Firefox 66: Scroll Anchoring fixes scroll position jumps during loading

[Karlston]

Mozilla implemented a feature called Scroll Anchoring in Firefox Nightly recently that fixes a very annoying scrolling related issue.

 

Here is the issue: open any site with a good number of images or other content and quite a bit of text. Scroll down while the page still loads and stay on a fixed position. The loading of content such as images changes the position on the page.

 

I experience the issue regularly, for instance when starting to read a long article or text on a site without waiting for all content to be loaded on it. The loading of images and other content that takes up space may move the visible part of the page so that I have to scroll again to go back to the position I was at.

 

Images, media, and other content on the page may not be loaded immediately. It depends on various factors such as size of files or the number of images on the page.

 

Tip: check out our Firefox download guide to find out how to download Firefox Nightly. We suggest that you use different profiles for Firefox.

 

 

The issue may be experienced on dynamic pages as well that load content as the user scrolls the page.

 

Bug 1305957 on Mozilla's bug tracking site, Page scroll position is not consistent while content is loading (implement "scroll anchoring"), was opened two years ago. Mozilla plans to launch the change in Firefox 66 Stable and has already implemented in Firefox Nightly, the cutting edge development version of the browser.

 

Scroll Anchoring support in Firefox fixes the issue. The visible part of the page remains in sight while the page is loading if the user scrolls down before the load event completes.

 

Google implemented Scroll Anchoring some time ago in the company's Chrome browser. The company launched Scroll Anchoring as an experimental feature that users had to enable on chrome://flags and enabled the feature by default back in 2016 for all users of the browser.

Closing Words

The implementation of Scroll Anchoring is a welcome addition to the Firefox browser as it resolves an annoying issue that some Internet users ran experienced.

 

Source: Firefox 66: Scroll Anchoring fixes scroll position jumps during loading (gHacks - Martin Brinkmann)

[DKT27]

I remember Google implementing this. Good to see author mentioning it.

 

I think someone once mentioned this nonsense is done on purpose - yet to check. So good to see them doing something about it.