regular scrollbar. Usually scrolling overrides happen because the designers' mindset was that the site should be a sequence of beautiful slides. They might prototype it as a Keynote presentation that is approved by management. And then some poor web developer gets tasked with building a site that feels like the Keynote slide show that everyone loved, and the only way to do that is to turn scrolling into an annoying "next slide" action.

darkwater 1y ago
I'm with you and I actually love these "special scrolling" websites. They are much closer to a truly work of art exactly because of the different design. To the haters: why do we have churches or buildings with marble statues in the walls or column instead of a standard stone wall, which was designed to do the job in a standard way?
- pbhjpbhj 1y ago
  Niches (recesses in walls for statues) and columns in church buildings are actually central features that serve the primary purpose of the building. Niches provide spaces for statues for remembering the dead, or prayers and veneration (for Catholics), enhancing the link between the spiritual and corporeal realms. Arguably they're also used to encourage payments from patrons for a church building's upkeep or construction. Columns allow spaces within a building to be connected, ensuring the body of the church (the people) can worship and receive teaching together. They can also reduce material cost of construction. Yes, for historic church buildings decoration was applied, ornate capitals in the pillars and such; bright, garish paint on the statues and everything -- and expression of the vitality of the building and of worship to God. I think perhaps your analogy needs buttressing (heh!) to make it clear? All I got really was 'I like the scrolling'. Maybe a revolving door is a good scrollbar analogue - it's central to access to a space (website), some people hate them, but used properly they enhance access (they're really good for limiting heat exchange with the outside when compared with regular doors!).
  - darkwater 1y ago
    All these things you mention are corollary to the construction of the building per-se, but are central to the "spirit" of the building. The same applies with this kind of websites and scrolling. The website has a goal in itself, uses a more creative scrolling feature as both a way to better convey the information and a work of art to be more attractive to the eye. My parallel was that the typical HNer just ignores this and think "don't touch my browser standard scrolling behavior", that would be akin to someone just wanting a plain wall to keep the roof up, ignoring everything else: "I pray there anyway, I don't need that statue to remember it".
rkagerer 1y ago
I don't mind designers overriding when they take meticulous care to craft a better tailored experience. But once I scrolled past the initial content I found the site a UI disaster. Not long after it said "Pick a person to explore", I wanted to tap a particular box to read one of their conversations, and couldn't figure out how to bring any dialog up. I wound up scrolling further down afterward to see if that was how to trigger some dialog for my selection, and all the boxes started moving around at seemingly random, performance tanked and the whole thing got stuttery. I couldn't scroll back to where I was or find that box again that I was interested in. I left in frustration. Design fail, as far as this user's encounter.
- deathlock 1y ago
  I feel the same. I don't particularly mind if a developer overrides the scrollbar, and I would actually argue that in this case it was a good way to present the story and overall I liked it, but you need to do it right. If the sites becomes all clunky, it stutters, and you get text popping up a while after you scrolled, then it's better to focus on the performance and leave aside the animations.
tjoff 1y ago
Took me a really long time to realize that I should scroll. Because why would I? There is absolutely no indication that there is anything to scroll to. I clicked on the two avatars but that didn't get me very far and the only thing left to click was "by alvin chang" but that was about as fruitful as I imagined it would be. So I assumed it was a podcast, re-checking that I had audio on etc. But nope, so I checked another browser. Same there... Then I read HN comments, ah ... Great design? ...
- n2d4 1y ago
  Same here — once you get the scrolling part it's pretty great, but like you I was stuck at the top for a while. A downwards-pointing arrow on the hero would help a lot here.
  - arccy 1y ago
    If you use a sane browser, the page will have a scrollbar indicator on the right?
    - tidbeck 1y ago
      I have (Firefox on macOS), still easy to miss.
      - badc0ffee 1y ago
        I have Firefox on macOS as well, but I don't see a scroll bar until I start scrolling. Could be because I'm using an external trackpad, and not a mouse.
      - arccy 1y ago
        On chrome the scroll bar is very visible. I don't think you can blame Chrome for this... this is just bad design by Firefox.
    - JoblessWonder 1y ago
      Firefox in Windows has the tiniest little scrollbar indicator in the top right that honestly blends in very well with the background. I didn't realize I needed to scroll until I came to the comments. I clicked around... got some interaction... but basically left the first time being very confused.
Joeboy 1y ago
I found it only slightly worse than not overriding the standard scrolling behaviour. Any time a site remains usable despite this sort of UX intervention we can consider that a win.
saberience 1y ago
It's interesting but I hated this design * 1000. I would prefer a white page with purely black text than this horrible override of the scrolling behavior and images and text flying around, this sort of design makes me feel literally nauseous and I had to click away not even 5% through this page. It's so much harder to concentrate on content like this, it's distracting, confusing, gives me brain fog etc.
RataNova 1y ago
But here the timeline gives the scroll a clear purpose
- ThePowerOfFuet 1y ago
  That's exactly what they said, right at the beginning of their comment.
gxonatano 1y ago
It's not great design. It's a dirty hack that might work for some people, but is a non-standard practice that abuses JavaScript to achieve a certain effect. Overriding scrolling behavior might work if you're scrolling with a mouse or trackpad at a consistent speed, that that might even work for a majority of the site's visitors, but for others it breaks. If you press the PageDown key to get to the next page, it doesn't work. If you scroll half a page down using another key combination, it doesn't work. If you use a text-based browser, it doesn't work. I didn't test it using a screen reader or other types of browsers, but I can't imagine it would work that well there, either.

by pavlov 1y ago

darkwater 1y ago

I'm with you and I actually love these "special scrolling" websites. They are much closer to a truly work of art exactly because of the different design. To the haters: why do we have churches or buildings with marble statues in the walls or column instead of a standard stone wall, which was designed to do the job in a standard way?

pbhjpbhj 1y ago
Niches (recesses in walls for statues) and columns in church buildings are actually central features that serve the primary purpose of the building. Niches provide spaces for statues for remembering the dead, or prayers and veneration (for Catholics), enhancing the link between the spiritual and corporeal realms. Arguably they're also used to encourage payments from patrons for a church building's upkeep or construction. Columns allow spaces within a building to be connected, ensuring the body of the church (the people) can worship and receive teaching together. They can also reduce material cost of construction. Yes, for historic church buildings decoration was applied, ornate capitals in the pillars and such; bright, garish paint on the statues and everything -- and expression of the vitality of the building and of worship to God. I think perhaps your analogy needs buttressing (heh!) to make it clear? All I got really was 'I like the scrolling'. Maybe a revolving door is a good scrollbar analogue - it's central to access to a space (website), some people hate them, but used properly they enhance access (they're really good for limiting heat exchange with the outside when compared with regular doors!).
- darkwater 1y ago
  All these things you mention are corollary to the construction of the building per-se, but are central to the "spirit" of the building. The same applies with this kind of websites and scrolling. The website has a goal in itself, uses a more creative scrolling feature as both a way to better convey the information and a work of art to be more attractive to the eye. My parallel was that the typical HNer just ignores this and think "don't touch my browser standard scrolling behavior", that would be akin to someone just wanting a plain wall to keep the roof up, ignoring everything else: "I pray there anyway, I don't need that statue to remember it".

rkagerer 1y ago

I don't mind designers overriding when they take meticulous care to craft a better tailored experience. But once I scrolled past the initial content I found the site a UI disaster. Not long after it said "Pick a person to explore", I wanted to tap a particular box to read one of their conversations, and couldn't figure out how to bring any dialog up. I wound up scrolling further down afterward to see if that was how to trigger some dialog for my selection, and all the boxes started moving around at seemingly random, performance tanked and the whole thing got stuttery. I couldn't scroll back to where I was or find that box again that I was interested in. I left in frustration. Design fail, as far as this user's encounter.

deathlock 1y ago
I feel the same. I don't particularly mind if a developer overrides the scrollbar, and I would actually argue that in this case it was a good way to present the story and overall I liked it, but you need to do it right. If the sites becomes all clunky, it stutters, and you get text popping up a while after you scrolled, then it's better to focus on the performance and leave aside the animations.

tjoff 1y ago

Took me a really long time to realize that I should scroll. Because why would I? There is absolutely no indication that there is anything to scroll to. I clicked on the two avatars but that didn't get me very far and the only thing left to click was "by alvin chang" but that was about as fruitful as I imagined it would be. So I assumed it was a podcast, re-checking that I had audio on etc. But nope, so I checked another browser. Same there... Then I read HN comments, ah ... Great design? ...

n2d4 1y ago
Same here — once you get the scrolling part it's pretty great, but like you I was stuck at the top for a while. A downwards-pointing arrow on the hero would help a lot here.
- arccy 1y ago
  If you use a sane browser, the page will have a scrollbar indicator on the right?
  - tidbeck 1y ago
    I have (Firefox on macOS), still easy to miss.
    - badc0ffee 1y ago
      I have Firefox on macOS as well, but I don't see a scroll bar until I start scrolling. Could be because I'm using an external trackpad, and not a mouse.
    - arccy 1y ago
      On chrome the scroll bar is very visible. I don't think you can blame Chrome for this... this is just bad design by Firefox.
  - JoblessWonder 1y ago
    Firefox in Windows has the tiniest little scrollbar indicator in the top right that honestly blends in very well with the background. I didn't realize I needed to scroll until I came to the comments. I clicked around... got some interaction... but basically left the first time being very confused.

Joeboy 1y ago

I found it only slightly worse than not overriding the standard scrolling behaviour. Any time a site remains usable despite this sort of UX intervention we can consider that a win.

saberience 1y ago

It's interesting but I hated this design * 1000. I would prefer a white page with purely black text than this horrible override of the scrolling behavior and images and text flying around, this sort of design makes me feel literally nauseous and I had to click away not even 5% through this page. It's so much harder to concentrate on content like this, it's distracting, confusing, gives me brain fog etc.

RataNova 1y ago

But here the timeline gives the scroll a clear purpose

ThePowerOfFuet 1y ago
That's exactly what they said, right at the beginning of their comment.

gxonatano 1y ago

It's not great design. It's a dirty hack that might work for some people, but is a non-standard practice that abuses JavaScript to achieve a certain effect. Overriding scrolling behavior might work if you're scrolling with a mouse or trackpad at a consistent speed, that that might even work for a majority of the site's visitors, but for others it breaks. If you press the PageDown key to get to the next page, it doesn't work. If you scroll half a page down using another key combination, it doesn't work. If you use a text-based browser, it doesn't work. I didn't test it using a screen reader or other types of browsers, but I can't imagine it would work that well there, either.