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David Pogue Calls Out 18 Sites For Failing His Space-Bar Scrolling Test (yahoo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Yahoo Finance's David Pogue:
You know this tip, don't you? When you tap the Space bar, the web page you're reading scrolls up exactly one screenful... But in recent years, something clumsy and unfortunate has happened: Web designers have begun slapping toolbars or navigation bars at the top of the page. That's fine -- except when it throws off the Space-bar scrolling! Which, most of the time, it does.
Suddenly, tapping Space doesn't scroll the right amount. The lines you were supposed to read next scroll too high; they're now cut off. Now you have to use your mouse or keyboard to scroll back down again. Which defeats the entire purpose of the Space-bar tip. Over the last few months, I've begun keeping track of which sites do Space-bar scrolling right -- and which are broken. I want to draw the public's attention to this bit of broken code, and maybe inspire the world's webmasters to get with the program.
Pogue's article announces "the world's first Space-Bar Scrolling Report Card," shaming sites like the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New Yorker, and Scientific American for their improperly-scrolling web sites. (As well as, ironically, Yahoo -- the parent company of the site Pogue is writing for.) Pogue writes that web programmers "should get their act together so that the scroll works as it's supposed to. (And if you work for one of those sites, and you manage to get the scrolling-bug fixed, email me so I can update this article and congratulate you.)"
Suddenly, tapping Space doesn't scroll the right amount. The lines you were supposed to read next scroll too high; they're now cut off. Now you have to use your mouse or keyboard to scroll back down again. Which defeats the entire purpose of the Space-bar tip. Over the last few months, I've begun keeping track of which sites do Space-bar scrolling right -- and which are broken. I want to draw the public's attention to this bit of broken code, and maybe inspire the world's webmasters to get with the program.
Pogue's article announces "the world's first Space-Bar Scrolling Report Card," shaming sites like the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New Yorker, and Scientific American for their improperly-scrolling web sites. (As well as, ironically, Yahoo -- the parent company of the site Pogue is writing for.) Pogue writes that web programmers "should get their act together so that the scroll works as it's supposed to. (And if you work for one of those sites, and you manage to get the scrolling-bug fixed, email me so I can update this article and congratulate you.)"
Never realized that key performs scrolling.
Why don't people use the Page-up/-down keys anymore?
There is necessarily some overlap to these plagues
1) AOL (1990's Internet gateway confused with the actual Internet)
2) hotmail/msn
3) spam/malware
4) Penguinistas (from the advent of Linux until Linux became a stable and mature OS, c. 2004/6; subsequently, for the most part, it's all good, ignoring the systemd pimple)
4) Adobe Flash
5) poorly implemented Javascript (still continues, never ends)
6) Apple and the development and ubiquity of the iOS-dominated mobile web (this ruined nearly everything for mobile device power-users)
7) unrestrained web developers and site feature creep, KISS is replaced with incomprehensible complexity (slow steady march to WWW apocalypse)
WWW/Internet never needed any of these things. Some of them started out innocuously enough, and turned evil (like Flash), and some started out evil and turned to goodness (such as Linux and it's irrational popularity prior to become mature and stable).
What will be the next scourge of the Internet?
The Admin and the Engineer
If you don't know who David Pogue is, you have no business criticizing anything related to usability. Just keep on making your crappy interfaces and collect your check.
> Seriously, could someone in web design please explain WHY keeping a toolbar on the top is a good idea?
Graphics Guru here. (I've been programming graphics and doing UI design since the mid 80's)
I used one for the first time on one of my web pages a few months ago where I show the Section name, Page Number, and other misc info -- some which is clickable to navigate to a different section. Basically a "sticky floating header." I also have an option where the viewer can toggle color on/off (since I use color highlighting to show categories.)
I have mixed opinions about this:
* (+) It looks sexy as hell so I can understand why people want to use it. As you scroll the page up the last section you come across "sticks" to the top of the screen until the next one. It helps "anchor" the reader by showing them useful information relevant for the current section.
* (-) Calculating where to scroll now needs to be intercepted / adjusted to account for the sticky header height.
* (+/-) If used the ancient iFrame that would solve the scrolling calculation problem but I lose the graceful "scroll up into fixed place".
* (-) I hate the fact that I'm losing vertical space which is already at a premium.
* (-) Treating it as a "sticky footer" solves the scrolling calculation problem, but it just looks weird as the reader is mis-led into believing what the "next" section is, not the "current" section.
* (-) I really wish there was an option to auto-hide it -- but that has it own's problems. What triggers it? That forces the reader to press a key or move their mouse to make it visible. UGH.
With all the problems it creates I'm not convinced the sticky header is the right solution -- it has a limited usefulness. It definitely should be used sparingly, but I lament that there really are no good alternatives.
i.e. Form without Function is useless visual vomit.
Unfortunately too may UI / UX "experts" get dazzled by the "bling" forgetting WHY people are reading in the first place. i.e. They want to solve a task: either linear reading, or non-linear navigation.
This is why I constantly asked myself 4 questions when I was deploying it:
* What purpose does this sticky header server?
* What problem does it solve?
* Does it create more problems then it solves?
* What are the alternatives?
Good design is almost always a trade off. :-/
The problem modern Web designers don't know what the fuck they are doing anymore. They don't understand the _context_ of the problem that has been "solved" for 20 years. Instead they want to dumb their UI down to tablet / phone standards tossing out all the UI advantages that people have come to expect as standard behavior. UI has become a "lowest common denominator" -- the worst of everything. Even worse these UX designers think they are doing god's work unwilling to listen to feedback on all the dumb shit they are doing, unable to learn.
This current fad of "flat design" is one such idiocracy. Instead of empower the view to use different colors to help distinguish icons you force them to decode similar monochromatic silhouettes. *face palm*.
It is good someone is starting to call out these dumb web designers.