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Forum Member
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 10/26/2008 10:33:13 PM
Posts: 17,
Visits: 22
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Like many NNW users, I suspect, I regularly spend hours-long sessions in Combined View reading one news item after another, repeatedly hitting the spacebar to scroll to the next page of the current news item, or move to the next unread item, as applicable.
Currently, whenever NNW moves to the next unread item in Combined View, it scrolls the view so that the selected news item is at the top of the viewport. Consequently, every time you hit spacebar to move to the next unread item, you must move your eyes back up to the top of the viewport to read it. This is actually quite an unnatural way to read, since when you finish reading one item, your eye naturally moves to the next item down in the display, but when you hit spacebar that next item suddenly moves to the top of the viewport, and your eye has to find it again.
At the risk of overstating the point, this reading experience can also lead to repetitive stress injury (RSI), as your neck tends to become "locked" as your eyes repeatedly scan that first line of the viewport, rather than naturally tilting as your eyes read down the screen.
What I suggest is a "Lazy scrolling" option on the General > Reading tab of NNW’s Preferences. With this option selected, when the user moves to a new item by hitting spacebar or the up/down arrow keys, the Viewport in Combined View would only scroll when necessary for the title of the newly-selected item to become visible. The experience of "spacebar reading" would then become a much more natural (and comfortable) process of reading from the top of the viewport down to the bottom, and then starting back at the top again.
This may seem like an extreme case of nitpicking, but I can honestly say it would make a huge difference to my comfort level in using NNW for extended periods of reading. I hope you will consider my request seriously.
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NewsGator
Group: Administrators
Last Login: Today @ 11:17:48 AM
Posts: 1,018,
Visits: 1,928
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I see what you're saying. It's a weird thing -- I myself would rather have it work the way you describe, but it seemed that lots of people wanted it to pin the current article at the top, so I went with that.
I hate adding new prefs -- there are already way too many -- but I am thinking about some way to address this in the future.
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Forum Member
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 10/26/2008 10:33:13 PM
Posts: 17,
Visits: 22
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Thanks. If it comes down to an obscure Terminal command, I’ll take it. :-)
For what it’s worth, I find NNW has just the right amount of preferences, but then I’m a power user. Maybe the app as a whole needs a "Power User Mode" that is off by default?
On a related note, I’ve noticed the current behavior is somewhat inconsistent. Items that do not contain a body (i.e. there is only a title) do not get scrolled to the top of the viewport when they become selected in Combined View.
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