Don't Fuck with Scroll
Momentum scrolling plugins degrade web usability and accessibility, causing confusion, motion sickness, and performance issues, particularly on older devices, while complicating user control and hindering workflows for power users.
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Momentum scrolling plugins, often marketed as enhancements, disrupt the web browsing experience by degrading usability, accessibility, and performance. They violate user expectations by altering the familiar scrolling behavior, leading to confusion and frustration. This can cause motion sickness for some users due to the floaty animations, and many sites lack options to disable these features. Additionally, these plugins reduce accessibility for disabled users, impairing the functionality of assistive technologies. Performance inconsistencies arise across devices, as the plugins can lag on older hardware, alienating users with less advanced technology. Power users, who prefer efficiency, find their workflows hindered by the slow animations. The added JavaScript libraries from these plugins increase page load times, negatively impacting user experience, especially on mobile networks. They can also conflict with native browser features, making the browsing experience less functional. Furthermore, the animations can obscure scroll position, leaving users disoriented on long pages. Maintenance overhead increases as these plugins require regular updates, which can introduce new bugs. Ultimately, momentum scrolling disrespects user control by overriding their preferences. The conclusion is clear: these plugins complicate a simple function and frustrate users, suggesting that websites should stick to native scrolling for a better experience.
- Momentum scrolling disrupts established user scrolling habits.
- These plugins can cause motion sickness and reduce accessibility for disabled users.
- Performance issues arise on older devices, alienating a segment of users.
- Power users experience hindered workflows due to slow animations.
- Increased maintenance and potential bugs result from using these plugins.
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36 commentsIMHO, that assessment and corresponding answer applies perfectly not only to Momentum scrolling but also to most of the current trends in UX design. I wonder how we got into this worship of aesthetics to the detriment of everything else.
As well, their link at the bottom to the website that inspired this opinion piece page is chef's kiss.
Viewing the page source on these kinds of pages gives me warn fuzzies, not in a nostalgic way, but in a "these folks get it" kind of way. It's like in the Helvetica documentary where the guy explains what it must have felt like for designers to newly be able to choose Helvetica instead of those 1950s crap script fonts.
Bravo.
Streaming media platforms are probably the most notorious offenders in this space, but are definitely not alone.
It was far from obvious that this was the cause. In fact I completely forgot about this setting. I thought the problem came from the website or an extension or the browser or bootstrap, damn.
When I zoom on an image, it should zoom with the rest of the page, not resize itself to shrink to the same size. That behavior is infuriating.
But, if you are making something with plenty of precedent, please follow it. There is a reason we wind up with mandated nutrition labels and such. It is good to be similar to things. Especially if you are, in fact, similar
I don't think I even want to count how many hours total I've wasted a minute at a time rewriting a comment I accidentally deleted.
And of course, ideally I don't want to do much scrolling at all, I would prefer stable pagination for basically everything.
It appears that the plugin basically does two things:
1. Repeatedly calls window.requestAnimationFrame with a callback
2. Set a custom style on a specified element (position:fixed, width:100%, transform:translate3d)
You'd have to stop both to override the plugin.
To my recollection, I have never come across this on a website since the Flash days, however.
I hadn't even considered this existing. From the title, I assumed it was about those pages set up to stay fixed on one page and then change entirely to the next one when you've scrolled down far enough.
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