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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?
I wouldn't call it a "tip" or "trick" if the meaning of the key is obvious. Of course, kids these days might not see an actual PgDn key any more, and there are probably other reasons for the (unix)? tradition of using space for the same action, like HJKL for arrow keys.
Speaking of tradition, if browsers can respect the traditional space key, how about basic text manipulations like Ctrl-K, Ctrl-A and Ctrl-E?
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Perhaps he should check sites for whether, when you follow a link and return, it takes you back to where you were or to the top of the page.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Well, the fact that some of the text gets obscured by a toolbar isn't the problem.
The real issue IS all the toolbars that remain in place when you are scrolling.
Who ever thought it was a good idea to steal my vertical pixels should be shot at dawn.
Even with Full HD screen there is still LESS vertical pixels than what I had 15 years ago on an old 21" 1600x1200 CRT.
"Progress" my as.
Seriously, could someone in web design please explain WHY keeping a toolbar on the top is a good idea?
Huge fonts, toolbars, mystery hamburger navigation and goddamn parallax scrolling.
Scrolling isn't a problem. There are a lot of ways to scroll.
What IS a problem is damned hover menus. They should be banned from the universe.
I'm using an ad blocker and it works fine.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
"Jarring UI experience"?
Seriously? When I ask for the next page, it is because I WANT TO READ THE NEXT PAGE, and not because I want to see how clever the scrolling animation is.
Also, key scrolling is a local browser function. Whether it is space or page down or META+wheel on the mouse or shaking your phone in just the right way, the browser is just jumping down the buffer a bit.
The problem is that the HTML specs provide a way to float crap on top, and ways to pin it to the top or bottom of the page, and also a hint to the browser that indicates how much reading space is covered by the crap, so that the browser knows how far to jump per page request. Lots of websites have the floaty crap, without the hint.
That's all that needs to happen. Web designers need to provide the height of the crap they are cluttering the page with, and they aren't. They aren't being asked to write special javascript to jump properly, they aren't being asked to write keyboard drivers, or layout engines. Just to include a hint about how much of the reading space their floaty crap is obscuring.
See that "Preview" button?
Even the original design of Windows was supposed to have keyboard shortcuts as the main way to interact with the environment and individual programs, with the mouse functions translated, depending on context, to the appropriate keyboard shortcuts in the main event loop.
Using the mouse to access menu functions, you'd see the keyboard shortcuts beside the desired operation (Print Ctl-P, Save-Ctl-S, etc) and quickly increase your speed. F*cking web developers screwed that paradigm up real good. Windows also screwed it up in later iterations.Now we're all screwed. Thanks, people, by dumbing shit down, you've just made everyone dumber, forcing them to work at the level of the lowest common denominator.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
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.
Except for all the 'made for Internet Explorer' pages which abused ActiveX to the detriment of Netscape.
It makes the view move down causing the contents or page to scroll up. In no cases should it cause the screen to move unless your device is on unstable surface.
...Microsoft's browser monopoly shenanigans are technically not something that affected anyone other than Microsoft users that didn't have the ability to work around it....
Au contraire... It appeared that Microsoft's goal was to leverage its Windows monopoly in an attempt to push the web "standards" towards its Internet Explorer capabilities. Microsoft wanted the web to work best when viewed via Internet Explorer, and in the process, take control of the web in the same manner in which they took control of the desktop.
.
Microsoft wanted the web client to drive the web standards development, instead of the standards driving the web client development. Fortunately, Microsoft failed. However, inside many companies, the web doesn't work right unless it works right with IE.
Besides, we already have the page down key.
No we don't.
They both have the same broken behavior. You missed the forest for the trees.
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
And while we're at it, can we name and shame the fucktards who implement the "infinitely scrolling" page feature?
I hate that shit- you can't bookmark the page properly, and if you back up to it then it either loses it's memory of where you were (forcing you to scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll down to where you were) OR it forces you to reload 150 pages of crap back to get back to where you were. Either way its a pain in the ass and a hostile UI design.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Why do you think the key is called "Enter" to begin with? Think about it. It was the key that entered (submitted) form data. That's what the key meant for 30+ years before the PC (let alone the mouse) was invented. "Return" was a different key entirely, one that took the same action as a carriage return on a typewriter (and sometimes labeled with the down-and-right arrow).
The real mistake was combining the functions of these two, distinct keys in the early PC days - at the time, terminal keyboards still did it right. Then a bunch of kids re-invented form submission, ignoring decades of best practices in usability.
Enter for form submission was the standard and the correct standard since before you were born. That's what the name of the key means ffs. Now get off my lawn!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You can no longer discover the keyboard shortcuts in Windows. Discoverability is the victim in the latest user-hostile UI fads.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
The problem is that the HTML specs provide a way to float crap on top, and ways to pin it to the top or bottom of the page, and also a hint to the browser that indicates how much reading space is covered by the crap, so that the browser knows how far to jump per page request. Lots of websites have the floaty crap, without the hint.
I found a solution this weekend: just disable CSS. Pages are readable again, besides the catastrophic breakdown of design, but articles... man, articles are text and images again. And space/PgDown scrollable.