6 ms·

The poster seems to be implying that this effect is prevalent across the web, yet i'm seeing it for the very first time on that post. (And, indeed, it's annoyin

by sgbeal 7mo ago

The poster seems to be implying that this effect is prevalent across the web, yet i'm seeing it for the very first time on that post. (And, indeed, it's annoying. My eyes can't read when there's animation going on nearby.) The goldfish animation along the bottom is epic and i will have to mine that bit for reuse somewhere :).

ramon156 7mo ago
I was redesigning a website of mine and Claude suggested to add this as an animation. My theory is that, if claude is confident in a suggestion, a lot of other people have done the same. Maybe it's too subtle to notice. Edit: on odeva.nl
- chrismorgan 7mo ago
  The scroll fade on that site is comparatively inoffensive (comparatively), because you messed with scrolling itself, which is one of the worst things you can do, taking over and ruining inertia. You’re literally going out of your way to make things worse. The ONLY time scrolljacking of any kind is acceptable is for things like maps where there is no “normal”.
  - eru 7mo ago
    Or for a game, where it's part of the interface.
    - chrismorgan 7mo ago
      Got an example of what you mean? Because if you mean the only thing I can think of, I very strongly disagree.
      - wtallis 7mo ago
        Hijacking native scroll behavior to badly reimplement anything remotely like scrolling is wrong even in a gaming context. But if you're implementing Half Life 2 in a browser, where the user no longer has a normal cursor, then hijacking scrolling to implement the weapon switcher is fine.
        eru 7mo ago
        Yes, that. Or some weird experimental stuff, like running an emulator for the Playdate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playdate_(console) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playdate_(console) or whatever. Games are allowed to be a bit wacky, and no one is forced to play them.
Xerox9213 7mo ago
https://history-of-animation.webflow.io/ https://history-of-animation.webflow.io/
DrewADesign 7mo ago
I’ve seen the mostly in personal website templates used by people that would have had very sparkly MySpace profiles had they been creating for the web back then.
Sohcahtoa82 7mo ago
> The poster seems to be implying that this effect is prevalent across the web Because it is. For sites with dynamic content (social media, news, etc.), it doesn't happen. But commercial sites trying to convince you to use their product, they're incredibly common. It's not always a fade in exactly like this site does it. Sometimes it's content sliding in from the side. It's incredibly pervasive on SaaS marketing pages.
- sgbeal 7mo ago
  > It's incredibly pervasive on SaaS marketing pages. That would explain my ignorance of it - such sites are in the bottom negligible percentage of sites which i might accidentally visit but never purposely do.
jonas21 7mo ago
You probably haven't noticed it before because when it's done well, it's a subtle and pleasant effect that can be used to draw your attention to particular elements on the page. This site is intentionally doing it very poorly to make a point. Really, the takeaway should be don't do things poorly. But that's kind of obvious.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- JohnFen 7mo ago
  > when it's done well, it's a subtle and pleasant effect I've seen it quite a lot, but apparently I've never seen it done well. It's a very annoying effect that chases me away from the site using it.
- knorker 7mo ago
  > when it's done well It's always awful. This site is exagerated in degree, but in kind it's merely on the scale of awful. Computers should not waste my time. Even if eyes are 10ms faster than the awful fade, if a million people see it, that's almost three hours of human life down the drain. And when scrolling fast, or far, it's not uncommon to have it waste a second of human time. A million of those is 38 human working days, just flushed down the toilet, because someone wanted "pleasant". It's fantastically disrespectful of other people's time. The web is already slow. No need to deliberately spend effort to make it even slower.
  - stefanfisk 7mo ago
    Agree 100%! I’m a fast scroller and skimmer. Info scroll down and the text is not there I’ll just assume that the site is shot and close it. Ain’t nobody got 200ms to wait for a god damn fade in when there’s an infinite amount of sites out there to discover.
  - arcfour 7mo ago
    I don't have a strong opinion either way on the effect, but I do have to say that I always find it amusing how fatalistic HN can sometimes be over the most minor cosmetic inconveniences, couching them as "wasting (large amounts of) humanity's time" and "disrespecting people" as if we're talking about something far more serious than little animations on a webpage. I mean, you might not like it, and that's fair and understandable, but is it really that big of a deal? Surely not.
wgjordan 7mo ago
Anthropic uses it across all their websites, here's a typical example where the effect is obvious as you scroll down: https://claude.com/solutions/agents https://claude.com/solutions/agents I could be wrong, but my simple guess is that it's become widespread in LLM-generated websites partly because of Anthropic's own style guides getting adopted through Claude-bundled skills and such.
- Waterluvian 7mo ago
  Are the little hand animation graphics meant to flicker like they're an epilepsy test? That was so awful I didn't have brain power left to notice the fade scroll.
- psychoslave 7mo ago
  You are absolutely right!
- ayhanfuat 7mo ago
  It is partly to blame, yes. This is from Claude’s official frontend skill: “Motion: Use animations for effects and micro-interactions. Prioritize CSS-only solutions for HTML. Use Motion library for React when available. Focus on high-impact moments: one well-orchestrated page load with staggered reveals (animation-delay) creates more delight than scattered micro-interactions. Use scroll-triggering and hover states that surprise.”
  - SoftTalker 7mo ago
    Who thinks like this? The last thing I want on a website is surprise. I want to do what I came there to do, the same way it worked last time, and then get on with my day.
    - MoonWalk 7mo ago
      On a Web site or anywhere else. Apple, Microsoft, "flat design," and peek-a-boo UI all insult the user and waste his time by turning an important tool into an Advent calendar.
llm_nerd 7mo ago
It definitely isn't prevalent, and usually is for "feature" pieces (like an expose on the Washington Post back when they were a real newspaper), along with product pages. Apple uses it for their various pages, and it is legitimately annoying- https://www.apple.com/iphone/ https://www.apple.com/iphone/ Tesla is a fan as well- https://www.tesla.com/models https://www.tesla.com/models Occasionally sites use lazy loaded images, and do a "fade in" effect when they're actually loaded. Nothing wrong with that particular use.
- flexagoon 7mo ago
  > https://www.tesla.com/models https://www.tesla.com/models Love how that page takes almost 10 seconds to load for the first time on a 200Mbps connection
RobotToaster 7mo ago
Are you sure you don't have prefers-reduced-motion enabled? I just found out I already have it enabled when I went to look for how to enable it...
ge96 7mo ago
> The goldfish It goes where you click in the water area

by sgbeal 7mo ago

ramon156 7mo ago

I was redesigning a website of mine and Claude suggested to add this as an animation. My theory is that, if claude is confident in a suggestion, a lot of other people have done the same. Maybe it's too subtle to notice. Edit: on odeva.nl

chrismorgan 7mo ago
The scroll fade on that site is comparatively inoffensive (comparatively), because you messed with scrolling itself, which is one of the worst things you can do, taking over and ruining inertia. You’re literally going out of your way to make things worse. The ONLY time scrolljacking of any kind is acceptable is for things like maps where there is no “normal”.
- eru 7mo ago
  Or for a game, where it's part of the interface.
  - chrismorgan 7mo ago
    Got an example of what you mean? Because if you mean the only thing I can think of, I very strongly disagree.
    - wtallis 7mo ago
      Hijacking native scroll behavior to badly reimplement anything remotely like scrolling is wrong even in a gaming context. But if you're implementing Half Life 2 in a browser, where the user no longer has a normal cursor, then hijacking scrolling to implement the weapon switcher is fine.
      - eru 7mo ago
        Yes, that. Or some weird experimental stuff, like running an emulator for the Playdate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playdate_(console) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playdate_(console) or whatever. Games are allowed to be a bit wacky, and no one is forced to play them.

Xerox9213 7mo ago

https://history-of-animation.webflow.io/ https://history-of-animation.webflow.io/

DrewADesign 7mo ago

I’ve seen the mostly in personal website templates used by people that would have had very sparkly MySpace profiles had they been creating for the web back then.

Sohcahtoa82 7mo ago

> The poster seems to be implying that this effect is prevalent across the web Because it is. For sites with dynamic content (social media, news, etc.), it doesn't happen. But commercial sites trying to convince you to use their product, they're incredibly common. It's not always a fade in exactly like this site does it. Sometimes it's content sliding in from the side. It's incredibly pervasive on SaaS marketing pages.

sgbeal 7mo ago
> It's incredibly pervasive on SaaS marketing pages. That would explain my ignorance of it - such sites are in the bottom negligible percentage of sites which i might accidentally visit but never purposely do.

jonas21 7mo ago

You probably haven't noticed it before because when it's done well, it's a subtle and pleasant effect that can be used to draw your attention to particular elements on the page. This site is intentionally doing it very poorly to make a point. Really, the takeaway should be don't do things poorly. But that's kind of obvious.

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
JohnFen 7mo ago
> when it's done well, it's a subtle and pleasant effect I've seen it quite a lot, but apparently I've never seen it done well. It's a very annoying effect that chases me away from the site using it.
knorker 7mo ago
> when it's done well It's always awful. This site is exagerated in degree, but in kind it's merely on the scale of awful. Computers should not waste my time. Even if eyes are 10ms faster than the awful fade, if a million people see it, that's almost three hours of human life down the drain. And when scrolling fast, or far, it's not uncommon to have it waste a second of human time. A million of those is 38 human working days, just flushed down the toilet, because someone wanted "pleasant". It's fantastically disrespectful of other people's time. The web is already slow. No need to deliberately spend effort to make it even slower.
- stefanfisk 7mo ago
  Agree 100%! I’m a fast scroller and skimmer. Info scroll down and the text is not there I’ll just assume that the site is shot and close it. Ain’t nobody got 200ms to wait for a god damn fade in when there’s an infinite amount of sites out there to discover.
- arcfour 7mo ago
  I don't have a strong opinion either way on the effect, but I do have to say that I always find it amusing how fatalistic HN can sometimes be over the most minor cosmetic inconveniences, couching them as "wasting (large amounts of) humanity's time" and "disrespecting people" as if we're talking about something far more serious than little animations on a webpage. I mean, you might not like it, and that's fair and understandable, but is it really that big of a deal? Surely not.

wgjordan 7mo ago

Anthropic uses it across all their websites, here's a typical example where the effect is obvious as you scroll down: https://claude.com/solutions/agents https://claude.com/solutions/agents I could be wrong, but my simple guess is that it's become widespread in LLM-generated websites partly because of Anthropic's own style guides getting adopted through Claude-bundled skills and such.

Waterluvian 7mo ago
Are the little hand animation graphics meant to flicker like they're an epilepsy test? That was so awful I didn't have brain power left to notice the fade scroll.
psychoslave 7mo ago
You are absolutely right!
ayhanfuat 7mo ago
It is partly to blame, yes. This is from Claude’s official frontend skill: “Motion: Use animations for effects and micro-interactions. Prioritize CSS-only solutions for HTML. Use Motion library for React when available. Focus on high-impact moments: one well-orchestrated page load with staggered reveals (animation-delay) creates more delight than scattered micro-interactions. Use scroll-triggering and hover states that surprise.”
- SoftTalker 7mo ago
  Who thinks like this? The last thing I want on a website is surprise. I want to do what I came there to do, the same way it worked last time, and then get on with my day.
  - MoonWalk 7mo ago
    On a Web site or anywhere else. Apple, Microsoft, "flat design," and peek-a-boo UI all insult the user and waste his time by turning an important tool into an Advent calendar.

llm_nerd 7mo ago

It definitely isn't prevalent, and usually is for "feature" pieces (like an expose on the Washington Post back when they were a real newspaper), along with product pages. Apple uses it for their various pages, and it is legitimately annoying- https://www.apple.com/iphone/ https://www.apple.com/iphone/ Tesla is a fan as well- https://www.tesla.com/models https://www.tesla.com/models Occasionally sites use lazy loaded images, and do a "fade in" effect when they're actually loaded. Nothing wrong with that particular use.

flexagoon 7mo ago
> https://www.tesla.com/models https://www.tesla.com/models Love how that page takes almost 10 seconds to load for the first time on a 200Mbps connection

RobotToaster 7mo ago

Are you sure you don't have prefers-reduced-motion enabled? I just found out I already have it enabled when I went to look for how to enable it...

ge96 7mo ago

> The goldfish It goes where you click in the water area