Why are article progress bars so popular?
More and more articles online seem to have some sort of reading progress bar at the top or bottom of the viewport, slowly filling as I scroll.
Does anyone know where this idea originated or why it’s so popular?
I don’t know, but it is annoying. There’s a thing called a scrollbar. Every device has it, and if you’re really curious about how far you are down a document, you can just look at the scrollbar.
You probably feel like you’re demonstrating that you have this neat gadget on your page. I agree it’s super distracting. Let me focus on the words.
They show the length of the article which the scroll bar would have if it weren't invisible.
Tiktok induced short attention spans