Ask HN: Browser plugins to unfuck scrolling?

Hello HN!

I've been googling for this all morning, but can't find anything. My problem is this:

I love scrolling web pages, this is how I can reach the content at the bottom :) I also happen to love the pixel-smooth scrolling of OS X and I mainly use 13" laptops, so the vertical space is scarce.

The latest improvements in CSS, particularly the introduction of position:fixed has been slowly ruining the web, in my opinion. Try scrolling down this page, for example: http://www.millcreekplaces.com/community/zilkr-on-the-park-apartments-in-austin

It's ridiculous. The "parallax" effect makes it even worse: retina displays can barely handle regular scrolling - they're noticeably more laggy than non-retina on a same screen size, but parallax completely destroys the experience: Not only I can't see much because of "stuck" headers/footers, but the smoothness of scrolling is gone as well.

THE question: are you aware of browser plug-ins that help fight this insanity? Thank you.

4 comments

[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 22.1 ms ] thread

hpeinar 11y ago ↗

How would one fight this insanity? Detect elements that "stick" while scrolling and remove / hide them? Show again when scrolled to top?

old-gregg 11y ago ↗

Fighting "stuck" elements seems easy: similarly to how Adblock works you would define a regular expression to identify a page element with position:fixed and the plug-in would remove that CSS style (I can do it manually via developer tools, a plugin would make this change automatic/permanent).

sharth 11y ago ↗

Apple has a great example of a website design that drives me mad: http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/

sheraz 11y ago ↗

Agreed -- I would love to find a plugin to curb Parallax and other abuses of these CSS/JS UI tricks.

Don't even get me started on the terrible performance of mobile...

The worse offenders are Themeforest templates. I sometimes buy there because the visual designs are quite good for the money. However, post-purchase I am swinging the code-machete and killing 90% of the animations, CSS tricks, big images, and video background that come with them.

Then, for my own projects, I've become super lazy/efficient and just use PureCSS [1] and adobe kuhler [2] and one of the icon sets [3,4]

[1] - http://Purecss.io [2] - http://color.adobe.com [3] - http://www.flaticon.com [4] - http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/