What scenarios exactly come under the umbrella of Scroll Hijacking?

Question

I have read about Scroll Hijacking and understand its impact on UI.

I just want to ask what could be the possible scenarios on UI which represents Scroll Hijacking.

For example in below image [image 01 - Inline Scrolls] I have disabled the default scroll at HTML Body and introduced three panels with their inline scroll.

(image 01 - Inline Scrolls)

So, in this scenario a user can only scroll a panel if his/her mouse cursor is focused on that particular panel and we have browser's default scroll i.e. NO JS.

Does this scenario come under the umbrella of Scroll Hijacking? Also please provide more examples

Answer 1

Scroll hijacking occurs when your scroll behaves differently than it normally should. Usually this is done so you move in a pre-set path along the website, where you cannot skip content because scrolling only performs one action at a time: back or forth.

In your case: while you are modifying where you can scroll, the scrolling behaviour itself remains the same. You can still scroll at your own pace within each panel. The issue with scroll hijacking is that you can't 'get out' of the animations and/or sectioned content at your own pace. It's heavily directed by the website. Sometimes this works to enhance the experience, most of the time it's very annoying as you cannot just do what you want.

An example of true scroll hijacking: http://www.thepetedesign.com/demos/onepage_scroll_demo.html