Don't Fuck with Scroll

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Scope of “Don’t Fuck with Scroll”

  • Core complaint: JS-driven “momentum” or “smooth” scrolling that overrides native browser/OS behavior feels laggy, disorienting, and hard to control.
  • Demo page using luxy.js is widely described as “garbage” and unusable, especially with keyboard-based tools like Vimium.
  • On touch devices, the JS scroll is worse than native: scrolling doesn’t stop on touch like the OS normally does.

Single-Page Apps, History, and URLs

  • Many argue SPAs frequently “break the web”: back button, URLs, bookmarking, and navigation states are often mishandled.
  • Counterpoint: SPAs don’t inherently break history; good implementations use the History API correctly and can behave like normal sites.
  • Reality described as: teams often skip or bungle history/state work under time pressure, so SPAs ship with broken navigation.
  • Debate over whether SPAs solved a real problem vs. creating complexity, bloat, and high resource use. Some praise SPA performance, others say they’ve never seen a truly fast SPA.

Scrollbars, Visibility, and Accessibility

  • Strong criticism of tiny, hidden, or removed scrollbars; they reduce usability, progress awareness, and touch ergonomics.
  • Some designers defend hiding scrollbars for aesthetics, even explicitly saying they don’t care about users who “need handholding.”
  • Others push back hard, tying this attitude to exclusion of disabled users and arguing that native scrollbars are low-cost, high-value accessibility features.
  • Discussion notes that plain HTML is accessible by default; problems arise when developers “get clever.”

Keyboard Shortcuts and Browser Conventions

  • Complaints about hijacking standard shortcuts (Ctrl/Cmd+F, Ctrl+K, Ctrl+R, F5, Alt+Left/Right, copy/paste).
  • These overrides break user expectations, interfere with browser search, navigation, and refresh, and are seen as another form of “we know better than you.”

Broader UX/Design Critique

  • Frustration with trends that prioritize aesthetics, animations, and “creative” scrolling/zooming over usability and predictability.
  • Criticism of “scroll to drive animations,” horizontal scroll rows, and lazy-loaded content that breaks scroll position and browser find.
  • Some frame this as excess or misapplied UX/design work; others say the problem is lack of real UX, not its existence.