It's a huge problem with the current SPA trend. Sites are re-implementing all sorts of basic functionality like scrolling, links, and form inputs and invariably do a myopic job of it where they only implement basic functions or ones that the developer personally uses.

There are so many sites now where you can't Ctrl-click, middle-click or right-click links and get proper behavior, where inputs don't work the way they should, where sites try to hijack keyboard shortcuts (and of course assume everyone's using the default ones), where scrolling with the keyboard messes up layouts because they assume you're going to gradually scroll down with a mouse or swipe, where browser extensions can't affect element types because everything is just a <div>, etc.

It's a gigantic pain in the ass for consistent usability across sites, and a complete disaster for accessibility as well.

Project managers/product designers that don't understand their problem domain paired with developers that won't say no.

There's a couple extensions that are supposed to target and disable this behavior, but I've found them flakey at best.

aren't you forgetting the 'developers' who want to be 'cool' in this equation?

It's why I use reader mode in FF. All that js, ads and other crap just go bye bye leaving you with only the article content that you wanted to read to begin with, like it should be.

I couldn't agree more. While it's enticing to show your creativity in something like scrolling, it almost always negatively impacts the site...as it definitely has here.

Flash the browser plugin may have died, but the mindset that made people want to make websites in it never did.