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Scrollbar Blindness

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Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#191

Post by mixmastamyk »

derefr wrote: post #165
supernova87a wrote: post #18

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…

Scroll bars weren't really "hidden", though; they were obviated. At least on macOS, all the mouse-like input peripherals that Apple will sell you (both the Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad), and all the inputs for their laptops, have two-finger "natural" scrolling. Apple seems to expect/assume that you've scrolled a touchscreen at some point in your life (in fact, many people have scrolled more touchscreens than deskto…

> it's for shitty low-end laptops that still to this day have 1366x768 displays.

We had scrollbars on 640x480 both ways and liked it. Even SGIs with 1280x1024 monitors had scrollbars, and it wasn't a burden that some folks today seem to think it was.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#192

Post by tiborsaas »

jakub_g wrote: post #71

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…

Our company offered me a choice between a Mac and a PC, but also said that the former is heavily recommended so I picked that option. I didn't want to be the guy who constantly cries for help because stuff is just not designed and never tested on windows.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#193

Post by snazz »

madeofpalk wrote: post #151
gspr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this case I'd say it highlights another problem too: web developers thinking it is their prerogative to control how their users scroll.

"to be fair" - on Apple's site they arent controlling how the user's scroll. They aren't scroll hijacking, they're just progressing video playback based on the native scroll position. It's still janky (and buggy?) as hell on Chrome on Windows with a mouse with a scroll wheel.

Those kinds of pages are janky on macOS with a low-sensitivity scroll wheel too. They're really satisfying on touchscreens and touchpads; I wonder if it's possible to make them smooth on devices with junky mice without implementing the equally-annoying smooth scroll hijacking that is popular on some sites.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#195

Post by narag »

baggy_trough wrote: post #187
reaperducer wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For anyone (cough, elderly parents) who aren't adept at discovering hidden features You don't even have to be elderly. The 20-somethings in the office (pre-pandemic) had no idea that on an inconsistent smattering of Apple apps, if you pull down, a hidden search bar magically appears. How did that conversation go? Dev: Where do you want the search bar to go? Designer: Put it somewhere that no one will ever see it, or…

Even worse than undiscoverable features are land mine features, where some subtle gesture triggers a wild and unwanted mode change. Extra credit if the mode change is hard to get out of.

Windows keys started the nightmare for me decades ago. So nice hitting one of those while gaming full-screen!

This conversation happened a thousand times: "but you can hit them again and restore what you were doing"... no, I can't, specially if I have pressed a dozen keys since.

I used to buy IBM keyboards from more civilized times, but my dealer disappeared, maybe he was arrested?

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#196

Post by IncRnd »

reaperducer wrote: post #189
IncRnd wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several online cross-platform browser testing services. You don't even need a non-mac yourself. If the company is large enough to alwayus test locally, most modern testers will use VMs or some sort of containerization for repeatable determinism. This is absolutely a solved problem.

Online isn't real-life. You can test in a VM, but it will never be the same as testing on actual hardware. Even my craptastic company gives me a bunch of devices to test on. And I very deliberately specify very low-end versions of the machines so that I can test against worst-case-scenarios. It's a bonus that sub-optimal hardware is cheap as chips. My favorite testing device is a $20 burner phone I picked up in the s…

> Online isn't real-life. You can test in a VM, but it will never be the same as testing on actual hardware.

Ths context is that testing is a solved problem. You are taking specific factual examples I wrote and attempting to debunk them with a general statement that is in agreement with what I wrote. Testing scrollbards can absolutely be tested inside a VM. Pretending that native hardware is needed to cover 99% of the use-cases for scrollbars is kind of silly.

> Even my craptastic company gives me a bunch of devices to test on. And I very deliberately specify very low-end versions of the machines so that I can test against worst-case-scenarios. It's a bonus that sub-optimal hardware is cheap as chips.

You've made my point. This is a solved problem.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#197

Post by dmitriid »

IncRnd wrote: post #166
dmitriid wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All you need is a round of testing for cross-browser compatibility. It's a pretty much solved problem by now, doesn't take that much time and can be automated. Please show me a solved automated test for the issue in the post.

There are several online cross-platform browser testing services. You don't even need a non-mac yourself. If the company is large enough to alwayus test locally, most modern testers will use VMs or some sort of containerization for repeatable determinism. This is absolutely a solved problem.

This is a non-answer to my question.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#198

Post by pseudalopex »

bstar77 wrote: post #137

I have dealt with this problem in an Electron app I designed and support. The different platform scrollbar behaviors drove me mad because of my insistence on a common experience. I really like the hidden scrollbars that Apple settled on. They are easy to identify by hovering the cursor over scroll-able content and they just act as an overlay over the content. In windows, the content is actually shifted the width of t…

That's a lot of work to make sure every user's experience on their platform is inconsistent.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#199

Post by atharris »

hellofunk wrote: post #181
xur17 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For folks considering the switch, I highly recommend considering linux as well. I've used both macOS and ubuntu as a development environment, and bug wise they are on par, but linux really excels at having a true "native" development environment. Docker without a weird VM, true bash, etc.

To suggest that “bug wise“ it is the same between Mac and Linux is a bit of a stretch. I work in a team where the developers are mostly split between Mac and Ubuntu. Guess which ones often have problems joining zoom meetings or attaching their machines to a projector for a presentation? There are a lot of things that you generally don’t have to worry about much if you’re using a Mac. I’m not gonna say that one of the…

This is definitely the largest drawback of Linux in general - support for peripherals and common communication/presentation software is really lacking. If I had a dollar for every time I had to muck around to get my headphones to work on Ubuntu, I wouldn't be posting here.

Re: Scrollbar Blindness

#200

Post by snazz »

mbar84 wrote: post #131
chias wrote: post #84

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 litt…

The other being System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys and map Caps Lock to Escape

Or Control, depending on which you're used to. Every time I try to use Windows I'm surprised that there's no easy-to-access setting for remapping Caps Lock like there is on every Linux DE and macOS.
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