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What do I see when I get to this page? An olive skull and crossbones with EXTRA VIRGIN SUICIDE. Let me scroll down so I can see more! I hit the down arrow. N

What do I see when I get to this page? An olive skull and crossbones with EXTRA VIRGIN SUICIDE. Let me scroll down so I can see more! I hit the down arrow. Nothing happens. I try the Page Down key. Nothing happens. Ah, yes, I know, the keyboard doesn't always work on every website. I'll just use the scroll bar! Hmm... No scroll bar. Wait! Over on the right, there's a box with a triangle in it, pointing up. It almost looks like the top arrow in a scroll bar. That's not the direction I wanted to go, but it looks like a clicky thing, so I'll try it. Yay! The up arrow scrolls right! And I can click the up arrow again and it scrolls right again. And now there's a left arrow angle bracket over on the left that scrolls left when I click it. Why is one an angle bracket and the other a triangle? Why does one point left and the other up? This Must Mean Something. But never mind that, at least now I understand that this page doesn't go up and down, it goes left and right, and I have a way to navigate it. Hmm... Left and right? Maybe I can try the left and right keys? Yes indeedy, they work! I feel like such a computer expert now.

mef 13y ago
You can also just click anywhere on the title image.
jsolson 13y ago
My experience: "Hey, there are a bunch of dots at the bottom, just like my iPhone. The left one is lit up. I'll try tapping right. Oh, neat." Honestly never even noticed the giant right arrow on the right side. My wife (who didn't see me navigating about), within ~2 seconds of looking at the page, said she'd tap the giant arrow to go to the next page. While I think they could certainly have done better, I don't think it's as bad as you're making it out to be. My biggest complaint is that on mobile the pages snap in rather than sliding in as you swipe.
- Stratoscope 13y ago
  You're probably right, I was over-dramatizing it a bit. On a touch device I would have probably figured it out sooner too, and it didn't really take me that long to figure it out on the desktop browser. Anyway, I figured out why I wasn't seeing a proper right arrow. It's a bug in their CSS. They're using this sprite sheet: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/01/13/food-chain-olive/74ba3337612371882a1c848ec4747ca84c394795/spritesheet@2x.png http://graphics8.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/01/13/food-ch... This has the left and right arrow symbols at the bottom right. The left arrow is working correctly, but for the right arrow the specificity of their selectors is a bit messed up. The right arrow has a background-position that should select the bottom right corner of the sprite sheet, but this particular rule is getting overriden by a background: in a more specific selector that makes it use the top left corner (0 0) instead. And that top left corner happens to include the top of the fork-chicken's tail, which was looking like an up arrow to me. I guess the moral of the story is if you're going to do this kind of fancy presentation, there are a lot of things that can go wrong!
joedevon 13y ago
Horrible for accessibility sake. Which is important to people who have all kinds of issues with non standard methods of navigation.
HelloMcFly 13y ago
I don't see an up-arrow, but I do see a giant arrow pointing right.

mef 13y ago

You can also just click anywhere on the title image.

jsolson 13y ago

My experience: "Hey, there are a bunch of dots at the bottom, just like my iPhone. The left one is lit up. I'll try tapping right. Oh, neat." Honestly never even noticed the giant right arrow on the right side. My wife (who didn't see me navigating about), within ~2 seconds of looking at the page, said she'd tap the giant arrow to go to the next page. While I think they could certainly have done better, I don't think it's as bad as you're making it out to be. My biggest complaint is that on mobile the pages snap in rather than sliding in as you swipe.

Stratoscope 13y ago
You're probably right, I was over-dramatizing it a bit. On a touch device I would have probably figured it out sooner too, and it didn't really take me that long to figure it out on the desktop browser. Anyway, I figured out why I wasn't seeing a proper right arrow. It's a bug in their CSS. They're using this sprite sheet: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/01/13/food-chain-olive/74ba3337612371882a1c848ec4747ca84c394795/spritesheet@2x.png http://graphics8.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2014/01/13/food-ch... This has the left and right arrow symbols at the bottom right. The left arrow is working correctly, but for the right arrow the specificity of their selectors is a bit messed up. The right arrow has a background-position that should select the bottom right corner of the sprite sheet, but this particular rule is getting overriden by a background: in a more specific selector that makes it use the top left corner (0 0) instead. And that top left corner happens to include the top of the fork-chicken's tail, which was looking like an up arrow to me. I guess the moral of the story is if you're going to do this kind of fancy presentation, there are a lot of things that can go wrong!

joedevon 13y ago

Horrible for accessibility sake. Which is important to people who have all kinds of issues with non standard methods of navigation.

HelloMcFly 13y ago

I don't see an up-arrow, but I do see a giant arrow pointing right.