Scrollbars. Ever heard of them? They’re pretty cool. Click and drag on a scrollbar and you can move content around in a scrollable content pane. I love that shit. Every day I am scrolling on my computer, all day long. But the scrollbars are getting smaller and this is increasingly becoming a problem. I would show you screenshots but they’re so small that even screenshotting them is hard to do. And people keep making them even smaller, hiding them away, its like they don’t want you to scroll! “Ah”, they say, “that’s what the scroll wheel is for”. My friend, not everyone can use a scroll wheel or a swipe up touch screen. And me, a happy scroll-wheeler, even I would like to quickly jump around some time.
Back in the day, the guideline was to put useful information and links at the top of the page when it loads, so that people could read the important bits and follow the links they needed without having to scroll down. Then everyone started using the entire space on load for a stock marketing photo or video so you would always need to scroll to see anything useful. Then they added whitespace everywhere so you’d need to scroll more. Then they removed the scrollbars. And sometimes they make scrolling do unpredictable animations instead of scrolling. It has become self-indulgent design instead of functional.