I was going to post this into "General Questions and Answers", but there is no "Poll" above the text area, so I assume polls are intended to be posted into "General Topics".
One of the most frustrating parts of using a smartphone is the battle to avoid pull-to-refresh.
The pull-to-refresh gesture (also known as "pull-down-to-refresh", "swipe to refresh", and similar names) reloads the content when the user swipes down while the top of the page is on screen.
This might seem useful initially, since there is no need for a refresh button anymore. However, in practice, it is by far more annoying than helpful. It causes accidental refreshes while scrolling up because you might pull down once too many while scrolling up and run into an unwanted refresh.
Results of unwanted refreshes include waste of mobile data, loss of unsaved input in web forms, loss of position in a video or audio track, and loss of time from having to wait for the page to load again.
Many apps won't let the user deactivate this gesture. The most infamous example might be Chrome. In 2019 (Chrome version 75), the option to disable the pull-to-refresh gesture was removed. It baffles me how the UI designers of Chrome never thought about the possibility of users being annoyed by refreshing accidents.
Pull-to-refresh is in effect a screen-sized refresh button. It's a trap waiting for you to fall into it. A ticking time bomb.
The purpose of pulling down is to scroll up. Pull-to-refresh makes the result of pulling down ambiguous, since there are two possible results of pulling down. The user is forced to check whether they are at the top of the page by pulling down very slowly, which consumes time and energy.
I would like to know whether I am the only one here who is severely annoyed by pull-to-refresh.
Pull-to-refresh has unjustly been accepted as a normal part of touch screen user interfaces. It's about time to find out what people actually think about it. It's time to question this trend.
[I hereby release this text under the Creative Commons 4.0 Share-Alike International license.]
One of the most frustrating parts of using a smartphone is the battle to avoid pull-to-refresh.
The pull-to-refresh gesture (also known as "pull-down-to-refresh", "swipe to refresh", and similar names) reloads the content when the user swipes down while the top of the page is on screen.
This might seem useful initially, since there is no need for a refresh button anymore. However, in practice, it is by far more annoying than helpful. It causes accidental refreshes while scrolling up because you might pull down once too many while scrolling up and run into an unwanted refresh.
Results of unwanted refreshes include waste of mobile data, loss of unsaved input in web forms, loss of position in a video or audio track, and loss of time from having to wait for the page to load again.
Many apps won't let the user deactivate this gesture. The most infamous example might be Chrome. In 2019 (Chrome version 75), the option to disable the pull-to-refresh gesture was removed. It baffles me how the UI designers of Chrome never thought about the possibility of users being annoyed by refreshing accidents.
Pull-to-refresh is in effect a screen-sized refresh button. It's a trap waiting for you to fall into it. A ticking time bomb.
The purpose of pulling down is to scroll up. Pull-to-refresh makes the result of pulling down ambiguous, since there are two possible results of pulling down. The user is forced to check whether they are at the top of the page by pulling down very slowly, which consumes time and energy.
I would like to know whether I am the only one here who is severely annoyed by pull-to-refresh.
Pull-to-refresh has unjustly been accepted as a normal part of touch screen user interfaces. It's about time to find out what people actually think about it. It's time to question this trend.
[I hereby release this text under the Creative Commons 4.0 Share-Alike International license.]
