Comment by zahlman
4 hours ago
The webpage linked is an example of everything I wish people would stop doing in web design.
Fortunately, at the bottom there is a link to the "technical documentation" (https://squeezlabs.github.io/handcrank/) which is vastly improved (aside from being light-mode-only and linked from a dark-mode-only marketing page). It also gives me much more interesting information (specifically: models that can apparently run acceptably on a Pi 5).
Please let me read your content with a scrollbar that works the way scroll bars are supposed to, rather than turning everything into a weird slide show where you don't actually know when the next slide is coming. Please let me just click on buttons that look like links to more information, without JavaScript.
I agree this type of web design sucks. It's been common for more than a decade - I remember Apple getting criticized for using this on the product page for the old "trash can" Mac Pro in 2013, and it was already widely used back then.
However, it seems pretty clear to me they did this in service of a joke - you have to "crank" your scroll wheel to get to the content, just like you have to crank this device. I think it's funny...
Why can't technical people appreciate that us, the silent majority, love having our scroll hijacked? I can't remember the last time I used a scroll bar to navigate a website, but using it to navigate between choppy javascript keyframes fills me with joy.
This isn’t scroll hijacking
You can scroll normally, with all your favorite keys, or go super fast to the bottom
It’s just scroll animations. Bad ones, admittedly.
> just scroll animations. Bad ones
Scroll animations, post-grid floating voids, bouncy house dampening, hyper rounded... everything. These are the 50s Chevy fins of today.
I've enjoyed working with some great designers over the years, Stanford D-School and even wild-raised. All the good ones intuitively steered clear of trends destined to be era-stamp tropes. They'd say, "I can already hear the ghosts of design-future mocking me: 'That's so early-AI' and 'Yo, the mid-20s called and wants their bento grid back.'"
> You can scroll normally
Except you can’t.
I scroll down, and the content of the page doesn’t move as expected.
Just use your page_up/page_down keys, and you can skip all the stupid/excessive scrolling requirements.
5 replies →
"love having our scroll hijacked? "
You are the silent majority?
No doubt non technical people have different UX experience than tech nerd, but I have seen plenty of "normal" people curse at artsy fluffy design, that made known navigation skills useless and nobody likes their time wasted.
Pretty sure your parent comment was being sarcastic. Why else would they write “choppy javascript keyframes fills me with joy”?
2 replies →
Great prop for a Black Mirror episode about AI use in a post-apocalyptic world. Everywhere you go, all you hear is brrrrr..brrr..brrrr followed by people mumbling.
Calling this web design is giving it too much credit. This is just a glorified marketing pamphlet, which is fine for its purpose.
boo wendy boo. i liked it.
Yeah this is a better link https://squeezlabs.github.io/handcrank/
Totally agree on the atrocious landing page. The technical one is much better, although the power supply circuit by using a resistive balancer and a linear regulator wastes some good power for nothing.
Twas probably also prompted… to pile irony over...
yea i can't stand this. im not so boomer i want every webpage to be like. times new roman white background and just using <p></p> and bulleted lists, but idk i cant even put a finger on what im not enjoying here. think it's possibly using scrolling as a way to try and force me to read through stuff. jokes on them, i can't read. not giving me the agency to click around into info that interests me drives me nuts, chances are im just gonna keep scrolling at 1000mph and eye scan until i see what im looking for virtually zero chance im going to sit through the experience of every carefully designed scroll-slide they've tried to present to me here.