Comments on: Scroll Stoppers at MensHealth.com

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 20:42:22 +0000

Good point. We are working through a redesign to our home page at rezoom.com and have had to take this into consideration. We are adding a number of modular widgets to display different data and we are currently working on testing different browser sizes for “first impression” looks just to be sure all our fancy new modules get some attention if they are below the page line.

If anyone reading doesn’t already know about it, browsercam.com is a good resource for seeing your site on a number of different browser and resolution combinations. They basically just load it up and creat screen captures and send them to you. Pretty niffty.

By: Kendall

Kendall — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 14:09:50 +0000

Well if you check out the source code for Men’s Health you’ll see why it has issues. It has some of the ugliest code I ever did see. They really need to work on their layouts though. The problem you identify is definitely a problem.

By: Jim Bunzol

Jim Bunzol — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 13:59:39 +0000

Here’s a bit of irony for you. I emailed a link to this article to my colleagues and we encountered a literal “scroll stopper” on this page. When my colleague clicked the link, the bottom of the page was where the “Podcast Powered by” text is located on the right side of the page. He was unable to scroll any further.

My first question was what operating system (Windows XP, same as me) and my next question was screen resolution (1024×768, mine was 1280×1024). Both browsers were IE 6.

Since I was unable to recreate this issue at 1280×1024, I then switched to 1024×768 resolution and, snap, there it was. This page literally stopped where the “Podcast Powered by” text is located on the right side of the page. I had to refresh the page to be able to view the rest of the screen. I tested this with multiple users and came to the same conclusion.

Now after switching back to 1280×1024, the same issue is recurring everytime I click the link to the page. I then tested the scenario with a fourth user and found that if the user has no browser window open and clicks the link, the page will not fully display, however, if there is already a browser window open and the user clicks the link, then the page will fully display in the already open browser window. I then realized that it has nothing to do with the screen resolution, but rather if the page opens in a new window or in an existing window.

I only find this comment important because if people don’t realize there is more to this page, they will miss the link to the article “As the Page Scrolls” which is at the end of this article. Of course if this does happen, the user will also not see the comments section which renders this particular comment moot. Both articles are excellent reading.

By: Steve Portigal

Steve Portigal — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:18:15 +0000

I encountered one of these today! I signed up for a shipping account at FedEx.com and it walks through filling out various bits of content, contact info, then credit info, etc. All the zones are available on screen, but the credit card info (except for the title) is below the fold. The contact info was already populated, so I tweaked one or two fields and hit the associated continue button. The status bar told me it was loading a page about credit card, but it was exactly the same page, as if there was some error in the address or something. I tried this several times and somehow I ended up scrolling down to see that the credit section was also waiting to be filled in, with its OWN continue button. I don’t know what made me scroll, but it’s clear that the visual cues were absolutely scroll stoppers. In this case, scroll stopping 100% broke the registration process. Bad fedex.com, bad.