Death to Scroll Fade

Something else scroll-related I personally hate:

Sticky 'headers' that disappear when you scroll down, and appear when you scroll up. I hate them so much. It hurts my brain to see the stupid thing appear and disappear constantly if I scroll around a page.

The worst part is you can't even zap them out of the way with something like uBlock, because then there's no header even when you're at the top of the page. >:(

EDIT: Whoops, flipped the directions. Complaint still stands though.

> This post purposefully ignores the reduced motion preference to give everyone the same truly terrible experience. I am sorry. Please use your browser’s reader mode.

"Reader Mode" shouldn't even be a special mode. It should just be the default browsing experience, and users who want all this styling crap should have to enable "Clown Mode" or something.

I thought this was going to be about iOS and how now (as of iOS 26) there is a "fade out" at the top of every web page (around the notch/top-edge area).

When scrolling/reading a web page, it literally changes that section of the text so that it fades to gray.

So, "everything scroll fades".

I couldn't find a way to turn it off. Quite irritating, IMHO.

EDITED TO ADD ELABORATION: The issue with iOS "scroll fade" text color in Safari near the top notch is that this makes that top-edge-text "dynamic" (changing) and thus "draws attention" to it visually, thus competing for eyeball attention when I am probably actually reading somewhere further down on the page. Also, I would still like to be able to glance up to the topmost visible text if wanted, without having to adjust to its different and less visible colors. Apple designers should know all this. Further, I'd say the page text color should probably by default respect what the web page designer configured it as, and not have the OS change that text color (unless the user gets fancy and requests an override with dark mode or whatever settings).

This article's critique seems valid, too (more generically about "scroll fade" in interfaces, e.g. web pages, which seems to mostly be about items appearing gradually via motion). Personally, I see less of that these days, compared to making every page in an OS fade out where unnecessary.

The poster seems to be implying that this effect is prevalent across the web, yet i'm seeing it for the very first time on that post. (And, indeed, it's annoying. My eyes can't read when there's animation going on nearby.)

The goldfish animation along the bottom is epic and i will have to mine that bit for reuse somewhere :).

I used to use WikiTok [1] on my phone at times, but now they’ve introduced »words appear word by word« on the mobile version. Baffles me, why one would hide and gradually reveal any sort of content. It’s nauseating!

[1]: https://www.wikitok.io/

I feel like the scroll fade fad is misunderstanding layered on bugs, turtles all the way down.

Once upon a time, developers implemented lazy loading of images, to save bandwidth. However, some developers implemented it poorly, waiting until the moment an image is scrolled on-screen to even start loading it, leading to a visible blip as you scroll.

(The better way would be to load an additional pageful of images beyond the current scroll view, which would provide enough time to load before scrolling into view at least most of the time. However, this doesn't maximally save bandwidth and some developers don't make good tradeoffs between diminishing returns on saving bandwidth vs. visibly degraded UX.)

Then, designers saw the blip-into-view effect, thought it was an intentional visual effect (rather than an artifact of poorly implemented lazy loading), but thought, oh, I'll fix it so it looks nice, with fading.

And here we are with a dumb visual fad originating from a bug without realizing it was a bug.

There's a very simple fix I typically do when it comes to animations:

    animationCount = 0
    animateElement(el) {
        el.animate({duration: BASE_DURATION / animationCount})
        animationCount++
    }

(formula exagerated for simplicity)

Essentially, for any animation that gets repeated, it should decrease in duration over time. This makes things impactful when they're first being displayed, but they very quickly approach an extremely minimal state, making things feel snappy.

I worked for a client who was all about scrolljacking. Then he discovered parallax effect, and there was no looking back. He fired me, and got another team who didn't have any opinions.

Now the page stutters on every device other than iPhone 16+ with 5G. :shrug:

I raise you one. Death to the parallax scroll. In fact, death to all scroll animations.

Looking at the main site, seems like it's branded as a "no AI frontend consultant".

First time I'm seeing a "no AI" used to differentiate a work for hire.

Can't say this wasn't obviously coming. Boutique hand-coded consultancies/software-houses are probably going to spring up a lot.

Gotta love the attention to detail at the end, that is illegible when selected too.

It's not realistic, though. Illegible sites never get that detail right.

Why do web animations get so much hate with the HN crowd?

I think a website is similar to a painting. Some will make you dizzy by just looking at them, and others will be a minimalist dream.

Don’t hate me HN, but I say keep messing with the scroll bar, keep making annoying blinking banners, have your way with scroll fade.

Don’t listen to these web dev veterans, they are just like snobby movie critics!

Hah, the point has certainly been made. Absolute Barf-o-Rama.

I suffer from pretty severe motion sickness, which hasn’t really improved as an adult, and this page immediately made me feel like I’m going to throw up. Had to switch to reader mode after the first image. I was always the kid who couldn’t read in the car, and was always groggy on long road trips because of Dramamine (side note, Meclizine has significantly improved my life, as it has largely the same effect without drowsiness). As an adult I’m fine as long as I’m in the front seat, public transit is terrible for me. Elevators are tiny torture chambers, especially when stopping on multiple floors. And it’s cumulative, the sensation becomes worse the more I’m exposed to it over the course of a day (I have a mental “theme park budget” in my head of how many rides I can comfortably do!). VR can’t have any motion that isn’t firmly anchored to a sense of place (space ship/driving sims are okay though!)

I’m glad awareness is being raised about this, but I’m curious what websites are using this now? Is it just personal blogs and the like right now? I definitely would have noticed this cropping up on websites I frequent.

This is why I chose a fade-in reveal https://www.rgbjoy.com/

My favorite part of the iPhone 17 pro / ios26 combo is that it lags on any and everything that remotely touches the GPU like this website.

I couldn't do the mandatory onboarding training at a job once because the course web app had heavy scroll fade, and I got nauseous after a few minutes. I tried every few hours for weeks. Eventually I said I couldn't do it. They had to print it out to pdf for me, and gave me a pass on the courses that were dependent on animation to work.

I can only add another aberration that it just started to happen on my browsers without even updating or doing anything at all: I get the master volume raised, I mean not the YouTube volume, but the volume that is reported in my OS.

I truly don't know how this is possible or how should I turn it off completely. There are some settings in Firefox but the ones I have tried do not work.

This is one of the worst things I have seen in many years, along with all the other aberrations that are already spread on the net.

What sucks with scroll fade is when it fades slower than one can read or scroll.

Fading the entire content very fast, so fast that it's barely perceptible is actually better on the eyes.

Blinking hurts. Fast changing contrast hurts. The fade is a natural effect I use everywhere almost. My eyes never complained, rather are grateful for the small effort it takes to get right

Scrolling is broken by everyone everywhere.

Scrolling to the bottom then forcing me to click "show more"? Lazy. A truly horrible experience. I don't know how anyone could think that is a good idea. The worst offenders are the ones showing me products. You might as well not have pages of products at all. Just tell me these 12 are the only ones you have because I've already lost interest. Not that most web stores are any good - most have no useful ability to search or browse so finding anything is like digging through a junk drawer. It all screams "we hate selling product, please go away".

Next worst? Everything Google makes and all the fools who copied them: scroll down, scrolling hard stops, then a few seconds later the next segment of content loads. The scrollbar position is naught but lies. WHY??? Are you proud of that? Because you shouldn't be. You should be ashamed. Demand-load the content behind the scenes so scrolling is continuous and smooth. If the user scrolls fast then skip pages and/or cancel prior requests. The scrolling is the priority, lazy-load the content as needed... but for f*k sake don't do what Google does.

The top worst: hijacking scrolling for any form of animation or to change direction. Absolutely horrid and I leave any webpage that does this out of spite. This just screams "I'M A DESIGNER, LOOK AT MEEEEE!!!!!". It is code equivalent of being "too clever", but for UX. If you don't want people to buy your product or signup for your service but instead be impressed by your ability to vomit out D-E-S-I-G-N then by all means proceed. Everyone is guilty of this, even those who should know better.

I've always been under the impression it was lazy loading the page to increase page loading times for content above the fold? At least this was why I started using it about 8 years ago.

Its like anything though. I think people just thought it was a cool effect and so it wasn't about page speed any more, it was just about something people used to add some panache to their sites.

Kind of like people who've been abusing modals for the last decade or so. lol

Really, almost any animation or hijacking on scrolling should be abolished. It's one of the most disgusting things to encounter on a webpage.

I don't want your product to spin while I scroll down. I don't want animations or boxes to start appearing or disappearing. I don't want helpful tooltips, popups, or "I hope you enjoyed this" notifications to appear as I scroll.

What I want when I scroll is for the page to move, either up or down, in a completely consistent manner. I want to be able to reasonably predict what I'll see as I go up or down.

Apple loves this shit. Fortunately they aren't AS BAD as they once were, but you'll still encounter it on their product pages.

https://www.apple.com/macbook-neo/

I'm someone who loves over-the-top, creative-for-the-sake-of-creative web design, even for something primarily text-based like a blog post, I 100% sympathize with and want to accommodate those who don't.

I think `prefers-tacky` is a brilliant idea! It means excess decorative images could avoid even being downloaded if the user so chooses.

It's amazing how web graphic designers don't realize 99% of all added motion/animation is just as annoying and unnecessary as <blink> and <marquee>.

It’s kind of like when someone wants you to read something, so they hold the thing to read for you and read it out loud, while moving their finger at the words they’re currently reading. I know how to read!!!

I wish this blog stopped the scroll fading after it made ita point. would have really hammered it home.

In reader mode on iOS 26, there is some scroll jank, presumably due to hidden scroll fade.

(Take this as another excuse not to hijack scrolling behavior, not an actual request you improve your implementation of tacky-mode.)

Amen. So cathartic to see someone publish the post I've been wanting to write for a while, and with a much better title.

Also: I've noticed a new abuse recently of sites implementing scroll momentum on desktop — has anyone else seen this? I couldn't believe it, but there it was.

I'm guilty of this as well. https://kraa.io/about has some fade-in animation for the intro text – driven by wanting the initial impression to be focused/minimal and 'unravel' as you go. I take it that most HN folks would vastly prefer to NOT have this?

This terrible idea is a parody of a good idea from game design - LOD cross-fade. When a distant object changes from a low level of detail representation to a higher one, or vice versa, the change is best done as a cross fade. The old one fades out to transparent, the new one fades in from transparent.

This is done to hide the change, not as a creative effect. The human visual system is very sensitive to fast changes. But below half a second, smooth changes are not too noticeable. With this trick, plus a slight amount of distance haze, you can get away with quite low detail distant models. That's part of how GTA V does those long vistas efficiently.

Here's a long drive around the GTA V world.[1] Watch how background objects change. Many distant background objects start out with very low detail. Watch power line towers, for example, which are very low detail until about 100m range. The cross-fade to a better model takes about a half second. Active players don't notice.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws_yYxUaWRE

Originally read the URL as “D-Bus Hell dot com” and was like… yup.

As always with this stuff, it's only bad when you notice it. When it's done right you just think "That was a nicely designed page".

Death to Scroll Bar size change!!!

good read. thanks for sharing

This website has a slow and laggy implementation which unfairly shows off the effect.

This is the modern day blinking HTML tag.

I also hate infinite scrolling.

I much prefer to have websites simple at all times. I understand that stylish means it must look good and elegant, but this often ends up annoying me to no ends. Without ublock origin I would go nuts. I use it more to get rid of HTML I don't want to see. All pop-ups and slide-ins for instance. These things should never ever happen. Any notification should happen differently, or not at all. Often it is "please donate to us" - I understand their use case, but how is this relevant to my use case?

do not the scroll

i will umatrix you

There are no bad animations, only bad designs.

If you design the animation to be way over the top like this, and then design the page to use it on every line then of course it looks like shit.

This is like arguing against any amount of sugar in food and then shoveling it into someone's mouth to try to prove your point. It's disingenuous and you aren't proving anything. I don't even think the top agreeing comments here are coming from web devs or the target users.

[dead]

[dead]

[flagged]