[jeff_tyrrill]

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.

[halapro]

If you opened any "web design awards" website you'd know how terribly wrong you are.

People will animate the sh out of any element exclusively for you to go "wow". It does not go much deeper than that. Designers and developers spend weeks scrolling up and down completely disregarding content. It looks cool, nothing else matters.

[tylervigen]

...is that really the story? It feels like these are two related, but different things.

[saghm]

I'm not sure it's feasible to prove or disprove how this design trend started. I wouldn't be shocked if it was true, but I also wouldn't be shocked if it wasn't. I'd be more surprised if we ever found out for sure one way or another than about what the truth is.

[jeff_tyrrill]

I haven't dug into the history to see if this is really how it happened. I'd actually feel better if it wasn't true but it's the thought that occurred to me when I noticed the scroll fade effect becoming popular.