4 ms·

pardon the hijacking, but what's with this trend of everything above the fold looking like an entire complete page with almost no content? half the time i land

pardon the hijacking, but what's with this trend of everything above the fold looking like an entire complete page with almost no content? half the time i land on sites like this, i sit there for 5 seconds wondering where the hell the content is. the scrollbar is not that visible, guys. if i dont see partial content hiding at the bottom of the fold which would clue me into the fact that there's 10 more pages worth of scrolling, i'm not gonna "get it" by noticing a scroll bar. the pretty UI is not worth the horrid UX EDIT: i think repliers are focusing too much on scrollbar visibility. this isnt the main issue. i have no problem with the scrollbar being visible on other sites. it's plenty visible on my Win 8.1 / Firefox 1080p res. The problem is that A) i dont want to scroll an entire page before i begin reading and B) i dont want it to be the primary (and sole) indicator of additional content. I have to look over to the side to get the only cue, it's really annoying. /rant.

dm2 12y ago
I've noticed that too and also do not like it. I'd prefer the traditional style article and thumbnails where necessary (not just for the sake of cramming images into articles). Maybe they've done testing and this style article gets read/shared more, it certainly looks more official and permanent but it's still just a blog post / news article. This is where I first saw it, and it's annoying to read the huge text and adjust to the images that float under text: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/that-time-an-air-force-f-16-and-an-army-missile-battery-fought-each-other-bb89d7d03b7d https://medium.com/war-is-boring/that-time-an-air-force-f-16... Apparently they never even considered what it would look like when someone tries to print that article, the 1st half of the page is a solid black image, then the text is laughably large.
- NotAtWork 12y ago
  That page you linked is horrendous!
  - dm2 12y ago
    This link from the same site is on the front page of HN today: https://medium.com/@sachagreif/in-the-past-couple-years-startups-have-started-realizing-that-good-design-can-make-the-difference-2fdeb90d390a https://medium.com/@sachagreif/in-the-past-couple-years-star... It's a decent article and fairly interesting (though not surprising), but the layout is like navigating a minefield, it's still better than the multi-page layouts that are common on some sites. Try to print this article though, 17 pages. 17 pages. Their main business is offering content in a format that is readable and accessible to users. One solution would be to have an alternate layout with normal sized text, no giant header image, and thumbnails rather than half-page images, and that layout preference would be both saved in a cookie and settable via a URL parameter.
sosuke 12y ago
I don't love it, but think of it as a book or magazine cover or full page picture at the start of an article. I've just started scrolling on every page I land on at this point.
LeoPanthera 12y ago
> the scrollbar is not that visible That's the real problem. It's become very trendy to have nearly-invisible, or even actually-invisible scrollbars. This is a horrible loss of UI and I have never understood it.
- leeoniya 12y ago
  the thing is, it's as visible as it always was. i'm on Win 8.1, Firefox - it's plenty visible, it's just not the first place i look and shouldn't be.
JohnTHaller 12y ago
Not being able to see your scrollbar is the fault of your browser's and/or OS's horrid UX.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - leeoniya 12y ago
    that's even worse. but in this instance it's not overriding it. when i see a page that looks like a complete page, my first instinct should not be to see if there's a scrollbar. imagine if the only way you saw magazines was in 2D, and the covers were not always in the magazine format. you would have no clue if the image you were looking at was an picture or the cover of something more. in the age of html5 slideshows, this is not a good thing.
megablast 12y ago
Is it hard to scroll on your machine. On a mac it is incredibly easy to scroll on a webpage, that is why I think these designs might be more popular.
- leeoniya 12y ago
  nope, very easy. scroll through thousands of lines of code per day. what i dont scroll through every day is a lot of content-less whitespace - i'd complain about that too :)
AgentME 12y ago
What's really annoying is the pages where the background image stays fixed as you scroll down (and text starts to scroll up over the background image). Sometimes I believe I'm at the bottom of the page when scrolling appeared to do nothing and I get ready to close the tab before I notice some text had come into view. Er, I usually notice the text. When I first started seeing some of these, I remember thinking some of them had failed to load when I couldn't scroll, so I guess I don't always notice the text.

dm2 12y ago

I've noticed that too and also do not like it. I'd prefer the traditional style article and thumbnails where necessary (not just for the sake of cramming images into articles). Maybe they've done testing and this style article gets read/shared more, it certainly looks more official and permanent but it's still just a blog post / news article. This is where I first saw it, and it's annoying to read the huge text and adjust to the images that float under text: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/that-time-an-air-force-f-16-and-an-army-missile-battery-fought-each-other-bb89d7d03b7d https://medium.com/war-is-boring/that-time-an-air-force-f-16... Apparently they never even considered what it would look like when someone tries to print that article, the 1st half of the page is a solid black image, then the text is laughably large.

NotAtWork 12y ago
That page you linked is horrendous!
- dm2 12y ago
  This link from the same site is on the front page of HN today: https://medium.com/@sachagreif/in-the-past-couple-years-startups-have-started-realizing-that-good-design-can-make-the-difference-2fdeb90d390a https://medium.com/@sachagreif/in-the-past-couple-years-star... It's a decent article and fairly interesting (though not surprising), but the layout is like navigating a minefield, it's still better than the multi-page layouts that are common on some sites. Try to print this article though, 17 pages. 17 pages. Their main business is offering content in a format that is readable and accessible to users. One solution would be to have an alternate layout with normal sized text, no giant header image, and thumbnails rather than half-page images, and that layout preference would be both saved in a cookie and settable via a URL parameter.

sosuke 12y ago

I don't love it, but think of it as a book or magazine cover or full page picture at the start of an article. I've just started scrolling on every page I land on at this point.

LeoPanthera 12y ago

> the scrollbar is not that visible That's the real problem. It's become very trendy to have nearly-invisible, or even actually-invisible scrollbars. This is a horrible loss of UI and I have never understood it.

leeoniya 12y ago
the thing is, it's as visible as it always was. i'm on Win 8.1, Firefox - it's plenty visible, it's just not the first place i look and shouldn't be.

JohnTHaller 12y ago

Not being able to see your scrollbar is the fault of your browser's and/or OS's horrid UX.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- leeoniya 12y ago
  that's even worse. but in this instance it's not overriding it. when i see a page that looks like a complete page, my first instinct should not be to see if there's a scrollbar. imagine if the only way you saw magazines was in 2D, and the covers were not always in the magazine format. you would have no clue if the image you were looking at was an picture or the cover of something more. in the age of html5 slideshows, this is not a good thing.

megablast 12y ago

Is it hard to scroll on your machine. On a mac it is incredibly easy to scroll on a webpage, that is why I think these designs might be more popular.

leeoniya 12y ago
nope, very easy. scroll through thousands of lines of code per day. what i dont scroll through every day is a lot of content-less whitespace - i'd complain about that too :)

AgentME 12y ago

What's really annoying is the pages where the background image stays fixed as you scroll down (and text starts to scroll up over the background image). Sometimes I believe I'm at the bottom of the page when scrolling appeared to do nothing and I get ready to close the tab before I notice some text had come into view. Er, I usually notice the text. When I first started seeing some of these, I remember thinking some of them had failed to load when I couldn't scroll, so I guess I don't always notice the text.