Post #1901576
2026-05-03 01:36 UTC
Replies (35)
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@ferrix@mastodon.online 2026-05-03 03:34
@tj@howse.social addendum: when you are holding the scroll bar and you're near the end finally and BOOP a bunch more content loads and your scroll bar is now insane
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@TerrorBite@meow.social 2026-05-03 02:30
@tj when you're scrolling down, and suddenly the page stops scrolling and the scroll is controlling some kind of animation instead
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@drewtowler@mas.to 2026-05-03 02:40
@tj https://dontfuckwithscroll.com/
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@aredridel@kolektiva.social 2026-05-03 02:50
@tj YES and also Apple too pls
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@nikunashi@ieji.de 2026-05-03 02:54
@tj Ugh, so many sites: 3 scroll bars, all super thin, all on the right side. Not in the same order as the windows whose content they scroll - why why why 🤬
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@RedFacedUakari@mastodon.social 2026-05-03 03:20
@tj I’m personally pissed off at browsers for giving web authors this ability. The browser is supposed to be the user agent! My features! Not yours!
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@arazil@elvenstar.cafe 2026-05-03 03:35
@tj For some reason, we ended up with ultrawide screens and tiny 5 pixel wide scroll bars. It drives me nuts. It is one of the worst modern design trends out there (along with infinite scroll and the overuse of "bubbles and/or glass everywhere" design).
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@Quinn9282@mas.to 2026-05-03 04:03
@tj :1000:
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@djsf@fosstodon.org 2026-05-03 04:22
@tj bold of you to assume that the scrolling is finite
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@skua@mastodon.social 2026-05-03 04:22
@tj "web developers stop fucking with" Their whole fucking culture is shit. There are exceptions. MP3-Tag and Libation spring to mind. But the rest, with their glitter and glam, can be happily trashed. .
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@HunterZ@mastodon.sdf.org 2026-05-03 04:27
@tj I want to know who started the war on scrollbars...it's been ongoing for a while now, but it seems like UI/UX designers are all in lock-step on this for some weird reason.
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@the_wub@mastodon.social 2026-05-03 04:51
@tj At least ten years late but I applaud the sentiment. I remember the GTK3 changes to scrolling behaviour in application scrollbars. Still fixing that every time I install a Linux with the XFCE desktop. Then various desktops also introduced application scroll bars fading in and out around the same time. Still fixing that every time I install a Linux with the XFCE desktop. I still maintain that this sort of stuff, whether in web pages or applications is a variant of #enshittification
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@pheonix@hachyderm.io 2026-05-03 04:59
@tj Yes please! Scrollbars are not meant for design, they should be strictly the browser's chrome. Between this and scroll-jacking, I don't get these trends.
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@aligorith@mastodon.nz 2026-05-03 05:45
@tj I'd argue this applies not only to web developers (who keep trying to hide them outright), but also all OS designers who keep working harder and harder and harder to make them all but invisible + unusable! 🤬 Among other annoyances in this category are: 1) Scrollbars that are often now too thin to even aim at, which is made worse by 2) Scrollbars that are not visible by default, and will disappear mere seconds after the most recent scrolling interaction ends 3) And even when they are visible + not too thin, they are configured to be very low contrast + translucent... Having lived through the 90's / early 2000's ugly grey MS Windows type scrollbars, I can understand why a lot of people are scarred from that experience. But IMO, most designers took the wrong lessons from those. Key things we should've done different: * Changed from "click to go up/down a page" (i.e. mostly pointless) to opening up "click anywhere to scroll there" (which is what a few enlightened designs do) * Instead of making them smaller and smaller and less visible, we should've tackled instead the problem that they were no offering enough value, and instead leaned in *hard* on covering them in clickable markers (with optional additional details) to jump to useful landmarks
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@donhawkins@mastodon.social 2026-05-03 05:46
@tj @pluralistic 💯☝️🔥⚡️👆👊👏✊🎉❤️
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@rusty@ma.zcx.cc 2026-05-03 05:48
@tj I kind of figure that if a scroll bar suddenly grows when I get near the bottom of the 'page' it means that the dev only really cared about me reading up to that point. If they wanted me to read the entire post, the scroll bar would have reflected that, and I could have decided whether I had time for that at the beginning. Or scheduled it.
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@tanavit@toot.aquilenet.fr 2026-05-03 05:55
@tj Is not the scrollbar a feature of the browser, not the server ? Serious question.
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@corvus_ch@social.corvus-ch.name 2026-05-03 06:01
@tj my all time favorite: infinite scroll with footer containing links like contact, support, impressum and the like.
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@Bebef@kowelenz.social 2026-05-03 06:09
@tj I wonder what you might think about the endless scrolling design pattern...
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@argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org 2026-05-03 06:48
@tj Some websites now display a horizontal progress bar across the top of the viewport, which fills up as you scroll down the page, exactly like a scroll bar. Instead of just showing a scroll bar. Madness. Absolute madness. #webdev
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@Amorpheus@kind.social 2026-05-03 06:49
@tj When scrolling through the replies on this post, the scrollbar does not provide any reliable information on how far I am through until I reach the very end either... 🥸
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@flesh@transfem.social 2026-05-03 07:09
@tj@howse.social "Can web designers stop? I don't give two shits about your design vision."
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@mindpersephone@spookygirl.boo 2026-05-03 07:09
@tj but but my infinite scrolling!
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@ericjames@booping.synth.download 2026-05-03 07:19
@tj@howse.social in a similar vein, don’t make a page scroll with smoothing at the beginning and in the end. it’s not natural
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@Ertain@mast.linuxgamecast.com 2026-05-03 07:45
@tj Preach it.
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@aral@mastodon.ar.al 2026-05-03 08:25
@tj Meanwhile, web developers: “Why is the livestock we’re trying to farm for its data talking? John, did you know they could talk?”
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@mees@sunny.garden 2026-05-03 08:25
@tj but, you would lose interest in our sales pitch if you knew how long it was!
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@lukeharby@infosec.exchange 2026-05-03 08:32
@tj Hate it. Seems like it also might be an accessibility minefield.
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@cavyherd@wandering.shop 2026-05-03 08:32
@tj Can •all• the developers stop fucking with the scroll bars please? Same same—your design vision isn't worth a piss if I can't •use• it.
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@DamiaB@peculiar.florist 2026-05-03 08:37
@tj Here on MacOS the scroll bars only appears when needed, i.e. while scrolling. We can see its size and position. It keeps beeing displayed a few seconds after beeing used and disappear. But, we can also hover it, click on it and scroll while sliding the mouse. But, that beeing said, I didn't encounter much website that disabled totally the scroll bar. I didn't knew it was a thing up until your toot.
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@lyrial@transfem.social 2026-05-03 09:01
@tj@howse.social I'll just drop this here: https://scrollbars.matoseb.com/
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@2003MugishaPhocit@mastodon.social 2026-05-03 09:03
@tj Do you know how to create websites?
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@fedithom@social.saarland 2026-05-03 09:16
@tj THIS!
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@daz@floss.social 2026-05-03 10:23
@tj can I add disabling control click to open link in a new tab to the list? I was on a docs site that did this. Really frustrating.
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@dysfun@social.treehouse.systems 2026-05-03 11:15
@tj what i have never understood is why they consider the scroll bar as part of the design rather than the window framing