

Show HN: Scrollorama - johnpolacek
http://johnpolacek.github.com/scrollorama/

======
notJim
Cool plugin, but I can't help but think of that quote—“Scrolling is the new
flash.” Not trying to hate on your plugin or code, but I really hate all this
scrolling stuff people are doing now. I wanted to scroll, not have a bunch of
crazy animations explode in my face.

I feel like the popularity of this effect is to some extent a symptom of our
society's constant information overload, and the attendant inability to slow
down and focus, which then compels sites to compete for our attention with
increasingly flashy presentations. Of course, to a much larger extent, it's
probably due to cargo-cult website design.

~~~
ZenPsycho
it's a neat effect that just became possible, like morphing. When something
new becomes possible everyone wants to find an excuse to try it. Welcome to
being human and having joy in what you do. Even if it's not "effective" at
"informing" or "achieving business aims". you know. Boring things.

~~~
stock_toaster
> When something new becomes possible everyone wants to find an excuse to try
> it.

For some reason that sentence reminded me of the 80s.

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buro9
I hate these things, maybe it's just me.

Reasons:

1) I use a mouse with a scroll wheel and the default setting is to scroll
three lines at once, and I use the scroll wheel a lot. None of the scrolling
effects ever look good for me, and if it's a site which depends on the scroll
effect to communicate (a few marketing sites have done this) then I don't get
the message.

2) When I use keyboard shortcuts (which I do quite frequently buy I realise
most users don't), I just hit page up and page down. I see none of the
effects.

To me, this is as bad as hover effects on tablets. I just can't see how it
helps to improve user experience or accessibility. Sure, sometimes that isn't
the desire but even in the case of those marketing sites I'm fairly sure the
marketing men behind it would be appalled to find out some of their target
audience was communicated to poorly. Though the worst thing is those same
people on other sites then disable some key presses and default keyboard
short-cuts to make sure there is no choice but to go through the bad UX to be
communicated to.

What worries me when I see these things so high up on HN is that I fear others
think this stuff is good.

Is that the case? Is it just me who prefers the idea of the client determining
how to render something and not putting such stuff on the websites we create,
or to put accessibility to all pretty high up?

~~~
RandallBrown
You don't have to do things just for improving accessibility. Sometimes it's
just about looking neat.

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tsunamifury
Unfortunately its a does not work well with iOS as it doesn't update until the
scroll event is finish -- resulting in a somewhat jumbled and confusing
experience without the animations. No doubt this is due to the way Mobile
Safari conservatively updates events to save power.

------
ceol
Awesome job! OS X Chrome 16.0.912.63 has some stuttering when using trackpad
scrolling, but it's surprisingly smooth for all those animations!

By no means is this meant to dissuade using Scrollorama, but for very long
pages (like the demo), I tend to flick the trackpad up to scroll through and
stop it when I see the content I'd like. However, I find it's hard to follow
the sections because they're almost in a constant state of transition. I'd
love to see this used on a site with lots of dummy content, since I assume if
it's padded with text or photographs, it will flow much better.

This could be really cool on a portfolio site!

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johns
Excellent landing page. Epitomizes "show, don't tell"

~~~
jmilloy
Epitomizes "show, _and_ tell".

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DrCatbox
Is this a bug in firefox 8.01? When scrolling up, the O overwrites the
adressbar, bookmarkbar and part of the main menu. Upgrading to 9.01 made the
effect less visible, since now only a small part of the O can end up covering
the firefox UI.

EDIT: It can in fact cover parts of the main menu in 9.01 just as in version
8.

~~~
walrus
That surprised me as well. The first A in "SCROLLORAMA" goes over the
scrollbar in Firefox 9.0.1 on Linux.

~~~
DrCatbox
Could this be a security bug? Is there other ways scrip+css can take over the
rendering, which I guess is done by XUL? Advanced click-jacking?

------
johnpolacek
Fixed the scrolldeck link, thanks. That's another plugin I made that is for
making html slide deck presentations (similar to deck.js or reveal.js) and
uses Scrollorama for navigation and animations.

<http://johnpolacek.github.com/scrolldeck.js>

To fix the jerkiness, I could animate the css props but that would probably
cause quite a performance hit. If anyone wants to fork it and make
improvements, please feel free!

------
mmastrac
Very cool. Nitpick: would be nice if it smoothly animated when using the
scrollwheel - it's pretty jumpy using the wheel, but awesomely smooth with the
scrollbar.

~~~
jrgifford
Using Ubuntu? If so, you ran into Ubuntus horrible scrolling config.

~~~
damncabbage
Do you have any recommendations for "fixing" it?

(I'm not sure what the desired behaviour is.)

~~~
jrgifford
It's "supposed" to be smooth scrolling. Only way to get that easily is to
enable natural scrolling (like Lion). -
[http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/07/reverse-natural-
scrolling...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/07/reverse-natural-scrolling-
ubuntu-os-lion/)

------
lvillani
This script seems to trigger a bug in Firefox or X11 which _brings the whole
session down_.

It's 100% reproducible with my setup: Firefox 9.0.1 on Ubuntu 10.04 (x86_64)
and Fglrx 8.920 (Catalyst 11.11, if I remember correctly). Load the page then
scroll down a bit: the whole X session blows up.

Anyone else experiencing this?

------
derekerdmann
Very cool, but I'd hesitate to use it on a production site - it's really jerky
if the scroll isn't fluid, like on most PC's.

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Trezoid
The rollout of the top H1 is downright painful (locked up the browser with
100%+ CPU usage on a C2D MBP 13") in Firefox 12.0a1.

Everything else works though.

It's all good in Chrome 16.0.912.63 on the above machine though.

~~~
johnpolacek
Yeah, I pushed it a bit with that one for sure, but I just couldn't resist,
haha

~~~
johnpolacek
Just pushed an update that should help the performance a bit. (thanks
eivindbekk/John Resig)

------
ot
Awesome plugin and landing page. Minor nitpicking: the "scrolldeck" link is
broken.

------
mikeleeorg
Totally random, but I scrolled down this page while listening to Limp Bizkit's
"Take a Look Around" and thought: someone's got to create a movie credits page
using this, just for the fun of it.

------
shdon
I'm very surprised at how much more smooth this is in Internet Explorer
(version 9) than in either Chrome, Opera or Firefox on my PC. IE doesn't
actually scale the letters in the title though.

------
spicyj
Just a heads-up/reminder: <http://johnpolacek.github.com/scrolldeck> is
broken.

------
richardburton
I love the <http://www.groupme.com> scrolling stuff. It was done tastefully
and to great effect.

~~~
dylanpyle
Here's another nice one: <http://nizoapp.com>

edit: also, hm, i seem to be missing any effect (if there is one) on the
parent post's link

~~~
johnpolacek
How about this one? <http://gidsy.com/handbooks/making-the-perfect-listing/>

~~~
georgemcbay
Nobody asked me, but: I don't like any of these linked pages.

Overriding the way scroll works feels like a horrible thing to do, especially
if it alters the nature of scroll (as those 'infinite scrolling' pages do),
but even if it just results in extra animation that is still too much of a
surprise. Scrolling should be a surprise-less action, just like clicking a
link, IMO.

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alagu
Totally love it. I was searching for iOS address book style scrolling (fixed
headings for a context). This would help.

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lowglow
Totally awesome. I'm constantly impressed at the holiday projects that were
developed.

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sn_
Doesnt work with scroll up/scroll down keys, which I always use.

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aridiculous
The bursting lettering at the top was truly unexpected. Bravo.

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ricardobeat
no dice for mobile webkit.

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earle
paging looks broken

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drivebyacct2
Sadly, these just don't look very good unless you're on a Mac and using a
touchpad.

~~~
ElliotMingee
I beg to differ; I'm on an Asus laptop running Windows 7 and they look great.
For scrolling, I simply middle clicked and moved the cursor down slightly and
everything was buttery smooth.

~~~
drivebyacct2
I forgot that still works on some computers. Honestly, I've never seen anyone
else ever do that on a computer before. I don't even use it when I'm on my
Windows laptop.

