[Update: Fixed by Yahoo] Yahoo Answers “infinite scroll” bug in Chrome has still not been fixed for nearly two years now

Love it or hate it, you can’t deny that Yahoo Answers has come in handy at least once in your life. However, the point of this article is not to discuss how we feel about the service in general; rather, it’s to talk about a bug that I’ve noticed in Chrome for quite some time now: “infinite scrolling.”

Update 9/10Response from Chromium member.

Update 9/20: Workaround.

Update 9/22: Fixed by Yahoo.

After doing a bit of research, I managed to find that the first instances of this happening were reported in November of 2015 on Chrome 47—nearly two years ago! I filed a bug report, but the thread has gotten a steady amount of responses since it was first created. A Chromium member marked it as “WontFix” and closed it in January of 2016.

I’m currently using Chrome Beta, Version 61.0.3163.79 on Windows 10 where I first experienced the bug, but I also see it on the public/stable track of Chrome, Version 61.0.3163.79, Windows 10. And yes, I tested it in incognito mode with all extensions disabled, and I still get the same result. Using Yahoo Answers in Microsoft Edge, however, works fine.

Anyways, by now you’re probably wondering what exactly is this bug. Well, to put it plainly, whenever you visit a question on Yahoo Answers in Chrome, the “Answers” part will go into an endless scroll and zoom straight down eternally, so naturally, this makes it just a tad bit difficult to read the text.

Users are reporting this bug in all versions of Chrome, from stable all the way to Canary. Whether it’s tied down to only Windows 10 or if it affects other operating systems remains unclear. Let us know in the comments below if you’re seeing this bug in Chrome as well.

Update 9/10: A Chromium member has responded to the thread today with the following comment:

If this is affecting you the best thing to do is reach out to Yahoo and inform them of the problem. A post has already been made to their uservoice alerting them to it. It seems that isn’t being looked at regularly.

This is not a Chromium problem as comment 9 points out. It is a bug in the code for Yahoo Answers specifically engineered to only run for “Webkit” user agent strings. This is Yahoo’s responsibility to address.

And here’s comment 9:

Looks like this code (getting invoked on every resize event) is the problem:

     if (navigator.userAgent.match(/WebKit/)) {
                    w = I.documentElement.scrollHeight
                } else {
                    w = I.body.scrollHeight
                }
                if (w > 0 && J.contentWindow.dmRosAdHeightOffset !== undefined) {
                    w += (parseInt(J.contentWindow.dmRosAdHeightOffset) || 0)
                }
                J.height = w;
                if (w === 0) {
                    K.style.display = "none"
                }

This doesn’t appear to be a particular library or anything, just part of the yahoo answers site itself. Filed feedback here: https://yahoo.uservoice.com/forums/211240-us-answers/suggestions/11334171-fix-the-infinite-scroll-problem-with-chrome-s-scro

So this definitely is an issue with Yahoo. Feel free voice your feedback on their forums.

End of Update

Update 9/20: We’ve managed to find a fix for this. Check it out here.

End of Update

Update 9/22: It looks like this bug has finally been resolved by Yahoo. I guess it only took two years…

Several other users are reporting that the AdBlock workaround that we found is not needed anymore, and that the site functions fine now. I, myself, am unable to reproduce it anymore.

Let us know if the site’s back to normal for you as well in the comments below.

Thanks: ConradTW

End of Update

Source: Chromium Bugs, Google Groups, Yahoo Feedback (1) (2)