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Scrollbar Blindness

svenkadak.com

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Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#71

Post by jakub_g »

If you read between the lines, you should understand that the root cause of issue is the macOS developer monoculture.

All you need is one Windows or Linux-based developer in your team to catch those kind of issues. But so many dev teams are macOS-only those days, whereas, apart from US and 2-3 other rich countries, 80%+ or even more of actual desktop users are Windows-based.

(There are many other problems with macOS monoculture, for example, the spread of ultrathin fonts that look nice and crisp on retina macbook but result in very low contrast rendering on Windows).

US-based devs: outside of your country (that is, >95% of humanity), most people do not have a Mac, an iPhone, nor use MM/DD/YYYY dates and 12-hour clock.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#72

Post by newsbinator »

bradstewart wrote: post #65
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.

Developers (seemingly a lot of them?) use a touchpad as their primary input device on a regular basis? I guess this is an example of being in my own bubble, but I can't stand touchpads. I've used the touchpad on MacBook, like, twice in 2 years.

Full stack dev, 8 ~ 12 hours a day on my 2015 MBP 13" touchpad. No regrets.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#75

Post by Spivak »

Aardwolf wrote: post #21

"introduced an enhanced scrollbar behavior that made scrollbars hidden by default" That's not enhanced at all, it's horrible, and scrollbars should be more contrastful and bigger again

But that’s silly when the preferred method of scrolling is a mouse wheel or a swipe nether actually require the scollbar as a touch/click target.

The actual useful UI left is “does this thing scroll”, “where on the page am I”, and “the grab and flick” gesture on touch to scroll faster.

In hindsight I think the mistake was having scrollbars be part of the document flow instead of hovering invisibly over the content until they’re needed.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#76

Post by kevincox »

bradstewart wrote: post #65
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.

Developers (seemingly a lot of them?) use a touchpad as their primary input device on a regular basis? I guess this is an example of being in my own bubble, but I can't stand touchpads. I've used the touchpad on MacBook, like, twice in 2 years.

It's definitely personal preference. I love touchpads and actually use a drawing tablet (with finger support) as a large touchpad when I am at my desk. I have a mouse nearby because it works better for some things but most of the time use the touchpad.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#77

Post by rkapsoro »

bradstewart wrote: post #60
bb123 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Now I'm really confused, when does MacOS decide to hide scrollbars? Only when you're using a touchpad?

It depends on which pointing device you have installed.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#78

Post by apocalyptic0n3 »

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

One of the best things I think I've done for quality purposes is require all developers, QA team members, and project managers have scrollbars turned on at all times. It's sent the number of sites with hidden overflow in production down to near-zero for us. Someone, somewhere down the line will end up seeing that your page is 300px wider than the viewport before it hits production. And because that usually indicates other problems (often related to accessibility), it usually has a domino effect of discovering other issues that need to be fixed.

It has definitely made a marked improvement to the quality of our work, and I recommend everyone require their teams using Macs to require scrollbars be set to "Always"

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#79

Post by VoxPelli »

matsemann wrote: post #3

Yes! Far too many developers now only check that the page renders nicely on Chrome on their expensive macbook. While most of their users may be having a less than stellar screen and don't see the contrasts, run old hardware and a different OS+browser combo.

To be fair: If they would use a cheap Chromebook, then the outcome in this case wouldn’t be any different

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#80

Post by fortran77 »

> If you are a front-end developer that uses macOS, I kindly ask you to dedicate a little more attention to how the websites you create behave on platforms other than your own.

I think this is a lost cause. A lot of macOS people are "zealots" and they feel that anyone who uses anything else is simply "wrong." I've long dealt with designers like this and realized I can't win.

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