Scroll Transitions Are Dumb

I just came across a website with it, but it does seem to have fallen out of favor a bit. You know those annoying pages where they hijack scrolling to make text fade in and out when it’s on the screen or near the edge. It makes things so strange to follow.

The worst offenders have a bunch of different transitions depending on where you are on the page. There was a marketing page the old owner of our gym used. That was nothing but flashy buzzwords. He could have saved himself money by actually showing up instead of having emergencies regularly after nearly doubling the price of our lifetime unlimited membership while giving less.

Mobile apps are a mess with this sort of behavior too. I am sure that I have made it abundantly clear that I think most apps are awful steaming piles of 💩.

The thing is browsers have had a built-in way to scroll. It has been efficient for years. When marketers take the keys completely, it is nothing but fluff. In some ways it reminds me of the old days when you would often have to sit through a Flash intro to view a company’s website, then the site was often in Flash. Remember the ridiculous animations and sound effects?

This stuff is fine on a personal page or maybe a creative one. I’d even give them a pass on a product announcement page, but the general information or help pages are tedious and annoying. It’s a surefire way to get me to just leave altogether. I do have to admit I do not seem to be seeing it as often as I was a couple of years ago.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should!