Ask HN: What is up with the "scroll your own movie" websites?

1 points by Sarien 12 years ago | 1 comment

There seems to be a hype around websites which provide no controls except scrolling like this http://www.mozilla.org/de/firefox/os/

This is a terrible user interface. It is basically a video where you have to scroll for it to play. You keep ending up with half complete animations all the time and sometimes it is really hard to see that you even can scroll. (The above site even provides helpful blinky downwards arrows at times.)

Can anybody tell me what the merit of this method is? Is it just designers trying to show off?

And when did the firefox turn into an actual fox instead of a red panda?

bbx 12 years ago |

Other examples include http://www.apple.com/iphone-5c/ and http://www.milwaukeepolicenews.com .

Trent Walton actually wrote an article about it: http://trentwalton.com/2013/10/23/scroll-hijacking/

I myself sometimes trigger animations depending on the scrolling position. But I don't depend upon the exact scrolling position to show or hide elements. I, like you, don't like this trend. It's like a vertical slider, where you can only stop at pre-defined positions.

It reminds me of custom scrollbars implemented in Flash or JavaScript that act completely differently, especially slowing down the scrolling movement (you need to turn your mouse wheel 10 times as much to scroll one single page).