April 6, 2026
Zoom fights and pinch frights
Zooming UIs in 2026: Prezi, impress.js, and why I built something different
Dev’s zoomy new UI has commenters split: dazzling demo or dizzying gimmick
TLDR: A solo dev launched Zumly, an open tool that makes zooming the way you move through a web app. The crowd split fast: fans call it fun and intuitive, while critics flag accessibility, scrolling, pinch-to-zoom confusion, Firefox glitches, and 'unnecessary' motion—plus requests for better back-button support and stable nav.
A solo dev just dropped “Zumly,” a web tool that turns zooming into the way you move around an app—not just a slide trick—and the comments instantly split into wow vs why. Fans loved the playful feel: one tester said the Mission Control → Satellite → Subsystem flow “feels oddly intuitive and fun,” and several folks dug the idea of a navigation you can literally zoom into. The demo is live on the Zumly site with code on GitHub.
But the pushback was loud. Accessibility came up fast: one commenter cheered “I don’t miss Macromedia Flash hell at all” and warned that cut‑off, unscrollable showcases are a red flag for people who rely on assistive tech. On mobile, someone “pinched to zoom” out of habit and the page “got very confused,” while another called it “sluggish” and said it didn’t behave in Firefox. The biggest heckle? “It feels absolutely unnecessary.”
Constructive advice poured in too: keep a steady navbar, add breadcrumbs for power users, and use the browser’s proper history so the back button behaves. With Prezi locked down and infamous for motion‑sickness vibes, and impress.js stuck in slide‑deck land, Zumly’s promise is fresh—but the crowd’s verdict is a dramatic split between delight and dizziness.
Key Points
- •The article compares Prezi and impress.js as presentation-focused zooming solutions and introduces Zumly as a navigation-focused alternative.
- •Prezi is a closed, paid platform for zoom-based presentations with AI features; exports to PowerPoint flatten zoom effects and users report motion sickness.
- •impress.js uses CSS3 transforms in a step-based architecture, enabling Prezi-like presentations but lacking dynamic view mounting and navigation state management.
- •Zumly is framework-agnostic and uses zoom as a navigation model by dynamically injecting and scaling target views during transitions, akin to SPA routing.
- •Zumly was started in 2020 after the author’s work on Zircle UI and has been rewritten multiple times; a live landing page and GitHub repo are provided.