4 ms·
Nice idea, badly implemented. The interface teaches me how to use it very badly. The most obvious interface clues are the arrows to either side of the page, bu
by pertinhower 14y ago
Nice idea, badly implemented.
The interface teaches me how to use it very badly. The most obvious interface clues are the arrows to either side of the page, but these work in the usual manner (hopping from page to page), so they distract me from the heart of your interface.
When I do happen to mousewheel, I can't immediately understand what that does. Am I moving myself or a divider? Why is the divider coming from the top? What's above the divider? Why is it snapping like that, instead of scrolling smoothly? The snapping erects a level of indirection between my (smooth) wheel movement and the movement of the divider, which obscures my ability to understand what's happening. I can't decide whether to scroll upwards or downwards—which is "forwards?"
Why is there a white page "behind" the text if I scroll the divider upwards? Is that what's on the next page or the previous page? Why are you showing me a white page?
The sense that I'm reading downward yet new text comes from above feels very strange. I see how you've ended up here, but it's highly unintuitive. Alas, it's also fundamental to your concept, so whether the concept lives or dies (once all other problems are removed) is a question of whether people can adapt to this spatial "warp."
The "snappy" movement of the page divider line feels clunky. Move per pixel, in immediate response to mouse wheel (or touch drag?) movement—preferably with inertia—definitely not per line.
This is not the way I want the world to scroll. But I see where you're going: leaving the text in place makes sense, and if you're going to do that then using a divider from the top follows inevitably. So the idea is worthwhile, but this implementation is its own enemy.
- rdwallis 14y agoThanks, the arrows are a relic from the ebook reader on the main site. With that I specifically wanted users to discover the scrolling only by accident after they were already familiar with the pagination. I tried it without allowing the scroll back on the first page (i.e. stop the white page from appearing behind.) but it made the ui feel stuck.
- fastball 14y agoI think you're over-engineering your analysis... I immediately knew what was going on when I started scrolling, so I don't share your view that it is counter-intuitive. Also, I think your problem with the scrolling is your mouse. Does your mouse have a smoothly scrolling middle button, or is it one of the ones that moves in clicks? Scrolling with my touchpad worked excellently. You only see a white page when you are before the beginning of the text you are trying to read... otherwise scrolling up results in going to the previous page.
- EGreg 14y agoI would add one thing to make it much more clear: darken the text below the divider to give a clue that it was invalidated even better, have a background gradient corresponding to the "age" of the horizontal line that's being shown the gradient would make a subtle but intuitive hint as the movement commenced!!!
- masklinn 14y agoI can only say that, scrolling with a touchpad gesture (OSX), I fully agree with pertinhower and completely disagree with yours.
- fastball 14y agoI too am on OSX (10.8.2) Perhaps it is your browser? I am using Chrome (Latest Version - 24.0.1312.52)
- lucian1900 14y agoI hadn't even tried to scroll!