It's not just you. It's an annoying trend. Perhaps it's good for phones and tablets (that's arguable), but I don't think it's good for mouse input. At least this landing page (NPR) has optional buttons on the right side, unlike most pages I've seen like this (Spendee). It's turning "mobile first" into "mobile only", and I am being dragged kicking and screaming into it.

As always, the general rule of the desktop is "don't break my browser functionality". Browser functionality = scroll bar, back/forward button, refresh, bookmark, etc.

A better rule is that these browser functions should do what the user expects. I don't think this page violates that rule (and it might not even violate yours: the scrollbar's movement has not been altered on this page like on Apple's product pages).

It violates mine: on just about every other page when I press spacebar the page scrolls.

I gotta admit, I was confused for a few seconds when the page didn't scroll when I scrolled my mousewheel.

No, because what the user expects can be customizable, app developers can't just guess it.

>It's turning "mobile first" into "mobile only"

Yeah, it is definitely whacked for desktops, and I know it's supposed to be somehow good for mobile, but I don't get that either. What's the theory behind it improving the mobile experience? Is it supposed to save bandwidth or something? Because I'm not sure if it's loading the content on scroll or preloading all and merely animating on scroll.

Either way, bandwidth is becoming less of a problem, so I can't see why we'd be launching new design trends to address it.

Maybe most people have difficulty scrolling accurately, and without pgdn it's more usable this way.

That said, I hate it too. I want to scroll normally.

I don't blame people for experimenting with new ways of visualizing the "scrolling" mechanic. (Though, it is so widely done these days that I can hardly give NPR One credit for "experimenting" in this particular case.) I think it's fun to see people testing new ways to interact.

But if you do that, it had better be well implemented -- and that is clearly where this falls short. User input translates into on-screen behavior inconsistently, arrow keys are basically broken. When you're trying to replace something so basic as scrolling, this is an interesting case study in just how frustrated users will get with even small frustrations. I've found that even the (now) more typical load-on-demand pages drive me nuts when there's no more than a momentary hitch in the scrolling to load more content. Though maybe I'm just easily bothered by such things.

Not only that, but it manages to break the spacebar as a scrolling tool. I'm getting really sick of webapps that are hijacking or breaking keyboard shortcuts!

Oh wow, I hadn't even noticed that! I use the space bar to scroll in "couch mode", because of the lack of scroll wheel on my laptop. Lately, I feel like I'm going to start shaking my fist at clouds.

Couldn't agree more about the scrolling. It's trying too hard to be fancy and ends up just being frustrating and hard to use

It's not you - The page is broken - the scrolling is completely screwed up on that page.

Replace the All Songs Considered stream? I sure hope not!

The stream is great and I've been an ASC listener since it was a semi-regular podcast I would download. Now I have it running in Radio Tray on my desktop most days, and I don't want something interactive.

The primary attractions for me are 1) It works overseas (I'm in Europe) 2) It is consumed passively, and 3) The curation of the music stream is superb. You can even email Bob feedback on songs and he writes you back. I think it's one of the coolest and most enjoyable things on the Internet.

I'm not against a new interactive app for people to use on their mobiles, but this in now way replaces the stream for me.

Cranking an animation... this doesn't feel like the future.

Yeah, the scroll reveal is this year's Pinterest Layout. Don't worry, it'll be some other bandwagon in 12 months.

It's not you. Scrolling without visual feedback makes the user think they've hit the bottom of the page.

Terrible design.

The behavior is even more miserable if you try to navigate via keyboard pageup/pagedown. Whole sections of content are liable to be skipped, and when they aren't, you often land in an odd intermediate frame that doesn't make a lot of sense.

Page designers need to consider that navigation is not always continuous.

Yes, this is annoying to me too. When you scroll that NPR site, it starts with normal scrolling and then turns into a strange mode where your scrolling intermittently does apparently nothing or changes the whole page or even shows horizontal scrolling of part of the screen. This is not how scroll is meant to work and it goes against all patterns trained for decades. It also detracts from usability as now I am confined to the order and flow that designers want, not that I want, PageUp/PageDown works weird, quick skimming is impossible, etc. Reminds me of some of Apple products - looks nice, works great if you are exactly the use case they designed for, very frustrating or useless if you want to do something the designers did not foresee.

I didnt realize there was more at first, till I read the comments.

The npr page for some reason becomes actually extremely straightforward and normal if your browser is really narrow (discovered when using my portrait monitor).

It just makes all the images stuck in place and scrolls like a normal fucking webpage. I put it on my standard widescreen one, and yeah, pg-up/pg-dn, up/dn just completely destroyed the page.

It isn't you. It is by fair the most annoying thing ever. I usually close sites right away that do this because it tends to be slow, jerky, and overall frustrating. The only reason I kept putting up with it is because it is NPR.

Also the up/down arrow keys don't work beyond the first screen, very annoying.

+1

Its just not smooth enough.