This is one recent design trend (along with the windowed images that scroll thro...

dave5104 · on Oct 21, 2014

I am a UX/UI guy, and I wish it would be used properly. What a lot of parallax sites like to do is mess with the scrolling of the page. ("Scrolljacking" is a term I've thrown around for stuff like this.)

Don't do that. Ever.

The user should always be able to scroll normally and not have their browser screen clunking along because they're not scrolling at a speed that is optimal for the animations at hand.

Here's a decently bad offender for a visual of what I'm talking about: http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/ (After the initial animation, try scrolling down--it's not as easy as scrolling should be.)

teleclimber · on Oct 21, 2014

An example of Apple doing parallax right is the new iMac page: http://www.apple.com/imac-with-retina/ At least the top image effect is very well done IMO and does a very good job conveying the central premise of the new iMac: looottts of pixels.

Having said that I really dislike what happens lower on the page where the iMac image stays pinned on the left and the descriptions scroll normally on the right. It's totally jarring to me. It seems unnatural that some of the contents would move with the scrollbar (as expected) and other significant elements would not. It immediately pulls me away from the content and leaves me trying to analyze what in the world is going on.

We experience parallax in the real world every day and are completely wired up to find it normal and expected. But real parallax involves objects at different distances. When you force objects that are in the same plane to move as if they were in different planes, you get the "funhouse" effect.

I suspect that like many other cute effects somebody will eventually do some serious AB tests and figure out that this kind of thing reduces conversions.

davedx · on Oct 21, 2014

The pinning is actually buggy: it pins the Mac to the wrong vertical offset when you scroll past the threshold the pin hits. At least on Chrome on my Macbook Air it does, anyway. Maybe it works correctly at other resolutions or browsers.

So not really "parallax right" if you're counting the whole page from top to bottom. I like the images a lot though, they're very nice.

alexirobbins · on Oct 21, 2014

It's probably also counting the width of the page, which would make the positioning formula trickier. Still, get your shit together apple!

teleclimber · on Oct 21, 2014

yeah I noticed that too.

vonklaus · on Oct 21, 2014

I actually think this was terrible as well. I clicked the link on the release date because I was curious. I scrolled for a while, and I thought I was somehow just zooming out. It clunked along and took a while to get to any information. It felt poor. The animation was not fluid. Maybe it should have been a screen sized gif, that played over 4 seconds and then disappeared. Not sure, but it felt like I had no control over the page as a user. I couldn't scroll away.

ep103 · on Oct 21, 2014

That's a really bad example. I suggest www.kennedyandoswald.com/

leetNightshade · on Oct 21, 2014

That's not a great example either. I can't grab the scroll bar and go to the top or bottom of the page since they have their own custom scroll bar that doesn't work like it should. Also Page Up and Page Down don't work.

jnem · on Oct 21, 2014

Wow,you weren't kidding, that's unforgivably bad, especially for the "UX Gods" at Apple.

Igglyboo · on Oct 21, 2014

This is a good example of it done extremely well, also from Apple.

http://www.apple.com/imac-with-retina/

It's even more impressive when you inspect it and see how it's done.

ollysb · on Oct 21, 2014

How is it done? I see a couple of css transitions but there must be some js involved as well?

Igglyboo · on Oct 21, 2014

It's a large div with a ton of canvases inside, the scroll wheel is also linked to a css transition on the div the scales it outwards.

Karawebnetwork · on Oct 21, 2014

Yes. They linked the scale of the image (CSS) to the scroll wheel with a bit of JavaScript.

daddykotex · on Oct 21, 2014

Hell yeah, thanks for sharing!

zo1 · on Oct 21, 2014

I couldn't scroll at all after the initial animation. What exactly is supposed to happen on the site?

ntaso · on Oct 21, 2014

It is especially terrible, if you use your mouse wheel to scroll and not a swiping gesture on a trackpad. Parallax just looks horribly with a mouse wheel.

tricolon · on Oct 21, 2014

It is especially terrible if you use neither the mouse wheel nor the trackpad. The cursor keys, Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down simply don't work.

untog · on Oct 21, 2014

It's open to abuse (hiding content until it's scrolled to, usually) but the actual visual idea of it is fine, as far as I'm concerned. Just don't try to communicate the main purpose of your page with it.

kelvin0 · on Oct 21, 2014

I second that motion, bring it behind the barn and take it out of it`s misery. Especially when the scrolling pops up some unexpected graphic which is jarring and doesn't bring anything to the site`s aesthetic or UX.

romanovcode · on Oct 21, 2014

I think it's already dying. I see less and less parallax sites whereas two years ago every startup had their site as parallax. :)

at-fates-hands · on Oct 21, 2014

One of the reasons is probably because parallax on mobile is a horrendous experience and people have started to catch on to this.

I've only seen a handful of companies who can pull it off well. This is probably one of five I feel does it well: http://www.extreme-sensio.com/

talmand · on Oct 21, 2014

That's because it is simply done. For the most part the only thing that really happens in a big way is that the background changes out based on scroll position. Any other element that animates on scroll does so in a minor and subtle way. The actual scrolling of the page is not altered in any way.

I agree, this is one of the better ways to handle such things if it has to be done.

ntaso · on Oct 21, 2014

I tried to buy a theme from themeforest and it's extremely hard to fine one that is NOT completely polluted with CSS animations and parallax effects. I wish you were right, but just from the top-selling themes of marketplaces like themeforest, it seems that the trend is still quite big, unfortunately.