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Chrome Now Uses Scroll Anchoring To Prevent Those Annoying Page Jumps (techcrunch.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the frustration-free dept.

Google has updated its Chrome browser to fix the annoying page jumps that occur when pages are loading. While developers want pages to load the actual content of a page before additional ads and images appear, "the problem is that if you've already scrolled down, your page resets when some off-screen ad loads and you're suddenly looking at a completely different part of the page," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The latest versions of Chrome (56+) do their best to prevent these jumps with the help of a feature called scroll anchoring. Google tested scroll anchoring in the Chrome beta versions for the last year and now it's on by default. Google says the feature currently prevents almost three jumps per page view -- and, over time, that number will likely increase.

63 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. What about header jumps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does it prevent those incredibly annoying jumps that happen when a website suddenly inserts a header at the top of the page after you scroll down a few lines? Because when I see those, I usually just close the page and make a mental note to not visit that site again.

    1. Re:What about header jumps? by Tobenisstinky · · Score: 1

      Like this one?

      --
      wha'? where am i?
  2. Just Slashdot by Garfong · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The only website I have this problem with is Slashdot, which wants to cover the top 3rd of my web browser with an ad.

    1. Re:Just Slashdot by mykepredko · · Score: 1

      Nice to know Google has slashdot's back.

      --
      Mimetics Inc. Twitter
    2. Re:Just Slashdot by mnemotronic · · Score: 3, Funny

      The only website I have this problem with is Slashdot, which wants to cover the top 3rd of my web browser with an ad.

      It happens to me all the time on Ars when viewed with Chrome on an Android. The cause is not the initial load; it's the carousel advertisements "above" the current view. When they change size everything adjusts it's position. I get completely lost. Which, in my case, is like selling coal to Newcastle.

      And don't get me started on the CPU cycles needed by all the advert videos playing somewhere "off screen". My S7 starts to feel more like an S zero point five. The does not help my browsing experience nor does it entice me to support the advertisers -- the opposite in fact.

      --
      The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
    3. Re:Just Slashdot by martiniturbide · · Score: 2

      Is this chrome feature going to fix Slashdot's horrible top banner ??

    4. Re: Just Slashdot by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

      Vaporware but if MS ever wanted a comeback on phones, they'd grow Edge's market share by releasing on Android first. I prefer their Outlook client to any FrankenUI interface to Gmail that Google churns through.

    5. Re:Just Slashdot by antdude · · Score: 1

      With an ad blocker?

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
    6. Re:Just Slashdot by urbanriot · · Score: 2

      Haha I'm glad to hear someone else is annoyed with Slashdot's annoying jumbo ad. I installed ad-blockers specifically because of Slashdot, it's the most annoying invasive ad that blocks the text while I scroll.

    7. Re:Just Slashdot by ryen · · Score: 1

      I think Google is also updating their search rank algos to reduce scores for pages that don't show much content above-the-fold shortly after page load.

    8. Re:Just Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I don't see ads on Slashdot (probably for geographic reasons), but Slashdot makes an article jump around on Chrome at least three times. First it jump to below the summary to the first comment, then loads something into the top banner which causes a jump to the top, then it jumps again back to the first comment.
      I'm pretty sure this is Slashdot's fault, since they recently added the entirely unhelpful scripting to skip the summary and jump to the first comment when it used to just open an article at the top of the page. For those of us who open an article based on the subject rather than reading the whole summary, it is extremely infuriating that I get two lines into the summary before it starts bouncing around.

    9. Re:Just Slashdot by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Try DNS66 for Android. Block 99% of adverts. No root or anything like that required, and it's open source. Get it from the F-Droid app store.

      Saves a lot of battery, as well as making browsing more pleasant. Works in most apps too.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    10. Re:Just Slashdot by cdrudge · · Score: 1

      Hadn't heard of that app before. Is it using an actual external VPN service, as in all your traffic goes through some 3rd party? Or is it hooking into the network stack as a sort of virtual local VPN where everything is local, intercepting traffic getting around the normal restriction of writing to the hosts file requiring root?

    11. Re:Just Slashdot by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      It creates a local VPN connection, nothing leaves your phone. It only intercepts DNS requests and blocks via a hosts list.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    12. Re:Just Slashdot by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2

      Try DNS66 for Android. Block 99% of adverts. No root or anything like that required, and it's open source. Get it from the F-Droid app store.

      Saves a lot of battery, as well as making browsing more pleasant. Works in most apps too.

      I don't know how regular non-technical people can even use the internet any more. There have been rare occasions when I've had to turn off my protection, and the screen jumps around like it's having a seizure. I've said it before and stand by it, but if ad and script blockers are outlawed, I'll find something else to do with my time.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    13. Re:Just Slashdot by solios · · Score: 1

      I don't have this problem at all on the desktop. On my phone, on the other hand, it happens with every single website on the commercial web. The damned things spend more time loading than they do displaying content, and it seems like pages are constantly refreshing, only to add nag-boxes for some mobile app I don't want, then to bug me to "subscribe." etc. End result is I don't feel compelled to upgrade my phone, I just don't use the web on it anymore. I can't, it's crap.

    14. Re:Just Slashdot by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      The web without an ad blocker reminds me of that scene in The Simpsons... "The goggles, they do nothing!"

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    15. Re:Just Slashdot by NoSalt · · Score: 1

      Try CNN.com sometime.

    16. Re:Just Slashdot by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      I don't know how regular non-technical people can even use the internet any more. There have been rare occasions when I've had to turn off my protection, and the screen jumps around like it's having a seizure. I've said it before and stand by it, but if ad and script blockers are outlawed, I'll find something else to do with my time.

      There'll be a plugin with an offline mode that accidentally *wink* rewrites all URLs to local and only goes 1 deep and doesn't download anything but 1st level javascript. Eventually someone will figure that out and the workaround, but for now it works well if you want to browse an entire site.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    17. Re:Just Slashdot by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      I don't know how regular non-technical people can even use the internet any more. There have been rare occasions when I've had to turn off my protection, and the screen jumps around like it's having a seizure. I've said it before and stand by it, but if ad and script blockers are outlawed, I'll find something else to do with my time.

      There'll be a plugin with an offline mode that accidentally *wink* rewrites all URLs to local and only goes 1 deep and doesn't download anything but 1st level javascript. Eventually someone will figure that out and the workaround, but for now it works well if you want to browse an entire site.

      I'm wondering when the first history poisoner is coming out?

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  3. God I hope this works by jareth-0205 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It didn't work very well when I enables it in testing a few months ago, but we'll see.

    Page jumps make me actually angry. It's like a book snapping shut on you mid-sentence.

    1. Re:God I hope this works by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Scrolling on certain websites (i.e. Twitter) has been totally broken for me since the last Chrome update and now I'm suspecting this is the cause.

    2. Re:God I hope this works by Big+Hairy+Ian · · Score: 2

      About the only time I ever click on an advert is because the page jumped and moved the advert to where the link I was just clicking on was. This will be a good fix if it works.

      --

      Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.

  4. Solution to laziness by alzoron · · Score: 1

    This wouldn't be that big of a problem if web designers would properly declare the size attributes on images.

    1. Re: Solution to laziness by SirSlud · · Score: 2

      Dynamic content - often the page doesn't know the size of the content until it's been served.

      --
      "Old man yells at systemd"
    2. Re: Solution to laziness by zerocircle · · Score: 2

      An example: I was a front-end developer for the Wall Street Journal five years ago. The home page was a shifting multi-column stack of dozens of internal content modules (developed by different programmers) that had no awareness of each other (also often the case with the programmers), along with dynamic ads and an astounding amount of additional crud that included externally-sourced content like spammy Taboola and Outbrain links. To conserve bandwidth, the module containers triggered just-in-time content loading when the user scrolled down to within a certain number of pixels. There was effectively no way for any part of the page to know the position of any other part. Sure, I declared the sizes for images within my module, but it had no effect on the rest of the page.

    3. Re: Solution to laziness by Carewolf · · Score: 1

      Dynamic content - often the page doesn't know the size of the content until it's been served.

      Often the page doesn't know the content at all because it is served by a different third-party that may resize it at any point, or overlay normal content. The only thing stopping them is usually that they promised not to.

  5. And caused a bug I had to fix... by scrib · · Score: 1

    Our website has a bootstrap drop-down menu an each item in a list on a page. When the mouse hovered over an item that opened a submenu, the submenu would make the page grow, Chrome scrolled to the bottom, the mouse was no longer over the menu item and the submenu closed, shrinking the page and Chrome scrolled and the mouse was hovering over the menu again.

    Rapid cycling of screen position and menu state was Not Good. At least you can turn off the anchoring...

    --
    Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
    1. Re: And caused a bug I had to fix... by Highdude702 · · Score: 1

      I think the same thing, Frys Electronics is the one that gets me the most. but i have the onmousehover bullshit. they have buttons for a reason, sometimes i like to move the mouse up for it not to distract me while reading, and all of a sudden a menu i didnt want is now distracting me. its stupidity at its best.

  6. Re:They'll need it on Slashdork by MouseR · · Score: 2

    Pales in comparaison to AC annoyances.

  7. Bout Damn time by tempest69 · · Score: 2

    I've gotten so irritated at the damn next button being replaced with some damn link to crap. I've just started blacklisting every damn site I get sent to unfairly. But they keep changing the names of the same basic garbage.

  8. holy shit finally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    why did this take so long for someone to do?

    1. Re:holy shit finally by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      Oh come on, it's only been 20-25 years since Netscape introduced the problem by rendering pages as they loaded. Some bugs are difficult to fix! ;-)

      (Or maybe they're fixing the bugs in reverse order, I mean, they just fixed the modal, window-switching, alert() problem after a similar period of time...)

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  9. Re: They'll need it on Slashdork by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    A comment from 'MouseR' is just about as anonymous as a comment from 'Anonymous Coward'.

    It's the message that matters, not the name that's associated with it.

    Besides, the best comments I've ever seen here have been posted by 'Anonymous Coward', while the worst come from registered users (like any comment from 'creimer').

  10. Re:Google image search by kekx · · Score: 1

    I'm pretty sure, that the rationality is that it saves google a lot of money. Most of the time people will only look at the first couple of images anyways, so not loading preemptively saves a ton of bandwidth.

  11. Re:iOS + Chrome + Slashdot = Page jump by Black+LED · · Score: 2

    Every web browser (Pale Moon, Firefox, Chromium, Opera, Vivaldi) I use does that here. It's a bug in Slashdot's scripting, not in the browsers.

  12. Re:iOS + Chrome + Slashdot = Page jump by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Slashdot does this with that over-sized ad in the header, it frequently covers the first story on slashdot.

  13. Re:Mobile Ads by Gojira+Shipi-Taro · · Score: 1

    Slashdot has a mobile app? I never use those. How are you supposed to block ads and shit on a mobile app.

    --
    "Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
  14. Re: They'll need it on Slashdork by Highdude702 · · Score: 1

    You do have a point there.

  15. Need this on mobile by Philotomy · · Score: 2

    I rarely notice this on Desktop (probably due to ad blocking), but man, I sure could use this on Mobile.

    1. Re:Need this on mobile by Opportunist · · Score: 1

      On mobile it sure is even more annoying due to lower CPU power and generally slower load times.

      --
      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  16. really? by superwiz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I am on Chrome 57 and I still the jumps on Slashdot whenever the IBM ad loads. I can see why Google would be concerned. I blacklisted a lot of the ad sites just because of what they did to the screen. I am sure a lot of others did the same. If people blacklist ads, this hits Google's bottom line directly.

    --
    Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
  17. Re:iOS + Chrome + Slashdot = Page jump by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I don't care if it's a browser bug or feature,
    When the ability appeared where GIF files could be infected, every ad blocker I could find went up. Every known ad server went into my hosts file, rerouting to 0.0.0.0. I don't trust ads.
    It's not that I don't like advertisements. The industry had blown that trust away when they ignored infected files and served them as legitimate graphics.

  18. Google, fixing problems they cause by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 2

    This jumping is because of how Google uses "first render" timing to affect pagerank. They forced developers to use stupid workarounds, and now they are solving the problem caused by the stupid workaround.

    --
    Your ad here. Ask me how!
    1. Re:Google, fixing problems they cause by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Google does this to at least make the page readable quickly. On the other hand, they didn't count on developers just making worse lazy-load ads.

    2. Re:Google, fixing problems they cause by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      If they want the page to load quickly, they could stop trying to get everyone to install trackers on their site.

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
    3. Re:Google, fixing problems they cause by omnichad · · Score: 1

      Google Analytics added 70ms to the loading time for this page when I went to view your comment. And with it loading post-render and not modifying the DOM, there's a lot less impact. Slashdot Media's own analytics script also loaded on this page. It took over 400ms.

  19. it's the endless fracking ads by wardk · · Score: 1

    that cause the jumpiness. hell, adblock is telling me it blocked 34 ads right now.

  20. Why wasn't this problem fixed over a decade ago? by ayesnymous · · Score: 1

    They've had the width and height attributes on HTML tags since the 90s.

  21. The best solution for this madness is by Artem+S.+Tashkinov · · Score: 5, Informative

    uBlock Origin.

    I stopped using Adblock+ long ago, because it makes all my web browsers consume more RAM, than when running without it.

    1. Re:The best solution for this madness is by Lost+Race · · Score: 1

      It's not just ads that jerk the page around while you're trying to read it. Newegg's web site, for example, seems to lazy-load a lot of dynamically-sized content. Yeah, that's their fault for using lots of crappy scripting, but browsers could handle it more gracefully.

  22. Re:iOS + Chrome + Slashdot = Page jump by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    What ads?

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  23. Re:Google image search by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    Same with YouTube. The "related" videos on the side are only getting loaded as far as you can see them, only when you scroll down, more preview pics get fetched.

    The reason is the same: Most people will not even scroll down, and bandwidths are good enough by now that loading them takes only a second or maybe two. That actually saves a LOT of money on bandwidth for content providers.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  24. Re: Google image search by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    And instead spread it across 10+ pages, like those annoying pages that chop an article that could easily fit on 2-3 pages over 20+ just to get 20+ page impressions from you and show you 60+ additional ads?

    Thanks, but no thanks.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  25. Re:Sweet by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    When that research comes up with results, don't inform us. Just wipe your hands like everyone.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  26. Derp by whodunit · · Score: 1

    Lel mismod

  27. Noscript by entropy01 · · Score: 2

    This was solved a long time ago with Noscript. Pages load fast and don't jump, not to mention the security benefits.

  28. Allocate space by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Why don't web pages just preallocate the space that will later be filled with content? Seems like this problem never should happen if that were done from the beginning.

  29. Re:Block the ads by Cajun+Hell · · Score: 1

    That's easy as an amateur, but try making a good web page when have a boss.

    --
    "Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
  30. Re:What happened? by Cajun+Hell · · Score: 1

    Whatever happened to that?

    "Responsive design."

    --
    "Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
  31. Re:They'll need it on Slashdork by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 1

    I'm sure Slashdot will get 90% less ad-click revenue now. The only time I ever clicked on an ad on this page was because of the page jump putting ads where I click.

    Slashdot was the website that inspired me to use ad-blocking software. I couldn't take the page jumping around on Slashdot anymore.

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  32. Re:iOS + Chrome + Slashdot = Page jump by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

    There's a half-page ad? Interesting.

    --
    The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  33. Re: They'll need it on Slashdork by surd1618 · · Score: 1

    You wouldn't talk to a 3 digit user that way!