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Merged 3 posts from Option to turn off animated swipe back (to load the previous page), like Chrome.

    Please add a way to disable certain animations such as the entire page swipe that happens when you go back a back. It can be very disorientating.

    • Vlad replied to this.

      I agree with this, although I would actually support removing it altogether. I thought this was poorly thought out when it was added to Safari. Firefox and Chrome wisely declined to add it to their interfaces.

      1. It makes single-page applications that use pushState() behave in unexpected ways.
      2. It adds nothing and is just visual flair. Any context of "you are going back" can be added in other ways (see Chrome or Firefox for examples)
      3. There is no consistency with any other aspect of the UI behavior:
        1. The page didn't swipe over to "cover" the existing page when the user clicked a link to go to a new page. Why does it swipe backwards to "uncover" the previous page? UINavigationController on iOS swipes back, but it also slides the new view on top of the old view when navigating forward. This "stack" consistency makes sense, while the behavior in Safari and Orion does not.
        2. The back button does not slide but navigates instantly. So there are 2 different behaviors depending on how the user navigates. Again, iOS is consistent with the back button.
      4. The animation must complete before the page can be interacted with. This slows down browsing.
      5. Users with accessibility issues requiring "Reduce motion" to be enabled in accessibility prefs still must watch the entire page slide away when they navigate back using the trackpad. This can cause issues for those users requiring them to work around it (retrain behavior, remap swipe with BetterTouchTool, etc.)

      In summary, I don't think it adds anything useful to the UI while causing issues with both applications and users with accessibility needs.

      cloudbread Can you show a video of what effect are you talking about? By the sound of it it sound like something built into webkit.

          2 years later
          3 months later

          I agree with the feedback of removing it entirely or using an alternative feedback mechanism. It adds complexity and some odd behaviors. On rare occasions I've noted that it won't actually navigate back but reload the page. The UX really only makes sense on mobile and I'm convinced it was some bureaocratic decision in the name of consistency.

          My work around to this is to use the CMD-[ keybinding which just does the back navigation. Though having used Chrome for years is hard to break the muscle memory of swiping left.

          Merged 5 posts from Add ability to disable animations when going back.
            Vlad changed the title to Implement Chrome/Firefox animation for page back .
              4 days later

              I'm still very much in favour of replacing the WebKit back & forward animation/implementing a new one on top of WebKit.
              For anyone who dislikes the WebKit gesture as much as I do, the workaround I have been using is under system settings, within trackpad, then more gestures, change swipe between pages to "Swipe with three fingers". The annoying thing about this workaround is that you have to disable three finger drag under accessibility settings.

              I have also found some weird behaviours with the three finger swipe for back and forth, between weird page reloads instead of actually going back or forth, and the fact that it doesn't seem to work on the new tab page.

              A path for this change would also be to communicate all the reasons this should be changed to the WebKit team who can natively change this via https://webkit.org

              This is because we have our hands full just building the browser, and would avoid changes in the Webkit codebase if possible.

              4 months later

              Given that Cmd-[ works fine, could the page back user request just do the same action as Cmd-[?

              I feel it is really against the entire speed aspect that orion seems to follow

                It would be amazing if this could be implemented, I've always really disliked the inturruption of the bad safari/orion swipe.

                  2 months later

                  Given that this post is looking for the community opinion, I would like to add my two cents: I love the Safari/WebKit animation for this and prefer it over the Chrome/Firefox one. It gives the visual indication and feel of going back and forward and is consistent with the "native app look". However, the page suddenly changing after the animation has played out is a legitimate issue and it would be wonderful if it could be fixed.

                    The page navigation animations is just straight up bad in webkit. The chrome one is much better. In webskit, its like first the page navigates and then it reloads and its just not so smooth of a transition. Can you give an option to disable the animation while navigating forward or backward a page?

                    Its just a better user experience. Quick jump to pages forward or back like with the "cmd+ right arrow/leftarrow" is so much better in my opinion. But my reflex is always swiping between pages to navigate so an option to disable the animation would be great. People who like the animations can keep it.

                    • Vlad replied to this.

                      Vlad cant find any post similar to my post, everyone has different porblems with the swpe feature

                          Merged 4 posts from Option to disable page navigation animations.
                            a month later

                            So, I'm not sure, but I know how WebKit's scrolling feels and the app Dash feels like it's using WebKit. I could be wrong, but it does feel like it. If that's the case, the developer has also implemented a Chrome/Firefox-like swipe back animation which is great and better than what comes with WebKit.

                            Just thought I'd share.