Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by alexpenny 4938 days ago
Why are you using page down? No scroll wheel, old habits, on a laptop?

Its something I've never used and have never thought about while designing, seems like a lot of websites are ignoring it as well; fb, techcrunch etc.

3 comments

It's hard to get more optimal than "read a page of text" "press button for next page". Scroll wheels require some combination of

* Have to move it more to travel the same distance

* Have to fiddle with it to get exactly one page

* Have to track your position during the scroll

* Have to scroll more often than once per page

This (among numerous other near-universal UX transgressions) has gotten to the point that my first action on almost any internet article is to hit ⇧⌘R.

I've always read at the center of the page while scrolling. It's what I've noticed most everyone my age doing. Maybe it's generational, I've only been at this since windows ME.
I use space for page down and shift+space for page up. Scrolling means tracking where I am as I go, when I hit page down I know where to start reading, the top. It feels more like reading a book.
Maybe because he wants to go exactly one page down as easily as possible, and this is something that has generally worked for decades. It's pretty simple, really.
Wow brilliant!