writing · .0005 · 2026
a scroll film of a working build, captured frame by frame rather than screen recorded.
a screen recording carries the recorder's frame pacing, the operating system's compositor, and whatever else the machine was doing. it judders and the judder reads as the site being slow. capturing frames deterministically and encoding them afterwards gives you a film of the site rather than a film of your computer.
driving the page with a programmatic scroll does nothing on any site using a smooth scroll library, because those intercept the wheel and ignore the scroll position you set. the page sits at the top and every captured frame is identical. you have to send wheel events.
images below the fold never load if you jump the viewport rather than travelling through it. the film ends up full of empty boxes. move in steps small enough that the loader fires, and wait for the network to settle before capturing.
an undismissed cookie banner swallows the first wheel events. the capture looks like a dead site for two seconds and then jumps. dismiss consent before anything else, the way a visitor does.
a case study page needs to show the thing working, not a screenshot of it sitting still. a ten second loop of the page actually scrolling is the cheapest honest proof that a build exists and behaves.