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Scrollbar Blindness

svenkadak.com

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Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#81

Post by 52-6F-62 »

pantalaimon wrote: post #46
bb123 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think it has more to do with the increasing size and sophistication of the touchpad in Macs. There is no need for a scroll bar when you have a touchpad you can flick (likewise for magic mice).

But the touchpad won't help you visualize where on the page you are.

I use the larger touchpad rather than a mouse when working at my desk, and I have to say that's been a non-issue—for me anyway. A slight touch/movement on the pad and I know exactly where I am (and the device really is just great...).

That said, the issues outlined in this article are glaring, and I do notice them when I switch to PC/Linux and a mouse and back. It's definitely something easy to forget, though.

The UX is designed to make most of the obviousness fade away and make the process an extension of your natural movements. Kind of like how a good band can take cues from each other without explicitly speaking or reading off of a sheet during a performance. But that doesn't help people who aren't adept professionals, or people operating under completely different circumstances.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#82

Post by pcr910303 »

Really, am I the only person here who can't understand the complaints on hiding scrollbars? I do agree with a lot of things that resonates HN, but this is one thing that I have never understood.

Stop complaining about discoverability, everyone that knows how to browse the web knows how to scroll. It's like worrying whether the user will know how to use a mouse when you're designing a web page. Scrolling is not something like shortcuts or tabs - you need it to move around, which means you get to know it as soon as you start your computer and after the first knowing phase it's visual clutter.

Also, I would like to ask whether users will usually even want to click on the scrollbar to move around. Unless the small number of cases where the page is long and you want to move around quickly (and if you have ever been in that case, you know that even there using the scrollbar is pretty useless because it's too sensitive - you are usually less precise when you use a scrollbar, not more), there's virtually no reason to click it. Computer screen estate is precious because not everyone is using a 27-inch display (13-inch display here), so that's a pretty big reason to hide the scrollbar.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#83

Post by VoxPelli »

I would very much want a way to toggle scroll bars on and of within the browser, eg a Toolbar button that I can add through an extension.

The fact that I can only toggle it at an OS level is pretty bad. I love the invisible scroll bars and I would prefer to have them in all apps I use myself, but I do respect the platforms and users who have visible ones, but I shouldn’t have to choose between my own user experience and testing for their user experience

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#84

Post by chias »

I need to use a MacBook as my work machine (for a little over three years now), and generally have a strong dislike of the platform. It's just similar enough to Linux to lull me into believing that I kinda know what I'm doing, but just different enough to make me feel incompetent whenever I try to actually do anything nontrivial.

    System Preferences -> General -> Show scroll bars to Always.
I stumbled across this little gem about a year ago, and has been one of the bigger quality-of-life improvements I've found on this machine.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#85

Post by 52-6F-62 »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #70
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #10

> Alternatively, you can set the scrollbars to be visible at all times by setting System Preferences -> General -> Show scroll bars to Always. Hidden scrollbars recently caused me an extra day of work. I was documenting all options in hundreds of html select boxes (dropdowns) on a legacy product being rewritten. Many of these dropdowns were vertically scrollable, but macOS using Chrome did not display a scrollbar. I…

Here's a tip you can try next time you have a problem like this. Maybe your task was somehow resistant to this, in which case I really do understand your pain and am not trying to paper it over, but just in case this could benefit you or folks like you: In Chrome: 1) Right click on element you want to grab all of the contents of, and select Inspect Element. NOTE: If this element is the sort that isn't properly placed…

> 1) Right click on element you want to grab all of the contents of, and select Inspect Element. NOTE: If this element is the sort that isn't properly placed in the DOM and/or disappears when focus/mouse leaves, you can freeze the current DOM...but the right way to do that will depend on your context.

Just to extend a touch—I use CMD+Shift+C or CTRL+Shift+C countless times in a day while debugging, or sometimes for this very reason. The shortcut is the same across browsers—at least Chrome/Edge/FF/Safari.

Instead of right clicking, it'll give you a "target" for selecting an element and highlight it before clicking.

In the console the selected element will be immediately accessible by `$0`.

Eg,

    $0.innerHTML;

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#87

Post by keyringlight »

Santosh83 wrote: post #25

Increasingly many sites are opting for overlay scrollbars that are exceedingly difficult to actually use. It's almost as if they don't want you to use the scrollbar yet provide one for compliance. They are often very thin (just a few pixels) and coloured dark gray upon black background and won't expand to a bigger size until you successfully squint and hunt it down and precisely position the pointer over it.

Contrast is issue I've found to be annoying, as though UI designers don't really want you to spot it easily and to show the information it conveys. On the windows side I think it's after winxp that they moved away from having color to greys, and then later to solid blocks

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#88

Post by bradstewart »

newsbinator wrote: post #72
bradstewart wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interesting. Despite my efforts to consider that people have different preferences for almost everything in life, I am constantly surprised by my assumumptions about how other people do things that turn out to be very wrong.

It didn't even occur to me that someone who uses a computer all day long would use a touchpad, even though millions of people own one, Apple continues making them bigger, and the only thing "wrong" with them is that _I_ can't figure out how to click things on the first (or 5th) try.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#89

Post by kevincox »

Spivak wrote: post #75
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 un…

The scrollbar does still provide valuable context over what scrolls, how big the scroll area is and how far you have scrolled. The second two you can solve by just scrolling a little to see the popup scroll indicator but discoverability is huge and I often am confused by this when I am using macOS.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#90

Post by bradstewart »

rkapsoro wrote: post #77
bradstewart wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is the kicker, thanks. I'm using a (non-Apple) mouse and changing the settings didn't seem to have any effect.
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