Scrollbar Blindness • Hacker News Board

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#11

Post by m4tthumphrey » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 1:53 PM UTC

I loathe the fact that scrollbars are now hidden. I'm constantly looking for it to either

a) find out how big the page is b) scroll more precisely

I don't even understand why they would remove them? Who ever complained of a scroll bar?

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#12

Post by dgellow » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 1:56 PM UTC

Another one of such thing: please try to scroll on your site using a mouse wheel from time to time, even if you're normally using a touchpad (from your laptop or an external one)!

Lot of fancy homepage with scroll animations are awful on anything that isn't scrolling as smoothly as a MacBookPro touchpad.

Example: https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/ is horrible to use on anything that isn't a mobile device or a Mac.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#13

Post by untog » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 1:58 PM UTC

m4tthumphrey wrote: post #11

I loathe the fact that scrollbars are now hidden. I'm constantly looking for it to either a) find out how big the page is b) scroll more precisely I don't even understand why they would remove them? Who ever complained of a scroll bar?

> I don't even understand why they would remove them? Who ever complained of a scroll bar?

IMO it's all part of this push to combine mobile and desktop UI. On mobile there is a legitimate case to be made for removing them because screen real estate is so precious. But desktop gets clobbered as an unwanted side effect.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#14

Post by dusted » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 1:58 PM UTC

dgellow wrote: post #12

Another one of such thing: please try to scroll on your site using a mouse wheel from time to time, even if you're normally using a touchpad (from your laptop or an external one)! Lot of fancy homepage with scroll animations are awful on anything that isn't scrolling as smoothly as a MacBookPro touchpad. Example: https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/ is horrible to use on anything that isn't a mobile device or a Mac.

yes, that's pretty terrible, I always scroll with the mouse wheel, since I'm tool old to be rubbing a plate of glass and not feel like a moron. But this one, made my finger hurt a bit and I din't even make it half way down.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#15

Post by tomconnors » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 1:59 PM UTC

I've been guilty of this. Normally I like to blame CSS for all of my personal failures, but I think the definition of "overflow" is intuitive enough. I was hesitant to turn on visible scrollbars system-wide because I thought it might be ugly. I did and it's not, so I second the author's suggestion to do that.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#16

Post by kwanbix » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 2:00 PM UTC

dgellow wrote: post #12

Another one of such thing: please try to scroll on your site using a mouse wheel from time to time, even if you're normally using a touchpad (from your laptop or an external one)! Lot of fancy homepage with scroll animations are awful on anything that isn't scrolling as smoothly as a MacBookPro touchpad. Example: https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/ is horrible to use on anything that isn't a mobile device or a Mac.

Your example works just fine on my ThinkPad P50. Unless I am missing something.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#17

Post by untog » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 2:00 PM UTC

> I kindly ask you to dedicate a little more attention to how the websites you create behave on platforms other than your own.

Agreed.

> Alternatively, you can set the scrollbars to be visible at all times by setting System Preferences -> General -> Show scroll bars to Always.

Disagree. Now you're using a different UI layout than the vast majority of your users!

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#18

Post by supernova87a » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 2:00 PM UTC

I have to pile onto the criticism of the hidden scroll bars, and other similar features (like the hidden buttons of PDF viewers now, such as in Chrome). Discoverability is a problem.

For anyone (cough, elderly parents) who aren't adept at discovering hidden features, these things can be utterly mind-boggling and frustrating. Even I was stumped for a good minute the first time trying to print/save/download a PDF when that "feature" came out.

I don't really need the small sliver of menu space in PDF view to be reclaimed -- and for what, a "clean" look? Those are real and important functions I desire. What I actually need is for news and blog sites to stop covering 1/4 of their vertical window space with hovering frames, ads, and banners asking me to subscribe. Which, by the way, subsequently don't properly calculate into that now hidden scroll bar's movement and cause you to overshoot the displayable area when paging down. End rant.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#19

Post by umvi » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 2:00 PM UTC

Wow, that's pretty bad. I'm guessing the front end developers of those sites just do everything on a Mac and never check how the site looks on Windows or Linux.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#20

Post by bb123 » Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 2:02 PM UTC

m4tthumphrey wrote: post #11

I loathe the fact that scrollbars are now hidden. I'm constantly looking for it to either a) find out how big the page is b) scroll more precisely I don't even understand why they would remove them? Who ever complained of a scroll bar?

They can be partially or completely re-enabled in the settings on MacOS.